Clusterfrag

Yung starts subconsciously snapping his fingers quietly, anxious for something to happen. He looks to Taipan as he issues his direction to Mouse. “Too long Tio, we gonna fall behind Zal and the rest.” He assesses the approach, decent cover on foot, which causes him to readjust, switching his lead foot and shifting his weight from one side to the other. “Those two guards moving on, this is our window.”

Yung scans the exterior of Cellblock A, gauging the height of the building and examining the seaside edge of the complex. Although it seems precariously dangerous, such things often are when they serve as a respite for anyone familiar with the area. “Axel, eyes on top of this cell block? Reiya, can Mach move to the other side of the camera and provide us a little cover on our side now that we’re past?”

“Unlikely there’s an entrance on the roof, but maybe, we’re taking shots in the dark at this point. Anyone got any other ideas on where the guards might be smuggling things in and out?”

Mick creeps along the ocean-facing side of the cell blocks, meticulously examining their surroundings as they move. It's not much different from a standard B and E, albeit with much higher stakes. They're just there to steal people. Or rescue them. Whatever. The ork pauses near the end of cell block A, something catching their eye.

The renovations are thorough, Mick is willing to give Saito's cronies that much. Splotches of ferrocrete plaster betray places where the old buildings have been repaired. There are no holes to speak of, but Mick has noticed that there are windows hidden in the architecture. As the outer wall bends inward to meet the roof, there are long openings almost like ducts. Clever. They appear small-- too small for a person to fit in, designed to allow air and perhaps a bit of sunlight.

Meanwhile, Mouse stares intently at her AR feed. An army of tiny red cartoon echidnas are mustering around the discovered icons, their animations locked in a silent chant. The exploit program pounds relentlessly at both, unleashing a series of rootkits. It doesn't take long for the icons to yield, granting her three marks on each.

Another AR window pops up, dutifully informing her that it's sniffed encrypted traffic moving between the icons and something else. Whatever she's just cracked is tied to a host.

"I'D WORK A LOT FASTER IF YOUR MOM WOULD STOP DMING ME." Mouse chirps in response, not even sparing Yung a glance as her persona snares one of the icons and drags it closer for inspection. "I BARELY UNDERSTAND WHAT SHE'S SAYING ANYWAY- JUST THE PEACH AND THE TONGUE EMOJIS."

(( Perception to ID the icons? Or if you just message me what they are, I can just toss that/her next actions into the post. ))

Mick eyes the ducts into the barracks, squinting, assessing. << We got small ducts that lead into the Cell Block here. Too small for a person. Maybe not too small for a wolf-person, with a boost up from an eight-foot troll. >> The ork remains eagle-eyed, searching for any sign of medical facilities and personnel.

A smile splashes across Yung’s face after receiving Mouse’s playful retort. He didn’t intend for his comment about waiting to be directed at her, more at Taipan’s apparent hesitation in continuing the advance. Still, the gibe is strangely welcome, a brief respite from the mounting anxiety of the situation. “Momma is a southun’ belle, born and raised in Georgia, how you know bout that darlin’, you been performin some extracurricular on me?”

He takes a moment, gazing out over the San Francisco Bay, drawing a breath of salty air through his nostrils. The rhythmic splashing of the waves on the rocks below proves a meditative distraction. “I don’t mean to fluster ya, but those emojis, peach and two tongues, that’s an old southern saying, pretty as a peach and taste twice as good.”

"Quiet," Taipan hisses softly through clenched teeth, glancing back at Yung and Mouse. "You can bet the Kuroikaze are 'wared up enough to hear a fart on this breeze let alone your banter." He turns back to peer around the forward corner of the cell block.

Every fiber of Taipan's being propels him to advance, but he restrains himself. When faced with a threat one knows not how to counter, sometimes one must embrace that vulnerability, and place trust in others to lead. He glances back, giving Mouse a meaningful nod of confidence. "Mouse, we'll move when you clear us."

In fairness, Mouse is already on edge from having to work in AR, keenly aware of how much slower the process feels when handicapped by her own meatspace body. Her initial retort to Yung’s seeming implication had thus been reflexive: some deeply ingrained response to any perceived criticism of her decking skills, but the fact that Yung ran with it draws an audible snort from the netnerd. She’s ready to launch into a vivid imagining of the ‘extracurriculars’ that she’s been ‘performing’ with Yung’s mom, but is mercifully preempted by Taipan’s scolding.

