The camera covering the incident was located in the same atrium they were in. Freyr looked up and over her shoulder to locate it behind her. The initial view was quite far from the action, but she could zoom and enhance it with little trouble. It was also a bit gloomy, as only the emergency lights were on. The timestamp at the start of the video was the dead of night in Babylon terms, so Freyr guessed everyone had long gone home.

After a few seconds, four dark shapes appeared from the stairway in the corner of the frame. Freyr guessed these were the Skinners. They didn’t look out of place, as they wore the standard issue Cradle newbie jumpsuit, however from the footage they were clearly on edge. The one in front brandished a pistol to ensure the office area was clear before motioning his colleagues forward. Two of the other activists were carrying bulky briefcases, which they laid down on two of the free tables. Once they’d been opened, Freyr paused the video and zoomed in. One of them was a laptop and one of them was clearly some kind of bomb.

“How the fuck did they get a bomb into the Cradle?” Freyr asked. Major Osman shrugged. “We’re looking into it now - they may have had help. Keep going, it gets better.” Freyr hit play again.

One of the activists armed the bomb, another connected their laptop to one of the consoles and then began typing manically. The other two checked out of the windows and generally looked nervous. “What was that?” Freyr asked, pointing to a section of the screen covered by the big side windows. “Just wait.” Karos murmured. One of the guys standing guard seemed to notice it as well, as he stuck his face to the glass and peered in that direction. He turned around, shouted, and the other person rushed over as well. Freyr turned the sound on.

“I didn’t see what it was… i think it’s below us!”
“Ok. We need to wrap this up now!” How long until it's armed and the data is ours?”
“Two minutes.”
“I need five.”
“We don’t have five fucking minutes, we need to get out of here right now.”
“Wait...did you hear that?”
“Yeah - get the scrambler armed and then we’re leaving. I’m gonna check downst-”

A loud crash made Freyr jump in her seat. In the blink of an eye, the activist standing by the window had just disappeared out of it. The man who’d just turned away to go downstairs whirled around, as did the two others on the opposite side of the space. The leader raised his pistol, but clearly hesitated when he saw what came through the window. Freyr leaned in til her face was almost touching the glass, not quite able to grasp what she was seeing.

It had six insectoid legs, shiny black, and a compact, armoured carapace. But quite unlike anything Freyr had seen before, the carapace and abdomen behind that were punctured by at least a dozen violet tendrils. They worked as appendages to heave the creature through the gap and also held the immobile man it’d captured like a limp doll. The thing had a short neck and a face… Freyr’s breath caught the moment she saw it. It was a human male’s face, pale and contrasting with the sheer black of the body and legs. The eyes were bulging and completely black, but she recognised the face nonetheless. Her mouth dropped open and a silent scream shook her body as her eyes filled with tears.

The creature had David’s face.

The rest of the abduction was very brief. Screams rang out on the recording as the leader fired his handgun at the creature. But when another of the things crashed through a window behind him, they were quickly overrun. The creatures held all four of them aloft like broken playthings and scooped up the unarmed briefcase bomb before exiting via the same windows they entered. 

But the only thing Freyr saw was her husband’s visage through streams of tears as she howled in anguish at the screen.