Between gunfire and the resonating sound the crystalline creatures start shattering to pieces, but Cortana is right in that they're mostly reacting. After the crystalline creatures start falling, strange amorphous living blobs start plopping out of the vents, stripping metal with their acidic noxious purple bodies as they slosh towards the two of them. They reach long sticky limbs in their direction as the drag themselves across the floor.

But reality folds and on the other side of it they can see a garrison of criminal guards, set up in some kind of stronghold.