Instead, traces of a mischievous (and clearly unchastened) smile linger as she inspects the two new devices in her digital grasp, the ‘sleeping mice’ dissolving to reveal icons for thermal cameras. With a thought, bold red outlines appear around both AR sprites- ARO tagging them on the imagelinks of her teammates.

>> 3 things:
>> 1. I spotted 3 thermal cameras nearish Mick. You’re welcome. I’ve got full control and exact locations for two of them, so I’ve tagged those already.

Even as her message hits her teammates’ comms, she’s still working, sniffing the stream of traffic from the cameras as they phone home. As soon as she spots the host icon, she extends a pair of fingers into the space before her, curling them inward in a distinctly suggestive manner as she directs her persona inside.

>> 2. They were slaved to a local host… where I now have full admin privileges. First order of business is to find their feeds, so I can tastefully edit us out of them.

Yet another window pops into her already crowded consciousness as data from the host begins to trickle in. She opens her hand once more as she snags a string of output from one camera, and tracing the flow of information inward, seeking out the virtual ‘camera-bay’ where the feeds are collected. Of course, even as she lets this search process, she fires off one last missive:

>> 3. Yung: Tell your mom to trim her nails. I don’t care if she’s a “Southun’ Belle”, it’s basic fragging courtesy.

With that, and a childish little grin directed squarely at Yung, she returns her focus to Taipan, shooting the de-facto commander a nod in return. “LET’S START MOVING. I CAN DECK ON ROUTE, AND SHOULD BE ABLE TO LOOP THESE FEEDS BEFORE WE GET ANYWHERE CLOSE TO THEM.”

(( > Trace-Location/ARO-Tag for the two cameras I have marks on. (Hopefully the others can still jump in and start moving this way.)
> Enter host
> Matrix search for the outputs of these cameras, where hopefully this data’s being consolidated somewhere. I’m hoping I can edit the feed data there/all at once, rather than futz around marking/controlling each camera individually. ))

Water crashes on the rocks below, waves of nostalgia washing over Yung. Although clearly a playful exercise, Mouse catches his chin and lower lip quivering for a moment as she looks his way. The kind of irrepressible physical response someone has when overcome with extreme sadness. A single tear slips through from behind the rounded frame of his glasses. He swiftly brings his hand up to wipe it away, feigning as if something is in his eye.

Facing Mouse, he can’t help but return the childish grin with a weak forced smile, the kind that says ‘daijoubu, sinpai naiyo’, though it’s clearly not true.

Rather than risking a voice crack, Yung returns her statement via subvocal comms, Daedanhada Draper, I owe you a box of Cap’n Crunch when we get home.

He exhales sharply after sending the message. These two, why all of a sudden do they remind me of gajog. Kento always focusing on the game while Camina and I frag around.

He forces the thought out, shaking his head in an attempt to return to the extremely dangerous present situation.

Axel snorts at the repartee between Mouse and Yung, and keeps it quiet to avoid Taipan's ire. He checks the controls for Echo again, already making its way to the team from the short distance from the other side of the island. He places his hands on AR controls that only he can see, and levels the tiny drone's flight path. The cell blocks loom in the sensor feed.

<<Gonna get us a preview of what's to come, I hope.>>

He aims the drone for one of the openings at the top of the cell block and only slows just before slipping into the building like just another lost wasp.

Mouse watches the icons pulse as her trace program sets to work. Geolocation data scrolls across her feed, bouncing between various buffers before being fed into the TacStar overlay. A couple of red spheres appear on the map near the communications bunker. It would appear that the thermal sensors (and likely any sensors in this area) feed back to a monitoring station at the black site's central hub.

That accomplished, Mouse taps an icon and watches as her trademark logo zips along a series of route tables and packet exchangers, until she's looking at a digital representation of the host in an AR window. It looks like a pretty boiler-plate security package, the kind a defense contractor might oversell to an up and coming dictator.

She chews on her lip as she scans the various nodes and databases that comprise the sensor system. It doesn't take long for her to locate the locus-- some kind of data processor that handles threat monitoring through sensor data. The feed coming in is encrypted, but that's alright as the cameras currently regard her as an administrator...

Echo wheels around and returns to its owner, dipping below a harsh wind current and diving towards the cell blocks. The insect-like drone swoops underneath the brick eaves of cell block A. The gap that Mick had caught a glimpse of is little more than a slit. Axel guesses even Mach would have a hard time squeezing through. But it's no trouble for Echo. Looking like nothing more than an errant insect to any would-be observers, it hovers carefully through the opening.

