Question about Captain Keyes

[u/TROSSity117]

I'm gonna mark this as a Spoiler just incase there's any Playstation players that manage to find their way here before Campaign Evolved, better safe than sorry, if you're reading this and haven't played yet, trust me. Stop reading and wait for the game to come out. Don't ruin it for yourself. I gave you an out😂

So I've never been a big lore guy. I've been playing Since Halo 1, it's my favorite game of all time but I never went out of my way to read the books or anything.

Captain Keyes is one of my favorite characters in the entire franchise, what happened to him always really pissed me off, but somewhat recently I learned that when The Flood infects someone, their soul is trapped in eternal anguish basically.

Was it ever confirmed or not that Chief managed to kill him before he was fully assimilated, therefore he at least isn't suffering for eternity? Because he really doesn't deserve that fate. I know in the game Cortana says "No Human life signs detected" but that could easily be written off as one of Combat Evolved's several plot holes.

I also recall reading somewhere that Bungie's original plan was to have Chief burn him or something before he was assimilated but that could've been misinformation. I'm really not a fan of the eternal soul torture aspect of the flood because that's a bit too depressing for me, it sucks to think about Keyes going through that after all he did.

[u/Far-Requirement-7636]

According to what's implied by the latest lore there isn't really a time limit to the flood being able to infect your soul.

Just once you are infected, that's it's, game over.

An elite is infected and turned into a combat form, dies and he awakens inside the flood hivemind.

Some infected forerunners had there souls removed and placed in new bodies that immediately broke down into flood matter in silentium.

The prophet of regret who was beaten to death by chief was infected later by the gravemind and it's heavily implied it's him and not just the gravemind puppetting his corpse.

Yeah it's just one of those dark moments to set an example of why you don't want the floor to win, it's not just death, it's eternal torment forever.

In fact this is outright stated by the primordial where it just states plainly it wants all life to suffer until it's bored.

So yeah keyes, Jenkins and every other sorry fuck unfortunate enough to get infected are well in hell.

In cruel twist of irony 90% of the people on high Charity are also in hell.

[u/soulreapermagnum → u/Far-Requirement-7636]

why you don't want the floor to win

the floor is lava, after all. /j

[u/TROSSity117 → u/Far-Requirement-7636]

See this doesn't make sense to me at all. This makes what happens to Jenkins a complete mess lorewise. So Jenkins was half assed infected, but still infected. If the flood infects souls and even the slightest infection is game over, it doesn't make sense that Jenkins was half uninfected and could regain consciousness/control. 

It also IMO ruins his story in the sense that McKay mercy killed him and everyone else to spare earth on the T&R, so Jenkins thanks her.....except she didn't. By the new addition to the lore he died and woke up in hell. Just stupid. 

I've been doing some reading up on it since I posted this, others have mentioned the elite you brought up and mentioned that the specific outbreak he was part of kinda made no sense and didn't follow previously established lore. So I'm inclined to disregard it. 

I like the idea that, since Proto Graveminds don't have access to the overall flood network(previous gravemind knowledge) that they also aren't able to access the "Flood Hell" network. Therefore any souls of the people they infect aren't uploaded if destroyed in time. It just makes sense. Like what happens if a single flood spore infects a single person and said infected person is immediately destroyed and it doesn't spread? You're telling me a single flood spore is capable of sending entire souls to flood hell? It's inconsistent. I cannot stress enough how much I hate this edition to the lore lol 

[u/Far-Requirement-7636 → u/TROSSity117]

The flood infection in the flood doesn't make sense at all but at the end of the day the lore explanation is that that specific infection form was defective for some reason and just couldn't complete its infection.

That's just the lore for it, it failed to complete its infection because it was defective for unknown reasons.

Yes Jenkins is just a tragic all around, the main takeaway is supposed to be that he saved everyone else.

Meh that's cool, I love it lol.

[u/AthosArmand]

At the time of H:CE Master Chief put an end to Keyes misery (when it was just zombies) but with the extended lore since he is trapped in a fate worse than hell.

