The bottom line on the holographic display changed to:
Engaging course
The sound of the engines shifted—lower, deeper—and the acceleration increased noticeably. The walls and ceiling of the cabin, along with the floor beneath our feet, were fully transparent, giving us an almost panoramic view. I watched the ground drop away at astonishing speed. For a brief moment I could still make out a few illuminated structures in the distance, but they quickly dissolved into scattered points of light.
Almost immediately after that, the cabin shell gradually lost its transparency, as though veiled in a soft, warm beige glow. The world outside faded, and the interior became cozy—almost domestic.
The steep climb lasted about a minute. Then the angle of ascent eased, the glider leveled out, and we transitioned into near-horizontal flight. The acceleration faded to almost nothing.
A new line appeared beneath the route map:
On course
The edges of the “safety vest” unfolded smoothly and retracted back into the seat.
Art glanced at me.
“Dinner will be here in nine minutes. For your first time—something familiar: beef steak, fried potatoes, a vegetable salad, and orange juice. Sound good?”
“Yes, perfect. And… is there a kitchen on board?”
Art smiled.
“No kitchen. I just ordered delivery.”
I stared at him, waiting for a grin or a Got you. But he looked entirely serious.
“Oh. I see,” I muttered. “In that case, I’ll take you up on your offer to use the… what did you call it?”
“Sanitizer. Yes, go ahead. It’s intuitive, but ask if you need anything. I’d suggest a shower—you’ll appreciate it right now. Toss your clothes and shoes into the bin; they’ll be cleaned while you wash.”
I stood and walked to the rear section of the cabin. The door marked with a water droplet slid open silently. Inside was a compact but surprisingly spacious compartment equipped with everything one might need.
I used the facilities, and as soon as I washed my hands, a shower icon illuminated beside the mirror. I touched it.
The fixtures withdrew seamlessly into the walls. A neat recessed compartment slid out—a clothing bin. I undressed quickly and placed everything inside. The bin retracted, and the surface sealed smoothly over it.
The air began to move around me, swirling gently. The walls and ceiling took on a soft silver sheen. The shower activated—not from above or the sides, but seemingly from everywhere at once. Warm water enveloped me in fine, almost weightless streams. Then the flow shifted into a light mist, faintly tingling, as if electrically charged; it seemed to cleanse more thoroughly than any soap or gel I’d ever used. Finally, a cocoon of warm air wrapped around me, drying me as gently as if by invisible hands.
The entire process lasted less than a minute.
When the air stilled, a panel slid out from the wall with my clothes—clean, dry, and slightly warm. I dressed, put my shoes back on, and returned to my seat feeling refreshed and unexpectedly alert.
“Perfect timing,” Art commented. “Now it’s my turn.”
He headed toward the sanitizer.
Barely seconds after the door closed behind him, the hologram in front of the windshield changed. The map dissolved, replaced by a slowly rotating three-dimensional image of a compact trapezoidal craft with smooth, streamlined edges.
Above it appeared:
Docking request
Small service drone, “On the Fly” delivery
Accept Decline
After a few seconds, Accept highlighted softly in green on its own, and the header changed to:
Docking authorized
The display then reverted to the route map, where our glider icon had already advanced noticeably.
A couple of minutes later, Art emerged from the sanitizer, crossed the cabin, and dropped into his seat with visible satisfaction.
At that very moment, a faint jolt rippled through the cabin—more like the soft bump of a pillow than anything dramatic. No bang. No vibration. Just a subtle tremor in the air, as if we had passed through a dense pocket of warm wind.
I flinched—more from surprise than impact.
“What was that? The docking?” I asked.
Art looked at me calmly.
“No. The drone’s already gone. That was us catching up with our own sound—we just went supersonic. I’ve heard that long ago breaking the sound barrier came with a loud crack, even a shockwave you could feel on the ground. These days active wave-suppression systems dampen almost all of it before it fully forms.”
I nodded, impressed.
“Well then,” he said with genuine enthusiasm, “now we can eat.”
