“Me too!” Freyr exclaimed, eyes searching the room as she pieced together her experience. The orderlies helped them out of the harness - she felt really wobbly and had to grab one of them and sit down again. “It knows where my family is, they’re alive! It’s going to rescue them for me!” Freyr had found out a great deal more than that, but this is what floated to the surface of her memory first.

After a moment, Vreta’s own words sunk in. “Andromeda?” Freyr’s eyes were like saucers. “I remember the...Navigator saying that's where it spent most of its time, with its...family? I guess? My theory is that they have a deep symbiotic relationship with the Cradle. It's their home, hospital, interstellar craft, laboratory. In return, they-”

“Sorry to interrupt. Dr Lang, Vreta’Sori, you’ll want to see this.” Freyr looked past the orderly and saw the bald Facilitator standing in the control box through the observation glass. A technician at the console desk there was holding down the intercom button. The anonymous man motioned with his head for them to meet him outside the harness room door. “What about them?” Freyr asked, pointing to the still-sleeping 595 and Osman. 

“We’ll keep an eye on them. Come with me.”
[hr]

“Welcome back. We’ll debrief shortly, but I thought you’d want to see...” The Facilitator continued as they exited the harness room and followed him down a different hallway from the way they’d come in. This one went to the main observation lab, instead of the entry gate lab. 

“After some initial chaos and turbulence, the asset appears to have bonded with the Cradle and we managed to close the seal. It seems calmer now.”

They entered into a slightly larger rectangular lab, with three banks of consoles facing a big viewing screen. The whole team appeared to have migrated in here while they were under. A few of them waved - there was a palpable excitement in the room. Freyr vaguely noticed that there were significantly fewer CraSec guards in this room, though a few extra suits with compact weapons had appeared.

When Freyr saw what was on the screen, she gasped, clasping one hand over her mouth as a tear of happiness rolled down her cheek. Her weakened legs nearly gave out, so she grabbed hold of a nearby table, supported by the Facilitator. “It’s...beautiful.” She eventually blabbed. Despite everything that’d happened in the Cradle today, she couldn’t help but be ecstatic. One of her life’s dreams had come true.

The picture-perfect screen depicted the Cradle in all its magnificence. Fifty-two metres in diameter, composed of an indescribable pearly white alloy. It hung motionless in the middle of the Vault’s central void. And around it flew the deep black octahedron they now knew as the Navigator. Freyr watched for a few seconds, as the smaller object looped around the Cradle sphere as though it were a shoulder sash, slowly turning on its own axis at the same time.