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244
HALO: FIRST STRIKE
plasma. Like the burst released by a Covenant plasma grenade.
We don't see many cases—people usually die from the direct ef-
fects of those weapons long before these secondary symptoms
manifest.
"Apparently, the Sergeant captured a crate of plasma grenades
from the Covenant during the Siege of Paris IV He used them
all—received a commendation for bravery ... and a
twelve-hundred-rad cumulative dose of radiation as an
unanticipated bonus."
John was silent for several minutes. Dr. Halsey wasn't sure if
he was reading the computer files, contemplating her words, or
trying to confirm all this on a private COM channel with
Cor-tana. His impenetrable armor made discussions with normal
social conventions nearly impossible. It irritated her, yet without
that armor with its constant hydrostatic pressure and automated
biofoam injectors, John would have literally fallen apart by now.
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."