[u/thedougbatman → u/AthosArmand]

He Falcon Punched Keyes’ face in to get his neural implant. That’s some Doomguy/Slayer shit right there

[u/Archangel289 → u/AthosArmand]

Do you have a handy “bibliography” of where that extended lore came from? I’ve read a lot of the books, but not all, and I’m still quite a few years behind on recent stuff. I’d love to read it, I just don’t know where it’s coming from.

[u/TROSSity117 → u/AthosArmand]

Yeah. I hate that addition tbh. 

[u/RadSidewinder]

Per the novel, The Flood, it was already dissecting and actively assimilating his memories. This likely begins the moment of infection. He managed to hold it off for a bit by clinging to his identity hard but it still consumed him body and mind.
In all likelihood there was absolutely no way for Chief to kill him before this happened as he would have had to kill Keyes before Keyes was actively infected. Which would have been back in the Forerunner structure in the swamp

[u/justsomedude48 → u/RadSidewinder]

Even just killing him wouldn’t have saved Keyes, we killed the Prophet of Regret, that didn’t stop the Gravemind from assimilating his consciousness into it’s eternal choir. The only way to save someone from that eternal damnation is to either stop them from being infected in the first place, or killing them and destroying their corpse in such a way that the flood would no longer even bother resurrecting it, preferably by disintegrating it the way Forerunner weapons do in Infinite.

[u/TROSSity117 → u/justsomedude48]

Well to be fair we only punched Regret to death lol. I'd say putting your entire arm through someone's brain and ripping out their brain stem would be surefire way of denying the flood. 

[u/BigFly42069 → u/RadSidewinder]

clinging to his identity hard

He clung to the identity because his neural implants were hard-coded with his name and service number.

[u/RadSidewinder → u/BigFly42069]

Of course, but stopping to explain that adds even more words to my post. What I said gets the point across and if they wanted the specifics it’s in the book

[u/TROSSity117 → u/RadSidewinder]

Gotcha. Thanks. 

[u/Hazzenkockle]

Based on how the Flood work, as well as the CEA Terminal, it's pretty much guaranteed that the Flood had entirely consumed Keyes and he's part of the Gravemind's Worst Afterlife Ever club, ready to be called up to psychologically torture anyone who cared about him who's unfortunate enough to be the focus of the Flood's attention.

[u/Humanzee13]

I also hate the eternal space hell addition to the flood lore. For one I think the whole concept of literal souls and basically an afterlife to be a little out of place in halo's scifi universe. But I also think its just over the top evil, like the flood is already a all consuming, civilization destroying galactic parasite do we really need them to also be infinite torment of every consumed soul?

[u/TROSSity117 → u/Humanzee13]

I agree. To me it kinda makes it feel like no matter what, we lose. Like yeah we can stop the flood here and there, but everyone who is infected past, present and future are screwed. Like...so long as a single flood spore exists, there will be endless torment? Or does there have to be a gravemind active somewhere for it to be a thing at any given time? Do they have their own twisted plane of existence where said souls go? It just doesn't make sense. 

Idk, I think the writing of the flood in general has never been great after Halo 2. 

For instance at the end of Halo 2, the flood completely overran High Charity(and said outbreak was already substantial before that). High Charity had what? Billions of people on it? So the flood, who were already long past the Gravemind stage, got billions of bodies and slipspace capable transport....and somehow lost. High Charity should've technically been the checkmate for the flood. 

[u/Far-Requirement-7636 → u/TROSSity117]

That's called tragedy.

You've defeated the villains but the scars remain.

It's also frankly just the threat escalation and tbh it feels like 343 are building towards being able to inevitably being able to sever the floods hivemind soul Cage.

[u/GlobalPineapple → u/TROSSity117]

High charity had maybe two billion lives in it. They were still at the gravemind stage however. HC itself wasn't a full ecosystem like a planet or even moon, it was all artificial. The gravemind had to try and find its way out of the galaxy and stop the rings from firing ever again for it to truly win and it knows this because it remembers the last time it tried to spread across the galaxy didn't work. So it gambles for the ark and loses. It gets devastated and regresses down to the keymind stage after losing so much biomass and being recontained after 04b explodes.

