Chapter Fifty-one

Strange Readings

Thursday, March 22. 5:30AM. 125 S.A.

Over Leukerbad, Switzerland

In the Manta, EVE was a little uneasy. Whether it was the cloudy sky, or the fact that she had had to follow the whole trip in perfect sync, she couldn't deny that she felt a certain nervousness.
Although she was concentrating on the route, she had turned on the cameras at the rear and every now and then she took a look at what was happening with the droids. In that part of the ship the droids had been working for a few minutes and two of them were now dismantled pieces on the floor. Parts had been removed from their bodies, which other droids had used to build something.

The droid that contained the box could no longer be returned to its original state either apparently. Several pieces had been removed and those droids had been welding and changing the origamiun's confugurations to transform it into a machine that reminded EVE of a kind of sphere of at least a meter and a half in diameter. The surface of that sphere moved from time to time, as if it could configure itself. EVE did not know what the design was due to, but that movement was surely due to the origamium material folding and unfolding itself.

On her side, the synchronization had proved to be more complicated than she had first thought. She had several screens that told her if the course was right, but the problem was that it had to be perfect for some reason. Not just the route, the altitude and direction had to be perfect. She wasn't going to argue if it ended quickly and without further problems. But the truth was that the screens with the graphics were sending her data every few seconds. There were two holograms projected near her, one with a simulation of the sun and the other with the current solar state. She had entered a cloud bank, but the sun data was important. It didn't matter that the ship had sunlight for that, but that the simulation and the sun were in sync.

According to the orders she had received, everything would end when the simulation and the real projection were synchronized, which would happen in just a few minutes if all went well.
The droids had stopped working and were standing still, almost waiting for something that could happen at any moment.

The holograms were almost overlapping and although she could fly without problems, the clouds seemed to be getting darker and darker.

The ship was almost to the lake that could be seen on the map screen.

She wondered if those two she had rescued had carried out their task. Since she hadn't received anything new from Y-11, or Janus, she assumed they had made it safely. EVE didn't want to get involved in any assassinations or anything like that, so she had obtained information from Y-11 who had assured her that those two who were to be kidnapped would be fine. She did not know what they had done to find themselves in that mess, but Benjamin had also assured her that she should not worry about anything and she trusted in that.

EVE looked at the projections and then at the path she had been following. She checked once more that everything was working properly and made sure of the Manta's optical camouflage and the ship's other cloaking systems. She was worried that something had been damaged during the attack that fire girl had sent to the ship, but everything was in order. However, during the operation, she would have to remove the ship's defense shield and that worried her as well.

She activated the ship's extra batteries as instructed and craned her neck to relax a little.

Just a few more minutes and it would all be over. Whatever it was all about. She took one more roll call at the orders and looked at the final parts.

A tremor in the ship would be the signal that she had reached her target.

***

Over Leman Forest. Border between France and Switzerland.

One of the search ships was combing a new sector of the forest, a little further away from the established perimeter. The penetrating radars were sending readings to the forensic army technicians who were monitoring the results on another screen.

The pilot, a serious-looking synthetic, was more than busy at the controls. Despite his smooth flying skills, he was almost instantly startled by something.

Everything shook in the ship. The pair of techs slid to the side and one of them fell. That had to be bad. He had lost an altitude of about three meters. But that was impossible. Everything was working fine in the ship but, without a doubt, they had felt for a second as if everything was in free fall. But they had not touched the treetops, so it was impossible that they had actually lost altitude.

But the ship's readings also indicated that.

The two soldiers had risen instantly but, it happened again. It was more violent and they actually lost some altitude physically in the ship. They heard the rustling of branches and knew that this time they were actually touching the treetops.

That would have happened for a rare malfunction, if it wasn't for the fact that in other ships, located nearby, something similar was happening.

***

Lemac Lake, Noville. Switzerland

The Corven-21 descended smoothly towards the road along the shore of Lemac Lake, and landed in the empty street, near Lizbeth's parked vehicle. Despite being a three and a half meter high craft, by twenty meters long and about twenty-two meters wingspan with the wings semi-folded, the size of the street was enough to land comfortably.

When the rear hatch of the transport ship opened, Carissia emerged gracefully, her figure still wrapped in her work overalls, and made her way to the entrance of the museum where Lizbeth and Shin were waiting with the owner of the museum. Unlike them, Carissia, although her body required maintenance, did not need rest as such and therefore looked as awake as the day before. Her face showed her characteristic poker expression.

