Chapter Three
Cabin

With a serious expression on his face, Haruo Kenzaburo watched the image of Ruslan projected on the front glass, through the car's rear nanocamera, getting smaller and smaller.

"What?" Asami asked, looking at him sideways.

"Do I have something on my face?" He asked running his hand over his bearded chin.

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, trying not to take her eyes off the road too much.

"That soldier, he looked at me as if he had seen through the camouflage, almost as if he had seen my armor. Weird, kiddo."

"You weren't trying to scare him?"

"No. Why would I be trying to scare him? What kind of person do you think I am?"  

"Maybe he saw something weird on you."

"Unless he has x-ray vision, I'm not sure what he might have seen."

She ran her hand over his chin and smiled.

“I like that beard, it's cute,” she teased. Asami took a quick glance in the rearview mirror but Ruslan had already disappeared. She then touched the badge on the lapel of her coat. Her partner did the same on his trench coat badge.

"Deactivate optical camouflage," both said in unison.

The once fire-red hair was replaced by an albino shade of silver, and the straight hairstyle, was transformed into much longer and messier hair from which a few strands were sticking up. The same happened to her eyebrows and eyelashes, which changed to the same shade as her hair and her eyes acquired an emerald green tone.

Her partner underwent the same transformation, although less striking. His beard disappeared, and his hair grew a few centimeters, at the same time his face seemed to acquire a younger tone than it had exhibited until just a few moments ago. The left black eye changed to a yellow amber color, but the other eye with its strange pupil-less color remained unchanged.

The fey girl's name was Mai, a special agent from the Nevermore Institute's Special Investigation Division. Also knows as the SID.

His partner's name was Shin, also an agent of the same division. Although his circumstances in the division were very different from those of his partner Mai.

"That soldier, he didn't know anything, did he? He wasn't informed of anything?" Shin asked.

"No, maybe it's for the best. The fewer people who know we're here the better."

"Better for who? By the way, I don't know if you noticed but, he lied to us. He said he had no news that someone from Nevermore was coming but when he said goodbye he also said, I have orders to lend you help for whatever you need."

"Good point, but come on. He's a young soldier in the middle of nowhere, the last thing you'd expect is for someone from Nevermore to come up here."

"Yeah, I just hope he don't blow our cover or you're going to be in trouble."

"I'm used to it." Mai smiled slightly at him and sighed, but turned her attention back to the road.

While she was driving carefully, there were parts still covered in snow and the road was shifting quite worryingly. In several sections, she had to make, detours almost going deep into the forest due to landslides.

"That earthquake wasn't as small as it looks." Shin said.

They both remained silent for a few minutes, watching as the landscape began to become wilder and wilder, with the branches of some trees even crisscrossing the road, and they passed through areas where some sort of natural tunnels had been created. The paved road ended almost abruptly, and they entered a muddy road, patched largely by snow, that exhibited almost no sign that anyone had passed that way recently, except for some large vehicle tracks etched into the mud.

"Those tracks have to be from the rescue teams that were here before us."

"I don't blame them for not continuing the search, the road is bad, even though the place is beautiful," Mai said.

"Have you been around here before?" Shin asked.

"No, have you?"

"Nah, I've been to this country before, but never this part."

Mai drove in silence the next few miles to the lake and Shin, for his part, was distracted, looking to both sides of the road as if searching for something in the trees.

The winding uphill road had turned white again in the last part that separated them from their destination. A few minutes later Mai, parked in the glade of a hill, next to another much smaller abandoned vehicle, and from there they admired the postcard of the great lake whose mirror of water was lost several kilometers into the mountains.

Originally, in the Ancient Era of the 20th and 21st centuries, that area had been composed of three lakes.

The Upper Kolsay, located to the south and the farthest, bordering Kyrgyzstan. The Middle Kolsay was originally the largest of the three; and the Lower Kolsay. Earthquakes in the area, together with climate change, had made it possible for both the Middle and Lower Kolsay to be joined by an extensive arm of water, altering the already changing orography of the place. And despite the recent earthquake that had moved enormous amounts of earth, the view was still breathtaking.

Mai and Shin got out of the car once more to see the extensive landscape. At the foot of the hill, and a few meters from the lake, they could see the group of cabins that Ruslan had told them about. The water was so clear that they could even see the remains of the old buildings that had been swallowed by the waters, when the lakes were connected, as well as the remains of a sunken pier.

