Chapter Forty-three

5AM

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

Lemac Lake, Lugrin. France.

Mai rolled over in her bunkbed, opened her eyes slowly and yawned. She had rested, not as much as usual, but it was more than enough for the day.

On either side of her Philip and Zi were lying down and it looked like they had both finally fallen asleep. She couldn't blame them, the previous day had been tiring for everyone. Including all the search military personnel.

She straightened up and the blanket covering her slipped to the side. Her hair was a mess, but nothing her styling device couldn't fix. She ran her tongue along the back molars of her mouth and almost instantly felt a different taste in her mouth. She wasn't too fond of using the nano mouth cleaning system, but it was faster. Practically everyone used them, only some people like her and other old people still preferred toothbrushes.

She got up and went out to the tent still yawning and put a jacket. She was surprised to see the sky so full of clouds. That could not be good, she hoped there was no storm or they would have to call in the weather control system to dispel those clouds, even though it required special authorization. Playing with the weather had created Dark Events in the past, so it was not recommended. Especially since that area was off limits due to one.

The gray sky brought back fresh memories of what had happened in Kazakhstan last week. The truth was that, although she was focused on the work she now had to do, she was shaken by the memory of what had happened in the end.

The days had passed and the secret she and Shin shared about what had happened at the lake was too heavy. It was going to cause a big problem if it came out. They would have to make time once they were done with the plane case to talk with the others on the team and decide what to do. That thing had definitely been alien and it could think. She was concerned about what Shin hadn't told her, but whether it had anything to do with the secret they shared with Lizbeth was another matter. Although she could hardly imagine what it could be. What had Shin really seen under the lake that he couldn't tell her?

A microbial alien life form and virus was one thing, a life form that shared dimensions with them like the fractus was another, even though they could no longer invade earth after she closed that spherical portal in Siberia. But the lake had been different. Had it escaped into space aimlessly? Or was it returning to where it had come from? Both questions could have terrifying answers.

But now she had to concentrate on what was at hand. One problem at a time, she thought as she looked up at the sky, still with some concern.

She sighed and was about to go back into the tent when she slammed into a pair of soft breasts.

"Buh!" Zi startled her. "Good morning."

Mai, feeling the warmth through Zi's clothes, hugged her. "You're cozy."

"Hey! I'm not your girlfriend." Mai smiled and released her. She didn't want to be too much of a nag, but the truth was that she would have liked to rest a little more. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes, thankfully," Mai sighed and entered the tent. They both shuffled toward the bathroom as they listened to Philip, who had rolled over to the side, snoring.

Mai looked at him and then at Zi and they both laughed. "What a miracle he didn't wake me up," Mai pointed out.

"He's a weird little baldy, he only snores on his side."

Baldy? Mai thought, entering the bathroom first. Is that a new nickname? I'd never heard it. The tent bathroom was large enough to be mistaken for a real facility rather than a spatial distortion device.

"And you? Didn't you miss Shin last night? You've been together for months attached at the hip and last night you sent him off with Liz."

"Those two need a moment alone, to talk, among other things."

"Hmm..." Zi nodded suspiciously.

"What?"

"Just talk?"

Mai approached one of the bathroom cubicles but stopped. "Well at least I hope they just talked…"

"Away from here, alone, in a car... I wouldn't be surprised if…"

Mai sighed. "Well if they did it, I just hope they were at least discreet."

"May I ask?"

"What?"

"You guys do it every day?" Zi asked with a mischievous grin and Mai blushed. "Come on, we're friends."

"You're crazy if you think I could handle having sex every day. Shin is..." Mai pursed her lips as if she wanted to express something, but she was really blushing.

"Shin is what?"

"He's quite spirited... I mean he's affectionate and careful but he's... why do I have to explain? You guys must have already seen him in the tests or in the showers on the island."

"I've never seen it." Zi laughed. "Does he have it nice cock? I think I heard something around the medical team."

"Y-yeah..." Mai sulked, "On the other hand we don't have to have sex every day, only when we feel like it and there are other ways too. Now that Liz is with us maybe w-we can take turns."

"Why are you blushing? We are among friends. And what do you mean by other ways? What do you do when you're not on a mission?"

"Same as you and Phil. We just hang out, read, listen to music, go for walks or sometimes explore abandoned cities and eat industrial food. The normal stuff of living on the road, you know."

"That's the normal stuff. But you don't do anything else to him?"

"What do you mean?"

Zi made an obscene gesture with her hand and mouth and Mai looked away remembering Tuesday night and Wednesday of the other week, prior to what happened in Kolsay.

"It's embarrassing. But it's true I thought about him and Liz last night. This is the first time we are not together, apart from the island."

"Are you trying to deflect the topic?"

