"Warning, intruder detected. Manufacturing automated security forces." 

"Warning, data-storage corrupted. Seeking alternative manufacturing templates..." 

"- Ah, fuck." 

He awakens with disorienting suddenness. His instincts have him taking an active position, gripping the secondary controls of the mecha he's seated in. The displays fizz to live a split second later, and he sees that the mecha itself is situated in some kind of pod, opening with the hiss.

He reaches out to sync with the chassis.

'Where in Hell are we?' an illusory voice resonates through his head, in a way that his instincts find unsettling and unfamiliar. 'And who in Hell are you?'

The chassis synchronizes, but the feeling is strange. It's as if it was already synchronized and he's just inserted himself into it, but there's no one else he can feel through the chassis.

This is strange. This isn't how things are supposed to happen. But it's how things are happening.

He'll walk the mecha out of the pod, using the primary and secondary controls in tandem since this other presence in the chassis gives him doubt as to the primary's sufficiency.

Once he's outside, he quickly assesses the loadout and finds them to be...not as wrong as some of this situation, but provoking an instinctual irritation. The mecha is small, only about twice the dimensions of his body, and relatively lightly armed and armored, though at least with strong NBC defenses.

As he checks the various area scanners to develop a better sense of his immediate surroundings and find his way towards his current target, he'll spare some focus on forming the words in his mind and trying to put them into the chassis, reflecting the words appearing in his head a moment ago.

'I don't know. My designation is PS-X-EN000.'

He doesn't know it, but the residual consciousness stuck in his chassis couldn't override his controls anyway, not without some real wetware to back it up.

'Great, not only do I wake up without my body in some bombed out factory, but my body's been replaced with a damned clone trooper. That designation's a mouthful even for me, and I don't have a mouth anymore!'

There's a pause, perhaps as this ghost processes the area scan as well, before it speaks further. 'You're Xeno now.'

He processes the statement for a while, absorbing the seeming authority it was spoken in, before radiating wordless acceptance.

Now, what's the situation?

Background radiation levels are high. Not dangerous in the short term, but potentially in the long run. No no intelligible signal or signature can be extracted from them. 

The radio is sending enemy coordinates to his hud via the expected protocols. 

Psychic senses detect screaming. Not any screaming in particular, just a general sense that the universe as a whole is in some kind of distant agony.

They are in a rectangular room which once contained neat rows of pods like the one he emerged from, as well as a single doorway opening onto some hallway. Striplights illuminate a space which has been left to accumulate detritus over the centuries. 

None of the other pods in the room appear to contain people. Most of them are obviously damaged beyond repair; one has opened to reveal a misshapen lump of flesh and metal the size of a horse, mercifully devoid of sentience. 

'God.... Well, at least that isn't us,' the voice says as their collective senses pass over the lump. He gets the impression that this mysterious ghost in his mecha has intuited that it could've been.

No squad, aside from this ghost if that counts. This doesn't map well to what his instincts tell to expect from a mission with these parameters, which prompts further irritation. This is not just an unfamiliar situation, or one that is wrong. It's a bad situation.

Nothing to do but get it over with. This looks like it'll be corridor fighting, so the mecha's smaller size at least makes some sense. He'll ready a manipulator to interface with doors or other mechanisms, and a short-range spreadgun for room-clearing, then walk them over to the room's solitary non-destructive exit and open it up, attempting to angle the mecha to the side of the door to minimize sight-lines in case there's no other obstructions between the door and the current enemy position.

The enemy position appears to be - trying to make some sort of last-ditch inputs to the computers mounted in a podium in the centre of a room full of equipment from a dozen eras roughly hacked together. 

The enemy appears to be a person in a bright orange space suit, complete with identity-concealing reflective glass dome. Several large crystals, all glowing a matching orange, are mounted on the exterior of the suit. 

The enemy is saying: "Wait, no, don't shoot, I can pay, what's your heart's desire-" 

'A spacesuit? The sensors say we're in atmo. I guess if he had one lying around...maybe we can ask him--'

The mission directive is simple. There is a computer terminal, potentially fragile, in the middle of the room however.

He swaps his manipulator out for a linegun while holding the spreadgun steady, and directs the ballistics calculator to prepare the linegun's shot.

It will be easy enough to get a clear shot; in the meantime, the target seems to have given up on begging and is instead directing the orange crystals on their suit to shoot beams of searing orange light at Xeno. 

