You enter the strange infested structure. You have to find out what is up with it; what they tried to tell you about this. You enter a dark, empty room. But it was not empty, as you thought first. A flood spore sits in front of you on the dark floor. You realized: it looked kinda different from the other spores (not so ugly). But after a half second it jumps on you. You tried to shot, but you missed.
It grabs your chest. You feel safe, your shields are up. But suddenly your shield fail, from one second to an other. You hear the “shield down alert” and you feel horrorfied that the spore breaks your armor.
You trie to pull it away again, then you try to kill it. But all your Spartan-Power fails this time.
Then you feel it under your skin; moving… you feel the burning pain, like it eats your flesh. You try to speak to Cortana… try to say something. But you can´t. You feel that your shotgun drops on the floor and you fall on your knees. You hear Cortanas voice in your head… becoming weaker: “JOHN, John… oh no… j…o… … h… … …”.
Then you lose control over your mutating body and you land on the grey floor. And you start to hear a voice… but… it was not the evil, shouting voice of the gravemind, that you know (from Halo 3). It was a silent, friendly, nearly lovely voice. “I´am not gona hurt you. I’am not like the others.” You dunno whats happening, is the gravemind fooling you? But you feel, the voice is true. You feel that your mind calm down slowely. And you feel kinda secure. And slowely you get control over your body back. You hear Cortanas voice, far away… still trying to reach you. Still weak, but with growing power you manage to say in your mind: “Don´t worry, Cortana… … Iam here.”
The mutations on your body disappear slowly again. You stand up. The silent, familiar voice is still in your head. “It” is still in you. But it gave you free.
Your hand grabs you shotgun again and you stand up. “Come to me… please…”, you feel the familiar voice in you mind. It is so deep. Deeper than you heard Cortana´s voice ever.
“Chief No!”, Cortana cry, “Don´t listen to it, please.” But this time, you ignore Cortana. You can´t fight the deep voice… and you won´t ever.
You start to follow the path, that the familiar, lovely voice gives to you. Cortana is still trying to stop you; she gets desperate; she says everything to stop you… but you can´t. You say to her, that you have to check it up. But Cartana feels, that there is more; as same as yourself.
You go deeper into the infested forerunner structure. Two [enemys] appear: You kill one with your shotgun, then you grab your Magnum, beacause reloading the Shotgun would take to long now. But you dont have ammo for the magnum. You pull back, but it is a deadend. The enemy follows you. Now you see on the floor some kind of small flood spore. Something tells you, you can “use” it. You grab it, … and instantly it crawls into your body. But you don´t feel a pain. You drop your magnum. The enemy appears behind you. You spin around to attack it. And it works. You have some kind of [flood-weapon] in you. It uses only one weapon slot, like the other weapons.
After killing some more enemys on your path, you find a spanker. You try to change your [flood-weapon]. And it works. The spore leaves your body and you can use the weapon-slot for the good, old spanker.
Then you are there were the voice called you. Cortana is still very worried; but she has given up to reach you. She only hopes now that there is a small chance that you are right, and she is wrong.
You enter the infested room…
In front of you,… there is a gravemind. You feel it; the silent voice in your head comes from here. You don´t see any flood-guards. And you see… and feel… no aggresion. Then a realy small flood-creature lands in front of you. It looks like a big moth, or something with two round wings… not bigger than a crow. You feel, it is not an attack.
Then it transforms. The “dust” sets down slowly. Then you see some kind of ‘Flood-Girl’ in front of you. You feel very familiar to this strange flood-lady. But you also know, you never saw something strange like this before. Then she starts to explain:
What the Forerunners said, what they don´t said. How it happens, that she is not linked to the whole flood-mind. Why “her” flood" don´t have the “genes” that creates the evil hunger and the push to consume the galaxy. And what the Forerunners and Presecutors have do with all this. She explains, that she is very weak in comparison with the “normal” gravemind(s); and why you are here.
But nvm… (… I hate Cortana, she is evil! I want a nice Flood Girl. :D)