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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 within that 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's sickness 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 signals in 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 appeared on screen. "The Sergeant did not wait thirty weeks to get back and fight."
The Master Chief nodded, understanding the heroic, futile gesture. "How did this disruption of his nervous system save him?"
"I've deconvoluted the biosigns of the soldiers overtaken by the Flood. The parasite interfaces with a host by forcing a reso?nant frequency match to each host's neural system."
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"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 is proof of a failed attempt to possess him. It also appears to have im?parted him with some curious 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-attention stature. 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 to Sergeant Avery Johnson."
She shut off her monitors and eased back into the chair. "I've prepared two separate reports on this for ONI Section Three. The first has all relevant data on my analysis and the possible technology to counter an initial Flood infestation. The second includes the source material: Private Jenkins's and Sergeant Johnson's mission logs and the Sergeant's medical files."
She downloaded the reports onto two data crystals and ejected them from the port on the chair's arm. She set the clear cubes on the tray and gestured for John to take them. "I leave it up to you which to deliver to Lieutenant Haverson."
"Why would I withhold any data, Doctor?" the Master Chief asked and glanced at the crystals.
Her eyes focused past him as she struggled to find the words to match her conflicting emotions. "For a long time I had thought that we had to sacrifice a few for the good of the entire human race." She took a deep breath and let it go with a heavy sigh. "I have killed and 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 has worked out too well. I should have been trying to save every single human life—no matter what it cost."