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Chris Barrett (chrisb@roosteredge.com) writes:
Just wanting to get something off my chest. I find Cortana's choice of words interesting in Silent Cartographer: "....We can't proceed unless we can disable this installation's security system."
Cortana instructs you to disable this installation's security system. You do so. A cutscene shows a previously locked door open. But in doing this, did all other locked doors in the installation unlock? More specifically, did Cortana make you unlock every security door in installation 04?
To put a few phrases into context:
"I'll try Sir. But it looks like these Covenant worked pretty hard to lock it down." So how does a handheld door decoder so easily force open a security door engineered by the most advance race in the known universe? Either it contains a dedicated code-breaking AI (of Cortana prowess, no less), or...the Covenant tried to lock it down, but the security system was disabled, and they failed to stem the spread of the Flood.
"....no, that can't be. Oh, those Covenant fools...they must've know, there must have been signs!" What signs? Were all the doors in the Flood containment facility wide open, allowing a mass of Rangers to pour out? Perhaps not, but if an Elite or two opened a door and strolled in, the Flood would have found a satisfactory vector or two and used them to open other doors and infest the rest of the facility. Which explains, "We've got contacts...lots of them...but they're not covenant..." Contacts before the apparent release of the Flood by Jenkins and his crew. Many Flood have already found a means to escape.
This could provide an explanation for the apparently Flood-infected Hunters in AotCR, though the Flood would have to have spread extremely fast (a feat not beyond them), as the security systems of the containment facility have been disabled and the Flood has already found a means to escape the containment facility. Also, taking into account the fact that the control room seems to be on the opposite side of Halo to the map room, and thus presumably would have taken Echo 419 some time to get there ... the time frame seems reasonable enough.
While admittedly this theory doesn't explain the security doors in the Library (perhaps they are not connected to the rest of the network, thus the Monitor must access them himself. A reasonable enough security measure), it does go a long way to explain the circumstances in which the Flood were released (though this could be explained in Halo: The Flood. I haven't read that yet).
I suppose this could also add more fuel to the theory of Cortana being an 'escaping convict'. Cortana essentially released the Flood, or at least used you to do it.
One flick of that little switch on the Silent Cartographer. One little flick...
;-)
-mnemesis
