A/N: Set after the events of Halo 4. Will be reversing some canon for the sake of the story, specifically how Cortana was created. My technical knowledge of Halo is limited, but I'll try to make it as technical as I can get for descriptions of armor, ships, and weapons. Hope you enjoy.

Disclaimer: I do not own Halo or any of its characters. I just screw them up for the purpose of entertaining fans.

Forty Thousand Reasons

…

.

…

Chapter One

…

Solitude.

It was as if he were completely alone in the universe.

A singular being in a wasteland with nothing but deafening silence, which only brought the whispers of madness.

Behind his visor his eyes were closed, the armor plating of his forearms resting on his equally plated thighs, body hunched forward as the haunting quiet swamped him.

He suffered. He was suffering, but no one would ever know.

"Chief?" The sound of his title was jarring, and though his form didn't move, his eyes opened slowly.

The floor in front of him was metal, grated to help with stability, to be slip resistant, and it was gray.

"Master Chief?" His head lifted, his gaze rising to the woman who stood before him, a technician with her brown eyes cast down at his bent form, concern evident there. She seemed to take his movement for a response and cleared her throat, no doubt seeing her reflection in the orange of his visor and wondering what was behind it, like all of the others. "They're ready for the debriefing."

He shifted, planting his palms on his thighs and pushed himself up, now looking down at the small woman in front of him. He could hear her exhale in surprise, first time she'd ever seen him no doubt, he was used to the look of amazement.

"R-right this way." Turning her back to him she hurried out of the room, her slicked back hair trapped in a pony tail holder bouncing as she moved, her white jacket brushing against the back of her black pant covered calves.

He was trained to notice everything, and he followed his training well even if it was the mundane. Her steps stated she was nervous, the clipped movements working twice as hard as his heavy footfalls required as he followed her.

People automatically moved from his path, they also stopped what they were doing to gawk and whisper— some saluted in admiration, and some wore bitter or disgusted expressions. They thought the war hero was just lucky, his genetically engineered form was a godsend, that's the only reason why he performed so well.

They might have been right, but he thought nothing of any of them, his mind blank as he continued to follow the woman.

She lead him into a conference room where a large table sat, high ranking members of the UNSC seated around it, some with grim expressions, some smug. Projected on the screen behind them was a woman, older, with short bobbed hair and as his eyes turned to the screen his steps faltered, a quick jerk of muscles that no one would have seen but he felt in every fiber of his being as he moved to stand where he was designated.

"John," the screen greeted him and behind his helmet, his eyes squeezed closed. The voice wasn't quite right, but it was enough.

"Doctor Halsey." His greeting sounded, as always, formal, devoid of emotion.

"Master Chief Petty Officer, John-117." Standing at attention brought him to his full height of 7'2" and he raised his chin.

"Sir."

And that was how it started.

The events of the time that had passed since Cortana had awakened him on the destroyed Forward Onto Dawn was explained, then restated, and the questions that came were answered again and again. He responded to anything and everything as was his duty. He repeated himself without hesitation, he told them everything. Everything but...

His internal reflection was interrupted; he pushed the memory aside.

"Your armor, the upgrade that was applied to it is undecodable and unable to be recreated. The program on the data is locked in the severely damaged memory banks that was no doubt a side effect of the blast you endured." His eyes turned to Halsey on screen as a commanding officer spoke to him, though no one would know he ever looked away.

"While I was in cryosleep, Cortana made the changes." It was the first time he had said her name, since…

"During rampancy?" He eyes turned back to the sitting man with the graying hair, dressed in the uniform of an officer of the United Nations Space Command.

"I do not know when her rampancy began, sir." She had tried to hide it from him. Tried to act as if everything was okay.

"Your current armor will be decommissioned. It will be replaced with the standard Mark V armor."

Inside of his suit, his muscles tightened even as the calmness of his voice spoke, not betraying the emotion that stirred within him.

"Yes, sir."

"Is there anything you want to say, or add?"

The question caught him off guard and his head lowered slightly before he looked back up at the men in front of him before finally turning his body towards the screen where Catherine Halsey sat, watching the proceedings.

"I am sorry." Was all he said, his voice even and he straightened once again.

"It was unusual for an A.I. to last as long as that one did. Cortana would have been decommissioned over a year ago, on her seventh year had it not been for the two of you being lost. We will find you another suitable A.I. to fit your needs. Perhaps even another Cortana model." Halsey spoke, her voice was cold, uncaring despite the look of anger in her eyes.

It was just a computer program, a piece of equipment. As expendable in the end as he was to them every day.

He watched the screen a moment longer then turned his attention back to the commanding officer who stood.

"You are dismissed."

"Sir." With a salute, Chief turned and headed toward the automatic door that slid open with a hiss of hydraulics.

Chief...

The screen in his visor flickered, barely, but he noticed and paused, head lifting, shoulders straightening as he thought he heard her.

Shaking his head only slightly he moved from the room, the door clamping shut behind him.

"Right this way Master Chief." It was the brown eyed girl again, standing with a data pad clasped between her hands in front of her. "We'll have that old armor off of you in no time, get you resituated in case of imminent need, then have you off to rest."

Rest? What was that?

"Cryosleep?"

The technician looked back at him over her shoulder, startled. "No, no sir. You're being put on mandatory leave until you are paired with another A.I."

He said nothing as he followed her once again.

He was alone, and everything that was hers was going to be stripped from him.

As his boots sounded in the hall, they seemed to echo as he walked out into a bay of technicians, of men and women in armor. Spartans without being Spartans.

Sunlight streamed in through dimmed windows that overlooked the Earth, haloed in the light. Home; so they told him.

'Before this is all over, promise me you'll figure out which one of us is the machine.'

He stopped in the middle of the walkway and turned to look at the light of the sun, and felt no warm through his armor, he felt nothing.

"You weren't the machine." Spoken softly he turned his gaze away from the star and once again followed the technician.

…

Catherine Halsey sat back in her chair as the screen in front of her flickered to the UNSC emblem and pinched the bridge of her nose.

There had been such high hopes for Cortana, but she suffered rampancy just like all of the others. The hope of metastability had been lost, and now the husk of Cortana was nothing but disposable. Waste.

Annoyance flooded her as she stood, moving out of the conference room in the small station she was assigned to continue her research, of course, provided off the record by the UNSC.

They had done nothing but criticize the Spartan-II program, shut it down, and yet the savior of the human race was none other than one of the children that had lived through the experimental process. Her funding should have been returned, the program should have been reopened.

Evolution was too slow, and since she could see no gods among the stars, she knew she needed to step up. The common good was always above the individual, no matter how she felt about seeing John once again.

As she strode down a hallway, void of people and brightly lit, she glanced at a door, restricted to everyone but her, incapable of being over-ridden and paused to press her hand to the cool metal. Letting the feeling seep into her fingers.

"Such a disappointment," Halsey stated as she dropped her hand to her side, and moved to her quarters.

A/N: Tell me what you guys think thus far. Chapters will be longer in the future.

…Nuclotei