In a training room inside Facility:Null stands Sawyer Ambrose and Claudia Weslie. Claudia, who had now just been undergoing training to join Sawyer's unit 24, perks up seeing him enter the room.
"Tessa's already left?" Asks the young commander.
"Uh, yeah."
Sawyer looks around the room for signs of past activity, trying to gauge Claudia's effort over the past few days.
"How's training going?"
"Well I've learned how to use a gun… and I've been training self-defense since I was a teenager, so I already know a thing or two." She answers less reluctantly than before, attempting to hide her displeasement caused by the fact these people are forcing her to be a soldier for their company.
"That's good, 'cause we're leaving. A cryptid's been found and I want you to be there."
"A-a mission, already?"
"Only something minor. However, I want you to become desensitised to anomalies. We'll start small, but soon you'll be on a real mission, and I don't want you freezing up from shock - no matter what you see."
At that moment a woman, her curly brown hair being a striking feature of hers, enters the training grounds. The woman was evidently a senior researcher sporting the facility's classic white lab coat, and several paper notes clutched in her hand by her side.
Making her way to speak to Sawyer, she stops in her tracks in front of the two upon noticing Claudia.
"Is it alright that she's here?" The woman asks.
Claudia looks at Sawyer with a puzzled look, then back at the woman. "What is she talking about…?"
Sawyer bears a tired expression, then, out of nowhere, grabs Claudia's forearm and lifts it up for the senior researcher to see.
"She already knows."
"H-hey, what are you doing? Let go!" Claudia struggles, but to no avail.
"Your wrist was injured, wasn't it?" He deducts, clearly having more to say.
"How did you know?..."
"Small spatter of blood still in your shirt. I'm guessing you injured yourself from handling a blade, or from being unprepared for the recoil of a firearm. But it healed, didn't it?"
A guilty look washed over Claudia's face.
Sawyer continues. "I get why you hid it, I do. If by chance we were mistaken and you hadn't been affected by an anomaly, then we could let you go. That would have been your train of thought."
"But… but you said you didn't know what was wrong with me." By now, Sawyer has let go of her.
"I lied." He unapologetically admits.
"What?" Claudia's face is slightly overshadowed by distraught.
"I didn't. But I had somebody find Professor Lavender's file on you."
The researcher lady chimes in. "Well, it wasn't easy."
"So, what does it say?" Claudia expectantly asks the researcher.
Sawyer gives the lady the go-ahead to say it in front of Claudia.
"To be brief - when our 'John Doe' cryptid was tracked all the way to the United Kingdom, you were all that they found. A disfigured mess on the shore of a river. The unit that had gone abroad had no choice but to bring you in. Professor Lavender had discovered that you had been altered in a way by the cryptid - possibly, it had died after dragging you to that river. After which it left a piece of itself in you by coincidence."
Claudia takes in this new bundle of information. Her skin crawls thinking about some disgusting amalgamation flesh rooted inside her body and keeping her in one piece - so that it too can live. Though, death for a cryptid was never explicitly explained to Claudia. It seems like when a cryptid is 'killed' by field operators and brought back to the facility, it is then put back together and eventually heals itself to at least a once-again sentient state - though, by that point it has been properly contained already. From Sawyer's near three years of experience - he would deduct that destruction of a cryptid, especially its head or center, is what would typically mean death to such unnatural entities - if not tampered with afterwards, of course.
"The cryptid's nerves, or parts, or whatever - cryptid bodies work on a random, nonsensical biological structure so we have no idea what it is - are still inside Claudia, and still working on impulse. The severed nervous system does its best to keep the host to protect itself by dragging anything that was lost from her body back. If Claudia's body is forced to recreate a large part of herself from scratch… Well, it'll work, but it may happen in a violent outburst, twisting that part of her body into something volatile while it heals her. "Heal" is an optimistic way of putting it."
Sawyer stops the researcher, silently deciding that this has been enough information for one day.
"Alright. Thank you, Professor Mayer."
Making sure she isn't in a trance, Sawyer turns to Claudia and ensures that she understands her situation.
"Did you catch all of that?"
Her eyes flicker back to Sawyer as she nods. "Yeah."