A few years later
Iowas POV
Months after I had crash-landed with York and Carolina, we had fixed the ship, apparently, it was a lot worse than we had originally thought, but we were in too far to stop when we realized, so we had no choice but to continue. Once the ship was up and running, we packed up all our gear from in the makeshift base and loaded it into the pelican. I sat in the main pilot chair, and Carolina sat behind me, with York standing off to the side, chatting with us, occasionally one of us would start cracking jokes, not being able to take each other seriously, sometimes Tex or Epsilon would join in on the fun, making it less boring of a trip, wherever we were headed.
Suddenly, Tex stopped laughing at the inside joke me and her had. "Tex? You alright?" I asked her, sounding worried, Carolina and York gave me a concerned look. "I'm picking up a distress signal... One of the recovery beacons our armors have." I looked back at Carolina and York, who shrugged, I turned back to Tex. "Do you know who it is??" I asked, and she just looked at me. "You're not going to like the answer..." She said, shifting uncomfortably.
"Probably not, but tell us anyway." Carolina pushed, her tone turning serious. York and I nodded in agreement with Carolina, eager to hear why Tex, or rather Beta, was so hesitant to tell us who she was picking up on her radar. "It's Agent North..." She said grimly, slowly turning her head to look at me. My eyes instantly widened. "North...? Are you sure? Tex, scan it again." I ordered her. "I did, several times actually, before I told you, I'm positive it's him, and I can't detect Theta anywhere." I cursed under my helmet, shifting gears in the pelican to make us drop down to the planet below us.
"York you better strap in!" Carolina called to our friend behind us, in which he nodded and ran to the back of the ship, sitting down and lowering the harness to keep him from falling out of his seat. I'm actually thrilled that they were installed on this ship, despite it being an older model than the ones we were all used to. I can't describe how many times I've 'accidentally' fallen out of the seat due to one of Tex's sharp turns; I chuckled to myself just thinking about it.
Once we reached the atmosphere of the planet, which was a rocky trip from the start, seeing as I practically dive-bombed the ship just to get down there, I told Tex to set a waypoint to where North's beacon was setting out the transmission. We were about an hour away, but I was going to make it in 30 minutes, I had to, I wasn't going to lose a teammate, not now. "Iowa, slow down, we can't just rush headfirst into this, we don't know what we're dealing with, or who we're dealing with," Carolina ordered me, but I didn't listen to her. "Shut up, Carolina, I'm not losing a friend today," I said angrily, picking up the speed as much as I could.
"She's right Iowa, I don't know how much more this ship can take, it's damaged enough," Tex warned me, but I also ignored her. Soon enough we landed about a two-minute walk out from where North was, though me being me, once the pelican landed I raced out of the ship and over to where North was. I could see him dealing with three UNSC jeeps, each packed with their usual mini guns on top. He was currently hiding behind cover, trying to think of a way out of this.
Instantly, and without thinking, I charged the jeep on the far right, jumping up onto the back part quietly and snapping the dude's neck, throwing him off to the side, unfortunately, that act didn't go unnoticed as the middle turret guy turned towards me, just as I took out the driver of my jeep with a pistol shot to the head. I ducked down just as the middle turret fired at me, almost hitting me in the head but luckily I slid off the back of the jeep and hid behind it. I couldn't see York or Carolina, so either they're hiding or tending to North, leaving me to deal with these two.
I then ran out from my cover, dodge rolling a large line of bullets and getting behind a tree, which probably was a bad idea, but it was a good thing I wasn't staying behind there for long, I quickly moved from cover to cover, getting closer to the middle jeep with each move I made, before eventually being able to take out the driver of the two jeeps with quick accuracy with just a pistol, surprising, right? Not really for me, just another Tuesday I guess. "Iowa, it's Friday." Tex reminded me, completely missing the point. "Tex, that's not the point, it's just a saying," I responded back to her.
