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.