In some parts of the shore they could see several logs that had sunk with the displacement of land and, in other parts, older remains of logs that due to the low temperature of the lake had been preserved over the years and formed a kind of natural border. The lake area had been formed by earthquakes in the beginning so, it was not strange that many times the trees around it ended up reaching the lake.

Mai walked forward a couple of meters and looked down.

"I think it would be best if we flew the last part of the path. I'm not sure how the road is under the snow," she said and turned to look at her partner.

Shin, leaning against the vehicle with a strange expression, looked in her direction.

"What's wrong?" Mai asked.

He approached the other abandoned vehicle. That one had an oval shape that Shin thought of as a transparent egg with wheels. Shin saw the stickers on the side of the vehicle, showing that it belonged to a car rental agency. He looked inside and simply saw that there appeared to be no belongings of any kind.

"How far is it from here to the place where the neural signal was lost?" He asked while looking at Mai.

She looked in the direction where the lake disappeared, and after a few seconds answered, "8.5 kilometers."

"That's quite a bit to walk under the snow and without any luggage."

"Yeah, I don't like it."

"Me neither. I mean, you know we're not going to find him alive, right?"

"Yeah..." Mai said, gloomily.

For several minutes they both searched the abandoned vehicle but, just as the search team had reported, they were unable to find any clues as to what had become of its occupant.

They walked silently back inside the vehicle.

Inside Mai made some signs on the front glass of the vehicle and instantly the glass became a little darker. At the same time, it began to project a series of images and a three-dimensional map of the region. Shin picked up a strange book from the back seat and opened it at random to one of the white pages. He traced the word Komarov with his fingers. Almost instantly a series of printed folders began to appear on the pages, linked by a system of nodes.

Mai moved her fingers across the glass, over several nodes of what looked like file folders. She extracted one of them and placed it on the three-dimensional wireframe map. Instantly, it changed its location until the image was superimposed as an almost exact copy of the landscape seen through the glass in augmented reality. A second later a red line was drawn showing a path that was lost in the thicket of the forest following the lakeshore.

"That's Dr. Sergey Komarov's last path." Mai said with a serious look.

She started the vehicle again, but this time a metallic hum was heard, and parts of the car changed and transfigured into something else.

The car lifted several centimeters in the air, and the body changed its shape, lowering the profile. The wheels were hidden inside, covered by a new plate, while the front metal of the fender and part of the bumper extended forward, as if they were freeing themselves from some kind of structure they had compressed inside.

A few seconds later it had almost taken on a slightly more aerodynamic shape and was soaring through the air, several meters above the trees, following the red line projected on the glass.

Shin searched through the nodes floating on the pages of his book, until he found an image.

“With the filters this thing looks better,” Shin said, looking at Mai.

"You think the colonel doesn't know that?"

"Yes, I suppose so. If they were that close, it must have been a pain to see this."

It showed the dark reflection of the face of a middle age man with disheveled hair and a several days unshaved beard on the water. Shin ran a finger over the image and it began to play a video.

[I wasn't planning on leaving a message, but it would be a bit stupid and selfish of me if I didn't. You are my best friend and I don't expect you to understand this decision, but please don't look for me. I don't want you or anyone else, to waste resources looking for me. I choose this of my own free will.

[My life was not bad, and I am happy that I had the opportunity to enjoy so many things... To have met you and that we shared so many adventures... I think I'm going to miss your wife's cooking.

[But... I no longer want to wake up every morning and see the world as we have turned it. There are many beautiful things still in this world, but we choose to close our eyes to that beauty, because the sight of our own mistakes is too painful to accept. B-because it is easier to live in a bubble of fantasy, full of vulgarities, than to accept ourselves. We are nothing but dust in the wind.

[I-I decided that I would not close my eyes to that beauty, because when we do we are as alive as we are dead… and there is nothing here for me anymore, my friend. Nothing.

[We are not what we perceive...we live believing that what we... W-we close the mirror of our soul by filling it with virtual things and empty to justify the value of our own existence and as a way of evading our own insignificance in the universe. Our own fatalism is our own consensual ignorance... T-there is nothing here."

[They will say I was a madman, but what greater madness than that of a species that seeks its own destruction. A species that loves that which it hates, that hates that which it should love, that awakens each day only to fall into the lethargy of its own decay.