Intuitively, this is an attack. He will trust the BC to maintain its lock on the target while he focuses on maneuvering to minimize exposure to this attack mode. Once the linegun has a clear shot again, he'll take it.

'Is he firing lasers out of those things? Where is his power source?'

He can feel the the curiosity and confusion of the ghost inhabiting his chassis, and that it's reviewing the mecha's sensory data-streams.

The two beams of probably-laser light fly wild, leaving scorching marks on the wall behind and badly damaging a readout screen. 

Xeno's own shot takes the enemy clean through the head, sending them flailing to the ground but not, apparently, disabling them - or even producing any blood. 

'That's...damned robots, of course. Still no idea where he's getting his power from, but that's at least a start. Try this.'

He accepts the suggestion, swapping the spreadgun for the lorentz cannon and beginning to charge up the power bank.

He'll also try and maintain his evasive footwork while minimizing further damage to the facility. If nothing else, he can try and make sure that the enemy 'lasers' won't be burning through equipment they haven't already damaged.

It's hard to tell what equipment in this room is even functional, but with the volume of fire heading his way, it's only a matter of time until he takes a hit; a glancing shot which would no doubt disable the limb if he had been unarmoured, and which does very little given that he is. 

That's unfortunate. Hopefully none of this collateral warrants decommissioning. He's curious what kind of situation prompted him getting created here and now, and if he's just getting recycled then he won't get to find out.

As the lorentz cannon approaches sufficient charge for the current range of engagement, he'll direct the BC to acquire a shot for it that'll avoid laying the guide-wires directly across the terminal the enemy was using. He'll take the first one it finds.

Zap! With a shower of sparks, the foe collapses back to the ground. This time, they don't rise again. The crystals continue to glow, but don't fire again.

The building does not provide any further security alerts. 

That's...good? It's wrong, but it's good.

'No more enemies detected, for the moment. Let's take stock of what this thing's left behind. Those laser-crystals aren't like anything I've seen before, so who knows what's inside suit.'

He acquiesces again, walking them over to the collapsed spacesuit, swapping the linegun back to a manipulator to open up the suit. He'll also briefly check if the terminal's screen is still functional, and if it is what it's displaying.

'Can you get the livery into visual? If I recognize it I might be able to figure out where we are, or at least who called us in for this job.'

It's a little awkward, but the mecha is capable of full self-inspection in a pinch. He rolls the shoulder of the arm that's still wielding the lorentz cannon forwards to see if there's any symbols or words on it that might be familiar to this ghost.

The interior of the spacesuit is empty - it was moving by exosuit support alone. Or well, it's not completely empty; it appears to have been used to store various small items, including a pouch of unidentified currency, a handful of tools, personal electronics, and some kind of small lizard creature, all thoroughly fried by the voltage. 

The screen shows a collection of command prompts and code for an unfamiliar software suite. The variables are not helpfully named. 

The mecha appears to be outfitted with what appears to be slightly dated NYPD riot control livery. 

'Freaky,' the ghost says, before radiating a feeling of irony at being the one to say it. Then it's silent for a moment as it considers. 'Those're the people I was on loan to, before all this. Never seen a place like this anywhere in New York, though. Or anywhere else for that matter, other than maybe HQ, a little bit. Given the absence of my body, though, I can imagine things must've really gone to Hell. Not sure how you ended up in my chassis instead, though. Either way, this thing looked it was here with a purpose. Probably worth collecting the goods, at least the one's that aren't toast. Then we can plug in and I'll see what I can dig up out of this place's systems.'

It feels a little weird having someone give him all these short-term specific directives, rather than mission that he's trusted to complete. Weird and a little frustrating, though also this ghost does at least seem like it knows a little bit more about the situation than he does, so he'll do as he is bid again, collecting the pouch and tools into one of the mecha's isolated storage compartments (this place is all pretty radioactive, after all).

As he extends an arm towards the terminal, pawing around for a plausible-seeming port to insert a data cable, he'll also glance at the fallen crystals, glowing mysteriously. 'Do you think those are worth picking up?'

'Maybe, though with the way they were floating around the thing before, and don't seem like they have any handles, it might be best to figure out something to hold them with that won't risk frying one of our manipulators. Maybe we disconnect one of the suit's gloves and jury-rig something out of it.'

Sitting on the desk is what appears to be a sphere, about six inches in diameter, it's entire surface covered in data ports of specifications ranging from the familiar to the absurd; it appears to already be in use as a data input between the main computer and several auxiliary drives, presumably of the intruders own possession. 

