We open with a close-up on Cortana, her face contorted in pain, eyes squeezed shut. "No," she says over and over, starting slowly in a whisper, getting louder and faster as her head twists from side to side. "NO!" she finally screams, as her eyes pop wide open. She breathes heavily, looks around in shock as she takes in her surroundings. She stops, closes her eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath to collect herself. Calmer but still shaken, she opens her eyes. She waves an unsteady hand in the air in front of her, and a control panel made of light materializes. Under an image of cryopod 7, she taps the button that says "Revive."
"Wake up, Chief. I need you."
After a moment of servos whining and pneumatics hissing, the cryopod opens. Master Chief John-117 takes his first unsteady step, unaware of how much time has passed since they escaped the firing of the replacement Alpha Halo above the Ark. He looks at Cortana's image projected on the plinth in front of him. The erratic lines of code scrolling across her form tell him that she is upset.
"Cortana. What's wrong? Why did you wake me?"
"Chief, I just had the most horrible dream. There was this Forerunner that was alive somehow, and then this Elite that kidnapped Dr. Halsey, and then you went AWOL with the rest of Blue Team and they sent some other Spartans after you, and then there was this big ugly Brute that almost killed you, and this weird flying squid lady, and there was a clone of me but younger and more annoying, and it was all because of that Monitor that we met on the first Halo…"
"It's all right, Cortana. We're safe now. 343 can't hurt you anymore."