It happened instantly.
A moment ago, I was in the car. I could see the slackened driver and Art ducking low, the seats they were sitting on, the road stretching ahead beyond the windshield, the icons glowing on the mask display. I could hear the engine running and the tires humming against the asphalt, hear the piercing, continuous alarm in the clip—cut off, at the very last instant, by the sound of a shot.
And now all of it was gone.
I could see nothing and feel nothing—not even my own breathing, not even the beating of my heart. I tried to perceive at least darkness, or to hear the silence around me—but there was neither. There wasn’t even an “around.” No space. No background. Nothing at all.
In the first moments, panic surged through me. The state was too unfamiliar, too alien, and that alone made it terrifying. But it didn’t last long. Almost immediately, I realized what had happened.
I was frozen.
Not dead—frozen.
My condition matched Art’s description exactly.
That realization brought a measure of relief. I remembered him saying that portable resonators are usually set to short freezes—most often, about one minute. I decided to wait it out. I even began counting silently to myself.
“One (one-two-three). Two (one-two-three). Three (one-two-three) …”
I counted to sixty. Then, just to be safe, to a hundred.
The freeze didn’t lift.
I waited longer. Then longer still.
At least five minutes had passed—possibly more.
And then a troubling thought surfaced: what was happening to my body in the real world right now?
Had Art avoided being frozen? Had he managed to stop the car? Or had it flown off the road—crashed into a tree, maybe caught fire? Was I bleeding out somewhere? Burning alive?
At that thought—and at the realization that I could do absolutely nothing about it, that I was completely helpless—terror took hold of me.
Only I didn’t feel the usual signs of fear. No chill spreading through my body. No goosebumps. No hair standing on end.
My terror felt like vacuum.
And somehow that made it worse.
For a while, I could feel nothing but that terror. I could think of nothing except the certainty that right now—this very second, or the next—I was going to die.
But death didn’t come.
Time passed, and nothing changed.
Gradually, I began to calm down. Of course, I thought, maybe I am dying—slowly, from blood loss or internal injuries. But the thought felt distant now, almost abstract. The sharp edge of panic was gone.
How much time had passed?
I tried to estimate it—and couldn’t.
Ten minutes, perhaps. Or many hours.
I had lost all sense of time.
Which meant it no longer mattered how long I would “actually” remain in this state. Because any span of time—even a few minutes in the outside world—could stretch here, inside me, into long hours, days, or years.
With that thought came boredom.
No—not boredom exactly.
A kind of lethal despair.
A sticky, viscous sensation that pulled at me like a swamp. Thoughts began to move in circles, repeating themselves, each loop slower than the last. There was nothing to hold on to.
And worse—no desire to hold on to anything.
Everything felt indifferent. There was no strength left to think or to feel. Only emptiness, and a heavy, syrupy apathy.
Somewhere at the fading edge of consciousness, a fragment of a thought drifted by:
Extremes converge.
What? What was that about?
Ah. Right.
Probably about how so much had happened to me in the last few days—so many vivid, astonishing, exhilarating things—that it had drawn its opposite toward it. This. The total absence of everything. The gloom. The void.
Wait. No.
I caught myself.
But all those things—they did happen. And they’re still with me now. In my memories.
It’s not for nothing, I realized, that erasing even this last thing a person has—their memories—requires a separate resonator charge.
And then it hit me.
A flash of insight.
A saving idea.
Why don’t I try to remember everything that’s happened to me—and write it all down? Not now, later, just dictate it in message mode.
It is interesting. It is extraordinary. This doesn’t happen to just anyone. And that means someone, somewhere, might actually want to read it.
I felt a sudden surge of strength, as if conjured out of nowhere. Thoughts began to appear, linking to one another, gradually settling into a steady, almost businesslike flow.
And for the first time since the freeze began, I felt like I had something to do.
Where do I even start?
Of course—I start with how I woke up with that premonition. That morning. The morning the new Gates opened.
Before that, I should probably explain, briefly, what the Gates are. What they look like. And then I’ll tell the story of meeting Art…
I hesitated.
I was going to write about Art. About other people. Without asking their permission. That felt, at the very least, impolite.
The solution came instantly, as if it had been waiting for me. I would change names. And of course I wouldn’t mention anyone’s last name—except, perhaps, public figures everyone already knows.
And Zara’s name? Would I change that too?
I wavered. Anything that touched Zara felt like touching her—without her consent. And yet I couldn’t leave her out. Not anymore. She’d become too important to me.
