The mechs fly much faster than we were walking, and have the benefit that we can simply stay invisible while moving. We use the individual mechs, supplementing the pilot seats with Charlene's summons so there's two pilots in each… and so we have the summons instantly avaible if there's a fight.

  We travel over miles of farmnd growing food crops and something that looks kind of like hemp, pass herds of the same six-legged beasts that hauled wagons at the airport, even pass what looks like a few mine entrances… at thirty-two miles an hour. We make sure to fly low enough that the mechs will handle a fall OK, as we're expecting….

  My thoughts are interrupted by the mech I'm in falling out of the sky and crashing to the ground… where the Auger legs take over, burrowing us down slightly into the dirt as I react to the change.

  I radio the others, “So… is anyone else grounded?”

  “I am,” Brenna texts.

  “Me too,” Charlene comments on the comm.

  “Awesome!” Alice excims, “we found one, then. Now let's see if we can map the edge….”

  We spend some time doing exactly that: Walking the mechs back slowly, attempting to fly them up every few feet. until we narrow down the spot where the engines can no longer get us off the ground. We map that, and start tracing it sideways, building a line in our on board computer systems, slowly mapping out the anomaly. After we have a few miles id out (which takes most of the day), we sit down and write a little code to solve a problem: Assume some number of overpping circles of varying sizes: Where would the centers need to be to make this line on an outer edge of the set?

  It takes a few hours to write, and then it takes the on board computer a little while to chew through possible permutations… but in the end, we have an answer that lists three centers for us… one much bigger than the other two. So of course, we head straight there… underground, after merging the mech, because the merged mech's burrow speed beats the pants off of the walking speed of the individual mechs (a SkySpy frame isn't intended for walking, and the Auger legs that grant a burrow speed reduce the base speed of the mech, and our merged mech has a few speed upgrades) and underground travel is stealthy enough… and even if someone does detect us, good luck doing anything about us through fifty feet of ground.

  So we're cruising along, navigating by map towards the center of one of the calcuted circles, when we suddenly sm to a halt.

  The straps stop my summon from taking injury, but the crash wasn't pleasant. I check the shields… okay, they soaked the hit entirely, so we're fine. I look through the viewing port… yeah, nothing but dirt. Well, I can go out and dig….

  “Everyone okay?” Alice seems a little shaken.

  “I'm fine,” Charlene chuckles, “we all have our seat belts, this isn't like that time in New Orleans.”

  “I can scout, give me a bit…” I swap one of my moldable talents out to give my summon a burrow speed, then possess the creature fully and leave through the hatch. I navigate around the mech by the tremorsense gained through the same talent, and take a look at what we're up against… it's basically a wall buried under the ground, and much harder than stone. Running a hand along it, it feels like metal… sadly, I can only ‘see’ for twenty feet in any direction, and that fuzzily. Still… it's enough that I'm not feeling custrophobic despite being buried alive. I head up around the structure to trace it out and come up with a rough square a few hundred feet on a side. I go around the top and get a series of curved arches all the same size, save for a rger circur shaft that goes all the way to the surface… that will be the entrance. I'm blocked by a thick mat of roots, however, so I can't readily check in more detail.

  Which is my cue to head back and report.

  I climb into the mech, and let everyone know, “This may be what we're looking for. It's an underground complex of some kind. I found what looks to be an entrance, but we're going to need to knock some roots out of the way.”

  “The mech can handle that, no problem,” Brenna beams into our minds.

  “That was my thinking,” I agree, “The Auger legs should chew through simple wood easily enough.”

  We get going, pushing through the ground, and putting the Auger legs into high gear when we reach the roots. They chew through the woody material, and buried between the trees, we find an old stone shack wrapped heavily in vines, blocking the door. The door being too small for the mechs, we climb out and knock.

  Now, we don't expect an answer: Tremorsense tells me nobody's here and the vines literally blocking the door make it clear there hasn't been anyone going in or out in years… but habit is a powerful thing.

  We give it a few minutes, then Alice cuts the vines away with a bde. She checks the door… “There's a reader of some kind here. Hey, David, do you mind?”

  I get out my hacking kit and get to work.

  Twenty minutes ter, I shake my head, “The security here is beyond what I can reasonably crack electronically. We'll need to go around.” I swap out my Moldable Talents while I speak.

  “What do you mean by ‘go around’?” Brenna speaks into my mind, “This appears to be…” she cuts off when I use the Warp sphere with Unseeing Teleport to send her to the other side of the door. I repeat that with everyone else, all the minions, and stly myself.

  “Give me a little while to recharge,” I smile as I work on exactly that.