[We simply live to the sound of a meaningless symphony, in the infinite emptiness of a mind that cannot hear itself…

[I don't want to be part of that. I want to be part of this. So I'm going back to where we all came from. I'm going home.

[Live long and be happy Amir.

[Bye buddy.]

I want to be a part of this. Shin thought about those words.

The video ended abruptly at the last sentence and Shin snorted. "The madhouse is empty, and all the nuts are here."

Mai glanced sideways at him, as Shin closed the book once more.

"At the cabin, I'm going to need a few hours to get some things in order, so I'm going online," she said.

"Office work?"

"Not exactly, I'm an expert witness in a case from a few years ago, the trial started just now, and Aria was digging up the files of the case."

"No problem, I'll be going through the data, when you get back we can do a perimeter around it or I can do it myself."

"No, no one is going to do anything alone... Komarov was alone. Until we know what is going on here no one is going anywhere alone," Mai said in a leisurely voice.

The car continued its run in automatic mode following the red line. Shin turned his attention back to the forest beneath his feet until something caught his attention."Are you seeing that?"

"What?"

"The trees. Look down."

Mai looked down. She didn't know what Shin was referring to at first, but after looking around a bit, she began to realize it. Dotted, here and there, some trees stood out from the others, because they didn't have any snow on them. Although it did not seem to be due to thawing. In fact their color was almost so black that Shin thought they were probably burned from the base.

"They are only the ones near the lake. It doesn't extend more than fifty meters from the shore," he said.

"Are they burned?"

"I'm not sure. We'll have to check it later."

The body of water narrowed after a few minutes. They were passing through the area that joined the two lakes. The landscape didn't change much despite that, but they had the opportunity to see parts of the terrain free of snow due to the earthworks. Several fallen trees on that part had been transformed into a kind of natural dam for the raging water coming down from the mountain, in a south-north direction.

Had it not been for the fact that they were working, they would both have enjoyed the view, which, although gray, offered an incredible panoramic view.

Once they crossed the narrower passage, they entered a mirror of water much larger than the first lake, surrounded by the same crystal clear water with a slight turquoise hue, which could be seen with total clarity several meters from the shore before being lost again in the darkness of the central lake.

The red line that indicated the path ended about 300 meters beyond the entrance and Mai saw how three yellow dots appeared on the map, almost three kilometers beyond the end of the line. A minute later three small buildings appeared.

"Those are the cabins," she said.

"This guy took a long way here. No vehicle, no food, nothing in the middle of the snow. What were all these people doing in the woods all these years?"

"Search and rescue teams made it this far, but the trail disappears down the shore."

"That must have been the site where he recorded the video. Where is it that the other bodies were discovered?"

"There. We'll have to look at that one too." Mai said looking to her left and pointed to a spot ahead hidden in the trees on the other side of the lake.

"We'll have to cross over that dam back there, unless you want to take the car."

"No car. We're looking for a body, remember?"

"… Yeah." Shin snorted.

"Don't ever say I'm not taking you anywhere."

"… Nothing like a romantic evening looking for a corpse under the snow.”

The car slowly descended over the area of the cabins, positioning itself near the largest building.

Shin took the badge from the lapel of his trench coat and placed it on his shirt at his right side. Almost instantly, as if it were a kind of spider, buckles sprouted from four sides of the badge and transformed into what looked like a tactical shoulder holster. He opened the glove compartment and took out a black pistol. He made sure it was loaded and put it in its holster.

They both got out and, as the vehicle reconfigured back to a normal car, Shin looked around again.

"I can hardly believe that places like this are abandoned and still in perfect condition."

"Does it still surprise you? How many abandoned cities we've passed through and slept in these months."

"Yeah... well, I don't think we're going to have any fun here. Or are we?"

Mai looked at him sideways. "Don't be kinky."

"I didn't say anything…"

Mai puffed her lips into a pout and looked at the cabin.

Certainly, the cabin offered a perfect lake view, with wide windows through which plenty of daylight came in and. Although some signs of neglect could be seen in the chipped paint in some parts, and that other parts nature was eating away at the building, it didn't look abandoned at all.

"They look great, to be honest," Shin observed.

"The materials are better than those of our time, they last longer. Probably even without maintenance this place could last another 300 years before it starts falling apart."