Another precaution wouldn’t hurt, either. I wouldn’t use geographic names—no cities, no countries. And I wouldn’t describe exact locations, especially not where the nuggets had been. Because what if nuggets tended to appear more often in the same places? What if there was a pattern to their emergence—something you could learn, and then predict where they’d show up next?
I should ask Art whether such a pattern exists.
And then I remembered where I was.
Frozen.
And it occurred to me that I had no idea when I’d get a chance to talk to Art again. The thought made me sigh—quietly, without meaning to.
Stop.
What…?
I just sighed, didn’t I?
Or did I only imagine it?
And then, completely automatically, I opened my eyes.
That’s it. The freeze was over.
I took another breath—this time with an almost painful sense of relief.
I looked around and realized I was at home, lying on my own couch. By the table, slumped into a chair turned toward me, sat Art. He was watching me closely.
The scene immediately reminded me of the day we’d met. That had been—what—two days ago? And yet it felt like long weeks had passed, if not months.
When he saw my eyes open, Art smiled warmly.
“You’re back,” he said. “We call it ‘thawing out.’ How do you feel?”
“I think I’m okay,” I managed, returning his smile as best I could. “Though I wouldn’t say I enjoyed the experience.”
“Pretty impressive reaction,” came a woman’s voice from somewhere to the side. “And considering it was your first freeze—and it lasted a full three hours—that’s actually excellent.”
I pushed myself up on the couch and turned toward the voice.
By the window, leaning against the wall with her arms folded, stood a tall, slim woman—young, but unmistakably adult. Her hair was pale, almost white, pulled back into a ponytail; her skin was fair; her gaze sharp and lively. She had the look of a professional track athlete—fast, disciplined, all coiled energy. Like Art, she studied me with open curiosity, a faint smile playing on her lips.
“Hi, Mac.” She lifted a hand in greeting. “I’m Kirsten. I work with AIO. I’ll be accompanying you two for the rest of this picking run.”
She flicked a friendly, ironic look at Art.
“You guys clearly need it.”
Then she looked back at me.
“Nice to meet you, Kirsten,” I said honestly. “Art told me you’d be joining us. And that you’d bring an extra box.”
She nodded, still smiling.
“Kirsten flew in on the evening flight and was actually planning to meet us in the morning,” Art explained. “But given… everything, I pulled her out of a perfectly comfortable hotel bed and asked her to come right away.”
“Good thing I rented a car at the airport,” Kirsten added. “Otherwise I’d have missed you thawing out. I got here a few minutes ago—haven’t even had time to grill Art properly.”
“All right, so what did happen?” I said, turning back to Art. “Tell me what came next. After they froze me.”
Art started in. He spoke concisely, matter-of-factly—but he didn’t omit a single important detail.
According to him, the moment the car rounded the bend and he heard the clip alarm and spotted the active resonator outside, he understood at once that the lens was positioned in a narrow cleft between two rocks. The shooter, apparently, was hiding behind the cliff itself—trying to keep our scanner from tagging him.
And as soon as Art grasped that, he realized something else just as fast: our only chance was to keep moving forward, to push past the line where the cliff would block the resonator completely.
On that stretch, the road curved left. The shooter’s calculation was obvious: once the driver lost control, the car would keep going straight and slide off the road into the ditch.
Art’s task, then, was to do two things at once: stay as concealed as possible from the active lens—using the side of the car and the back of his seat as cover—while reaching the accelerator pedal with one hand and pressing it, and at the same time turning the steering wheel smoothly to the left with the other, keeping the car on the road.
Both, fortunately, he managed.
By the time the car cleared the line of fire, Art’s resonator—secured to the dashboard—had already finished forming its impulse. Art released the accelerator but stayed low behind the seatback. The car immediately began to slow and came to a stop a few seconds later.
For a while, Art waited for the shooter to appear from behind the mountainside. But no one emerged, and the hostile resonator vanished—the scanner no longer detected it.
Moving as quickly and quietly as possible, Art got out of the car and went around its front, using the vehicle itself as cover. Then he dragged the driver out of the front seat and moved him to the back, placing him next to me. After that, Art got behind the wheel and headed straight for my place.
On the way, he contacted Kirsten immediately. He kept it brief, avoided details, told her there had been an incident, and asked her to come right away. As he drove, he kept glancing at me and the driver in the rearview mirror, half-expecting one of us to come to at any moment.
Neither of us did.
By the time Art reached my house, both the driver and I were still frozen. He unlocked the door using the key from my pocket, carried me inside, and laid me out on the couch. The driver he placed on the bed.
The driver thawed first—exactly two hours after the attack.