Cell block A resembles a warehouse in the barrens at first glance. The space is wide open-- no corridors, no rooms. The floor glistens, covered in an inch or more of tepid groundwater that has seeped up through the cracks. Some chemical (no doubt from the bowels of the island) has joined the effusion to create oily, iridescent patterns on the surface. Though there are no cells to speak of, two rows of steel cages hang suspended from the ceiling, nearly two meters above the dredge. Most of the cages have occupants: men or women in filthy prisoners coveralls, many tucked in fetal positions. Apparently Saito never heard of the Geneva convention.

The view tilts as Echo's head swivels, revealing more of the cell block interior. There are a few tables and lockers set up at each end of the block, but little else. A workstation terminal casts a ghostly glow at the far end. Echo's threat detection counts six guards, two seated, three roaming, and one apparently dozing off at a table.

After the greasy emulsion of boredom and horror at Bongoland, Axel had entertained ideas that this time would be different. That brutal as he is, a megalomaniac like Saito would at least put on airs of being civilized. That as horrifying as Saito's appetites might be, he would at least give a cursory service to existing on *this* side of the Renaissance. The gibbets suspended above a toxic sludge, in a building that would be more familiar to an archaeologist or geologist rather than an architect, neatly strip Axel of such notions in one fell swoop.

<<Tiamat's ovaries, you guys seeing this?>>

Zal's voice, somber as an undertaker, cracks over the comms. << I knew it was bad, but-- jesus... I just hope our people are alright. >> There's a pause while the rebel captain collects himself. << We're about to breach the communications bunker. It might get loud on this side of the island, but you won't have to worry about the QRF when we're done. Once I've confirmed the uplink is severed, you'll be clear to engage. >>

I guess the upside is they aren’t eating them eh?

How good are the optics on pequeña mosca, can you get her close enough to get visuals on those prisoners so we can confirm if Luis is in there? Would be nice to know before we go to the trouble of introducing ourselves.

Code is easy. It’s reality that’s a mess.

It doesn’t help that she’s clearly said something wrong. She doesn't know what. She just knows that, even before Echo’s feed shifts, there’s a sudden shift in Yung’s temperament, a flash of pain slipping past his breezy veneer. Her own brown furrows, and she dutifully turns her attention toward the video feeds, as though to afford him a veil of privacy. She has no idea how else to respond- how a kinder, more empathetic person might handle such raw emotion.

The images from the inside of Cell Block A, however, are infinitely worse. The sight of the dangling cages evokes a long forgotten memory from an ancient 20cen game, about prisoners tortured by a mad AI. The cells in which they were kept, though abstracted by the pixelized imagery, were akin to birdcages balanced precariously over a yawning abyss, serving both as instruments of punishment, and a trophy display for their hated-fueled captor.

It’s a small mercy to have the horrors of the cell block filtered through the limitations of Echo’s sensor array, their impact reduced in scale into a conveniently resized window. As the drone’s feed pans across the room, Mouse silently copies a clip from the damning video into her own storage, all while fighting to swallow back the bile raising in her throat.

In stark contrast with the livestream atrocities of the video feed, the raw data of the sensors proves welcoming in its blandness. She sets to work, capturing a stream of the more mundane ‘idling’ data reported by the feeds, and pastes this sample into a separate, digital workspace. With a command, the sample begins to repeat indefinitely, each iteration remixed with the subtlest of variance: an infinite loop that isn’t immediately obvious. Returning to the feeds, she slips inside the source code just long enough to inject a sneaky little function that, when triggered, will run her looped feed, and hopefully, buy them enough time to pass.

With that, she fires off another missive to the team, forcing herself to keep her language cool and professional, in a clear defiance of the shock and disgust still lingering in her countenance.

>>Thermals are ready to loop on signal. Looks like this host supports the local security systems? I’ll see if they have anything else I can play with.

(( > Garbage In, Garbage Out(?): Essentially, Mouse wants to pre-emptively set
up a command to replace the thermal data with a boring loop (until turned off). That way, she can just activate it when the team approaches the sensors.
>Matrix Search: Looking for other sensor arrays or surveillance-related devices slaved to the host. ))

Reiya really doesn’t want Mach coming in with them, as helpful as he has been and could be again. The thought of him getting trapped or targeted, or even just rousing suspicion, outweighs the benefits, in her opinion. She silently tells her pet crow to stay near the shore, and to head to one of the neighboring islands if he feels in danger.

