- Traxus 04
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- Honorable Member
What i'm suggesting is this:
The Precursors were so powerful that the Flood were not a serious problem to them. They simply looked around until they found creatures with a natural resiliency to the Flood infection - and they found the sea scorpion thing, which had Flood killing antibodies.
When they left our galaxy, for whatever reason, they left a specimen in stasis, which contained the antibodies, should anyone need them in future fights with The Flood.
When the ancient humans got into war with the Flood, they studied the specimen (the Captive) and obtained the necessary antibodies. The antibodies were injected into millions of humans, who were then sent to counter-infect the Flood and kill it off. The humans died too, of course, along with the anti-bodies. Thus no trace was left of the Flood cells (destroyed) or the anti-bodies (died out after their hosts died).
The one thing that did remain, of course, was the captive/specimen. But the humans were in no mood to let the Forerunners find it, under the circumstances. Except they couldn't destroy it either - Precursor tech is indestructible.
Soooo they were left with one option: deception. They built a fake 'communications device' which seemingly allowed conversation with the Captive, but actually only 'received' things that the humans had programmed it to say. They programmed it to say this dude was the last Precursor, that Forerunners had betrayed the Precursors long ago, and that The Flood was their revenge.
This would have two results
a) Forerunner religion would be undermined, possibly causing civil war (like what happened with the Covenant)
b) Forerunners would be afraid of the Captive and refrain from studying it or trying to release/retrieve it
Now for THIS to be kept a secret by the humans would be a much simpler exercise: the scientist or small research team would have gotten the 'cure' fit-for-purpose directly from the Captive/specimen, and then they would have set about infecting/vaccinating many people. Only one person (or a few) need know where the cure came from (compared with a massive research effort to independently engineer a cure), and the vaccination equipment could be destroyed after use, and the anti-bodies die out in their hosts eventually. No way for the Forerunners to work out what was going on, even if they could capture humans and read their memories.
Remember that the Didact says although he spoke to the Captive, it wasn't a 'real conversation'... like it was scripted. Oh a nd it does say in Cryptum that humanity were 'understandably reluctant to reveal the secret' of how they defeated the Flood, and that they 'distributed it amongst themselves' and the secret was 'impenetrable to our techniques.' So the Forerunners did look, they just mysteriously couldn't find it anywhere. The explanation must be able to explain this clandestine secrecy, even the face of literally 'mind-reading' equipment.
However there is no DIRECT suggestion that the cure and Captive are related. The only real good hint was that Didact can't understand how the human communication device is pushing through Precursor technology. But it just fits very well. You got to admit though, mind****ing the Forerunners with a fake message from the Precursors is a brilliant 'up yours' on humanity's part, if it's true. FUD at its best.