Marae was silent for a while as she carefully went over, line-by-line, the documents Freyr had passed to her. Nirann sat alongside her as well, though it seemed more like he was looking at Marae than the documents. Despite that, he was still the first of the two to speak up. “I can’t deny the similarities. The genetic match is close…very close. Some differences, but consistent differences. Not just random noise or errors. I don’t think this is an echo of my program, I can say with ninety-two percent certainty.”

Marae looked up at him and tilted her head. “Ninety-two percent?”

Nirann shrugged his shoulders. “Okay, ninety-one point nine nine repeating, but that is literally just ninety-two. Point is, this isn’t likely an error. There may well be Rothian minds in there, or your close cousins, at least. Very, very…old cousins.”

Rareth, naturally, listened on to every conversation that took place in the lab, and while she was mostly silent unless needed, she did have input on this matter. Many of the scientists had fallen to silence as they silently contemplated the implications of this discovery and the many possibilities of what it could mean, but Rareth was nothing if not decisive in her judgement. “Then we try to make contact. The Cradle’s denizens may have become hostile on Outremer, but that does not mean the same must happen here. If there are ancient Rothian minds in there, our common-ground may help us. Can we send them a message? Perhaps use the oldest dialects of the oldest Rothian languages we know of?”

“Even those may be too new, depending on how old these minds are.” The xenoarcheologist, Artek, commented. “Dr. Lang, your reports mention that one of the Cradle’s creature spoke to you, and you could understand it. Do you know how it learned your language?”