Even on the screen of her crappy comm, the feed of the prisoners in Cell Block A is horrifying; it certainly adds to Reiya’s long-held conviction that humans are the cruelest of animals. But she brushes aside her aversion, however natural, to study it as best she can; there may be some similarities to what they’ll find in Block D.

Mick scowls at the video feed coming over their comm. The ork is never surprised by the level of contempt human beings can show one another– only enraged. Silently, the adept promises to themself to kill as many of Saito's faithful as possible before the day is done. << Are we really just gonna leave all these fragging people here? >>

<<We’re only authorized to remove the two…>> The first response is obligatory, delivered with grit teeth and a hardened stare. Mouse instantly appends this missive up with a corollary, this time limiting her communications to ‘her’ team alone, while conveniently omitting Zal and his crew: <<...and from my experience, ‘authorization’ is just a minor technicality.>>

Echo zooms in on the closest cage, which appears as a plaid pattern on the thermo scope. The prisoner within is a burning coal, rimmed with yellows and greens. There are no wires or servos to be seen-- seems the cages are old-school lock and key. It's a sickening realization: these enclosures are probably meant for large game.

Movement attracts Echo's sensor, and the small drone pans to the side. One of the prisoners is sitting upright in the cage-- one of few that aren't motionless. A mass of dark, matted hair obscures the prisoner's face, but it's clearly a male human. He retrieves something from his person and hurls it at the closest guard.

The guard shouts in disgust and dismay, wiping his face. Retribution for this brazen outburst comes swiftly and in the form of a shock-stick. Touching the instrument to the bottom of the cage, the guard looses voltage into the conductive bars. Even though his back arches in pain and his limbs spasm, the prisoner doesn't stop laughing for a long time.

Meanwhile, Mouse is probing the host. Nodes appear at the end of packet exchangers, rising in an AR window like time-lapse skyscrapers. From her travails, Mouse deduces that the security monitoring system and physical security system are likely wholly separate. Nothing resembling door controls are anywhere to be found, although she does stumble across several security cameras that are spread throughout the cell blocks.

Perhaps most curious is that Mouse discovers a fair amount of data being re-routed to a second host. Although a good deal of environmental data is being fed into this host, it doesn't appear to have any outputs of its own. It could be a legacy system, she guesses, one that controls some specific but vital function. The fact that there are no monitoring nodes or controls of any kind serve only to baffle the decker.

<<No such luck. Not like I could hack these locks anyway… but that’s what the Autopicker’s for.>> The additional cameras are a welcome temptation, and she spreads out the fingers of both hands, sending an investigatory pulse to each of the icons, eager to find out how many she can drop in on. <<This host seems limited to old school surveillance- doesn’t even have the drones. It is feeding data to another host though. IDFK why. Maybe there's a central repository? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯>>

(( Subvert infrastructure: let’s see/share what’s on those camera feeds, at least long enough to see if any of the angles are interesting and tag them for the team. ))

Although he is not unmoved by the prisoner’s plight, Yung seems to be comfortable with remaining dispassionate and keeping focus on the objective. (( Group ))Not that I want my stock any lower, but every moment and movement is gonna factor into the success of dis biz. I feel for these meatbags, but we gotta get our packages and get the frag out. Freeing every prisoner is gonna take too long.

Mouse, you saying there’s cameras inside the building? Can you jump in those feeds and see if you can locate our guys? Maybe you can trace 'em back to the host and use that to access the other feeds cellblock B&C? Might make the whole process a lot quicker, but this isn’t my area of expertise. As Yung shares his idea, he begins moving down toward the far of the exterior end of Cellblock A. Gonna peek around the corner real quick.

Mouse navigates through the various nodes on the monitoring network, performing the proverbial poke and prod. Although much of the tech is high-end, it's also pretty old. Some deceitful contractor likely pawned it off as the latest and greatest to pay the absolute minimum on license fees. Still, this works in her favor. She pings the administrator user interface of the camera sub-routine to see what she's dealing with.

The next revelation has Mouse grinning from ear to ear underneath her mask. Whomever installed this system forget to set a password. She can't begin to imagine the indolence or ignorance that precipitated such a result, but nevertheless says a silent prayer to the God of hackers. Miracles really do happen.

