On June 4, 2559, Atriox summoned warlords Pavium and Voridus for a new mission. Peterson and their squad were ordered by Captain James Cutter to keep watch of the site for Banished activity, following a close shave with a Forerunner Despair-class fighter months prior. Peterson reported a 300-meter boundary by which all flora and fauna stopped growing and an unparalleled swarm of Sentinels patrolling this perimeter.

High Charity's remains would remain largely untouched in the conflict, though by June 1, the vessel had sent out recon teams to investigate the site. Peterson and their unit scout out the destroyed High Charity. For seven years, the few surviving Flood inside the rubble of High Charity festered, until the arrival of the UNSC Spirit of Fire and the Second Ark Conflict in 2559 provided them with a food source.ДЇlood outbreak UNSC scouting The installation's monitor 000 Tragic Solitude began to construct a sterilized quarantine zone around the wreckage of High Charity, ensuring that no life could survive around the site that the Flood may potentially use for sustenance. Because Installation 08 was incomplete and falling apart, a few Flood survived the faulty firing. ДЇollowing the faulty firing and destruction of Installation 08 and the damage it dealt to the Ark, the vast majority of the Flood were destroyed. The three would escape the city as it exploded beneath them, believing the Flood threat to be finished. Spartan John-117 and Arbiter Thel 'Vadam would travel to the city to extract the AI Cortana from the Gravemind's clutches, in the process destroying some of the still-operational power reactors in the city. During the ensuing fighting, the Gravemind would use its knowledge to transport High Charity to the installation, with the hulk of the city crashing on the surface and peppering the surrounding landscape with debris and Flood forms. In December of 2552, the UNSC and last remnants of the loyalist Covenant found their way to the extragalactic megastructure known as Installation 00.

The Fall of High Charity followed in the onset of the Covenant civil war, resulting in the Flood taking control of the titanic space station and the billions of residents therein. The Flood would eventually take over the UNSC In Amber Clad and use it to transport the parasite aboard High Charity, the holy city of the Covenant. The Outbreak on Installation 00 was a large-scale outbreak of the Flood on the Ark in 2559.ДЄt the end of the Human-Covenant War, Covenant and Human forces clashed at Installation 05, discovering the large-scale outbreak of the Flood there. And if we find prizes to bring it back, how could that go wrong?' - Voridus

Forerunner entanglement dish recovered by the Banished.

Access codes to Anodyne Spirit retrieved from High Charity's data stores.

High Charity sealed off once again and scoured of the Flood.

Atriox forced to abandon several key outposts.

First Strike and Ghosts of Onyx are also great books. Honestly, my favorite piece of Halo media is The Fall of Reach, and after thinking about it, reading it after playing Halo: CE would make it a lot more interesting. Apparently it takes place during the events of the games though. I don't know much about The Cole Protocol, so I don't have any advice related to that. I've only read part of Contact Harvest, but it seems like something you could start out with. I haven't read The Flood (which is a novelization of Halo: CE), but you could read that before playing the game. The Fall of Reach has a story from a much different perspective than that of the game, so this shouldn't be a problem. First off, I would suggest playing the games in the order they were released (leaving Reach for last).

Halo wars play as flood