“Freyr, i’m so sorry! I never wanted any of this, but now do you see how much we need you?” Karos soothed over Freyr’s howling. He knelt down next to her on the floor as she sobbed into her hands and placed a reassuring arm around her. “What is happening, why is she crying like this?” Osman demanded. “As I suspected, those creatures have the face of Dr Lang’s husband, who was abducted months ago.” Karos replied, looking up at her. 

Osman grabbed him by the arm, pulled him back to his feet and moved him away from Freyr. “Are you out of your fucking mind? What kind of sicko brings a grieving woman to identify their husband as the face of a giant insect?” Osman hissed. “That grieving woman is also one of the most brilliant xenobiologists on the planet!” Karos hissed back, pointing to Freyr. “She may be the only person on Outremer who can figure out what’s going on. I had to try!”

“That’s exactly what it is.” Freyr said. Both of them turned to look at her. “What is?” Karos finally asked. “An insect. An ant, to be precise.” Freyr continued. “Human settlers throughout the ages have inadvertently brought them all the way from Earth, hidden in food or raw materials. And when we first entered the Cradle via the underground vault, we brought them into the Cradle.” Freyr got up, an idea tugging at a thread in her mind. She wiped tears from her eyes and rewound the recording to the first few frames where the creature was visible - she hid the face behind the second human man. 

“In some of the first records about life in the Cradle, they noted the Cradle responding differently to smaller lifeforms like ants. As they strayed into the uncontrolled zone, it would hijack them, sort of like other well known parasites. Control the body and add extraneous features.” Freyr was searching through a database of scientific reports at this point, seeking to back up her hypothesis. There was something comforting about delving into information from the distant past to distract from the present.

“Here we are.” She said, pulling up pictures from three hundred and forty years previously, in the first years of the Cradle. It showed a common type of ant standing in a petri dish, with tiny purple stems sprouting from its body. “It’s pretty similar to our friends on the video.” Karos remarked. “Exactly.” Freyr confirmed, turning to them. “So, what are you saying, Dr Lang?” Osman asked. “Well, based on the evidence available, i’d say most of the genetic makeup for these creatures didn’t come from inside the Cradle. It may not have the means or the imagination to design it from scratch, so it’s hi-jacking our fauna, making it bigger, adding those appendages and that...face.” She exhaled deeply again.

“This is progress!” Karos beamed. A beam which folded into a guilty grimace in the face of Freyr’s obvious distress. “Listen, Freyr, I am so sorry again to bring you here. But this is exactly the kind of info we can use! I couldn’t tell you about it beforehand, as it would’ve coloured your judgement. I needed to see if you recognised that face without any-” The comm set on the table chirruped, and a voice called from it. “Major, there’s some kind of disturbance in one of these testing sheds, what would you like us to do?” Osman quickly picked up the handset and raised it to her mouth. “Establish a perimeter, we’re-” Suddenly, every light, screen and piece of equipment went dead. 

They were plunged into darkness, until Osman’s suit torch clicked on. “Lieutenant, come in!” the Major quickly moved out of the atrium into the main office area to look out of the windows. When she came back, she had drawn her sidearm. “Everything is dark. Follow me.”