May 6th at 9:50am
They moved on. Here and there, a blissfully ignorant servitor injected a stimulant, adjusted a drip line, or scraped waste from a swollen thigh with the careful precision of a butcher maintaining his knives. The females were equally oblivious to the group and to their own existence, suspended in a dense haze of syntheopioids that dulled awareness down to pure biological continuation.

Suddenly, one of the broodmothers shifted at the edge of the nearest row. She was larger than the others, her ribs visible beneath stretched skin, her abdomen so distended it seemed impossible her spine had not snapped. She tried to move, but the harness held her upright and the restraints bit into her abused body. A tube filled her mouth, forcing her jaw open, and the only sound she could make was a wet choking breath. Still she fought, trembling so hard the feeding lines shook, until at last she managed to raise one arm.

It was not a flail, but a gesture.

Her twitching clawed hand extended toward the close center of the chamber, trembling under the strain, and her nails scraped weakly against the metal brace with a sound so small that it didn´t matter amidst the cacophony of the plant. Her eyes locked onto the figure of commissar Bryce and in them there was a silent plea that cut through the dense fog of hallucinogens so naked it felt like violence.
There, isolated from the main flow sat a rust and filth covered cage in the same manner as the rest of the pieces of this hellish compound.

Inside lay a single newborn mutant cub, white as the rest of the breeders, unconnected, fragile and still blind. Its little chest rose and fell in shallow, stuttering breaths. It was not screaming yet, not awake enough to understand the world it had been born into, but its tiny fingers flexed once, reflexive, searching for warmth that did not exist.
The mother’s eyes widened further, and Bryce swore she saw tears pooling at the corners despite the filth and the chemical mist. The female tried to pull her arm farther, tried to reach across the impossible distance, but her restraints cut her short. The hand fell and the mist returned to her eyes, her breath in ragged wet gulps, adding her part to the macabre chorus.

Adept LIV stood rigid, optics flickering as the system fed her endless data. Thanatos lifted his weapon, but did not fire. Doctor Bast took a step forward and then froze looking at the commissar, and, the fragile boundary between observation and intervention. The servitor drew closer. Its tools adjusted angle. A syringe extended with a soft hiss, priming itself.

Bryce felt the moment stretching thin. That was the worst part. Not the gore, not the revolting stench, not the oblivious servitors but the certainty that this chamber was not designed for cruelty as an act of hate, but as a routine. Somewhere beyond the walls, the rest of the facility kept working, indifferent... but for what?

Then the machinery noticed the cradle.

A processing servitor on the central rail paused mid-cycle. Its head turned with a dry mechanical click, smooth and calm, like a clerk acknowledging a new file. A rune flickered on its chassis. Its tool-arms unfolded, slender and precise, ending in syringes, clamps, and cutting implements too dirty to belong near anything alive. It reoriented without hesitation and began moving with its spider-like legs toward the cradle, its movement steady, measured, inevitable.

The cradle did not move. The infant did not wake. It only breathed.

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What do you do?
1- Grab the cub, hoping that alarms or automated defenses will not activate.
2- Order LIV to seal the containment door immediately, leaving the infant behind but preventing anything from escaping.
3- Ignore the scene and stay hidden for a few more seconds allowing LIV to extract as much data as possible.