Art and I were sitting on the grass, leaning back against our packs, resting after the crossing. Not far from us, the other striders from Ellen’s team had settled in much the same way.
In the distance, among the rocks, I spotted a flock of dragons emerging and heading in our direction.
We had just passed through the Seventh Gates into the Second Variant, where my first picking was about to take place—my first as a full-fledged strider, an ARC agent. At the same time, this operation was also, in a sense, a layered ambush designed by Ellen and Norton, aimed at actively countering the Pride’s escalating aggression.
The journey to the Seventh Gates had taken almost the entire night, which gave Ellen time to conduct the snap in virtual format during the flight. There she walked us through the operational plan. To me, the plan felt less like an ambush and more like a form of fishing—or perhaps hunting large predators—where a harmless fish, bird, or small animal is placed in plain sight in hopes of attracting something eager to devour it.
In this case, that living bait was yours truly.
Strangely enough, that fact did not trouble me. On the contrary—something very much like this was exactly what I needed in my current state of mind.
That mood had been shaped by what happened yesterday.
When I woke—well past noon—Zara was no longer beside me. I jumped out of bed and ran into the living room. She wasn’t there. Her tiny cab was gone from the landing pad.
I rushed to my mask and clip.
In my inbox I found a single message, sent at 05:17—apparently shortly after I had drifted off beside her, noticing through the window-wall of my bedroom the first pale hints of dawn. Nearly eight hours before this moment.
The message was brief:
“I’ll return.”
I immediately called her ID and received the response I had already expected:
“The user with this ID is currently not connected to the Net.”
Art called some time later. From certain cues—ones I couldn’t even define—he seemed to understand what had likely happened and what was still happening. He didn’t press himself on me. He simply asked me not to remove my mask or clip so I wouldn’t miss the picking call, and then he disconnected.
The next hours I spent either lying on the bed staring at the ceiling or wandering aimlessly from room to room. I replayed our conversation at the restaurant again and again, along with everything that had followed. Of course, I wanted to dwell only on what came after her midnight arrival—but I forced myself to focus on what actually mattered.
I tried to understand what had happened. Where Zara had gone. Why she had chosen to leave the way she did.
And, inevitably, I worried about her.
So when the picking call came at 01:37, I felt relief more than excitement.
Art picked me up seven minutes later, and Big Tom set a course for the opposite side of the Earth—to the Seventh Gates.
Now, remembering all of it again, I took a deep breath and made an effort to shift my attention to something more immediate.
I thought about how the second crossing had felt. This time it had been much easier. Apparently my body already knew what to expect and had prepared itself on some subconscious level. I was recovering faster now. I felt almost fully steady again.
Art turned toward me.
“Well, Mac—even if this picking is formally still your internship, I think everyone—including me—considers you a real strider now. One of us. So—congratulations.”
“Thank you, Art,” I said sincerely. “If it weren’t for you, none of this would have happened to me.”
He grew thoughtful.
“You know,” he said slowly, watching the dragons drawing nearer, “sometimes I have the feeling that everything that’s happened since the day the new Gates appeared—it’s like a performance unfolding on a stage under the direction of some unseen producer. And you and I—we’re just characters in the show.”
He paused for a moment, then shifted into a lighter tone.
“But that’s poetry. Right now we’ve got work to do. And we might as well try to do it well.”
We rose to our feet and moved forward.
In the clearing before us, proud and graceful, magnificent dragons were landing.