Art had to act immediately. He used his resonator in forgetting mode and then began calmly convincing the confused man that he had suddenly lost consciousness at the wheel, and that Art had miraculously avoided a crash by grabbing the steering wheel in time.
Once the car had stopped, Art—presenting himself as a medical professional—had supposedly checked the driver for signs of a heart attack or stroke. Seeing none, and noting that the man simply looked like someone who’d fallen asleep at the wheel, Art decided to bring him to the nearest settlement—here—and figure out whether a doctor was needed.
As Art went on, luck intervened.
Before he even finished his explanation, the driver interrupted him and launched into his own story: he hadn’t slept in nearly two days. He’d driven a client several hundred kilometers to the airport, then had to cover a shift for a sick colleague. So it was very fortunate that Art hadn’t called a doctor—and especially fortunate he hadn’t called the police.
As he spoke, the driver was already moving briskly toward his car, barely glancing at me lying on the couch. Art walked him out, returned his keys, and the man drove off immediately, thanking Art profusely for his understanding and help. Apparently, he’d been worried the whole time that Art might still call the police.
Art returned to the house and waited—first for Kirsten to arrive, and then for me to wake up. Or rather, to thaw.
Both Art and Kirsten seemed to regard everything he’d done, and the way he’d handled the situation, as entirely routine. To me, though, it was all genuinely impressive. I was just about to say so when Art tried to stop me—and Kirsten cut in first.
“You can direct those compliments at me instead,” she said. “Unlike him, I don’t suffer from excessive modesty.”
I looked at her questioningly, then at Art. He was smiling with his eyes lowered, looking both embarrassed and quietly proud.
“When I went through Agency training,” he explained, “she was my instructor.”
I looked at Kirsten again, seeing her differently now. She turned to me and made a small, ironic curtsey. It almost distracted me from a thought that had just surfaced—but I caught it.
“Wait,” I asked. “Aren’t you taught everything through the e2n interface?”
Kirsten answered readily.
“Downloads transfer knowledge—information, essentially. But skills and abilities—the capacity to apply that information—depend on the individual: physical attributes, reflexes, natural aptitude, and so on. That’s why strider training combines a series of downloads with honing: hands-on practice, drills, and real skill development.”
I nodded, understanding.
“All right,” Kirsten said, “let’s get back to today. We can speculate all night about who staged the attack, but I suggest we leave that to the analysts—that’s their job. As for us, let’s try to get some sleep. It’s already past three a.m. I see only two sleeping spots here. Art, set up a sleeper for me, and I’ll release the flies in the meantime.”
Art nodded in understanding and reached for his backpack. Apparently, nothing in her words struck him as odd. I, on the other hand, was staring at Kirsten with a silent question written all over my face.
“‘Flies’—that’s what we call them—are mini-drones with cameras and scanners,” she explained, taking a small container out of her pack. “Unlike real flies, they don’t bother people. Quite the opposite—they keep their distance. But they’re excellent at securing a perimeter and will raise an alarm at the slightest threat. Here—look.”
She showed me the open container. Inside, nestled in custom slots, were four tiny black mechanisms—about the size and shape of actual flies.
The next second, they lifted off almost silently and hovered in the air, forming a neat square. After hanging there for a couple of seconds, they shifted into a line, moved together toward the slightly open window, and slipped outside.
“That’s it,” Kirsten said, stretching. “Now we can sleep peacefully.”
“Are you sure you want the sleeper?” Art asked. At his feet, his backpack on the floor was already taking on the familiar sarcophagus-like shape. “We can offer you a luxurious bed. Right, Mac?”
“Of course,” I said quickly. “I can sleep in the sleeper. I actually liked it.”
“Thank you for the concern, gentlemen,” Kirsten replied with dry irony. “But I’m more used to sleepers. It’s not just you striders who spend nights in mountains and forests. We do too—quite often.”
The Essence layer in my mask was inactive, so I couldn’t see Kirsten’s background glow. It was only now, from her words, that I realized she wasn’t a strider—and therefore must have been an agent transferred into our Variant through the Gates, her Essence boosted to the required level.
We settled in. Art and Kirsten, as far as I could tell, fell asleep almost instantly. I, however, couldn’t fall asleep at all. The freeze had probably acted as a kind of substitute for sleep for my body.
I spent the entire night in a thick, viscous half-doze, periodically sinking into a nightmare—always the same one. I dreamed that I was no longer myself, but the Black Jellyfish—a Creature made of absolute, all-consuming darkness. As if on the outside I remained in the ordinary world, while inside I was trapped in a permanent, unending freeze, composed of impenetrable gloom and bottomless emptiness.