They had called her to tell her the news about Oxy and to ask if there was any update on the search she had conducted, but to no avail. She had already been informed of the former and for the latter nothing new had been found to shed any light on what had happened. Just some bodies in the forest and more small pieces of the crashed plane. The cargo container that Mai had named had not turned up, nor had any minor victims yet.

"Are these the pieces?" Carissia asked and Lizbeth nodded.

Carissia fixed her gaze on the seats Shin and Lizbeth had prepared to transport as evidence for the investigation. Together they worked quietly to secure the items carefully in the cargo part.

Once everything was in place, Carissia turned to her companions. "Stay aboard," she told them, directing them to return to the ship. "I'm taking you back to base camp."

"What do we do?" Shin asked. "Do you want to investigate some more here or do you want us to go back to base?"

Lizbeth thought about it. The truth was that she didn't think they would find anything else at the site, and they could always come back later in case something else turned up. They were worried about what was going on at the camp with the search for Oxy and Professor Reubens. She had been sending messages every few minutes, but Mai had told her still nothing. How could they have vanished in the middle of a place with such high security and a military ring?

"Let's go back," Lizbeth sighed.

After they said goodbye to the museum owner and Lizbeth compressed her vehicle again, she and Shin settled into the seats and fastened their seat belts, while Carissia took over the piloting of the ship.
With a soft hum, the craft lifted off the ground and began to move gracefully over the lake, leaving behind a trail of water.

"How long will it take us to reach base camp?" Shin asked, his voice slightly strained with anticipation.

Carissia shot them a reassuring glance over her shoulder. "Not long," she replied. "But we can't go at full speed because of the alert in the area."

They both just stared out the window as Carissia piloted, there was nothing else left to do. It was only a few minutes.

Carissia was piloting over the waters, right on the lake strip dividing the two countries when she received a call over the Neurowire. It was one of the people in charge of the area where she had been all night, a subordinate of Pierre Allard's team.

[Captain Carissia. Sorry to disturb you. Are you piloting near the forest?]

"More or less, I'm over the lake. I am returning to Area Zero, at the camp."

[At what altitude are you, Captain?]

"I'm in low-level flight over the lake."

[You haven't had any problems with the ship or the instrumentation?]

Carissia frowned. "No, why?"

[We've had a few problems in the last few minutes with the ships over the forest and the ones over Valais. We're calling for landings.]

"Do you want me to check to see if anything is going on?"

[No need to, we're just alerting.]

"What was the problem?"

[A sudden loss of altitude.]

Carissia frowned. That could be a normal occurrence on one ship due to technical failure, but not on several.

"I'll go check," she said, cutting off the communication. The ships might be landing for safety but it was better to take a look. Who knew if there wasn't something that was causing the instruments to fail in the area. That place was close to where the plane had appeared after all.

"Guys!" Carissia said, looking back and catching Lizbeth and Shin's attention. "I'm going to take a detour. Something's going on in the forest."

"What's up?" Lizbeth asked, confused.

"That's what I want to see, some ships have been suffering malfunctions in the area." Carissia made a left turn and approached the forest.

In those moments, an uneasy feeling gradually came over her. The altitude indicators on the control panel were flashing unusually, showing readings much lower than they should be. She frowned, her mind quickly analyzing the possible causes of the strange phenomenon.

The ship's systems, designed with the latest technology, should have ensured smooth and accurate flight. However, something was clearly out of place. Carissia concentrated on the data streaming across the screens, looking for any clues that might explain the discrepancy in altitude.

It was then that she noticed something even more puzzling: the ship's radar systems were picking up two distinct signals, both intermittently appearing and disappearing in the same place, albeit above the flight zone they were in. That didn't make sense. In controlled airspace like Lake Lemác, there shouldn't be any phantom signals. Unless someone was snooping around.

She began to consider the possible implications of that mysterious anomaly. Could it be a technical glitch? In all the ships? A theory began to form in her mind, fueled by the suspicion and paranoia arising from the whole case.

A technical explanation might suggest a malfunction in the barometric altimeters, the devices responsible for accurately measuring the ship's altitude. An imbalance in atmospheric pressure or even electromagnetic interference could have caused incorrect readings, inducing the spacecraft to fly lower than it should.

However, the presence of intermittent signals on the radar further complicated matters. Could it be a natural phenomenon like a flock of birds, or a distant thunderstorm, or was there something else up there?

The flashing signal was not coming from the ground. It was above them and did not belong to any of the army ships, the FRT or the GSN.