There's an unfamiliar data access protocol on the mech software that is indicating that it's the appropriate one to use to interface with this system. 

'Polite of them to include a firmware update. Let me handle this?'

Sure, he'll let the ghost use a bit of brain to manage the interface while he redirects his main attention to the not-exactly-a-corpse, bringing his manipulator over to see if either of the spacesuit's hands will come off cleanly. Then he has another thought, and reopens the iso-compartment with the tools he collected and reviews them to see if any look like they might be useful to handling the glowing crystals.

'Ah, that feels better,' the voice says, radiating palpable comfort at having been handed some autonomy. 'Now, open sesame.' It then promptly accesses the system through the indicated protocol.

The facility will report itself as a backline medical facility. Presently: It has 0 security issues. It has 17 staffing issues. It has 236 supply issues. It has 1723 maintenance tasks flagged incomplete, including 453 critical issues. It has failed [warning: integer overflow] routine functionality checks since last service. It has 1 patient presently in need of care.

Staffing issues: not something they can help with. Supply issues: not something they can help with. Overdue maintenance: not something they can help with.

Integer overflow on the number of missed routine functionality checks...how big an integer can this system handle? That's plausibly a very large number.

And, a patient in need of care...

This mecha is not well-suited for medical purposes. It's for law enforcement, and even this ghost knows that law enforcement is close to the opposite of medicine. But he remembers HQ, and what it was like being there, day in and day out. None of them wanted to stay there. That's why they all dreamed of the day they'd be mission-ready.

This place reminds him of HQ too much.

'There's someone alive in here, somewhere,' he says simply, before remembering that he's talking to a clone trooper and not a human being. 'With the first aid kit in the mecha, and whatever other supplies we can scavenged up-- this is a hospital, sort of. An old, mostly abandoned, very run-down hospital. With that, we can hopefully get them stable. Then they can help us figure out what's going on here.'

Speaking of, he'll also query the computer system for the date, and also whether there's any unencrypted files relating to the facility's abandonment.

He's a little suspicious of this idea, but, he thinks he understands. There's a lot wrong with this situation, and they've only had a moment to gather information. Someone who's been dealing with it for longer, and isn't an enemy, may know more. If they're in a position of dependence of them, then they're less likely to betray them or disappear, at least until some alternative appears. 'Alright.'

Then works the tongs he found among the enemy's tools, loads up the crystals into the same isolated compartment along with the tools, closes it all up, and radiates receptivity for new mission coordinates.

And assuming the facility's system can point them in the right direction, the ghost will go ahead and hand them over. 'Before we check in on them, though, let's collect this little data-ball. It'll be useful later.'

Is there a reason why it couldn't have said that first?

Regardless, he'll go ahead and bring the manipulator over to disconnect the data-ball from the terminal, retract his own data-cable, and place the data-ball (and all the other gear plugged into it) into another iso-compartment. His instincts expect him to be nearly out of individual compartments by now, but this mecha has a handful more, maybe twice as many as he's expecting. Another discrepancy, though a convenient one in this case.

Regardless, with the coordinates in mind and nothing else to grab, it's time to walk.

The complex isn't large; no more than two dozen rooms, the vast majority of which are long-ransacked offices. It's not hard to find the other two "patient areas" of the facility and within one (the other seems to have been entirely stripped for parts.), another pod, in which a small child in an elaborately embroidered dress sleeps. 

It feels strange, to see someone so small. But, what hasn't felt strange here? He'll walk up to the pod and see if he can spot somewhere to interface.

'Here,' the ghost indicates a port, having thought to check for this kind of information while they were plugged in, using the same Orb that mediated their interface with the terminal. Once they have access to the pod, he'll check to see what information it has on the patient's status. If they're lucky, whatever issue the kid has won't urgent and they'll be able to get out of here ASAP.

While the ghost interfaces with the computers more, Xeno will distract himself from his growing number of annoyances by staring at the little person's dress. The elaborate design is interesting and pleasing to look at. It might be the first actively pleasant thing he's encountered in this life.

The patient was checked in for treatment 157 years 23 days 22 hours ago, and was diagnosed with chronic leukaemia, a comorbid misconfigured genemod, and two arrow wounds. Treatment has been completed, and the stasis pod awaits authorisation from medical centre staff or a parent/guardian to take her back out of stasis. 

Her dress is clearly handmade, and was clearly a tremendous work of love and care. 

He hopes that he can have something like that dress someday.

