Freyr could see that the President was now well out of her depth with these technical details. And in the absence of the Director-General, it finally fell to her to organise everything. She jumped as soon as the President shifted her gaze to look at her. “We have a full suite of monitoring equipment with us on the Barbarossa. Ideally, we would have a team inside the simulation at all times. Our first port of call should be attempting re-entry, using the newly consolidated codebase.”
 
Freyr considered the next part carefully. “The Cradle itself is in a secure environment underneath Babylon, built to contain sustained nuclear fusion on the inside and orbital bombardment from the outside. In theory, the city is totally safe. However, we don’t know the outward capabilities of this entity nor the Cradle. To be on the safe side, I would also recommend evacuating the city.” 595 kissed her teeth and shook her head derisively at this point.

“But that is your call, Madame President.” Freyr pressed on despite the distraction, shooting an corrosive look at the Agent beside her.

DeWinter nodded gravely, calculating the political risk behind her eyes. “I’ll consult with my cabinet, but it may be difficult to achieve without declaring a state of emergency. And once we go down that route, I can’t stop what happens next. What else?”