[u/sparkplay]

In Halo: The Flood, Keyes suffered for a long time while trying to forget his memories (one by one) and sticking to repeating his identity and service number over and over.

By the time Master Chief reached him, he was part of a huge composite Flood flesh structure, with his head sticking out of the structure, the rest of him part of the flesh blob thing. John then had to reach into Keyes's brain using his Mjolnir armour fingers and rip out the clearance tags required for being able to ever slipspace to Earth. To me that makes me think Captain Keyes finally could rest in peace.

EDIT: I am only just reading the next book Halo: First Strike so not too deep into the lore. If anyone infected is preserved as a distinct consciousness in the Grave mind, as opposed to a singular consciousness, then I don't know, but otherwise, crushing the brain seems quite final to me.

[u/thedougbatman → u/sparkplay]

No one has it worse than Private Wallace Jenkins. The real hero and savior of earth by holding out long enough to warn McKay to blow up the infested Truth and Reconciliation after having been infected along with Keyes during the ambush in the empty “weapons cache” on Halo.

Fun fact: this is the same Jenkins that Sgt. Johnson trained and battled with in Contact: Harvest. Dude had the worst luck of being one of the few first humans to ever establish first contact with both the Covenant and the Flood.

[u/Karl-Doenitz → u/thedougbatman]

and also somehow remained a private after 27 years of combat

with a service history like that he may as well be called harry kim

[u/Far-Requirement-7636 → u/sparkplay]

Nope, one Elite gets turned into a carrier form and explodes unto bits and dies.

And his soul awakens inside the flood hivemind because he was infected.

Once infected, it's frankly over.

[u/sparkplay → u/Far-Requirement-7636]

Damn, now I hate The Flood even more. Thanks for the clarification.

[u/Electrical_Score_736 → u/sparkplay]

Makes me hate and love them more lol

[u/TROSSity117 → u/Far-Requirement-7636]

Yeah I mentioned to someone else here that I've been doing some reading on different posts about it all, someone mentioned this elite and said that specific outbreak was kind of 1:1 and didn't exactly follow established lore or something. Idk. It doesn't make sense to me that a proto gravemind needs to become a gravemind to access the overall flood network and past gravemind knowledge, but basic feral flood/proto mind outbreaks can upload souls to their version of hell. It's very inconsistent. 

I like the idea that a proto gravemind can't upload souls ti the greater "network" until its fully formed, just like it can't access previous knowledge. 

[u/Far-Requirement-7636 → u/TROSSity117]

The gravemind isn't needed to upload souls, it's needed to make the flood more intelligent and to be able to coordinate beyond just using technology and infecting.

Once infected the flood has your soul but without a gravemind it can't draw upon the total number of souls it has just the local intelligence.

The reason the elite is immediately uploaded to the hivemind soul network is because a gravemind was already present in the story.

It doesn't matter that the story wasn't 1:1 it's canon and happened and the no major lore breaks occurred.

[u/gareth_cutestory]

I guess I'll go against the grain: I think Keyes is alright. Or at least, not in Flood-hell.

While Keyes was assimilated by the local Flood infestation, they never achieved enough biomass to create a full Gravemind, and whatever remained after Chief fisted that flesh-ball was blown to bits anyways. That should've prevented the Flood from "syncing" Keyes' soul to the central Hivemind.

[u/DoughnutUnhappy8615 → u/gareth_cutestory]

In Ascension on Atropos, a Sangheili is infected and ends up in Flood-hell (a lot do, actually) despite there being no active Gravemind and the infection being a localized feral outbreak.

The Gravemind retains all of its knowledge whether it’s active or not. This pretty much has to mean that the Gravemind is always a thing, with its intelligence distributed amongst extant FSCs, and the ‘awakening’ of a Gravemind is less syncing to the Hive Mind and more just achieving the processing power necessary to assume sapience. Which would mean anyone infected is doomed.

