[What Elena expected to find here—well, she doesn't know if she expected anything. But it wasn't this.]

I'm not dismissing that out of hand—I don't think we should do that in any case. [It'll just increase the odds that they all end up dead.] But if they were capable of that, why wouldn't they be capable of controlling them? Or if they aren't but can still monitor them, what's keeping them from coming here themselves?