The bunker's location was pinpointed: a massive, hidden facility buried under a mountain range, designated "The Cradle." Inside were thousands of cryo-pods containing the original Architects, and alongside them, incubation chambers for their "Perfected" successors—beings with human features but eyes that held the calm, unnerving light of the K'tharr.
The leadership faced an impossible choice. The Uncharted Shore was years away. They lacked the military force for a direct assault. Captain Elara, via delayed comms, proposed a grim solution: a precision strike to collapse the mountain, entombing The Cradle forever. It was clean, effective, and horrific.
Elias, however, saw the ghost of Aris Thorne in this. "We can't become them," he argued. "We can't decide a branch of humanity is unfit to live. We contain them. We isolate them. And we try, however impossibly, to show them another way. Our legacy cannot be just survival. It must be mercy."