"No, it's the truth," Mai said sincerely, sincerely trying to deflect the topic as well. "He even sometimes had to accompany me to the bathroom even just to make sure."

"You were attacked by a DLL in January right?"

"Yep," nodded Mai, remembering a certain daddy long-legged spider that had followed her for two hundred kilometers.

"Well, you can't blame him, even if he wasn't your lover, your partner would have to be with you through thick and thin because you're a VIP."

"VIP... yeah sure."

"Mai..." Zi was looking at her somewhat flushed. "Do you need help with that?"

"The what?"

Zi pointed to Mai breasts. "Milk."

Mai looked down at her shirt, blushing, and sighed obfuscatingly and opened the cubicle door and locked herself in. "Don't scare me like that, I thought I was leaking."

"Sorry... but do you have your cup, right?"

"I have my cup in my backpack. I still don't produce much milk, once or twice a day is enough."

"What do you do with that by the way? Do you give it to the lab or... to Shin with cookies later? What about Liz?"

"I'm going to shoot you with my bow if you keep asking, now is not the time to talk about that," Mai said angrily, Zi could almost be sure of the face she was making.

"I'm not judging you, silly. Good for all of you that the relationship is working out well enough for you to include those games."

Mai wasn't sure if Zi was joking or what, but she wanted to get those images out of her head. It was neither the place nor the time to be thinking things like that. But then she would have to take a break for that. That was a hormonal problem of many fey women, but it didn't bother her too much. Although under the current conditions she would have to find a time later to take care of it.

Whoever had invented that legend about fairy milk had all the curses of fey women for years. Although the hormonal problem had a scientific explanation, the origin of it had to do with medieval and even older legends that had been adapted by some religions and that spoke of fairy milk or even virgins. A legend that had become true for many fey women. But there were considerations. It was something that only affected women who had been on the Other Side, the female offspring lacked that phenomenon upon reaching adulthood, unless there was a normal pregnancy.

That could only be explained by the fact of having been on the Other Side. As the legends said, the Other Side could be considered as the realm of the feys or similar lands in other cultures. For example Tokoyo no Kuni and the marebito in Japanese mythology, or the Tuatha Dé Danann and the land of Tír na nÓg for Irish mythology. Given the diversity of types of feys around the world it was quite common to come to the conclusion that the Other Side housed an amalgam of all the mythologies of mankind and that these were manifested through them.

But it was not as if women were the only ones, men also had their part in it, and it was because of those legends that used to say that the male counterpart could be prone to promiscuity when it came to sex. Something that many magical creatures in various cultures also shared. While it was not entirely true, the truth is that it had brought problems to more than one over the years. But the truth was that enhanced sexual desire was found in both genders and that it went far beyond the categorization as male or female.

She was a clear example, she loved two women and one man. But there was something that the legends had not counted on. And that was that a fey had a greater degree of attachment to its mates than the human counterpart. In fact there were already statistics showing that they had a greater commitment to their mates. That could well be due to time, since feys could be much older than humans.

Whatever the case, the legends had become true in some ways and were more of a headache than anything else. Except for the pharmaceutical industry, since the feys were a perfect laboratory of compounds that had improved human life and, among one of many such products, were those derived from the essence produced by the breasts of fey women.

Zi had leaned against the wall when she saw Philip's face peek out the door. "What were you guys talking about? Where are there cookies?"

"What are you doing in there?"

"I have to use the bathroom."

"Now it's time for the ladies."

"Tell that to my bladder. There are enough cubicles for a platoon."

Zi walked over and shut the door on him. "Wait outside."

Philip folded his arms in disbelief. "Really? I'm not going to see anything I haven't seen on the island, you brats!"

"From our point of view you're the brat!" Zi laughed back from the other side of the door.

"Unbelievable," Philip sighed.

Mai, locked in the bathroom was simply thankful he hadn't heard the previous part, or if he had, he would have kept it to himself.

***

Jim Stuart opened his eyes. He was in the synthetic body again.

His real body was again at rest in the apartment in Edinburgh, but he had used the night hours to inform himself about the case of Sil Moore, but nothing new had happened. Thor had not yet returned from Germany. Jim Stuart had tried to reach him, but the call had not been answered. Whatever had happened was taking its time.

On the other hand the FRT station chief had not objected to his request for a couple of extra days to help Oxy with the work on the lake.

He had managed to get permission and would be able to help the professor without any problems.

Still, it was strange to wake up and see no one at the scanning machine.

In fact there was no one in the tent. The scanning staff was probably taking hours off and there had been no one there during the night.

Stuart got up from his chair and walked over to the machine. Several boxes of small aircraft parts had been piling up and were ready to be scanned. He wondered if he could start the but, since he was a guest on the investigation, it was best to wait for Oxy. He wondered if she would have stayed until later after he left.