'Well, that's convenient. She's apparently all good to go, just waiting for permission to be discharged from care. I'll see if us being the only apparent staff here qualifies us to give the order...'

It says something that she's been in here for over a century and a half, though. She might have some great-great-great-grandniblings to go back to, but given the conditions around here, that's not seemingly incredibly likely, and he's pretty certain that whoever she came here with is long dead.

It does! In a state of staffing emergency, remaining staff have pluripotent rights in order to enable them to provide what medical care they can. 

'Try to keep still, and let me do the talking for now. She's just a kid-- shit, do you know what a kid is? She's young, or she looks it. Not as young as you, but she doesn't have any skills burned into her either, probably. She'll probably be confused, and if we want her help, we need to not scare her.'

'You don't think the mecha itself will scare her? It's not military but it's still meant to intimidate.'

'It is intimidating, which is why I'm going to be trying to keep her calm while I explain the situation. Just try to not make any sudden movements or say anything out of the blue.'

He grumbles, but it doesn't feel strange to hand a non-combat situation off to someone else. That feels normal, and that helps him tolerate it.

And feeling acceptance the clone trooper is radiating, the ghost will go ahead prompt the pod to begin the patient discharge process.

The stasis pod hisses and slowly opens. The girl within yawns and slowly awakens, brushing her hair (pink?) out of her eyes and stretching as though awakening from a restful sleep. 

"Huh? Who're you? Where's papa?" 

Not the strangest color he's seen.

After a moment to grapple with the voice synthesizer, the loud speakers crackle to life, then the surprisingly gentle voice of a young man speaks. "My name's Imre, and the one in my cockpit is Xeno. We got called in by the facility to help, and now that we handled the intruder we're here to get you out of here. I don't know where your papa is, he wasn't here when we got here. Maybe you can help us look for him?"

He wonders whether the name the ghost gave is something he just made up, or something else he somehow knows. Either way, he'll consider it the ghost's acting designation until it contradicts itself.

When Imre mentions him being in the cockpit, he has the urge to indicate his presence somehow, but he was directed to not speak up or make any sudden moves, so he'll just slowly wave the mecha's free manipulator-wielding arm, a motion that comes naturally but still has a feeling of incorrectness, somehow.

He's a little confused by Imre saying that the facility 'called them in,' or of a time when they 'got here,' given how they just got created a moment ago in another one of the pods. Maybe it felt more like appearing here from somewhere else because of how Imre seems to remember things from before.

"Papa must be nearby. He said he'd wait here until I was well. Are you a golem* or a vech**?" 

*Oldtech perpetual motion engine in the form of power armour or vehicle. 

**Biorobot or mecha; prototypically living feral in the woods like a bear that escaped from a screening of Neon Genesis Evangelion. 

A what, or a what?

After quietly explaining the unfamiliar terms to the clone trooper, Imre responds. "Definitely more like a golem than a vech, though not exactly like either. And, we don't know what your papa looks like. Would you be willing to help us find him?"

She nods rapidly. 

"Papa is easy to find! He's the tallest, and the strongest, and he has big blue horns! And he's also the best at shooting and riding! In the entire clan!" 

Well, that's certainly distinctive, and a concerning description of what sort of situation there is outside. He already figured this probably wasn't anywhere in New York, but it's looking like 'New York' might not be much of a thing anymore, if people are going around in 'clans.' He supposes that makes sense with the context still trickling in from his integration of the language files he plundered from that Adapter Orb, the hardware plugged into it, and the central terminal. "We definitely didn't see anyone like that inside. Maybe he had to go outside for something? Or maybe the intruder we handled earlier tricked him somehow. Want to ride on me while we go check outside?"

'Xeno, please slowly lower the manipulator down towards her, and be ready for if she climbs up onto us.'

He'll oblige, though he's not clear on why she would. 'Isn't she healthy now? She shouldn't need help walking out of here.'

'She might not need help walking, but her stride is going to be tiny compared to ours, or even just to your own. That, and she's not working with our chassis or your freaky psycho-biology bullshit, so sparing her the calories might be important. Plus, letting her ride on us will let her feel a bit more comfortable with us, and let her think of us as similar to the other people who've carried her. It'll help her trust us.'

That sounds a bit backwards to him. 'Wouldn't it make more sense if she only let us carry her once she trusts us?'

He radiates a bit of exasperation as he replies, 'It's complicated. Kids have to learn things like 'trust' through experience. Maybe she won't ride on us, but she might, and I just need you to not react weirdly-- not try and throw her off or anything, when she does. And if she does, try and be aware of where she is and how bumpy her ride'll be once we're walking.'