With a knot in her biomechanical stomach, Carissia made a decision: it was better to err on the side of caution. With steely determination, she adjusted the ship's controls and raised it to a safer altitude, away from the forest.

"Why are we ascending?" Lizbeth asked.

"There's something weird on the radar at different altitude, I'm going to check what it is."

Carissia was deep in thought as she navigated the skies, her mind working frantically to decipher the riddle unfolding before her. She mentally reviewed the ship's systems, going over each component in little more than three seconds looking for possible glitches or interference that might explain the unusual readings.

Her knowledge of piloting technology and detection systems kicked in, and she checked the various types of radars and sensors that equipped the ship. Among them, weather radars stood out as a vital tool for detecting adverse atmospheric conditions, but none of the indicators suggested a thunderstorm or other natural phenomenon that could explain the observed anomalies.

The laser altimeters, designed to measure height with unparalleled accuracy, were also in perfect working order according to the ship's diagnostic records. She ruled out the possibility of a malfunction in those devices, leaving her even more intrigued about the true cause behind the erroneous readings.

Her mind turned to the horizon, where the shadow of a possible explanation was beginning to take shape. Could it be that they were being subjected to external interference, perhaps a cloaking device or an active defense system operated by an unknown entity?

The possibilities were multiplying in her mind, fueling her determination to discover the truth behind it all. However, a nagging sense of unease accompanied her as they continued their flight into the heights, reminding her that in the skies, as in life itself, nothing was as it seemed.

Almost as if all at once a wall of water hit the craft. It had just started raining cats and dogs. That didn't worry her so much, since the sky had been heavy all night threatening rain but, according to the weather forecast, there would be no more than a few drizzles and they would come later. That the downpour suddenly appeared was bad for the search teams.

At that precise moment the three felt a twinge in their stomachs and a slight dizziness. It was as if they had fallen, but they recovered almost the next moment.

"What was that?" Shin asked.

"That's what the other ships reported," Carissia stated.

A turbulence rocked the ship, but now it was real. Everything had moved. The radars were picking up a single signal that appeared and disappeared.

"That was worse," Lizbeth complained, almost feeling as if she might vomit up all the breakfast she had eaten just moments before.

Carissia paid attention to the altitude. FL150, FL200, FL250.

"Hey..." Shin snapped. "Are we over the forest or Valais?"

"In between the forest and Valais... and ascending," Carissia informed him.

Shin looked at Lizbeth. "This is the place where the plane first appeared, right?"

"Yes…"

Carissia looked at the flashing signal. Why had there been two signals at first? Was that a radar shadow?

The other display told her she was almost at FL300, the 30,000-foot altitude.

***

The Manta was entering the airspace over Port Valais and entering the storm that seemed to come out of nowhere.

EVE simply looked at the holograms of the sun. They had overlapped.

The droids behind her, with the huge sphere, needed no command. They already had their hands close to that sphere. EVE could see that several cables had extended from some of them and connected to different parts of the ship and to the sphere. They were about to reach the exact point in three ... two ... one. Zero.

EVE had an unpleasant feeling in the pit of her stomach and felt almost as if she had fallen out of her seat. Although she recovered the next moment the whole ship was shaken by a tremor.

She glanced sideways at the controls and projections.

[Superpocision in progress.]

She heard a buzzing sound coming from behind her and looked at the cameras while not releasing the controls.

The sphere had lifted off the ship ground several centimeters and hovered, while the droids around it simply watched and had attached their hands to the sphere, adopting a position almost as if they were holding it.

United in that way they seemed to be the base that held the sphere steady in place. EVE was busy, but if she had been paying attention she would have seen that in fact the sphere was not moving at all. Those droids did indeed move and tilt with the shaking of the ship, but it was a coordinated movement intended to keep the sphere in place and unaffected by the ship's tremors. It was as if it were some sort of giant gyroscope.

The humming became louder, which made her frown. She hadn't been told about that part. Almost instantly she felt another jolt throughout the ship and could feel the metal creaking.

"What the hell is this?!"

The buzzing sound became deafening and EVE took a quick glance at the rear camera. Just at the moment something was expanding out of that sphere.

It was a kind of translucent bubble with a slightly bluish hue. But it wasn't just growing around the sphere. It was enveloping the droids, the floor of the ship, everything. It approached her and passed through her. It was a strange and unsettling sensation at the same time. It was the same feeling as diving into ice water, even though there was no liquid. But the bubble did not stop there. In less than a second it had enveloped the entire ship and continued to grow, crossing the clouds and following its path as if nothing could stop it.