I could feel her roll her eyes at me, which only made me roll my eyes in return. I was wasting time, I shook my head and came out from the large tree I was hiding behind, dodging and weaving the turrets fire as I threw a grenade at the one on the left, where it thudded against the boot of the soldier manning the turret, exploding violently as I jumped up above the turret in front of me, kicking the gun upwards, breaking the thing in half and snapping the soldier's neck. With that done and over with, I ran over to where North was hiding in cover, York and Carolina were already there, crouching next to him. Before I could even say anything, my eyes landed on a large piece of metal sticking out from his side.
"North, I-" I began, but he cut me off, holding up a finger to stop me from continuing. "It's just a flesh wound..." He coughed, Carolina, reached forward and took off his helmet, setting it to the side, a small trail of blood sliding down the side of his mouth and down his chin. "I'm glad to see you three... Even under these circumstances." He smiled weakly, making me bite my lip, tears stinging my eyes. "North... Please don't go..." I took his hand in mine, squeezing it, but he just squeezed back. "Don't worry Iowa, I'll still be with you, I'll be with all of you." I could tell he was about to cry as well, even York and Carolina were struggling not to.
"I'm glad you three are okay at least." North coughed some more, and I wiped away the blood with my thumb. "Hey York?" He turned his head to his old friend, possibly one of his closest. "I'm here, North, I'm here," York stated, resting a hand on his shoulder. "You make sure to watch out for them, yeah?" North requested, making us all laugh sadly. "Yeah buddy, I will." York nodded, making North smile softly, he then turned to Carolina. "Don't... Don't ever lose yourself Carolina, you're better than that." He informed her, and Carolina nodded. "I won't, I promise." She sniffled, Carolina was actually crying for once, that was a first.
North smiled and nodded as well, before he suddenly just stopped breathing, signaling that he was dead. I cursed under my breath, slamming my fist into the broken concrete wall that he was leaning against, cracking it. "Dammit!" I cried out, we all stayed silent for a moment, each of us paying our respects to him, soon enough, Epsilon came out to warn us. "Hey, guys? Sorry to ruin the moment, but there's a pelican incoming, you three need to leave." And he was right, I could faintly hear the sound of a ship coming our way. I sighed and stood up. "You guys take the ship... I'm not coming with you." I stated, turning around to walk away
"What? Why not?" York asked, standing up as well. "There's something I need to do... But don't worry, we'll see each other again soon." I turned to face them, I hated making empty promises like this, but it had to happen. "I'll cya soon you two, take care." And with that, I hopped into one of the jeeps and took off away from the group. "Are we really leaving them?" Tex asked, appearing beside me. "Yeah, we're going to find Maine, and hunt him down," I said angrily.
"But we don't even know where he is! It could take us weeks, months even!" Tex argued, trying to be the voice of reason.
"Maine is hunting us down, one by one, he already took Eta and Iota away from Carolina, then he took Theta, Sigma is already with him." I responded.
"But how do you know he is?" Tex asked, making me roll my eyes, for a super computer, she wasn't very smart in this.
"Think about it, what reason does he have for taking Carolina's A.I's and then Theta? During one of the classes you skipped out on, Sigma stayed behind, and from What Delta told me, he was running various sequences to get the so called theory stage of meta stability, where an A.I is considered human." I explained, the image of the symbol flashing across my mind.
"He's trying to get the A.I's to become metastable?" Tex asked. "But he wont be able to handle that many A.I's, hell, even Carolina couldn't handle the two."
"He doesn't need to, either he has them in his memory unit, or in his storage unit, inside his helmet. Meaning he doesn't have to go 'insane' while carrying them all." I explained.
"So, how are we going to find Maine? We don't even know where to begin." Tex asked, crossing her mini holographic arms across her chest.
"Ehh... You're not going to like it, frankly I dont like it either, and I have no idea if it'll even work." I sigh, trying to run each possible scenario through my head.
"Oh no, no, not a chance! We worked so hard to get out of there and now you want to go back?" Tex exclaimed, obviously reading my thoughts.
"Okay, hear me out, we go back to command, get on the good side of the director and counselor again, and then we'll have the proper equipment to hunt Maine down, it'll be much faster and easier and frankly, a lot safer." I explain, and with heavy resistance, Tex finally agreed.
So, thus began our long trip back to where it all began, back to where I was 'born.' Back to command.
