"We can revisit this under more pleasant circumstances."

"Sounds like a plan." Kiss, then Ellie will wiggle free.

She'll allow that. Reluctantly.

Onwards in their investigations, then?

Onward. Maybe now that Ellie has an idea about what they were doing here, her poking of the terminals can be more conclusive.

A pretty solid start. 

That's the idea.

Still... There could be functions a lot worse than turning the operator - or possibly everyone in the room, if Jade and Cat would be naturally immune - into catgirls. Something caused Cat to wake up with global amnesia, after all, and while the power armor's probably designed to handle poison gas... The - cat-ification beam or whatever? Got through it.

...Ellie should probably get back in the power armor first, come to think of it.

Yeah.

There's still plenty of other things that could potentially squish her.

Unfortunately Ellie doesn't seem to have any of Cat's other powers.

They can do more investigating later, maybe.

Once they're somewhere more secure.

Right.

Hopefully Cat didn't bust the armor up too badly trying to get Ellie out...

It's still intact and fully functional, luckily enough (it's a durable design).

Right.

Ellie slots herself back in, then returns to her hacking.

The file system is a mess, and a lot has been deleted, but Ellie's eventually able to pull up some records.

Keyword "synth", keyword "cyborg", keyword "replacement", keyword "experiment"...

As she's pulling up the files, there's a soft clanging noise from somewhere outside their room. 

...Probably not a good thing. Let's see how much she can get downloaded to local storage before someone starts shooting or something gets lit on fire.

A really good chunk, at least of the files she's found and decrypted so far. She can't rule out the existence of other files, though. 

She also can't rule out the existence of enemies about to attack, and that one will have to take precedence.

"They're close. Try to hole up, or try to run for it?"

"I'd rather not get cornered."

"Then let's go."

"Right." Ellie briefly debates destroying the computer, but they might want to come back at some point.

Faster to just leave. 

Cat will take the lead?