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.