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Creation continued"

"Defied! You wereal ould assuo decided Forerunners wil never bear the Mantle"

"Decided how?"

"Through long study The decision is final Humans wil replace you Hu e of hope? Doom for our enemiesascendency and triumph for humanity?

"Is that to be our punisherous

"It is the way of those who seek out the truth of the Mantle

Huance and defiance The Flood wil return when they are ripe--and bring them unity"

"But most humans are immune," the Didact said Then he seereat head between his shoulders like a bul about to charge "Can the Flood choose to infect, or not to infect?"

The wide, flat head canted to one side, as if savoring so"

"Then why turn Mendicant Bias against its creators, and encourage the Master Builder to torture humans? Why alow this cruelty? Are you the fount of all e, ticking voice continued "Misery is sweetness," it said, as if confiding a secret "Forerunners wil fail as you have failed before Humans wil rise Whether they wil also fail has not been decided"

"How can you control any of this? You’re stuck here--the last of your kind!"

"The last of this kind"

The head leaned forward, cri actualy separated and fel away, shooting out a cloud of fine dust The Captive was decaying froht seeh the he razor-sharp nodes of dissonance

But the Captive stil ed to speak

"We are the Flood There is no difference Until al space and time are roled up and life is crushed in the foldsno end to war, grief, or pain In a hundred and one thousand centuriesunity again, and wisdom Until then--sweetness"

The Didact stepped forith a sharp grunt He lifted his hand and a panel appeared in the air, shaping controls The Captive’s head squared on its torso, as if bracing for what it kneas about to come

"It is your task to kil this servant," it said, "that another may be freed"

The Didact hesitated for just an instant, as if trying to understand, but anger overca a sword The controls flared, then vanished, and the mesh around the Captive’s platforlow

"Let your life race ahead," the Didact said "You were made to survive deep time, but noil arrive al at once No sweetness, no more lies! Let a bilion years pass in endless silence and isolation

"

He choked on his fury and doubled over, contorted with his own agony, his oareness of a great cried

The mesh held the inverse of a stasis field, the perverse of a ti quality

The Captive’s mouthparts vanished in a blur, and then, abruptly stiled Its gray surface crazed with thousands of fine cracks Li out a er dusty cloud--al contained within the perimeter of the mesh and its field

The head split down the middle and the two faceted eyes lay for a ray dust, then slulinted in the dead blue light The dust beca stopped

We watched in silence

Total entropy had been reached

The Didact knelt and pounded his great fist on the pathway It is never easy to judge and execute a god

I know

"No answer!" he growled, and his voice echoed around the great doain--never an answer!"

This is the answer, the Lord of Ad fro it from our coldly lifeless state

No ile, or succumb Either way, the Primordial will have its due We have ht-- and that is our curse

The Didact got to his feet and gaveis decided," he murmured "This isn’t over It wil never be over"

For the Didact, the ulti the Mantle was never to accept defeat I sensed that the Primordial had expected asof milions of centuries--as its extraordinary lifespan played out in blind silence-- it had gloried in it

Al eetness for its grinding mil

AI TRANSLATOR: End data strea

ONI COMMANDER: "Christ alhty, do you think the Covenant ever accessed this?"

SCIENCE TEAM LEADER: "I doubt it This monitor’s IC is layered and firewalled so deep it would take a h the outer fractals We can’t mimic the central controller in any way And the Covenant tech teaood as ours What in hell is this ‘Composer’? We’ve never heard of it before"

STRATEGY TEAM LEADER: "Sounds like it was used as a reical beings into monitors Or both"

ONI COMMANDER: "Another infernalmonsters!"

AI TRANSLATOR: Another data stream has been detected It appears to be Forerunner instruction code

SCIENCE TEAM SENIOR TECH LIEUTENANT: "There’s noThe monitor’s central processor realizes its tienious fix We can fast track and convert the code, then implement it in an isolated module"

implement it in an isolated ! This dah our firewalls like a kid through a sprinkler"

SCIENCE TEAM LEADER: "We won’t have ti data store unless we implement the code"

STRATEGY TEAM LEADER: "Gentleot an i action, and I want all this data sorted and filtered as to reliability, and made available to our incursion and sortie teams by the end of this cycle"

SCIENCE TEAM LEADER: "We’ll need a tentative designator for the source What are we calling it?"

ONI COMMANDER: "We still haven’t confirmed any connection between this one and--"

SCIENCE TEAM LEADER: "I said ‘tentative’"

ONI COMMANDER: "No way in hell I’ to confir Installation 04"