Neil dived into the room behind Sayeeda, though he didn't bother to un-holster his ARC gun, instead taking out his sidearm. He decided he'd let Sayeeda handle this one, however. That whole 'Consort' thing probably had her on edge and Neil thought she could use a little time to let out some steam. The fact she didn't vehemently deny the name either had him confused in a not [i]unwelcome [/i]way, but he could think about that later. For his own sake, he was just glad he kept his bewildered laugh in check when the AI called her that. 

"Crazy fucking bitch," Drake breathed, and the door opening behind him with a hiss gave him a priceless look on his face. Neil stood over him next to his superior officer, gun in his left hand. "Oh I'm sorry were you complaining about this?" Neil asked him and kicked the man's wound. He gasped in pain, and his grip on the core loosened. Neil grabbed it before it could clang onto the ground, and lifted it up to hold protectively.  

The entire facility suddenly jerked, as if a tectonic plate beneath the surface decided to reassert itself over another. Neil fell to his knees, but luckily still held the core to his chest. "Nice going asshole." Neil said to Drake, only to be interrupted by what sounded like the guttural growl of a beast the size of a continent. It clicked monotonously, its pitch nearly too deep to fathom as it echoed across the halls.

Above them, a light began to shine from a hidden scanner at the northern most side of the room, and the Aelahyne AI appeared in a more bioluminescent form, made of light waves. Drake's pain was forgotten for a second, as weirded out as anyone when the face materialized before them. 

"The fuck is that!?" He asked, pointing from the ground. 

"Hurry. You must place the Core back from whence it came." The AI said. "It is by the Representative's hands that it must be placed back."
[hr]
[i]Harbinger Flagship[/i]. 
[i]50,529 Kilometers above Savran[/i]. 
[i]Command Deck[/i].

"Sir! There are strange readings on the planet's surface!" One of the UAI personnel called, redirecting the readings to be displayed before Admiral Corvus. It showed a green layout of the planet, with reverberations upon the site they had sent the commandos, and strange activity next to the anomaly they were to investigate. He didn't know what in hell was happening down there. The communications to the commandos had been lost mere minutes ago.

"True image. Zoom in and clear up the feed." Admiral Corvus commanded. The display turned into normal viewing of Savran, and the image picked up much closer to the location of Hatcher's city, now only about 100,000 square kilometers were visible on screen. Admiral Corvus wasn't sure what to make of what he was seeing. But if his eyes were not damned...one of the mountains had begun to ripple and stretch. One of the mountains had come alive.  

[hr] 
"I'll head back in there." Neil said, his face glistening from the running. He knew he had to go, but Sayeeda might be able to salvage something. He'd tell her just to run without him, as altruistic as that sounded, but she couldn't fly the ship, could she? Without even thinking of the move, he kicked Drake in the head, knocking the man unconscious without a moment's hesitation. "With the Captain's permission, I'd like to tell her to get one of the transportation vehicles and to come back to pick me up. But I got to backtrack [i]now[/i]." 

He blew some hair out of his eyes. "Hey, for what it's worth, if we both die... it was a fun few days."
[@Penny]