'Alright, fine.' This feels weird, again, but oh well. He'll just try and think of it like...a fragile extraction target, that he needs to not break during exfil.

The small child thinks slowly and sternly about this. 

"Yes please!!! Do you have a gun for me? So I can be your o-ver-watch?" 

Aw! That's just adorable. 'Do you have a side-arm in there?'

He briefly searches around, and finds what are appears to be a simple handgun holstered at his hip, and radiates confirmation.

'Go ahead and send it out to here then.'

And once the clone trooper has deposited it in the transfer compartment and flipped it around to the other side, he'll open it up to the girl. "Most of our gear is sized for my chassis, but Xeno inside had this handgun. Think you've got a handle on it?"

She nods firmly and takes the gun. She does in fact seem to understand how to handle a firearm; she's not intensely disciplined about it, but she's not making any mistakes which  grunts don't make all the time. 

It's cute that her parents must've been taking her to the range even at this tender young age-- or, just letting her practice out in the sticks, since he doesn't know actual ranges are going to be a thing anymore. "Very good! We'll be much safer with you keeping watch. Alright Xeno, let's take a peek outside."

'Before you ask: I'm telling her this to increase her confidence and help her continue to feel comfortable. Her papa...probably isn't going to be outside, not alive at least, and she needs to have a cushion-- she needs to have something or someone that she's comfortable with, that she can rely on to be steady and strong in his place.'

That makes sense, he guesses. Kids are weird, but he's been exposed to so much weirdness already, it's whatever.

He'll extract the orb from the pod's ports and stow it again, then slowly, carefully walk them out of the pod room, back through the terminal room, up to the door that the ghost indicates is the exit, swaps the lorentz cannon back to the spreadgun in case there's an ambush or the other side, then uses the manipulator to open up the door.

They are, apparently, underground. The facility did not, in it's internal self-assessment, believe itself to be underground, and yet, the way forward is a rising tunnel through packed dirt, sunlight glimmering at the other end. 

He's initially surprised, but after thinking about it for a moment, he supposes it only makes sense. After God knows how long, it's not that strange to think this place has gotten buried. It does prompt him to revise his estimates on how long this place has been derelict further upwards, though. And his estimates that this situation has anything to do with the NYPD further downwards.

He can feel the gently emanation of surprise from the ghost in his chassis, and takes note of it, but the fact that this seems to be kind of bunker feels like far from the strangest thing about it to him.

Assuming their guide doesn't indicate for them to stop or turn back, he'll continue walking up and out through the tunnel, stepping gently to try and avoid provoking a tunnel collapse, and making sure to not let the top of the mecha scrape into the ceiling.

The tunnel is not in danger of collapse; it appears to be reinforced with bone, though what animal has bones in the shape of the structural members of a well-designed ceiling reinforcement is unclear. 

As Xeno leaves the tunnel, he steps into what fails to be daylight; the ultraviolet spectrum reveals that the sun is high in the sky, but a dark fog leaves what appears to be a wide flat steppe of pale grass as black as night. 

He sees a campsite of a dozen people, sitting by a fire and doing the various work of camping. As soon as they see Xeno, the cry goes up - "Monster! It must have killed the boss!" "Scatter!"

And scatter they do, fleeing into the sea of grass by every means available to them - on foot, and by mule, pony, riding dinosaur, motorcycle, and in one particularly ambitious case, by what appears to be a motorhome modified to have machine-gun positions atop it. 

'What in Hell...' Well, they're mostly certainly not in Kansas anymore. The bone reinforcements almost make sense, given what he knows now about the vechs, but this fog...

"Well, it looks like the intruder we found earlier had some friends. Let's take a look through their camp."

'If you like, you can hand me the reins and I'll keep watch and you can go take anything that catches your fancy as well. I'll keep watch of anyone coming back looking to make scrap.'

He considers it as he walks out into the midst of the camp, swapping the mecha's manipulator over to grenade launcher to pair with the spreadgun. It feels a little strange to leave the mecha in someone else's control, but if he imagines it like he's piloting it externally the normal way it makes sense to use his smaller human body for detailed searching. 'Okay.'

Once they're in place, he takes his turn talking through the loud speakers. "I'm going to open the cockpit to get out now. Try to avoid it, getting hit could hurt." His voice is kind of gravelly, and pretty deep.

