TIME:DATE STAMP [[ERROR]] ANOMALYRevised date estimated 0450, September 12,2552, captured Covenant flagship Ascendant Justice, in Slipspace en route to Eridanus system.
Dr. Halsey buzzed the door open, and the Master Chief en.tered the clean room.
"You wanted to see me, Doctor?" He quickly looked the room over—taking in theadjoining surgical suites, and the strange or.ange sterile-field lamps set every meter into reflective recessions in the tiled walls.
Dr. Halsey had clamped five displays onto the arm of one of the contoured examination chairs in this room. She sat cross-legged in the chair and balanced a large alphanumeric-symbolic keyboard on her lap. Perched precariously on the side tray were Styrofoam cups of half-drunk coffee.
She waved the Chief forward. "I see you are ignoring sound medical advice by movingbefore you have fully healed.""I'm fine, ma'am," he replied.
She snorted in disbelief. "John—I've never known you to tell an outright lie. I'm pickingup telemetry from your armor, right now." She swiveled one of the monitors on her chairso he could see erratic biosigns pulsing on the screen. "What with the burns, contusions,fractures, and internal bleeding, you should be in shock. The only sleep you've gotten in a week was unconscious.ness brought on by your wounds. And you say you're 'fine'?"He stood and said nothing.
"Very well. I suppose you know your limitations better than anyone else." She turned thedisplay back around. "I wanted toERIC NYLUND243speak about your report on the alien construct—Halo. I've pieced together a bit of thestory based on Admiral Whitcomb's recounting of your adventures, Cortana's debriefing,and the mis.sion logs of Locklear, Johnson... and the curious partial mission log of one PFC Wallace Jenkins."The Master Chief shifted uneasily.
"There are inconsistencies that I must resolve before we get back to Earth." She pushedher glasses higher onto the bridge of her nose. "One of them is Sergeant Johnson." Shetapped in commands on her keyboard. "Please step closer, John. I want you to see thiswith me."The Master Chief moved alongside her chair. His massive weight thudded through thethick deck plating. Two meters tall and half a ton of metal and somehow Dr. Halsey couldn't help thinking of him occasionally as the same little boy she had stolen from hisparents in Elysium City.
No. John had changed. She hadn't. She was the one who still carried the three-decade-oldfestering guilt.
She took a deep breath and refocused her attention on the video records before her. On screen played mission logs that showed Covenant and Marines in firefights, the oddForerunner architec.ture in the interior of the Halo construct, and the terrifying omniparasiticlife-form known as the Flood.
She replayed the mission record of Private Jenkins and the first Flood attack.
John stiffened as Captain Keyes appeared on screen and as the Flood consumed theCaptain and his squad. Sergeant Johnson was there, too, fighting and cursing ... until thehordes of tiny, podlike Infection Forms swarmed over him.
"The Sergeant survived," she said. "The only human to have direct exposure to the Floodmeta-organism and walk away.""I know," the Master Chief whispered. "I'm not sure how he survived. How could anyone live through that?""That's the simple part," Dr. Halsey told him without looking up from her displays. Shetapped a key, and the Sergeant's medi.cal records flashed on screen. "See, here?" Shetouched a file dated three years before. "He was diagnosed with Boren's Syndrome.""I haven't heard of it," the Chief said.
"I'm not surprised. It's caused by exposure to high-yield244HALO: FIRST STRIKEplasma. Like the burst released by a Covenant plasma grenade. We don't see many cases —people usually die from the direct ef.fects of those weapons long before these secondary symptoms manifest.
"Apparently, the Sergeant captured a crate of plasma grenades from the Covenant duringthe Siege of Paris IV He used them all—received a commendation for bravery ... and atwelve-hundred-rad cumulative dose of radiation as an unanticipated bonus."John was silent for several minutes. Dr. Halsey wasn't sure if he was reading thecomputer files, contemplating her words, or trying to confirm all this on a private COM channel with Cor-tana. His impenetrable armor made discussions with normal so.cialconventions nearly impossible. It irritated her, yet without that armor with its constant hydrostatic pressure and automated biofoam injectors, John would have literally fallen apart by now.
For a fleeting moment she remembered when she had first read Alexander Dumas's Man in the Iron Mask. She had felt terror when the noble prisoner had been encased withinthat metal shell. How did John cope with the constant suffocating enclosure?
The Master Chief finally said, "I don't see the connection be.tween the Sergeant'ssickness and his surviving the Flood.""Boren's Syndrome," Dr. Halsey explained, "is characterized by migraines, amnesia, and brain tumors . .. and without the proper treatment, death. It disrupts the electrical signalsin a per.son's nervous system.""Is it treatable?""Yes, but it requires thirty weeks of intensive chemotherapy. Which brings me to this." She hit the NEXT PAGE key and an offi.cial "Refusal of Treatment" document appearedon screen. "The Sergeant did not wait thirty weeks to get back and fight."The Master Chief nodded, understanding the heroic, futile gesture. "How did thisdisruption of his nervous system save him?""I've deconvoluted the biosigns of the soldiers overtaken by the Flood. The parasiteinterfaces with a host by forcing a reso.nant frequency match to each host's neural system."ERIC NYLUND245"And the Sergeant's nervous system is so jumbled that the Flood couldn't force a match?""Correct," she said. "Further blood tests show his system bearing traces of Flood DNA— very much dead and noninfec-tious, but some gene fragments are intact. I believe this isproof of a failed attempt to possess him. It also appears to have im.parted him with somecurious regenerative abilities, although I cannot yet fully confirm this side effect."The Master Chief seemed to relax a notch from his usual ram.rod stiff at-attentionstature. This new information seemed to put him at ease. "I think I see.""No," Dr. Halsey told him, and she removed her glasses. "You don't.""Doctor?""Discovering how he survived is not what I wanted to discuss. It's what happens next toSergeant Avery Johnson."She shut off her monitors and eased back into the chair. "I've prepared two separatereports on this for ONI Section Three. The first has all relevant data on my analysis andthe possible technology to counter an initial Flood infestation. The second includes thesource material: Private Jenkins's and Sergeant Johnson's mission logs and the Sergeant'smedical files."She downloaded the reports onto two data cr stals and ejected them from the port on thechair's arm. She set the clear cubes on the trayyy and gestured for John to take them. "Ileave it up to you which to deliver to Lieutenant Haverson.""Why would I withhold any data, Doctor?" the Master Chief asked and glanced at thecrystals.
Her eyes focused past him as she struggled to find the words to match her conflictingemotions. "For a long time I had thought that we had to sacrifice a few for the good of theentire human race." She took a deep breath and let it go with a heavy sigh. "I have killedand maimed and caused a great deal of suffering to many people—all in the name of self-preservation." Her steely blue gaze found him. "But now I'm not sure that philosophy hasworked out too well. I should have been trying to save every single hum............