UR-DIDACT: Not an interview. A deep, burning brand. An upwelling of hidden genetic contents … So many things I would never have imagined. Things I cannot repeat, lest I lose what remains of my sanity, my Warrior soul.

CATALOG: Can you convey some of that to the Juridicals?

UR-DIDACT: Telling would punish me more than anything you can do.

CATALOG: Was your experience similar to the process that perverted Mendicant Bias?

UR-DIDACT: I wouldn’t know. I feel a coldness in my head. You’re doing something. What is that?

CATALOG: Calming encouragement. If necessary, we can compel testimony, but we cannot alter its contents. The testimonies are not yet clear on key points. You may hold the key to our final judgment.

UR-DIDACT: You’re trying to make me feel at peace with all that happened … Like I’m somebody else, standing outside, watching … ripping open a scab. I can’t relive what the Primordial did to me! Stop now!

CATALOG: There is no real danger. Let’s continue.

UR-DIDACT TESTIMONY RESUMES (UNDER COMPULSION)

I don’t remember much about what happened immediately after we were removed from the hulk. I presume the old ship did its duty and blew up. I don’t know what I should tell you next. This calmness distorts me. I should not be calm.

But I must explain.

We, Catalog and I, were on a Forerunner ship. That much I could see. A powerfully armed, very advanced version of a class of swift attack vessel—not a dreadnought. Something like a harrier. We were held in a distorting grappler unlike any I’ve experienced. Light took on a sapped, grayish hue, turned a corner right near my eyes … arrived late and unhappy. Whenever I pressed against the grappler, the force turned painfully back on me, leaving a numbness in all my muscles. I learned quickly not to move.

Even through the grappler, I could see that monitors were everywhere—jostling in the corridors, packing the lifts, control and fire centers—but they were not of a sort I’d seen before. They were new, small, extremely specialized. Some guided pallets bearing victims of the Flood—all Forerunners in the late stages of transformation. Shall I describe what that looks like? No. You already know.

The infected Forerunners—they knew me. Recognized me. Some writhed as I was conveyed past them, as if to break free of their disease, their pallets—their shackles. They knew better than I why they were allowed to remain. Their presence, along with the influx of new monitors, would override the secure command and control systems. Forerunners forced to betray their own kind, while reduced to flaccid monstrosities—sprouting hideous growths, being digested by the Flood, soon fit only for absorption in a Gravemind.

No doubt they were being used thus on all the ships we had seen—and many more.