A new AR window materializes, showcasing thumbnails of all of the active cameras. As she focuses her attention over each thumbnail, they grow large enough to fill her field of vision. The cameras are high-resolution indeed and seem to have low-light capabilities. Mouse finds herself looking at dirt pathways, brick walls, and clusters of trees. It would appear that these cameras are located outside, somewhere beyond the opposite wall of the cell blocks and continuing up on to the plateau. It makes sense that there would be no cameras on the cliffs-- whomever established this black-site was more concerned with keeping tabs on prisoners and didn't expect an incursion from the sea, certainly not with the considerable automated defenses.

Though the cameras don't reveal any personnel, Mouse takes care to note their locations by way of ARO tags.

<< The communications bunker is ours, >> Zal comms. << There were only a couple of techs here and they didn't even put up a fight. Skeleton-crew withstanding, where the hell is everyone? Anyway, we'll have the uplink down in a few minutes. Stay frosty. >>

Baek's voice crackles over the comms, << Might have found something that can help you: an old blue-print, probably from before Saito's people took over. The cell blocks used to be one large building, decades ago. It looks like there was a museum built in the middle. The structures are much different now, the Imperial Army no doubt rebuilt and reinforced a lot of it but that means that one of the cell blocks-- probably B or C-- has a different layout than the others! I hope the info helps. Good luck. >>

<<GG; EZ. No clue where the mooks ended up- only ones we’ve seen have been through our own drones.>> As she sends this, she shares a preview of the camera feeds, flipping from one outdoor locale to the next, each conspicuously empty. She bites her lip in anxious habit, paranoid mind already grasping for explanations. Has this footage already been doctored? Could they be hosting a honeypot? But this enterprise can barely afford guards, muchless something that would require active forethought and monitoring…

She shakes her head in meatspace, as if to preempt her own journey into a rabbit hole of deadly but unlikely scenarios, and forces herself to focus. At least in one sense, the ‘empty’ views are a convenience. As she had with the IR, she snags clips of the uneventful views and injects a trigger to swap to the uneventful footage.

<<I’ve got full control of the outdoor cams, but any internal systems are probably separate.>> She pulls one of the earlier images of the cell block, highlighting the terminal in the distance. << ← These are still our best bet at confirming our target locations. Otherwise, we’ll have to spot his face on Echo (which will take either a lot of luck, or a lot of time) or… idk… use magic? ¯\(°_o)/¯>> Her expression mirrors her text as she glances back toward Reiya with a shrug. <<Either way, we're clear to move out here as long as we don't get stupid.>> At this, she flashes Taipan a thumbs up... despite her obvious conviction that the team will, in fact, manage to 'get stupid.'

(( Control Device/Garbage In-Garbage Out vs. the Cameras: just preparing a command to feed it looped footage, so we can get moving. ))

Axel nods along to the comms as he studies the images.

<<Copy that, that's creepy as hell. Where is everyone?>>

He takes control of Echo again, and begins to buzz by the hanging cages, looking for a familiar face.

Taipan cocks an eyebrow at the unexpected amount of sense contained in Yung's message. << Yung is right. We can't stage a full prison break here. If we did, Saito's men are more than likely to shoot on sight, whether they're armed or not. Most likely scenario is that it gets all of them -- and all of us -- killed in the process. >>

He nods to Mouse with sincere -- if subtly expressed -- gratitude. << Nice work, Mouse. >>

Furrows slowly emerge in Taipan's brow as he digests Zal's sitrep. << Frosty's my middle name, >> Taipan absently parrots from some old trid he can't remember the name of. Where the hell is everyone, indeed?

<< If these were all one building, perhaps we can find a less conspicuous point of ingress to Block D from B or C. Let's move.
Keep it tight. >> Taipan checks his corners and motions the group forward toward block B.

Finally a little action eh? Yung says as he advances to the far end of cellblock A, pressing his back against the wall as he nears the edge of the building. So, you guys are gonna call me crazy, but my money says this some weird pathogen testing facility, something went wrong and killed most of the guards, yeah? He makes it sound like a joke, but something about his tone is lacking the typical levity riding beneath the surface.

He peeks one eye around the corner of the building in an attempt to get a view of the next cellblock. Anyway, hope not, dunno if our agreement outlined a zombification clause.

The feed tilts and wobbles as Echo zips down into the cell block and begins a slow orbit of the cages. The detainees are filthy, disheveled and many have their faces buried in their knees or are covering a head with their arms. Axel realizes that Echo will have to actually enter the cages to get a positive or negative identification.

