Jonathan was under the weather. After guiding the distraught poor girl to her room, he returned to the HAS and set its course to map the English countryside. Infiltrating Elgelica was never gonna be a one day mission anyways.

With the HAS always being on the move, it reduced discovery, or at the very least repeated detection. The airship would also automatically release sensor balloons from now on. A rift interposed between solar panels on top of the envelope was for just that purpose. An expensive little piece of pressure-sealed, auto-deploying kit inflated and released the scout blimps, but data was money, and it paid the bills. The sensor balloons would only be released at night, lacking the stealth capabilities of the HAS, they made up for that by being smaller and floating 20 kilometres above the planet’s surface, right at the Armstrong Limit.

The HAS flew itself unless otherwise told. Auto-pilot for heavier-than-air vehicles was already old hat at this point. In comparison, airships and blimps were child’s play, and it would hardly ever land to boot. A piece of rope tied to the wheel could do the job, mostly.

As such mapping and flight were entirely humanless activities from here on out, the network coverage was simply a matter of time.

In practice, if they cleared quarantine, satellites replaced balloons long before the job was done.

That was a big 'if' now; Keya, the cute Elf, had done something to him. Aside from puppeteering his arm that is, coz that was awesome. Like astronauts trained to detect oxygen deprivation, Divers paid particular attention to feedback from their bodies. And his senses were feeling off, nothing earth-shattering but tangible. It also helped that the medical implants—designed for precisely this—showed elevated blood pressure and the beginnings of a fever.

“Lee, prep the medbay, I need an acclimation check-up. I’ve come down with something, and it’s probably not a coincidence.”

“Got it, boss.”

He circled to what Kay had dubbed ‘the white room.’ She was a sly schemer just like him; he could tell. That was perfectly fine in his book; the last thing he wanted was an easily trusting agent. A small-town girl growing up in that village was bound to have developed street smarts. Add the tutelage of the Old man, and she was a diamond in the rough.

She obviously had some play with Elgelica, and the pitch to bind him with honour was a good strat, as honest as it was savvy. No matter where he went some things always held true: trust can not be bought, certainly not the trust he needed.

That said, Kay was a good kid, the kind reality ate up and shat out. He’d do his damnedest to avoid such conclusions if he could. To that end, his shit was his shit. He wouldn’t burden her with the lab mouse experiment he signed up for; that was on him. She had her own mountains to climb. Later, when she found her feet, she could pitch in. Right now was his turn.

The sensations had started in his arm, just after Kay had graciously given control back to him. The connection was hard to deny. But, trigger events did not preclude multi-factor causation.

He found the medbay, and locked the door from inside, drawing the shades closed so as not to be disturbed.

“Lee, guide Kay to some leftovers or a frozen dinner if she comes out her room. Keep her off me, for her sake, okay?”

“You got it cunt; I know the drill. Get in that capsule, so we got you covered if shit goes sideways.”

At the back of the room, there was a bed fully encapsulated in a cylindrical tube. Robotic arms and the like were housed where they could reach any body part. Jon stripped and lay down inside; the perspex door slid shut and sealed. It was airtight, making respiration and aerosol delivered medicine all effectively controllable.

Everything could and would be automatically tested. Although, Jon was definitely not fucking about with a catheter. Instead, he’d have to get up, where an exclusive lavatory in the medbay could test and catalogue to its heart's content.

He didn’t feel that bad in truth. The sensations hadn’t ceased as he crossed back through the Rift. That meant whatever process had begun was at least partly independent of the bullshit magic on the other side. Was that good or bad? Fuck, if he knew. But it was happening, and the capsule along with the implants, would document every hopefully painless and non-lethal step.

A metal appendage came down to clamp his arm and take blood. He let Evy and Lee take the wheel. This was the job; these were the risks. Now was his turn to trust. Kay had the gist of it; they were all bound one way or another. He settled in to get some rest, babysitting an elf these last few days had cut into his beauty sleep after all.