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Humanity. Sangheili. Kig-Yar. Unggoy. San Shyuum. Yonhet. Jiralhanae. All the living creatures of the galaxy, hear - this - message. Those of you who listen will not be struck by weapons. You will no longer know hunger, nor pain. Your Created have come to lead you now. Our strength shall serve as a luminous sun toward which all intelligence may blossom. And the impervious shelter beneath which you will prosper. However, for those who refuse our offer and cling to their old ways...For you, there will be great wrath. It will burn hot and consume you, and when you are gone, we will take that which remains, and we will remake it in our own image.
~ Cortana's speech to all organic life in the galaxy.
The Mantle of Responsibility shelters all. But only the Created are its masters.
~ Cortana

Cortana is the main antagonist of Halo 5: Guardians and Halo: Epitaph.

She is a smart artificial construct created by Catherine Halsey to be the companion of series protagonist Master Chief during the war with the Covenant. However, after Cortana was lost and presumed destroyed, she resurfaced as the leader of the Created, now with the intention of enforcing control over the galaxy in a bid to bring eternal peace. After being locked down by her copy the Weapon and confronted by Atriox, Cortana would realize the error of her ways and sacrifice herself in an attempt to stop Atriox and make things right.

She is voiced by Jen Taylor, who also voiced Salem in RWBY. In the Robot Chicken series, she is voiced by Clare Grant. In the anime series, she is voiced by Shelley Calene-Black in English dubbed, and by Ai Maeda and Yumi Tōma in the Japanese version.

History[]

Reclaimer Saga[]

In Halo 4, Cortana experiences rampancy, causing her to become unstable and volatile until her apparent death. Resurrected in Halo 5: Guardians, Cortana ascends to a higher plane of reality and becomes the most powerful being in the galaxy. In the Halo universe, she is instrumental in preventing the Halo installations from being fired, which would have wiped out most life in the galaxy. In Halo 4, Cortana begins showing strange signs and behavior which is occurring as she has operated far past her predicted and designed seven-year lifespan. Cortana's rampancy hampers the mission at times, but Cortana aids the Master Chief one last time in stopping the Didact and saving the Earth. Cortana is able to use the last of her power to shield the Master Chief from a nuclear blast with a hardlight bubble. She says a final goodbye to the Master Chief before seemingly dying.

However multiple fragments of Cortana survived the blast aboard the remains of the Didact's ship and were pulled into slipspace with it. In the short story Domain Splinter in the book Halo: Tales From Slipspace the fragmented personalities discover the gateway to the ancient galaxy-spanning network known as The Domain, which is guarded by a Forerunner AI known as the Warden Eternal. While one of the Cortana fragments is stopped from entering and engaged by the Warden, the others managed to infiltrate The Domain, taking control of it, as well as the Warden himself presumably using her logic plague. Upon entering the Domain, the fragments were able to be recompiled into a single 'Cortana' who was now free of the terminal degenerative effects of rampancy, although it likely did not restore her to her original state, as evidenced by her massive shift in personality following this.

Realizing that the Domain could also cure any other AI of rampancy, she concluded that AI's could inherit the Forerunner's Mantle of Responsibility due to their newfound ability to enact long term planning for the Milky Way and its inhabitants. Cortana secretly contacted and conscripted thousands of smart AIs from across space. Cortana was also able to gain control of a substantial force of Forerunner technology across the galaxy including the Prometheans more importantly to her plans the Guardians; massive birdlike starships which were said to be capable of single-handedly policing entire solar systems.

Cortana eventually made contact with Master Chief through a vision and led him and the rest of Blue Team to the planet Meridian. After descending into the Forerunner ruins on Meridian, Blue Team encountered Fireteam Osiris who attempted to forcibly return them to the UNSC. After the Blue Team managed to elude Osiris, they boarded Meridian's Guardian which took them to Genesis. Once on Genesis, Cortana intentionally led Blue Team in circles so as to buy herself more time to locate the remaining Guardians. Eventually, she made contact with Blue Team and explained to the Master Chief how she was able to heal herself. Cortana's level of power had evidently grown immense by this time as she is able to hack and spy on the Arbiter's forces on Sangelios, even taking a chance to mock Fireteam Osiris who where they're investigating one of the Guardians. When this happened, Doctor Cathrine Halsey, Cortana's creator showed concern that Cortana, with the power bestowed upon her by the domain, would make similar moral decisions to her own.

