The Velastra to rest at 3000 feet above sea level; I had to use my phone’s altimeter to see how far we’d gone. With inertial dampeners, we barely felt the turbulence from the ascent, nor when the Velastra came to hover somewhere over the Bernese Alps. A distance of three and a half hours was crossed in 10 minutes .

I was sure we approached something bearing Mach 1 as the clouds washed over the ship like smoke blowing in a wind tunnel. It was still dark out, somewhere around 4 am—five days ago that was the time I’d gone to sleep after stumbling upon the Velastra.

The weather had the promise of morning showers, so breaking the sound barrier might have as well been thunder; we did catch a streak of lightning as we zoomed past clouds, after all.

“ We’ll beam a signal from here,” Irina said as they motioned for my phone. Cassandra was already unbuckling herself to go stare at the mountain ridges, silhouetted in fog and clouds. Fortunately, the Velastra was barely detectable on radar as we used the mountains to mask the ship’ location. It seamlessly blended into the topography—a trick that Irina used to hide in the shadows of asteroids.

Cassandra finally pulled herself away from the scenery to join me at my console. She too was ready―

“Hailing Lucas Kauffman, Audio Only,” Irina said as they held my phone in their palm. The AI was standing in for the beam to radio wave modulator. The EVA that had been keeping surveillance at the Kaufmanns was doing the same by acting as a localised cell tower, only it might have been right on the chimney of their house.

The dial tone emanated from the bridge like a surround stereo; it was the purest fidelity I’d heard . I could already see the gears grinding in Cassandra’s eyes as she reiterated my sentiments. I shook my head as I thought how much of an audiophile she and I were. Finally, the call connected.

It began with a rustling sound and several groggy mumbles before Lucas started talking,

“ Hello?”

Cassandra and I both shared a look. She shrugged, letting me take the lead in the call.

“ Lu, it's K,” I cleared my throat. “ Sorry for waking you but I was calling to check on how you’re doing,”

“ Huh―K?!” Lucas blurted. We heard the sound of clattering and swearing; he’d probably fallen out of bed. “ How? Wait, won’t you be traced?”

“ Nah, we set up our own network,” I said. “ I doubt anyone has transceivers for beam communications,”

“ Alien ship?” he choked as his breath caught in realisation.

“ Yea,” I grinned. “ I made it…Also, Cassandra is patched up. She’s fit as a fiddle...”

“ Oh…is that right?” There was an awkward silence as he let out a nervous chuckle. I narrowed my eyes at Cassandra who averted her eyes. I sighed—the two lovebirds had had a falling out over the secret. I didn’t know it was that serious. Irina was rather amused nonetheless.

“ Sooo…” I said, moving things along. “ Is Cass’s mum with you?”

“ Ah, yeah…she’s been around,” he said, as the sound of a creaking door and thudding steps sounded through the call. “ Had to eh…I dunno, I kinda had to tell my Ma about things—” he chuckled nervously. “ Don't worry, I fudged things up—”

'Damn,' I thought. That was going to complicate matters—my mind was already working on overdrive to how I could work this to my advantage.

I had no idea how Mrs. Kaufmann would react; Lucas was never good at deflections. “ Cass' mom was a mess when I picked her up from the airport…good thing too I guess, she was zonked out when I drove from the hospital to the house. Raised hell when she realised I didn't stop by the hospital,”

“How much of it did you tell her?” I sighed, rubbing my face. “ And were you followed?”

“Uhm, I don't think so?— Made sure to use the trails to get to the farm—only cars on the road were groups of tourists coming to Grindelwald,” he said. “And, I told Ma that Mrs. Harper wasn't herself because Cass had gotten into an accident—left things vague and told her she'd come around,”

' Wow, didn't see that coming,' I thought. I had to give it to him, he'd pulled one out of his hat. Technically, it wasn't a lie—

“ Hold on a min, lemmi see if we can make it to the house in the morning... we're outta supplies, also we might need to talk long term plans,”

“ Ah right—”

Intuiting that I was about to talk to them, Irina muted the call.

“Anything suspicious the EVA might have picked up?”

“I would think not," Irina provided. “ I have mapped the vicinity within a radius of 3 kilometers,”

“ Can you bring up a map of the area?” Cassandra finally spoke, untensing her folded arms. She'd been chewing over the conversations we'd just had—

“ By all means,” the AI said as a dioramic layout of Grindelwald and the neighbouring area levitated in our midst.

“ Ah, I see where you're going with this," I nodded, cradling my chin as red markers with caricatures of hikers popped up. Itramenwald, Eiger Ultra, Camp Gletscherdorf; I looked for someplace that the Velastra could land out of view.

“ There's a camp here. I'm sure the tourist season is not in full swing yet—unless the weather lets up, the camp grounds are free game,” Cassandra said, manipulating the map legends as though she'd been used to it. “ Irina said you brought me via car?” she perked up.

”Yep,” I said.

“ I'm driving,” she said. I groaned as I motioned the AI to unmute the call.

“ Yes?” Lucas replied. The sounds of utensils could be heard over the call.

“ We're coming, ” I said.

“Great— at least I woke up for something,”

Cassandra blasted music in the Type R as we made our way to the Kauffmann’s farm. I took it as an implicit ‘don’t feel like talking’ prompt. However, it was easy to see what emotions warred in her expression, excitement at going to meet her mother, joy at driving a top-of-the-line AEV and dread of meeting her boyfriend after a tiff. Both of us wore nondescript sweatshirts and pants over our undersuits, baggy enough that they hid the contours of the undersuit’s armour sockets.

