Spyros climbs out of the jeep and blots away more blood from his cheek where he was grazed during the fight. He nods thanks and says, "We may be a couple of days depending on how things go, Estrella. Are you waiting here, or you want us to meet up with you back at the airfield?"
The woman ponders a moment at the tek's question, seeming to stare off into the night sky. A slight smile creeps onto her features and she looks to the ruined building where the flashlight signal had come from. "I will stay here for now. A couple days is no problem. I'm sure the watchmen would welcome the company."
She then responds to Therese, nodding gravely. "Aye, chica. I will pray for you. And for all of us."
"Let's get going then. See if we're lucky enough to find a place with a little shelter to keep an eye on the bunker for now."
The team checks their gear and sets out from the perimeter checkpoint towards the installation in the north. The grounds before them are like something out of a nightmare. Toppled buildings, weathered and crumbled by time and neglect spread out in all directions. The streets are littered with the rusted husks of century-old vehicles, many shot through with numerous holes and collapsed in on themselves. There was no life to be seen in any direction. No plants, no people, no animals. A ruin that nature would have turned into an overgrown temperate jungle years ago instead remains a bleak and terrible graveyard of a former civilization... a shocking testament to the power of the Aberrants.
The group moves slowly over the ruins, climbing over fallen pillars, navigating coils of barbed wire set out by the watchmen, and passing through some buildings that still had walls left. Within one such building, the team finds a pair of blackened skeletons leaning against each other, the surrounding floor and back wall similarly charred. One of the skeletons is human, the other... perhaps once was. The fingers and teeth were extended to grotesque proportions, ending in sharp points, and the bones in the forehead had thickened and developed bony ridges just above the eye sockets. This was, perhaps, one of the "monsters" that Estrella had mentioned. The rest of the building was in shambles, perforated all over with gunfire and larger holes from unknown sources. From a window on the upper floor, for this building managed to still HAVE an upper floor, the group could see the facility nestled into the hills to the north in the distance.
"This seems like a good place to take a moment, and possibly to prepare as a shelter, if we should need one," Therese says, looking around.
"What do you think about using what's left of this building as a watchtower? Maybe not so secure... anything could sneak in at ground level from any direction, but it is a nice place to keep an eye on the facility."
Frederick clears his throat and looks around the broken husk of the building. His hand slides to where the pistol rests at his hip, ensuring that it's still in place while he nods at what the Tek has to say.
"If we maintain a low profile it likely won't matter that the lower levels aren't easily secured." He kneels next to the corpses for a closer inspection, narrowing his eyes. "Unless Urso has any objections this site should be suitable."
Therese nods. "But I would still like to get a closer look. We can use this place as a base camp of sorts to launch our forays from."
Spyros glances at Urso, and takes his silence for agreement. "Okay then."
Then tek slings his pack off of his shoulder and crouches down rummaging. "Unfortunately, low profile is going to mean no fire, but we've got these prepped meal packs. Not the tastiest, but it's something." He looks up at the others and particularly Therese, "So what exactly do you have in mind by 'forays'?"
"Recon," Therese replies. "Using the plural might be optimistic, given the time constraints, but I would like a thorough examination, from as many angles as possible, of the facility's current status, before we plan our next step. In particular, we need to know where and how people are moving in and out of the facility, and to look for ways we might enter that don't involve those access points. And, of course, we'll need to know what the security setup looks like from ground level."