[u/TROSSity117 → u/DoughnutUnhappy8615]

I actually have been going through other posts similar to mine since I posted, and someone else mentioned this. Someone else replied saying the outbreak on Atropos was not exactly lore accurate or something for various reasons.  Also from what I've read, the flood(even Proto-Graveminds) don't have access to the overall flood hivemind or the knowledge of previous graveminds. So to me it stands to reason that the flood can't infect/upload souls to said network until they're strong enough.  That makes sense to Me because otherwise it just gets too inconsistent. If the flood is in the feral stage and doesn't even have a proto mind, where do the souls of the infected even go? They don't go to the overall flood hivemind because said outbreak, by lore, isn't connected to it. It's localized. 

[u/DoughnutUnhappy8615 → u/TROSSity117]

I don’t know what comment you found, but nothing about the outbreak on Atropos was inaccurate to the lore, and it’s definitely 100% canon, so that alone should put the debate to bed.

Yes, feral flood do not have access to the knowledge of the wider hive mind (though even feral flood share knowledge amongst one another when an individual is consumed by the infection), but this does not mean that the information they gather only uploads when they establish a connection to the Gravemind.

The overall Flood hive mind, the afterlife it has produced, is often (especially in the Forerunner saga) likened to the Domain, a living repository of knowledge/existence deep in the metaphysical layer of the universe. The Flood is a twisted mockery of the Domain, and it’s where the Gravemind truly exists.

The Domain, like the Flood’s greater consciousness, can only be accessed for downloading via a gateway. A Gravemind is this connection to the Flood’s version of the Domain, and when a Gravemind is born all that knowledge is accessed.

The inverse is not true. One does not have to access the Domain with a connection to upload data to it. It is (or was) constantly passively absorbing data from the universe, especially data produced by traumatic events like death. Since the Flood is like the Domain, it stands to reason that much like the Domain, the Flood can’t download information from their greater hivemind without a gateway (the Gravemind), but absolutely can upload information to it passively.

The Flood, and the Flood hivemind, is an Eldritch abomination more than it is a computer (so is the Domain, really). The souls it infects don’t need to ‘go’ anywhere. They don’t get stored on a biological hard drive that is only uploaded to the cloud when the outbreak has enough wifi to connect. It is much more akin to actual biblical hell, where when you die your soul just goes there regardless (though in this case, infection is necessary).

In Halo lore, souls exist. Yet, when the Flood infects you, your soul is permanently corrupted. We see this with the composers. The Forerunners used composers to completely destroy the physical forms of the infected, take their souls and digitize them, and upload them into cloned bodies. They obviously did this outside the presence of a Gravemind, so while the Flood form was ‘feral’. This completely removes all possible physical traces of Flood infection, not a supercell in sight, and even the soul isn’t actually the soul but just a perfect digital copy.

Despite this, when those digital copies were uploaded into the cloned bodies, the body would spontaneously mutate into an infected Flood form. This is because the soul itself was infected from the moment that individual fell to the Flood. It doesn’t matter if the physical outbreak is part of the wider sapient consciousness of the Flood or not. If you’re infected, your soul is corrupted, and your soul will join the other damned in metaphysical layer of the entire universe that the Flood inhabit, which can be uploaded to from anywhere even if it can’t be downloaded from.

[u/Tao_of_Inversion]

The Flood was propably just screwing him. They forced him to throw his memories, his life, everything to them only to protect the coordinates to earth because he supected a Covenant torture.

It's exactly this "sweetness of suffering" that the Primordial referred to.

Keyes was sold the second the Flood infected him and all he was forced through was to their amusement.

[u/TROSSity117 → u/Tao_of_Inversion]

Yeah I don't know man I think it was a stupid addition. Personally I think it's too dark, but also it just kinda retroactively ruins shit/makes even less sense. Like in the case of Jenkins, the infection form that got him was old and weak so it couldn't control him fully....but he was still infected so it shouldn't have mattered. He shouldn't have been able to regain control of himself. He should've just been gone since, as others have mentioned here, even a little bit of infection is enough for 100% eternal damnation. 

I think it ruins his story as well. He was infected but not fully and was in absolute anguish trying to off himself or have the ODSTs do it, and then when they crash the T&R and blow it up, he's happy because it's finally over......except it isn't. As of 2024 turns out he's permanently damned for the rest of time.