Mick's face twists into a rictus of frustrated acceptance. They get it. With the manual locks, there's no way to just spring all these poor bastards on their way out the door, but the ork will be damned if it doesn't feel like fraggin' drek to just shrug off doing something. Shaking their head, the adept tries to push through the emotion to focus on the task at hand. << So what's our play, shitheads? Do we need to do it the old fashioned way and get in there and search for our guy with eyeballs made of meat? Do we split up to cover more ground? We need to speed this drek along, feels like. >>

The ork advances in their approach deeper into the compound, creeping forward and peeking around a ferrocrete stanchion for any sign of a xenophobe to take their frustrations out on. For the first time, the emptiness of the facility really dawns on them. 'More ghosts in this fraggin' town than back in the mine.'

Taipan advances, his gaze methodically sweeping side to side over the readied rifle's top rail. << With the clock ticking, I expect this will get loud before long, and despite our rocky start I'd prefer to be together when that happens. Baek, get us an image of that blueprint, would ya? Axel, what chance we can get an aerial of B and C? Redlining those two might give us an idea of where there might still be a less conspicuous transfer to Block A. >>

The prisoners’ dilemma reveals yet another crumbling facade. Yes, in front of the Johnson, the little decker will dutifully play the strategic game, acting as the team's rational minded planner and connoisseur of intel. However, in her beating heart beneath the calculating exterior, Mouse is young, dumb, and full of… idealism. If not for the more immediate problem at hand, namely finding Luis De León, she might instead be dedicating her mental bandwidth to engineering a massive jailbreak… and inevitably undermining the rest of the team in the process.

She keeps pace with the team, attention divided between processing the problem at hand, and her own attempts to mimic Taipan’s subtle movements. <<More specifically, it’s going to get real loud the instant these goons realize their boarding party isn’t returning and they start actively searching for us.>> There's a gentle knit to her brow as she sends this, as though she's trying to convince herself that the violence she's considering is a cruel necessity, and rather than an inelegant call to, quite literally, 'Rush B, No Stop'. <<Unless Yung can pull a Cuban-Pete and distract every guard in the cell block, assume we'll have to strike to get in.>> Even now, she's finding herself clinging to abstraction: 'striking' and 'neutralizing' threats, to obscure the deadly reality of this plan. <<Maybe we'll get lucky. There's a one in three chance that the block we hit has our man in it. Even if we hit the wrong block, we'll have terminal access to confirm his location, and even any guard we take out in the process is one that won’t be coming after us when drek meets fan.>>

A file hits the team's PAN, courtesy of the TacStar software. The thumbnail reveals it to be an image file.

<< Here you go, >> Baek comms. << As you can see, the building there used to be pretty big. I think whoever built this place tore down the oldest stuff and separated it into separate cell blocks. More importantly, look how large the museum used to be. I doubt they'd just fill in all that space. There might be something underneath it. >>

Yung glances back at the rest of the team, eagerly anticipating their advance; but as he receives Baek's message he turns once again to face the cliff staring out towards the Golden Gate Bridge. So you're saying the easy way is under the cellblocks, as in, the files are in the computer?

Well drek, Axel, can you do a little scan of the cliffside? If erosion has eaten away at that slitch like it has the rest of the stuff on this island, maybe there's some kinda way we can sneak in there. Yung leans over the side of the cliff, craning his neck to try and gain a vantage from which he could see some kind of cavity leading to a subterranean entrance.

Taipan raises a fist to signal a momentary halt as the notification from Baek's file transmission pops into his AR feed. He takes a knee and expands the image file, absorbing the details as he listens to Baek's assessment. << Thanks, >> Taipan replies. << Good intel. >>

Taipan glances over his shoulder at Block A then forward along the team's current trajectory toward Block B, trying to estimate where on Baek's image they currently kneel. He glances down at the dirt next to his left boot and sends an ultrasonic pulse deep into the earth below. His eyes go vacant for a moment as he processes the torrent of data echoed back from below.

Axel directs Echo to the top of the cell block, taking back a bird's eye view of the interior.

<<This one probably doesn't have any openings to anything underground—at least not down low, or all this water would have drained out.>>

He scans the feed for any indications of a grate or door above the water that might lead down.

(( And if that doesn't turn anything up, he'll send Echo back outside to scan the cliffside for openings ))