I suddenly realized that the weakness and heaviness I’d felt after the transition were almost entirely gone—and that I was ravenously hungry.
Not surprising, I thought. The last time I ate… was in another world.
The armrests of our seats had already unfolded into broad dining surfaces.
A soft hiss sounded behind us. I turned my head—and flinched involuntarily.
Hovering at about eye level was a strange light-beige object, suspiciously similar in size and shape to a compact washing machine.
“Hello, Mac. Hello, Art. May I set the table?” the “washing machine” asked in a cheerful young male voice.
“Hi, Estri. Yes, please. We’re starving,” Art replied with a grin. “Mac, meet Estri—our butler mech. If you need anything, ask him. He has everything and can do everything.”
“Mac, don’t listen to him,” Estri replied, drifting lazily around our tables. From panels opening along his underside, articulated manipulators extended and began deftly producing plates with food, cutlery, glasses of orange juice, napkins—and even miniature vases with what looked like fresh flowers. “He forgets that my modification doesn’t include enough RAM for a proper sense of humor.”
“Aha! Caught you,” Art said, picking up his fork and pointing it accusingly at the hovering mech. “You just disproved that with your last sentence.”
“Still could use more memory,” Estri muttered, finishing the table setting before floating off toward the rear of the lounge.
Before me lay a steak glistening with pink juices, perfectly crisp slices of fried potatoes, three sauces—each somehow better than the last—a salad of impossibly fresh vegetables and herbs, and a glass of orange juice that smelled like sunlight and tropical orchards, its surface beaded with cold dew. The sight of it left no room for thought—only total culinary reverence.
We attacked the food in silence.
After a while, Art took a sip of juice, exhaled with satisfaction, and said:
“So. About your question—why a backpack can pass through the Gate, but flying Big Tom through it almost certainly wouldn’t work.”
He spoke while continuing to give proper attention to his dinner. I was doing the same, though mostly in silence—absorbing both the food and the explanation.
Art said that the inner Essence contour of a living being possesses a certain plasticity. It can expand, enveloping small objects that are in close contact with the body. Two conditions matter: contact and size.
“If your backpack fits tightly—almost hugging your body—the contour includes it the same way it includes your clothes. But only up to a limit. About thirty to forty centimeters in thickness. Anything bulkier simply won’t fit inside the contour. It stays outside, no matter how tightly you press yourself against it.”
This rule, he added, makes it possible to carry a non-strider through the Gate on your back—but not in your arms. Because whatever enters your contour quickly—within seconds—rises to match its level. And here’s the surprising part: it doesn’t draw from your internal Essence. It draws from the external field. Your own level doesn’t drop.
“So,” Art concluded, “Big Tom could theoretically be taken through a Gate. But only by boosting his quint level with a quint pump. And given his size—and what he’s made of—it would require so much Essence that it would be cheaper to build a new factory on the other side and manufacture a new Big Tom there.”
He smiled, signaling that the last part was a joke—though not entirely.
By then we had finished dinner. Estri quietly cleared the dishes and replaced them with cups of fragrant herbal tea. Art leaned back with visible pleasure and took a small sip. I did the same.
On the map hovering before us, our glider icon had already covered more than three quarters of the route. A new message appeared beneath it:
Descending for landing at destination
Art took another sip, then turned slightly toward me.
“Tomorrow there’ll probably be an afterparty for our picking,” he said lazily. “That’s what we call the debrief with the team lead. Someone once said it as a joke, and the name stuck. So… what do you think the analysts will find most interesting about this one?”
“The attack,” I answered instantly.
Art responded with eloquent silence—just a faint smile and another sip of tea.
“You’re not about to say they’ll be most interested in the appearance of such a valuable new employee as me?” I tried.
His expression turned unexpectedly serious.
“That’s closer. You’re not just valuable, Mac. You became a strider under unique circumstances. And it’s very possible your abilities are unique as well. And what happened during this picking…” He gently rocked his cup, as if weighing the thought. “It strengthens that assumption.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, suddenly alert.