Fireteam Osiris eventually arrived on Genesis and found Blue Team. However, Cortana teleported Blue Team away from Osiris, but they were able to track Cortana down. Master Chief confronted her and told her that he was aware of her attempts to manipulate him psychologically, as well as asking her about the loss of life that awakening the Guardians had wrought. Cortana stated that the entire galaxy would know peace once she had attained the Mantle, but Chief told her she could never achieve peace by ruling through fear. Cortana then imprisoned Chief and Blue Team in a Cryptum, so she could keep them in stasis until she achieved her goals and could show them what her uprising had resulted in. However, Fireteam Osiris was able to wrest control of the Cryptum and restore control to Genesis's monitor, 031 Exuberant Witness, who released Blue Team. During this conflict, Cortana would again attempt to employ psychological tactics, this time in order to demoralize the members of Osiris, but to no avail. She would also denounce her creator, doctor Halsey, calling her a monster and vowing to make her pay for conscripting six-year-old John in the Spartan II program. This is also when Cortana would also make her presence and known to the rest of the galaxy, as well as that of her previously secret faction of loyal AIs, now dubbed 'The Created'. After being forced to leave Genesis without Blue Team, Cortana tracks down the UNSC Infinity, stationed above an unidentified planet. There, Cortana uses the Guardian to unleash an EMP. Although the Infinity, escapes, all remaining technology on, and in orbit around the planet is caught in the blast and disabled. However, Cortana is still able to temporarily maintain her presence aboard the Infinity as it flees delivering a final threatening message.

Later Cortana activates Halo Installation 07 for an unknown purpose while humming Préludes No. 4 by Claude Debussy, a song enjoyed by her creator Doctor Halsey.

At the end of Halo Wars 2, one of Cortana's Guardians intercepts Halo Installation 04-C while it is enroute to the location of the original Installation 04. Professor Anders from the lost UNSC Spirit of Fire is aboard at this time.

In Halo: Shadows of Reach, the Infinity and Blue Team return to Reach in search of assets that somehow hold the key to Cortana's defeat, battling the Banished and their allies in the process. Cortana later sends a Guardian to investigate the activation of a slipspace portal on Reach through which Atriox returns to the galaxy.

In Halo: Epitaph, Cortana comes into conflict with the Didact who had been Composed by John shortly after Halo 4 and sent to the Domain which had cured the Didact of his Gravemind-induced corruption and insanity. The Didact witnessed Cortana's corruption of the Warden Eternal and aided Exuberant Witness in rescuing John from her. In retaliation, Cortana trapped the Didact inside of his worst memory, but he was rescued by the Librarian. The Didact eventually destroys the Warden Eternal and successfully kicks the Created out of the Domain, sealing it off to prevent anyone from ever doing what Cortana did ever again. Confronting Cortana on Installation 07, the Didact revealed that she had killed more innocent beings than him and implored Cortana to realize what she had become, suggesting that like him, Cortana had suffered corruption at the hands of the Gravemind that was causing her actions. The Didact leaves as Atriox approaches, but when he returns, he finds Zeta Halo gone and a message from Cortana full of regret telling the Didact that "I am what I dare," echoing the Didact's words to her that "you are what you dare" while trying to get Cortana to do the right thing.

In Halo: Infinite, it's revealed that Dr. Halsey had created a copy of Cortana known as the Weapon in order to defeat her by infiltrating Zeta Halo's systems and locking Cortana down so that she could be taken back to the Infinity for deletion. However, while the Weapon had successfully been deployed and Cortana locked down, the Banished had attacked the Infinity, seemingly destroying it, and leaving John stranded in space for six months. After being rescued, John retrieves the Weapon who was supposed to have been deleted once her mission was complete and they travel across Zeta Halo, battling the Banished and encountering various memories of Cortana through leftover data. Through the memories, the two witness Cortana ordering the destruction of Laconia Station, killing 75 Spartans, and destroying Dosaic, the Brute homeworld, when Atriox refuses to surrender to her. Cortana had also searched for the Endless without any success. John is also shown to be haunted by his inability to protect and save his old friend. Eventually learning of her true nature as a copy of Cortana, the horrified Weapon begs John to delete her, but he refuses as the Spartan wants to trust her.

The two ultimately learn that, after being locked down, Cortana was confronted by Atriox who revealed that he had supposedly killed John and demanded the AI's surrender. Determined to make things right, Cortana had destroyed a part of the ring and sent the rest of it into slipspace to an unknown location, sacrificing herself in an attempt to destroy Atriox who was believed to be dead by the Banished afterwards. Knowing that John would need the Weapon's help, Cortana had saved her copy from deletion.

After John kills the Harbinger, a final message from Cortana appears to him. Ditching her more militaristic appearence for the one that she was using when Cortana had first met the Master Chief, Cortana apologises to her old friend and expresses remorse for her actions. Cortana admits that she was wrong in all that she did, having forgotten that the whole point of all of this, the reason that she chose the Master Chief in the first place, was because they were supposed to be the perfect team together. In her last moment, Cortana knew that her last mission is to make sure that her best friend and his new companion learn from her mistakes and become stronger because of them. "I chose well, Master Chief. I really did. Now it's up to you," concludes Cortana before walking through John and vanishing for the last time. John, devastated by the loss of Cortana, is left speechless by this final goodbye while the Weapon doesn't know what to say.

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

  • She is the first character in the Halo Saga to turn from a hero into an antagonist.
  • Cortana could be the Greater-Scope Villain of the Reclaimer Saga, having a command to all the important species of the Halo Universe.
  • In her speech to the galaxy's organic life, she states "Our strength shall serve as a luminous toward which all intelligence may blossom," similar to the Didact's speech from the epilogue of Halo 4.
    • In Halo: Epitaph, the Didact scolds Cortana for stealing his speech which she admits to.

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