Freyr looked at the hand, then patted one of the claws gently. “Thanks.” She said, sniffing to regain composure. She slurped her tea, enjoying the fragrant taste. She let out a shuddering breath and nodded reassuringly. “I’m fine.”

“Dr Lang, can you look at this for me please?” one of her brightest new intakes she’d kept on Outremer called. Freyr got up and walked over to the young female scientist, what was her name again? Her implant confirmed it was Dr Girard. “What is it?” Several eyes in the room tracked Freyr as she moved, and people began making more productive noises in their groups.

“Check this signal cluster from the Object. Just opened up a few seconds ago.” Dr Girard pointed to a thin wisp of energy emitting from one side of the pitch black mass inside the Vault’s staging area. It was being tracked and dissected by the facilities state-of-the-art sensory equipment, but still represented one of the most sophisticated connections Freyr had ever seen.

“It’s searching for the Cradle. It’s awake!” Freyr exclaimed, temporarily forgetting everything else. In three hundred and fifty years, no one had seen active signals from a creature like the Cradle, this was history in the making! “This corresponds with the codex we uncovered in the thing’s mind - it’s how they join together, it must be.” Dr Wetherall murmured, gently queuing calibrations to the equipment for downstairs to implement. People crowded around them to get a closer look.