Shin turned to the lake and wrinkled his nose.

"There's no hot springs nearby... or volcanoes, right?"

"No, why?"

"Can you smell that?"

Mai looked at him with a questioning look and took a deep breath. "That's disgusting. You're a pig," she sentenced with a disapproving look.

"It's not me, it's in the air," Shin told her with a laugh, but his face showed almost a grimace as if he found it hard to smile.

They checked around a bit, but there were no signs that anyone had been in the area recently.

They climbed the few steps leading up to the main cabin and Shin stopped to watch as a vermiform, rooted-looking plant climbed up some parts of the cabin walls. He couldn't identify them but moving closer to look at the thicker ones he noticed that they gave off a foul smell almost like rotting flesh.

He was almost glad that the weather was cold, probably with the heat the stench had to be much stronger. Some parts had a sort of bulb that reminded him of ginger root in appearance, but much darker in color and with a fleshy texture. Shin lingered for a few seconds examining it without actually touching it and called out to Mai.

"Hey, what is this plant?"

Mai approached and looked at the strange plant for a few seconds, then moved closer and almost recoiled instantly putting on a displeased expression.

"Phew, what is that?" She looked at it for a few moments and added. "Whatever it is, don't touch it, it's not in the primary database. Analysis is required."

"If it's a new uncatalogued species, I want to name it." he said turning, around and with a smirk.

"I don't want to know what name you have in mind. Probably something nasty," she said, walking back to the door.

The electronic key to the cabin was where Ruslan had indicated.

The interior was clean, for an abandoned place, and was really spacious. Shin ran his finger over the furniture, only to find that there was barely any dust on some of it. The floor was clean. Somewhere in the cabin there had to be maintenance robots.

"Lights," he said.

A few seconds passed but no light came on. The place was well lit by the large windows, but they would need lights when it got darker outside.

Mai on the other side of the room simply tapped a key on the wall.

"Ah! Look at that, I missed seeing keys for the lights!" Shin said.

Mai walked to the bedroom and only a few seconds later Shin could hear her voice, calling out to him.

"Come here! I think that soldier forgot to tell us something about the cabins."

"What?" he asked as he entered the room and discovered that Mai's voice was coming from the adjoining bathroom.

"I don't think I'll even be able to take a shower here."

Mai stood in the middle of the bathroom, hands on her hips looking down the linear shower drain. From the drain sprouted a kind of reddish filamentous root system that climbed up the walls of the place and had spread almost to where Mai was standing. Shin approached the shower and looked at the strange formation on the walls, sniffing.

"This is not a plant. It smells almost like the one outside but it's different."

"I hate it when you smell things like that. "

Shin turned around with a sneer. "Liar, you and Liz love it."

Mai blushed and deflected the conversation."If it's not a plant, what is it?"

"Can you go to the other room?" Shin turned away and looked at her with a doubtful expression.

Mai backed up the few steps and stood in the doorframe.

"You're not thinking of blowing anything up, are you?"

"Doesn't smell like anything that's going to blow up but… just in case."

Shin pulled out an old lighter from his trench coat lit it, and moved it closer to the filaments in the wall. These ignited almost immediately, as the fire spread to all of them like gangrene, throwing a few red sparks first and then a blue flame that lasted a few seconds before dying out. The fire raced along the remaining strands, sweeping the walls, until it reached the shower where the last flame was extinguished in the drain.

"Interesting. Red sparks and blue flame."

A smell like burning flesh reached Mai's nose.

"What's so interesting about that?" she asked as she held her nose.

"I don't know, it's curious, red sparks could be due to various types of combustion, but the blue flame is striking. I think another material burned first, and then sulfur," Shin explained as he reached through the small window and let the air in. "You know what? While you're in a meeting, I'm going to do an analysis of the surroundings."

Mai looked at him with a doubtful expression. "Do you think it has something to do with who we're looking for?"

"Probably not, but it's curious, and the smell outside catches my attention too."

"If you're going to set up the lab try not to leave so many footprints…"

"I know, don't worry. I'm going to put the lab cases down," he said, smiling and walked out of the bathroom leaving Mai with a confused expression.

"… Okay… try not to block the luggage rack again!" Mai shouted but Shin had already disappeared from the room. No shower, I guess, she thought.