He turned on the Neurowire scanning system and searched for the professor's signal, but did not find her. He wondered if she might have turned off the Neurowire, but it didn't seem likely. He activated the jump sonar to detect if she might be in stealth mode, but that didn't work either.

That was a trick she had taught herself in his first week at the university when he and some other students were looking for ways to encrypt conversations. She had taught him the Caesar letter substitution cipher which, although old, still worked great for some communications and implemented multiple languages at the same time to encrypt communications. Oxy used to use it too.

But that hadn't worked either. He looked for Professor Reubens, but he was nowhere to be found either. Although, since he didn't have Neurowire, he could only track the contact lens if it was on.

Just at that moment two of the scanning experts from the previous day had just entered. They greeted him and headed towards the machines to begin the work.

"Excuse me."

"Yes, what is it?"

"Professor Ishijima? Do you know if she is in the SID tent?"

The two military surveyors looked at each other, but did not know how to answer for sure. "She was still here last night with the other professor when we retired. We didn't see her when she came out."

"I guess she has to be resting still." The surveyor looked at the containers ready for scanning. "I'd say she retired after we did. There are several pieces piled up for scanning so she can't have been working."

"I guess I'll go look for her, thanks guys," Stuart said and left the tent to begin his search.

***

Ryuuji and Natsuki had arrived at the SID tent with good news. Van was due to wake up soon and those particles had been automatically deactivated, making it easier to reset her Neurowire. All that was left was for her to perform a reset of her own to get everything back to normal. She had woken up a few times in the night with slurred speech, but the doctor had recommended that she have some rest, to make sure everything was going normally. She had only replenished fluids and eaten a light meal, but other than that Van was fine and it was a relief to everyone. Although there was still the question of how those things had gotten into her brain.

The doctor had run all kinds of diagnostics, but those nanoneurons had no identifiable signature. The system they had was new and almost written from scratch so he could not make any comparisons with other similar types or compare their manufacture. Still it was good news to have Van back. They just hoped that when she was fully recovered she wouldn't be in too bad a mood. Van wasn't going to take that as a joke and she could be really hard headed at times too.

While they were communicating the good news, Mai had taken a few minutes in private to pump her breasts and then put everything away in her turtle backpack. She made sure she wasn't leaking and put on her sports bra and t-shirt. It was a little strange, since Shin was always the one around when she did that, but he was probably waking up with Lizbeth at that time, and it was likely that Lizbeth was doing the same thing.

He always looked at her with some tenderness when she did that. Mai looked at the small bottle with its magical fey essence and sighed with a blush. Maybe it's not too early to think about children, she thought internally smiling and put the small bottle in the refrigeration system of the backpack and with that she was done with that daily routine. Although, in her mind she still thought about the stupid words Zi had said to her about the cookies. But well, Shin was a little dirty sometimes and it was true that she had allowed that and he didn't need those cookies.

That part of the legend about the fey fairy milk was true. It might actually be a good thing because of the magical and stimulating properties, but it didn't make it any less embarrassing.

She patted her face, trying to push those thoughts away. "Okay, let's get to work!" she finally said to herself.

The others also sensed what she might be doing and so they left her alone for a moment. Mai joined them just a few minutes later and had already braided her hair. She was in work mode again.

Then the five of them had a quick breakfast in the tent kitchen. They suited up in their overalls again, did a gear check in the backpacks and set off for the main tent, to catch up on the new details.

The base camp was bustling with activity again under a dark gray sky, that looked like it might collapse at any moment. The wind was much colder than the day before as well. But that didn't seem to matter to the soldiers, drones and FRT personnel who had started the work.

They were less than a hundred meters before they reached the main tent, when someone stopped them in their tracks.

It was Lefreve. "Director Izumi!" Mai looked at the man's face, it was pale.

"Director Lefreve. What's wrong?"

" Please. Come with me," then she turned to Ryuuji. "Please get the doctor. Quickly!"

Ryuuji was surprised at that order, but went off in search of the doctor. The group quickly made their way to one of the many rest tents led by Lefreve. He had not wanted to reveal the new emergency for fear of being overheard by other soldiers. Ryuuji and the doctor caught up with them just as he reached the tent.

The new emergency was a woman with short hair and dark clothes. She did not have the characteristic glasses she had been wearing all the previous day.

Jen Anderson was already lying on a bunk, appearing to be resting, but a trickle of dried blood was visible on her nose. At the foot of the bunk were two soldiers looking as worried as Lefreve.

"Oh, no," Zi said.

The doctor quickly set about examining her.

"What happened?" Philip asked one of the soldiers standing by the bunk.

"She retired to rest at about 12:00 a.m. and told us to wake her up a few minutes before five o'clock because she doesn't like to use the alarm. I got there to wake her up and tried to move her and then I realized she wouldn't wake up and she had blood in her nose."

