'Halo' Series Episode 6 Recap: "Solace"

Chief is fairly out of it following the events of the last episode, with Cortana notifying him to seek medical attention as his system is completely overloaded due to this contact with the keystone.

As he's both physically and mentally out of sorts, he casually locks Dr. Halsey in her lab, turning on a system modification that will emit a fatal level of radiation into the room. He seems unfazed by this whole situation as Cortana instructs him to stop what he's doing and let her out, with rage building in his body as he remembers bits of his childhood and her involvement in it.

Just as the gaseous radiation is being let into the lab, Chief finally acts and lets Dr. Halsey out with practically zero time to spare. Basically, it was a test to see if Cortana had the capability of saving her, but as she's only able to shut off Chief and not operate him, she wouldn't have been able to step in for the save.

Later on, Chief demands a meeting with Dr. Halsey and they finally get to hash things out, as she had been putting off the meeting for quite some time. She ends up revealing that she did indeed kidnap Chief as a child, along with other children who were trained to become Spartans. Instead of telling the families that she was taking their children away, she came up with the idea to flash-clone the children beforehand, pulling a bit of a switcheroo on them.

As the clones would naturally die off as time passed, the families were left mourning as their real children were actually alive, being trained into Spartans by Dr. Halsey and the UNSC.

With this revelation, Admiral Parangosky (who had been listening in to this conversation) decides to remove Dr. Halsey from the premises, firing her effective immediately and putting her daughter, Miranda Keyes, in her place. However, this exile doesn't stop her and her assistant, Adun, from hacking into the Cortana system and spying in on Chief and the UNSC from afar.

In the last episode, our sketchy Covenant-ish friend, Makee, was left on the battlefield, with the UNSC deciding to take her in for evaluation, eventually figuring out that her and Chief have very similar genetic makeups. Because of this, they're both able to experience the keystone at about the same levels, though it seems like Chief is even more sensitive to it than Makee.

Given this, the two have a heart-to-heart conversation about their shared experiences, with Makee revealing that the keystone used to hurt her, as well, both physically and mentally. However, when she stopped fighting it, it became one with her and everything became more clear. While Chief also seems to be skeptical of her, he decides to test something new out in his approach to the keystone.

He finds Dr. Keyes and has her agree to run a test with him and the keystone, though it's more so a test for himself rather than of anything diagnostic-wise. Even though he hasn't healed from the prior keystone, he goes ahead and firmly grasps it, immediately sending him into another world and his heart through the roof beat-wise.

At the same time, Makee is chilling in another room when this happens without warning, causing her to fall to the ground as her heart races uncontrollably. Their heart rates end up hitting the exact same BPM, and just when it seems like both of them are going to die, their heart rates fall and we're brought out of the exam room and into their heads.

Chief is standing in a lovely, open meadow on Reach with Makee next to him, with both of them taking in the views and the calm. It's clear that Chief now has control of his reaction to the keystone after following Makee's advice. With this, there's no telling just how far he'll be able to go the next time he touches the larger keystone, as well as where his relationship with Makee will head.