And then he'll go ahead and pop the cockpit and hop out. He's big, both tall and wide, and he hits the ground with a real thud. He's not exactly young-looking, but his big eyes and the way his head is almost hairless gives him an uncomfortably childish look on an otherwise adult face. He's got a standard issue NYPD cavalry uniform on, not he recognizes it. He's also grabbed a flashlight (which he noticed earlier when searching for a sidearm) since outside the mecha he'll need to rely on his own eyes and it's looking pretty dark.

People have generally grabbed whatever they can on the way out, including the majority of weapons, but they haven't been comprehensive in the slightest. 

Things they've left behind include: a campfire burning animal dung, and a second campstove that appears to be radiothermally heated. Several powder horns and partially assembled blackpowder cartridges. A map . Several bags, mostly open, of various durable food supplies, principally flour, rendered fat, and freeze-dried meat in canvas sacks, as well as foil sealed packets of various condiments and pickles. Miscellaneous sundries ranging from toothbrushes to moustache wax. Several large carts made from the same spindled and woven bone as the mine supports; two empty, one full of mine supports and miscellaneous electronics. 

The small child also finds a handful of hard currency which she calls cash, and a book bound in psychoactive metal. 

"Can I keep it?" She asks? 

A...radiothermal campstove? Where do you put it when you aren't cooking?

Shaking the confusion over that little trinket out of his head, he grabs the (oddly long and scroll-like) map, as well as some of the sundries that looks like they might be useful keeping himself and his mecha clean. He gets the feeling that maintenance is going to be important out here. 'There's some electronics over in this cart. It might be worth checking whether any of them are useful,' he transmits to the ghost, before having his attention drawn to the girl.

The coins aren't of much interest to him, but the book's binding is another story. It feels a little like the psychometal in the chassis, but definitely not exactly the same. "Let me hold it?"

He'll step over to the indicated wagon, swap the grenade launcher back to the manipulator, pop open the orb's iso-compartment, and start sorting through the wagon's contents to see if anything inside can connect to it, and in turn whether any of it either has some relevant info on it or has some valuable function.

Naturally, he's still got the spreadgun up and the sensors peeled for threats though. He was always better at multitasking with his chassis than with his meat.

The "book" turns out to be a collection of microfiche slides, titled "Dawn's Highway Vol 5: Highway Cruisers" on the exterior of the pleather and psychometal bindings. 

"Papa always said that Dawn's Highway was the best magic, and that we were lucky to have a shaman who knew some." 

Magic, huh? "What was that like?"

'Any of that sound familiar to you, Imre?'

He'll try and sync with the binding, slowly and cautiously since he's not sure what it's going to be like resonating with pieces of psychometal this small.

'Not a wit of it. We'll see whether any of this great can offer some illumination though.'

"He was so old and he always knew all sorts of things! Where to go to get good grass, or guz-o-line, or hide from raids. He was always giving gifts to the road." She lowers her voice conspiratorially. "Papa said he gave the crossroads more gifts than he did his wife." 

The psychomaterial was made (mass produced) as armour; an armour of crystal that wishes to safeguard the contents of the book not just against damage but also ill-use, for all mass production has rendered the sentiment bland and ineffectual. 

"He sounds useful to have around. I hope his wife wasn't jealous. What sort of gifts did he give?"

Does the binding know what the contents of the book are? Or just a residual urge to be protective in general? He'll hand the book back to the girl for now. Maybe this shaman shared a trick for how to read the microfiche with her and they won't need to scrounge through the facility for some piece of equipment for it.

The binding understands the contents of the book only in vibes; that is an archive, a method of teaching, a summation of the works of ten thousand lifetimes, a wizardry of the greatest sort.

But it's kinda short on hard details. 

The girl does not know how to read microfiche. 

Yeah, figures. 'The girl found a book of microfiche, related to that Dawn Highway magic thing she mentioned. Think there's anything to read it in facility? Or in that wagon?'

Well now he's going to need to recheck everything, though he doesn't think he saw anything in the wagon that looked like a microscope. 'Probably not, but it's worth checking.'

Then, once he's done checking over everything in the wagon, again, he'll speak up. "Hey little girl! Nice find with that book," he says as he walks back over to her and the clone trooper. "Want to see if we can find anything to help read it back inside?"

"YEAH!" 

Then back inside they'll go!

Once they're back inside, he'll post up next to the terminal, pulling out the orb with his manipulator and plugging back in. 'Keep yourself and the girl out of sight. I'll handle it if anyone comes down the tunnel.'

