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Dr. Halsey punched the ENTER key.
Araqiel vanished.
Dr. Halsey sighed and closed the display. "A waste of memory crystal."
She wondered if the AI had been bluffing. Maybe not; ONI Section Three gave its AIs broad discretionary powers for deal?ing with security breaches. Still... she was happy not to have found out how far Araqiel would have gone.
"Kalmiya, please retrieve the data file and show me the con?tents of Colonel Ackerson's directory."
"Working, Doctor. There's some minor encryption to unravel. It should only take a moment." She paused and then asked, "Doctor Halsey, the UV fail-safe in Araqiel's Riemann matrix... are they planted in every smart AI? In me?"
"They are not implanted in every AI," Dr. Halsey said, care?fully controlling her voice.
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Kalmiya would undoubtedly stress-analyze her vocal pat?terns, so she told her the truth. It was always a game of chess with smart AIs—move and countermove. It was a constant chal?lenge to earn and keep their respect. That's why she preferred their company to humans—they were so deliciously complex. Yes, she told her the truth... just not the whole truth.
"Here they are, Doctor."
Holographic file and folder icons filled the space over her desk.
"Filter by proper names," Dr. Halsey said. "Let's not waste our time with Ackerson's petty blackmails. Also remove any files dated before the SPARTAN-IIs went online, and any not ac?cessed more than a dozen times. I want to see what black ops topped his list."
The folders and files winked away, and only two folders re?mained floating over Dr. Halsey's desk: s-ni and KING UNDER THE MOUNTAIN. She tapped on the first one and it opened, revealing hundreds of separate files. Dr. Halsey examined them—there were medical files on each of her Spartans: complete records from their preindoctrinated origins; their childhood vaccinations; their parents; their extensive injuries and treatments during their train?ing; even the experimental procedures used to enhance their strength, agility, and mental resiliency.
"What the hell was he up to?" she muttered. She felt her pulse quicken as she scoured his records. There were DNA profiles on each Spartan, and there were extensive files on the old flash clone techniques that ONI had used to replace the originals. Ackerson seemed especially interested in this aspect of the program. He had followed the medical records of the replacements as they grew up, succumbed to congenital diseases, and inevitably died. He even had the bodies retrieved and autopsies performed.
Dr. Halsey's stomach soured. It was her fault, in part, that these replacement children had died so young. They had never per?fected flash cloning for an entire human. They had done it any?way thirty years ago because the Earth government was on the verge of falling apart... collapsing into a hundred civil wars. They had desperately needed the SPARTAN program.
And of course, they had done it simply because they could.
No matter the legitimacy of her reasons, she knew she had killed these children as sure as if she had shot them dead.