EVE had no time to be surprised and continued to control the ship as best it could while everything around it continued to tremble. Just then an alert appeared on the radar. It was detecting two other signals. One was below her, while the other was exactly where she was.

But that wasn't the worst of it. That feeling she had felt at the base of Pyrene was returning. That horrible feeling that a monster was underneath her. EVE frowned as she felt her symbiont armor just trembled all over, as if the material it was made of had undergone some kind of reaction to something.

***

A few hundred meters below the Corven-21 continued its ascent in the midst of the sudden storm. Carissia looked stunned at first as that sort of translucent blue wave was breaking through the clouds around her, but she was more astonished when the thing seemed to be growing and had enveloped her ship as well. The turbulence and tremors in the ship had intensified and she was now struggling to get the ship under control.

When that thing had touched her Carissia had felt the same sensation as if something had suddenly been taken away from her. It was cold and empty like the feeling of being in space, but at the same time immeasurable.

Shin felt a horrible pang in his stomach the moment that thing touched him and felt even worse than how he had awakened, for some reason he felt as if all the metal inside his body had also shuddered and reacted as it sometimes did in a semi-active state.

Lizbeth at his side looked pale and had taken his hand, when that thing had passed through her body. It had seemed to her to be the same sensation of sinking under the ice. A sensation that made her shudder because it reminded her of some traumas from her past.

Shin looked at her worried expression and tried to comfort her by squeezing her hand gently, but he also looked up. He could only see the ceiling of the ship but, for some reason, he felt as if there was something above them.

What is this? he wondered.

***

On the Manta. EVE gritted her teeth and turned on antigravity flight, provided by the ship's second engine. That was in the forecast, but she didn't imagine it was going to be so bad. The metal of the ship creaked as if at any moment it was going to be torn apart by some strange force.

The sphere at the back now seemed alive, pulsing and vibrating as if it had a life of its own. What the hell was in that box that had been stolen by those two thieves in Rome?

The droids and EVE could not see it at the moment but, with each press of the sphere, invisible blue particles were being released from the core of the sphere. From the rock in the middle.

***

On the Corven-21, Carissia had done something similar, the special antigravity engine was keeping them afloat. She had thought of running away from whatever that thing was, but first they had to regain flight. Almost two seconds after the thing had engulfed them, the ship was losing altitude as if the atmospheric pressure had changed. Not only that, some of the ship's functions were malfunctioning, Carissia was also feeling a little tired.

It didn't make sense. She had checked her internal energy cells and they were at seventy-five percent, when they were always at one hundred percent. In fact she only changed them every ten or fifteen years and those were new. But the ship's power was also showing faults. This was not just a problem with her aeon body. It was something else.

The ship seemed to stabilize a little when she turned on the ship's emergency batteries and the antigravity engine, but that was just a patch in a seam. Without much to do she decided to regain altitude.

In the back Shin looked around in surprise. "What?" That question was directed more to himself than to Lizbeth. "What is this?!"

Lizbeth looked at him, while clutching her head. Her pointy teeth had appeared and she had an expression as if she had a headache. "What's going on?!"

"What are these things?"

Lizbeth looked around, but couldn't see anything. "The what?!"

"Can't you see it?"

Lizbeth couldn't see it but Shin, with his one good eye, could see flashes and blue particles coming through everything. At first they came through the ceiling, but as Carissia regained altitude they came from the right side.

The two ships could not see each other through the gray and black clouds. A hurricane storm of wind and water was raging and falling like lead. On the other hand, the Manta's optical camouflage would allow EVE to hide easily. The radars of both ships were detecting intermittently. According to the readings they were within two hundred meters of each other.

But what worried Carissia was that there was another signal in the place where that ship was that could not be seen. There was something huge and whose shape she did not like at all. She didn't like it because, despite the clouds, she could feel it.

There was something else there. Carissia looked over her shoulder to the right and asked the others. "Tell me what are you seeing?"

Lizbeth looked out the window and could only see clouds on the right side at first. But what worried Carissia soon appeared.

There was a large black spot among the clouds, as if a gigantic cetacean was behind those clouds just a few meters away.

But no. It was no cetacean, bird or dragon.

The eyes of all three widened in surprise and absurdity.

"Y-you've got to be kidding, right?" Lizbeth said.

Out there hovered a huge airplane. A cloud moved out of the tail end for a moment and Shin and

Lizbeth could read the name towards the back, half hidden by some kind of dark film that almost completely covered the ship.

That name read ANEMI AIRLINES. Same plane of the Flight B313-MG.