Then he'll start querying the facility's system for anything like an inventory, and see if he can find something he might be able to jury-rig into a microscope.

If he's honest, he doesn't really feel like he knows what he's supposed to do other take cover into one of the other chambers, maybe pick up some debris to throw as a distraction, and try and keep the girl out of potential lines of fire.

He'll do his best to do that, though he's not sure exactly how to coax her into cover, if she even needs coaxing. "Imre is going to interface with the facility to see if there's anything here that'll help read the book. We should take cover in the mean time, in case some of the people from outside come back and try to attack through the entrance."

The small child will acknowledge the importance of hiding and do it properly but she's visibly annoyed by it. Very quietly visibly annoyed, under this desk. 

The facility does seem to have some sort of biological analysis lab which had microscopes for looking at samples not remotely the right sort of tool, but usable in a pinch. 

Some part of him feels like he's supposed to do something about her annoyance, but he's not sure what, so he just keeps watch.

Alright, that's worth giving a shot at least. Is this something that he can have the facility bring up from the terminal, or is it fixed in place somewhere in one of the chambers, and in the latter case where can he find it?

He'll also download any documentation on how to use this thing that happens to be floating around the terminal's archive, since he certainly doesn't have any experience operating any kind of microscope, let alone finagling a medical one into reading microfiche.

It's fixed in place in office #11, just down the hall. The archive has some product fliers, which includes a description of all the functions and how to operate them, but it does assume you're used to using microscopes in general. 

Well, hopefully he can figure it out.

"Alright, looks like we've got something that might work down in office number eleven. If you'll both follow me, we'll see if can see just what this book of yours contains," he explains, making his way towards the room without taking his sensors or gun off of the tunnel entrance.

And he'll follow, doing his best to continue keeping watch over their charge. Even if nobody comes down here to follow after them, he gets the feeling there's stuff down here that she could hurt herself with accidentally.

She will pick up the vibe that this is one of the mysterious underground complexes that one enters with fear and trepidation rather than one of the mysterious underground complexes that you strip bare of everything that can be removed from its moorings by a pickaxe and some grit, and will respond with appropriate caution (and more hiding slightly behind this random guy who seems nice.) 

Under the watchful eye of the still-working biological sample analysis microscope, the book is revealed to contain instructions on how to do magic! Specifically, instructions relating to the conjuration of demons and familiar spirits in order to command them to inhabit vehicles and similar vessels, which is useful to save fuel, automate travel, and give your car menacing spikes, amongst other more esoteric uses. It's one part phone-book, one part primer on mysticism and symbology, and one part punk manifesto. 

Huh. That sounds...disturbingly parallel to the process of how he grew out his chassis-mind, in places, aside from the fact it doesn't seem the summoned spirits need psychometal to house them, and they obviously aren't being cultivated from from a present and living human body. He's honestly really curious about what's going on with these, though he's a long way from trying to do the magic as its described, if they even have the resources necessary to try. If they encounter anyone who looks like they've got a possessed vehicle, though, he'll want to pick the brain of whoever's controlling it. Maybe the clone trooper can even try and synchronize with it, somehow?

Regardless, he'll go ahead and copy over scans of all the pages to the mecha's onboard memory, then carefully disentangle the book from the microscope and hand it back to the girl. "Alright, I've got the whole thing scanned in here," he says, bringing one of the mecha's arms up and knocking it gently against the exterior of the cockpit, in mimicry of tapping his forehead. "I can tell you all about what's inside whenever you like."

Backstories for individual demons range from surreal mythology to obvious lies with very little care for practical details of their birth. A place called The Black City features prominently in many stories, though the only detail about the place itself is that it is at the end of the world and that there are five gates. The magic is remarkably economical, able to be performed with spit and duct tape, apart from the price paid to the demon itself, which starts with quantities of blood which can be supplied by the practitioner and rapidly accelerates to quantities which cannot. 

The small child will solemnly take the book and store it in a stolen backpack, nodding at the offer of lessons. 

"We could try and find a place here in the facility for you to study, but it's pretty rundown. It might be better for us to head somewhere a bit more comfortable."

Hm. Also, if the primary price of these ostensible spirit's service is blood, and they're in a medical facility...he should double check whether there's still a supply of blood in cryo somewhere.

He's unsure of where Imre might be suggesting they go to, at first, until a moment later he realizes he's likely prompting the girl to propose a location and maybe a route there. "What's our movement formation? The cockpit is cramped for two people, even if one of them is small, and clinging to the outside could be difficult if we're traveling at speed."