Shin went back outside once more, and headed for the luggage rack. Inside rested some small industrial suitcases with fingerprint locks. He grabbed two and then pressed the bottom of the luggage rack. As if it were a magic trick the remaining suitcases rearranged themselves and other larger suitcases took their place.

Each one was labeled differently on one side. Emergency medical kit, hazmat kit, portable lab, evidence management, emergency communications, ammunition, nano closet and supplies, among many others. Shin took the supply case and the portable lab case and put it with the others outside. He pressed once more and only the medical kit was left in place. The rest had simply disappeared.

For him it had become part of his routine to get used to the proper use of the equipment. As far as he knew there were about a hundred compressed configurations in that vehicle, and Mai was the only one who knew all the combinations to operate them correctly. In Shin's case he had more than once made a mistake and locked the access. It was basically a game of mnemonics.

He made a gesture to close the luggage rack but, before he could close it, he opened it once more and this time the medical kit had disappeared to be replaced by an arsenal of various weapons placed in order above and below. Shin took a small metal box of about ten centimeters and closed the trunk. Walking full with suitcases, he entered the cabin and closed the door.

The temperature in the cabin had already risen and Shin looked around wondering if Mai had turned on any thermostats.

"It's warm."

"The temperature regulates itself when people are inside via those sensors," Mai said, coming out from another room and pointing to the corners of the ceiling and floor. "You just have to activate it with movement and the floor is thermal so we won't have any cold problems. I just checked the thermal memory and it hasn't been activated recently so, I guess that soldier was really the last one to come here and the rescue team didn't really arrive."

"I thought we were going to spend the night in the car."

"In case it gets too cold maybe we can stay here."

"Right. In case we want to roll on the floor at least we won't die of cold."

"We are not going to roll on any floor…"

Shin deposited the suitcases on a nearby couch and looked at Mai. "Hey!" he exclaimed and tossed the small box he had taken out of the trunk's arsenal. Mai caught it with both hands and looked at him worriedly. "Just in case."

"I don't have arrows for the duplicate. And I need a warrant to use the bow."

"If something comes out of the woods to bite you in the ass, you can be sure I'm not going to ask for authorization to use whatever weapon I have on hand."

"Why do you always say something wants to bite me in the ass?"

Shin shrugged. "Because you'd be on your back and it's cute. What's wrong with it? Liz says the same thing."

Mai shook her head. "My butt is not a toy or bait."

She turned to one of the windows and looked in the direction of the car. Almost immediately, Shin could hear the sound of something coming loose on the vehicle. He approached Mai and looked out as well as he could see four black spheres no bigger than a tennis ball levitating out from under the car. Two came from the front and others two from the back. They performed a sort of coordinated pirouette and took off in different directions. They were the surveillance drones.

Mai looked at Shin again.

"Look, you see? That's more like it, Mr. just in case."

"Can I play with Piper while you are working?" Shin asked, trying to smiling teasingly.

"He's not a pet, it' s a drone, leave it alone."

The next few minutes Mai was busy running a UV sterilizer, across the huge bed. Shin just watched her from the door frame, he thought she looked like a cat looking for the best place to sleep. Once she finished she smiled in satisfaction and returned the sterilizer to the portable lab case.

"As soon as I'm done, let's walk down that path and see what we can find," she said, lying down on the bed.

"No problem, take your time," he said and walked over. "Good luck in the trial." Shin brought his face close to hers and kissed her in the lips.

"Thank you," she said, and leaned on her elbows kissed him back. "That'll be all, we came here to work," Mai said with a smile.

"Was... that a question? Because it sounded like one."

Mai grabbed a pillow and threw it at him, laughing. "Get out of here."

He walked out of the room smiling and closed the door. Mai alone in the room went back to bed, wishing that even if they were short, those moments of happiness could last much longer. It had only been seven months since she had met him, but in the last five months since the three of them were together, her love life had taken an unexpected turn after so many years. And there was still a chance that it might even have more twists and turns, once they returned to the island when the rest time came, although for that the three of them would have to wait.

Waiting... for an answer. Perhaps they had already waited too long. But that was only with respect to the three of them. The answer to go a step further had to be given by someone else as well.

She closed her eyes, preparing once again for the most tedious part of her work.

Meanwhile, Shin came into the living room and looked at the suitcases of the mobile lab and supplies.

"Ok, let's do this," he said, rubbing his hands.