Impossible to imagine—and yet, I had. I had anticipated what I was now seeing. How, you ask? I can’t lie, not in this state … But how could I have foreseen the extent of this treachery? And if I had foreseen it almost as soon as I found myself in the Burn, how could I not have foreseen it centuries before?

The words of the Primordial. The more-than-implied threat. The alteration in behavior of the Flood in the later stages of the human wars … as if somehow a disease, a hideous perversion of life, could play favorites and turn away from one set of victims to focus on Forerunners.

Vengeance.

I had been blinded by victory, by the awful, energizing, deceiving drug of total triumph. I had wrongly surmised, back on Charum Hakkor, that the Primordial was secure, that nothing could open the timelock and release it. And I had known beyond any shadow of doubt that humans were on the verge of annihilation.

Forthencho, Lord of Admirals, and all his aides and commanders …

We had watched their torment, my wife and I.

Only the threat of the Flood itself could have forced me back from utterly extirpating humanity. And that was how the Flood had saved humanity from our wrath: by first infecting, and then withdrawing, and so implying humans knew of a way to combat or avoid the disease. An astonishing strategic feint, one I cannot help but admire.

Favored by the Flood!

Saving the humans, as many as possible, that was what my wife had desired all along. Only now do I recognize her actions for what they truly were. There can be no darker moment than this. No darker revelation of betrayal. What could I have done, even had I not been exiled into my Cryptum for a thousand years?

Held motionless by the grapplers, I raged silently, a darkly burning torch carried like a trophy up the nerve centers of this wretched, haunted ship. Catalog said and did nothing. It had rolled its carapace smooth, withdrawn its sensors—a rational enough response. If it could be infected by the Flood, then its function as a conduit to the Juridicals might be inverted. It could be compelled to open a direct channel to the very heart of Forerunner polity. At the very least, it could then pass along an extremely demoralizing message.

What we were seeing.

Perhaps already it was disconnecting its carapace, committing itself to suffocation, an honorable death. A dutiful admission of failure. But that would not be allowed. Catalog was too valuable.

Moisture condensed in clouds around it. Its grappler had chilled it swiftly and uniformly to within a fraction of a degree above zero, or to zero itself, where its memory and machinery could do nothing but superconduct through an endless cycle of memories and sensations. Never-ending, never-completed depositions. Colliding, confused testimonies.