"Well, we could travel a bit slower, or I could pull one of the wagons that the looters outside abandoned..." Huh. That could actually be meaningful use-case for this vehicle-magic, if it works and there's a convenient supply of blood.

It seems like this facility relied primarily on the ?general purpose fabrication pods? rather than keeping any biological materials in storage. The ones located in the room where they woke up, of which one has green status, one has amber status, and four have red status. 

The small child has a suggestion: "We should steal a horse!" 

Were there any horses left outside? He's not sure he remembers any but with the haze he supposes there's a chance he missed some. He'd be surprised if the looters just left some behind, though, and even if they did he'd figure they'd have startled away when he walked out earlier. "Well, if we find any, we can see about stealing them," he replies cheerily as he plugs back into the facility's terminal. "For now, the book mentioned some things that might be tricky to get later, but that this place should hopefully have plenty of. I'm going see if I can talk it into letting us have some."

Can he, in fact, prod the facility into fabricating some containers of stabilized blood, suitable for ritual use based on what the grimoire described?

The small child seems a little disappointed, but they understand. 

He can prod the facility into producing blood but it doesn't have a "stabilised" format; anything it makes is optimised for immediate use and will likely spoil rapidly. Compatibility is something neither the ritual guide nor the facility have any information for - the former assumes you will be using fresh sacrifices and the latter that you'll be putting it into wounded immediately. 

Hm. That's a bit of a conundrum. It brought him and Xeno here, though, so maybe he can finagle it into fabricating some kind of cryogenic freezer, then have Xeno put some freshly generated blood (and maybe cloned organs? Just in case having organs is a relevant part of having fresh sacrifices) into it.

That also makes him think. Don't clone troopers have, like, psychometal in their blood and tissues and shit? That's why they're all freaky. That probably will be hard to replace elsewhere, so he'll see if he can get the facility to fabricate some rations appropriate for a...fuck, what were they actually called?

'What did you call yourself earlier?'

'My designation, PS-X-EN000. Why?'

'Right, what does that stand for?'

His mouth answers, even though he can't draw up any explicit memories. "Psycho Soldier, series X, template EN, serial number 000."

It sounds right, when he hears it, too. But he's not sure why he said it, and a little annoyed that Imre didn't answer his question the first time. 'Why?' he reiterates through the link.

Man, 'Psycho Soldier.' What a name for such a boondoggle of a project. It's like they knew it was going to be trouble but decided to do it anyway.

He'll go ahead and see if the facility can fab up some rations suitable for a series X psycho soldier with the EN template, along with maybe a cryogenic freezer and some blood and organs. Maybe psycho soldier blood and organs? Would that mess with the magic? Who knows. Maybe a mix, one freezer with normal human stuff and one with stuff Xeno-style.

'I realized that you're not going to have any psychometal-enriched food outside of here, so I'm seeing if can I get the facility to make you some.'

Oh. 'Okay.'

He lets go of the frustration. Does he need psychometal-enriched food? He doesn't actually know. He only sort of has a vague idea of what eating is in the first place, or why people do it.

It will produce a suitable freezer for long term sample storage when prompted to manufacture a replacement for a long defunct component of the facility, but they'll have to rig an power source for it of some sort. 

It's happy to produce regular (or irregular in any of several mysterious undocumented varieties) organs and blood, but the database doesn't seem to have any further documentation of psycho soldier parts or supplies; in fact the database their design was printed from seems to be nearly entirely corrupt. 

Figuring all this out takes enough time that the haze is starting to bake off outside, leaving actual sunlight visible.

Not even blood and organs that are the same as what's in Xeno's body right now? Damn. He's almost tempted to fabricate a whole extra body and just butcher it, but he's not sure how well the girl, or Xeno for that matter, will take it.

'No such luck. I can get it to make some blood and organs, which might be useful for the stuff from the book though, so I'm going to tell it make a freezer, see if I can finagle this adapter orb in patching the freezer into the mecha's power system, then fill it up with the stuff. Those looters might be coming back now that it's light, so keep your eyes peeled on the entrance.'

He radiates acceptance and continues to maintain a defensive posture. He's not sure why Imre thinks why the looters might be coming back in that soon, they seemed spooked by the mecha even in the open and inside the facility they'd have even less ability avoid its weaponry, but he might just be missing something.

And with the clone trooper cooperative, he'll go ahead and do as he said he would.