"She's alive. Just unconscious," the doctor reported.

"What happened to her?" Mai asked.

The doctor turned and looked at her in bewilderment. "You're not going to believe this... but I think this is the same thing that happened to Agent Van."

The SID members looked at each other in concern.

"What's going on here? Are those Hypnite nanoparticles in the air?" asked Natsuki.

"If they were, we'd already have soldiers dropping like flies all over the camp," Lefreve pointed out.

At that moment Jim Stuart, followed by two soldiers entered the tent.

"Agents, Director Izumi, we have a problem," Stuart said.

Mai turned and looked at him. He was as pale as Lefreve had been. "What's going on?"

"Professor Oxy, she's missing."

Mai frowned. "What?"

"We searched most of this part for her and she's nowhere to be found. Professor Reubens isn't here either."

All eyes had focused on Stuart, not quite sure how to react to that news.

Mai looked at Jen Anderson on the bed and then at Stuart. She herself tried to locate Oxy and the other members were probably doing the same but, indeed, their Neurowire was disconnected.

What the hell is going on here? Mai thought.

***

Somewhere over the Croatian airspace floated a ship on autopilot.

EVE was relaxing in the pilot's seat and was looking at the sea of clouds that was already beginning to tinge, with shades of blood-red and purple, revealing that the sun would be rising any moment now on the horizon.

For an instant EVE remembered how it all began. The last Sunday night.

It had been many years since she had carried out a mission and therefore it had come as a surprise to her. To begin with, she had been living the last few years in relative calm with the one who had saved her. Although that could also be considered work, because she was part of the security group, the truth was that she had not been in risky situations for a long time.

For some reason that man Janus had insisted that she carry out that mission. Benjamin certainly did not have to agree to that request but, after a meeting in which she had not been present, Benjamin had become restless and almost annoyed with himself.

Janus had arrived at Benjamin's mansion undetected by the outside guards. After fighting and knocking out the guards outside the house, he had to deal with EVE, who was standing next to Benjamin.

That artificial body was strong, but it was no match for her. Almost on the verge of putting it out of commission, Janus had uttered a word that had alerted Benjamin and ordered her to stop. That word was "Lerian, Vannagon-Or-me-dur-Veh", EVE didn't know what it meant, but according to Benjamin had told her that was the word she had repeated incessantly upon her arrival. But, no matter how hard she tried, she could not remember it.

Be that as it may, after that closed-door meeting, Benjamin had asked her to fulfill a mission. Although then that mission had had the added bonus of rescuing those two morons from the Pyrene Station. That was a bonus. Still it was within the time Janus had set.

And now all that was left was the last part.

[Miss EVE. Do you read me?]

A woman's high-pitched voice snapped her out of her reverie. It was Y-11, the ally she had kept in contact with when Janus was unavailable.

"Yes, I'm here," she replied, combing a lock of pink hair behind her ear and then bringing a hand to the assistive device in her ear. "What's wrong?"

[It's starting now.]

"Well, it's about time. Shall we continue with the same itinerary?"

[Yes, it shouldn't be more than a few minutes, possibly thirty-five to forty according to the latest data. I'm sending it to you. You'll have to collate the rest yourself. But we know you won't fail.]

How confident, EVE thought. "How do you know I won't fail?

There was no response to that and EVE just sighed. "I'm going to deliver the whole package to Geneva and then retire. What should I do with this ship?"

[You can destroy it, or keep it. We won't need it, and possibly your master won't need it either.]

"What a waste of technology."

[It was a dispensable expense from the beginning. It's only so you can fulfill your mission.]

"Understood, I'll get in sync with the flight plan sent right now."

[Good luck, but I don't think you'll need it.]

"Over and out," EVE finished.

The pilot's seat lifted to the rear and EVE settled in ready to take over the manual controls of the ship once again.

Y-11 had sent some flight path files which she displayed on the cockpit holographic projector and looked at the route. It was the same as when they had explained her mission, nothing had changed.

She had to start about a hundred kilometers from where she was and from there she simply had to follow a perfectly shaped path. She would not even have to move from the ship, because the task would be handled by the droids. Her role was only to pilot it and nothing else.

Why? She was a good pilot, she had learned that over the years, but they certainly could have hired anyone else. Compared to what happened at Pyrene Station, that last part was a piece of cake. But for some reason she couldn't shake a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. It was almost like that feeling she had had when she was leaving the station.

She knew there was something wrong underground and that feeling came back to her now, as she looked out over the sea of clouds. For some reason to the west of where she was, all she could see were dark clouds, as if not even the dawn that was about to break could dispel the darkness of those clouds.

The ship's weather forecast told her it was a cloudy day in Western Europe and nothing else. EVE just wished it was just that.