The early morning sun shone into Vagabond's window; time to get up and check on Nathan...or whomever he was today.
It was becoming a morning habit to find out where he was and to find out if he was alright. Deciphering who he was today was a secondary priority.
Walking out into the main lobby of the hospital, she could hear things occurring down a ways in the dining hall.
...He was up earlier than usual.
She poked her head in to see if he was already eating; nope, still cooking. She poked her head through the kitchen doorway.
Already showered, freshly shaved, in a new outfit, and slightly jumpy at her presence; seemed like Nathan himself was running the operation today.
He had started wearing a light blue headscarf in the kitchen about a month ago, but he had grown attached to wearing it just about everywhere to keep his grown-out auburn locks from getting in his eyes, rather than just trimming it down. She wondered if he had an aversion to shaving his head, or even just the concept of trying to trim his own hair in general. Either way, the headband and his acquired white kitchen apron made him look a little like some sort of hired help as he scampered around the kitchen.
Well, he was technically the hired help; she had basically outlined that he was allowed to stay if he kept up with maintaining the central air, power, lights, and any other electronic or mechanical equipment.
"Oh, morning. I'll be done in a moment, and I'll clean right up for you."
She shrugged and walked over to inspect the fridge.
She'd have to roast up that headhopper he trapped yesterday; these things went south pretty quick, even with refrigeration. It was already starting to give the fridge a funny smell.
"So I, uh, found a radio in the trash out back. Fixed it up nicely..."
He grabbed a plate from the cabinet and sliced a few pieces of sourdough bread off the main roll, setting them on the plate. Turning off the stove, he grabbed a pan with a toweled hand and slid hunks of distinctive burnt mustard yellow meat-looking bits into the plate, then grabbed a small sauce pot on the back burner and simply coated the plate's contents with a white roux. Vagabond chuckled softly in her head; the man had no taste of presentation, she had divined. Just, chuck it on a plate.
...As if her oatmeal was ever visually appealing.
"Not sure if you're interested...in the radio endeavor...but I think I found something and, well, if you'd like to hear it, you can join me in the lab." He gave a weak and nervous smile in Vagabond's general direction before grabbing a fork and walking out of the side entrance of the kitchen.
...He heard something on a radio? Did that mean something was broadcasting? Oh, she was interested.
Breakfast could wait.
He had converted the whole wing into a cybernetic paradise, complete with security cameras which put a shiver up her spine every time she saw them.
At the end of the hall sat the garbage bin full of electronics items she had once deemed useless, now painted with the words "Assorted Electronic Equipment and Cords"; he had spent a few days alone organizing the contents, after the day it took to drag the thing inside. It took her the same amount of time to repair the floors from the damages caused from dragging a huge metal receptacle into the hospital and to the end of the Technology Wing.
The first room of the wing was a storage room for the more organic things; its main centerpiece was a hydroponics farm put together and run by a repurposed water filter and basic pump system, which ran nutrient-laced water down the length of four modified rain gutters. He hadn't wanted to build it initially, since he wasn't keen on biology and wasn't sure what he would need, but a few books about plants and one on hydroponic technology, along with Vagabond's persistence, made sure he built it to provide them with herbs and spices that were easy to grow, along with some... strange, alien-looking things Nathan had started growing. Luckily, those had their own little container.
Another room was full of chemicals and beakers; again, nothing overly complicated. But those weird plant-things were in plentiful supply here, locked behind a glass case and used for a variety of things. He had dragged the hissing headhopper they had encountered down to this room as well, and he nearly spent three weeks isolated, studying the thing, finally trudging out with his arms caked in drying, reeking inner fluids...she just really wanted to see what it tasted like.
In a few of the rooms, robotic construction tools had been built for automatons of all sizes and shapes; the 'full-height-model' robot bay was under construction, whatever that meant.
Some of the joints and limbs for the 'full-height-model' bots looked complicated and rugged, all filled with wires and pumps and gears covered in grime and rust. They were obviously not done; Nathan's latent OCD assured that every last machine in the building shone brightly as they had on their first day of commission.
The long room at the end of the hallway contained all his gadgets and gizmos; battery charging stations, experimental hybrid tools, diagnostic tools, simple machines that were halfway tweaked or being repaired for commission, and everything else you could think of when it came to small devices.
Sitting on a desk, with nothing surrounding it, sat a familiar white radio with its flat black plastic bottom, gears and parts scattered all around it.
"My latest project, while I'm waiting to get enough materials to go back to the factory to the southwest again, is getting this little radio to see if it can pick up anything on multiple channels of bandwidth. Now I know that this tiny radio is simply for regular radio; I can see that you're thinking that, but I've tweaked it a bit with a back-up transceiver in the back. Have a look."
He sat his breakfast place down on a table behind him and delicately spun the radio around, showing off a whole mess of wires and boxes, along with a second antennae.
"Got this from a broken CB radio; figured I could just combine it with nice, reliable Aperture technology to give it an extra kick! Now let me just realign this on the table, because this morning – you wouldn't believe me if I didn't show you – I picked up a transmission! And wouldn't you know it, it's a local signal!"
He flicked a switch and the machine whirred and sputtered, finally stabilizing the sound it was picking up. A steady, mechanically altered voice came in over the radio's speaker in short spurts, disrupted by the occasional static.
"…requesting assistance…in…sector 117…low on ammo and surrounded by…please reply…"
He turned it off.
"Someone nearby's requesting help! A real live person!"
Vagabond's eyes lit up; someone else! She was relieved.
"After breakfast, I was hoping to use my transmission scanner here-" he held up a thin, translucent touch screen-type device hooked to a transmitter and antenna, wiggling it a bit before setting it back down. "and find the source. Would you like to come with?"
Vagabond's head shook yes so aggressively, Nathan feared it would fly off. Luckily, it didn't, and it stopped to display a wide grin on her face.
"Wonderful. You should go grab some breakfast and get some armaments. If they're surrounded, there's certainly some headhoppers to kill."
Vagabond dashed to the kitchen; her sense of hope was as overpowering as her hunger for the first time in forever.