We’d printed them from the general purpose matter synthesiser, mostly because Cassandra did not have her clothes. It did not print organic fabrics, but the polyester composite was good enough. It was both water and dirt repellant. For shoes, we had the choice of footwear that looked like limited edition sports shoes that couldn’t have been inspired by anything but magboots. They were so light that I would barely feel them on my feet.

Irrespective of the weather, we tore through the morning mists. The Lidar painted the road ahead of us in hues of colour; the AutoNavi algorithm was making sense of the surroundings as she drove in Sports mode. The AutoNavi deemed it safe enough that we didn’t need the headlights at full setting. While Cassandra drove, I was reviewing information with AR gear that helped me see Irina as if they were part of actual reality.

“... nothing points to any overt action by Central Intelligence. If anything, the interwebs seem to quiet after the Incident,”

“ Ah, I didn’t ask why you decided to show the ship instead of moving without being seen,”

“ It was a matter of necessity,” Irina said with a wobbly wave of her hand. “ It was also meant to separate the noise from those who might have had vested interests. Thus far, they have been undertaking damage control and contented themselves with spreading rumours in state tabloids and social platforms,” they added, pulling up information I could see through the AR glasses.

“ Counterintelligence, “ I hummed. “ I don’t think it's going to hold folong,but whoever they have at their end is smart enough to know that; they didn’t even take down the videos from the stream. We have less time than I thought before chaos and unrest―”

“ I am afraid so,” Irina said. “ We might have to review our timeline.”

“ You’re right. Sooner or later it's going to sink in and people will suddenly start panic buying and hunkering in bunkers like it's Covid all over again,” I said, shaking my head wrly. “ I still don’t like the silence,” I remarked, worrying my lip.

Despite their computing ability, Irina didn’t have a connection with enough bandwidth to canvass the internet for the information we needed. They could even go into the dark web no problem. However, with the networking resources we had, their link to the cybersphere was left to ARACHNE, her version of web crawlers that dealt with recon and information.

It was only because of the Spacelink satellites that it was even viable; otherwise, the amount of traffic they were bouncing off servers would be easy to pick up. After the Cyber and Ransomware attacks at the end of the ‘teens and start of the twenties, most entities on the networks were more alert than ever. We didn’t want to trip any alarms that would have had EMP homing missiles seek us. I just didn’t have the breathing room to fight so soon and not with our deadline to the Arctic looming sooner rather than later.

“ I’ll keep looking for anything of note,” Irina said, their seriousness belying their normally chipper demeanour.

“ Right―We’ll keep in touch,” I replied, doffing the AR glasses. There was a brief lull as I watched the scenery zoom past our bubble of comfort and dryness, with the elements a glass pane away.

“ Sooo, aliens and magic huh?” Cassandra drawled, flicking her copper hair over her shoulder as she steadied the oblong steering wheel with the other hand.

“ More like advanced science that looks like magic, but yeah,” I said, laying back on the bucket seat. The music had petered out to a soothing melodic chillstep.

“ Thanks for saving me, by the way…” she mumbled.

“ Don’t mention it...” I said.

“ How are you feeling?” I asked. I was interested in how her Gestalt Insertion had gone.

“ Pretty good from the looks of things,” she said, flexing her fingers as she kept her eyes on the road. She peeked as if looking at the rear view mirror, a telltale of her looking at her Interface.

“ High Dexterity huh?” I grinned.

“ Hmm,” she gave me a one-arched brow. “ Some of my stats are average. I don’t know whether to feel offended that my Insight is only a 6. My Fortitude is a 6, affinity is a 5, Acuity is a 6. Only Dexterity is a 6 on the other hand... maybe I’ll be a caster type or something.”

“ Weaver or Esper,”I mentioned. “ You are surprisingly well adjusted,”

“ Yeah, all that time playing games with Lu―” she said. A grimace flitted past her face so fast I would have missed it if I wasn’t looking. “ Uh, what are those you just mentioned, Weavers and Espers?”

“ A Weaver is an Arcane who conjures matter from the aether,” I said, paraphrasing what I’d been reading. “ An Esper deals mostly with metaphysical workings, like charming people, obfuscating things, telepathy…you get?”

“ An Arcane?” she quirked her brow.

“ It's the closest Nyvari word that means something like demigod’s offspring,” I shrugged, I picked up the see through holotab I’d been using from the centre console and perused it from the last place I’d read.

“ The Nyvari speak of the Aeons, the demigods. And I quote When the stars were young and the planets were naught but shapeless rocks and matter careening across the firmament, they wielded aether to make the first planets and planted the first seeds that would bear life. Some call them the Precursors, some speak of them as the Heralds, and when their work was done, they left to move to another realm,”

“ Wow,” Cassandra said, blinking in disbelief. “ So what, these Nyvari took a right when Humans made a left at religion?”

“ I think there is more to it than that..at least Irina thinks so,” I said. “ I think it has to do with the Earth’s core which effectively makes it a dud at gathering aether. Thanks to that humanity and everything that has ever lived on it has never been sensitive to aether.”

“ If we’re theoutliers, then why are our blue bars full?”

“ I didn’t say Earth is aetherless, just that it's thin that’s all,” I shrugged. “ Just speculation, by the way― Uh, here we are,” I paused as we pulled up to Kaufmann's palatial home. Cassandra had to beep the house because we’d been driving without the simulated vehicle noise.

Familiar faces spilled out from the main door. I could not help but repress anxious emotions as I picked up the car key from the main console and stepped into the morning drizzle.