I hear you, Sergeant. We're going to come and find you. Repeat: help is on the way.
[ The message is send half a dozen times in the hopes of it somehow cutting through the static. This is serious, now. It's time to speak to Tyke, perhaps even time to address the ship.
Mobilize everyone. You have to come help. This is Brad Colbert, not some frightened newcomer--if he asks for help, Nathan intends to provide it without hesitation. ]
[ he spoke to thomas once, and it was briefly. tobias has no idea why thomas would contact him of all people. good thing is he can't do nothing when someone asks him for help. he was born for abnegation, after all. ]
It's the second call for help we've received. As well as the group disappearing, we've got a handful of other comms going offline over the last two days.
If there's nothing personal in the message, would you mind sending me the file? I'd like to compare it to the other message.
All of Shepard's recon groups seem to have vanished, and I can't be sure about the rest but a half dozen, maybe more.
Something's out there chasing them.
[ It doesn't change anything. The statement, the request for help, it runs through every single message clear as a bell. ]
We'll be staging a rescue--Tyke will be involved, myself, anyone else who wants to weigh in. She'll try and limit the group to people who can fight, but that won't stop people with loved ones and friends out there, and they'd be safer with us than out there on their own. I assume you'll want to be involved with that?
That would be four, with a suspicious fifth recording made directly to the network, and a sixth private recording sent from Pepper's comm--it's gone offline.
And how's that going? We have Shepard's last transmitted coordinates here, but I know the comms team kept in contact with a little longer than that last time. I'll need to speak with Ryuzaki.
Not turning up anything new. I had mirrors with each team, but they've stopped working. No tracking spell is turning up anything. They're all well into the dead zones.
[ Which is just. Super. ] Communications dropped out last time. This wasn't unexpected - even a disaster wasn't unexpected. There's a reason Shepard wanted people with experience out there. It's the other factors. Bloody luring more people down there.
[ He has no idea what mirrors are, but assumes it's some method of communication. Magic is still a mystery for him all of two years after seeing it for the first time. ]
I saw something coming, getting lost again, maybe cutting it closer to the jump this time. But this...they've gotten too close to something, you heard the post on the network. And it's out there, chasing them.
The instinct is to run straight down the nearest corridor and try and find them, but this ship is too big to try anything like that. In many ways the fact that it let them call for help is itself alarming.
My instinct is to find out if it's really them calling. Kate Bishop is a warrior. Either something down there is so bad it's broken her or it's not actually her at all. Everyone on these teams has field experience for this very reason-- to keep them from falling apart if something goes wrong.
[ Sort of resigned, ] I'm still going after them when we find out all we can, but I know damn well how reckless it is.
Shepard's team missing. Further people missing unassociated. Suspicious cries for help from people who shouldn't usually need it. Pursuit of those people. Mysterious doorways. We've had mysterious doorways around here before: doorways made of light and loved ones beckoning.
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