DT 2023: Starved Parasite

“So, what did we encounter here?”
Merlin crossed his armored gauntlets, a mix of awkward and concern, and an awareness he probably stunk after spending more than a standard week in his Mjolnir Mark VII powered suit. Despite a lack of Flood-related incidents since the initial craze, he didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in his bed. And even less so going anywhere without a thick layer of titanium alloy between him and the world. He didn’t want to tempt fate or karma after resolving Furthest Point’s minor Flood outbreak and have an Infector pod pop out from beneath his bed and put a solid end to his youthful adventures.
Similarly, the other Spartan supersoldier looking over the hastily placed hologram table before him was clad in hazmat-specialized, OSTEO-series Mjolnir and had yet to remove it since stepping off his ship. It was enough for Merlin to believe his concerns were not without good reason.
The Spartan, Rhee Jinbo, glanced around as if making sure a Flood infection form wasn’t hanging on the walls or crawling between the desks of the classroom converted into a command center for a visiting detachment of the UNSC Marine Corps 717th Xeno-Materials Exploitation Battalion.
“The ultimate result of invasive migration. Somehow, someway, a Flood specimen jumped on a ship. Made it to Furthest Point, and you get what we have now.”
“Eleven dead civilians,” Merlin confirmed with dreadful distaste.
Jinbo nodded, “Eleven dead. We’re still trying to find the ship responsible. Between the Created tying up all the superluminal networks and the frontier a mess of mismatching human and Covenant data protocols, our techs aren’t going to have a trail for some time.”
“You’re not exactly known for good news.” Merlin deadpanned.
“Well, the good news is, the Flood outbreak is over.”
Even as Jinbo spoke, he kept looking around the room through a depolarized helmet visor. More than five hundred years since humanity entered their space age, and yet some superstition remained alive and well. Karma was an enduring fickle concept, one with many interpretations but a constant being an order or destiny to things with cause and effect, and a resulting fate borne of all that came before. Kill some Flood, believe you cleaned up everything. Find one waiting for you under the bed you sleep on. Death, suffering, and become some kind of parasite zombie.
It was a little on and off mantra in Merlin’s head lately, in the quiet periods waiting for others to explain to him what the hell he was put through. “Don’t tempt fate. Don’t tempt Karma.”
“Why the certainty of that? Isn’t the Flood one of the most biohazardous threats in ONI factbooks?”
“Sure, but even the Flood has limits. Like all life, there are certain conditions where survival is impossible. In ancient history, population scientists worried if extinction conditions reached a point where less than 5,000 breeding pairs were left on Earth, there would be no chance of repopulation. They claimed not enough genetic diversity and factors of distance and environmental application would prevent the ability to reestablish human society. We got passed that danger by colonizing new worlds, and the Flood you encountered arrived to this planet dying of starvation.”