  I look around the room while I do… the only thing in here is an elevator… and it's powered up. Whatever else I could say about this facility… it was built to st. The outside was stone, but inside? Everything is clean, shiny lines of some silvery metal. There are no windows, just the door to the outside and the elevator door. The ceiling is a good ten feet up… but the locals average some seven feet tall, so that's hardly unexpected. And of course, the elevator has ANOTHER lock pad of some kind. I also take a moment to switch out talents again… tremorsense on my possessed Companion is handy… and that tells me the elevator isn't currently at the top.

  “All right…” I take a closee look at the one on the elevator… and it's the exact same model. “Yeah, no. Mundane means aren't going to cut it. However…” I switch a talent out for the Control talent of the third party Technomancy sphere (Inalready have the base sphere to keep things charged). A little casting… and tada! The door opens… revealing a shaft that goes down fifty feet. I can control the door, sure… but I can't see the actual elevator mechanisms to infect those.

  I look in the shaft: It's circur. There's what looks like a maintenance dder and a lot of very regur grooves in the metal walls that go all the way around. Something's missing, though….

  “No cables?” Charlene's comment crystallizes what's bothering me.

  “If it's the equivalent of a nuclear bunker,” Brenna broadcasts with her mind, “the builders may have been pnning with the idea that the entrance might not survive the bst.”

  “So the elevator has to be pushed up rather than pulled up….” Alice nods.

  Fortunately, there's also the service dder. The rungs are spaced a little further apart than I'm accustomed to, but they work. We climb down the shaft, Alice going first to look for traps, the rest of us climbing down after.

  We reach the roof of the elevator fifty feet down. It's pointed and very solid. It has gears on the sides that fit the grooves along the shaft wall, and engines mounted to the gears. The whole rig is flush to the walls of the shaft, except around the service dder, where there's a gap around the size of a manhole cover, and a set of wheels that connect to either side of the dder.

  “I get it,” I speak, “It's self-propelled. Turn the gears, it climbs the grooves, and the dder serves as both a backup way to leave and a method to prevent the rig from twisting.”

  “They probably have a door that connects at the dder,” Brenna broadcasts, “feel like riding the rest of the way down?”

  I think about it, “Yeah, sure.” I can even power the thing if it's out of juice.

  I climb down a little farther on the dder… and yes, there it is: An emergency exit. It has the same basic setup as the other doors… but there's no juice. Well… not a problem. I make a Sprite in the vehicle, and then the base Technomancy sphere let's me add charges… at a rate of one every six seconds. After that, I apply the Control talent, and the door opens… to a horrible stench.

  It's not hard to see why: There's a pile of mold, tech, and bones ying on the floor. It's hard to be sure from here… but I think a sidearm, a rifle, light armor, and a backpack? It's going to need cleaning and repairs… except that it's getting up. It's not showing on my Blindsense… okay then.

  I direct my minion to take a shot and dive into the elevator room, while I regret not currently having any offensive magic… I will need to fix that next level. For now I bst away with Shadowmark and update the team, “It's mindless, let's just kill it.”

  The beast fires back with the noted rifle, my mechsuit's shields absorbing the blow… they won't hold for a second shot, however.

  Alice is next in, diving through the door and using… the fists on her mechanized suit? Ah, no: She picked up a pair of Pority Gauntlets and is using those, that's why there are sparks when she connects… okay.

  Brenna also comes through, pulling her Mystic Fre, which she has shaped as a six-shooter from an old western film, and fires a fme that crackles with electricity at the creature. She also gets out of the way… ah, because Charlene's artillery drone is next.

  Yeah… the skeleton doesn't get a second shot in.

  We take some time to loot the body… the gear isn't any better than what we all already have, but we find a key card in the backpack, and we take it all anyway.

  I also take the time to swap a talent for the base Destruction Sphere. I still need Control from the Technomancy sphere, but I already have the base sphere, so that's just one of my moldable talents. The other… well: Flight doesn't help when there's low ceilings, a burrow speed doesn't work through metal anyway, and my impnt will warn me of anything smart enough to pose an actual problem.

  That done, we examine the actual elevator… it would be comfy if it wasn't for all of the mold. Circur, ringed with benches other than the space for the door and another for the control panel, with enough space in the middle to hold a small car... which is also the size of the double doors. Beyond that, it's just pin metal and a control panel that has buttons for a dozen floors plus a spot for a key card… which we don't need to use, as I have control by way of magic. And I note that now that it's powered, it's pying some music that sounds kind of like wind chimes in a light breeze. Huh.

  I concentrate a bit and refill any gear that needs it, we scrub the worst of the mold off the things we pn to hang onto long enough to sell, and I direct the machine down into the depths of the facility….