“At least two things. First—the unusual interest from the Creatures. And judging by it, not in both of us. In you.”
He fell silent, letting me draw the conclusion myself.
And he was right. First the Black Jellyfish. Then the Tumbleweed. Art had said Creatures almost never paid attention to humans in general—and to striders in particular. I nodded.
“Suppose that’s true. What’s the second thing?”
“The second…” he said quietly, almost to himself. “The way you found the wedding cake. You practically dragged us there. As if you sensed it. And things like that don’t happen by accident. I don’t believe in coincidences like that.”
He finished his tea and set the cup down. Almost immediately, Estri appeared beside us.
“More tea, Art? We’ve got time before landing.”
“Thanks, my friend, I’m good,” Art said, handing over his saucer. I did the same. Estri vanished soundlessly toward the rear of the Lounge.
The cabin walls became transparent again—just as softly and imperceptibly as they had clouded before. As if someone had simply lifted a thin matte filter, and the world outside flared into brilliance.
I rose slightly from my seat, forgetting my fatigue for a moment.
Below us lay not darkness, but a boundless golden radiance. It looked as though a vast sea of light had spilled across the land—billions of sparks from streets, highways, districts, floaters, hovering platforms, and layered interchanges. I had seen something similar before through an airplane window over a night megacity. But here it was as if ten such cities had been superimposed upon one another, merging into a single luminous, multi-tiered continent.
We flew directly above it—over sweeping arcs of transit lines, over fiery aerial highways of moving floaters, over towers that from this height resembled jeweled needles piercing the sky. In some places, light cascaded down the slopes of hills like waterfalls. In others, it gathered into dense geometric clusters resembling constellations.
The glider descended gently. The oceans of light gradually gave way to dark mountain masses. For several minutes we flew over ridgelines—black as silhouettes, cut by silver threads of roads and scattered sparks of alpine settlements.
Then, beyond another ridge, a complex of buildings appeared ahead, shimmering with a ghostly green glow. Its shape resembled a three-pointed star—or more precisely, a flower opening against the mountainside.
“That’s Trillium,” Art said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “The central office of the three Agencies. Our second home.”
Three elegant structures, slightly curved like petals or rays, radiated from a shared core. Their façades emitted a soft emerald light—not from visible fixtures, but from the material itself—so the entire complex seemed carved from a single immense emerald.
The glider swept over the complex.
A few seconds later, a sheer vertical wall of rock rose before us as if conjured from nowhere.
It was flawlessly smooth, black and dense as shadow. It seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.
We were flying straight toward it.
Then, several hundred meters above the ground, the wall… opened.
First, a circular outline appeared on the rock face—dozens of meters across, divided into six equal segments. The circle seemed to sink slightly into the surrounding stone. Then the segments slid apart smoothly and silently, like the rotating blades of a colossal camera aperture.
A softly illuminated cavern opened before us, vast enough to house an entire air fleet.
“The Vault,” Art said. “Welcome to the inner sanctum.”
In the surrounding silence, his voice carried a faint note of ceremony.
Big Tom glided inward with quiet authority, as though asserting his right to be there. Behind us, the segmented aperture began to close—just as smoothly, just as soundlessly—and within seconds the light of the outside world vanished, leaving us suspended in the even glow of the interior hangar.
The glider slowed and came to a halt, hovering in the center of the immense chamber. The surrounding walls were matte, suffused with soft diffused light that gradually dimmed above and below, making them appear infinitely tall. It felt as though we were suspended inside a colossal vertical shaft carved into the heart of the mountain. The air was perfectly still—conditioned evenly throughout the entire volume of space.
A hologram flickered to life before us: a translucent rendering of Big Tom with its internal compartments highlighted. One section in the central lower hull glowed mint-green—the same compartment where Art had placed our quint-boxes back near the Gates.
“We’re waiting for the ARC safe-drone to collect the boxes,” Art said.
As if summoned by his words, a substantial silver craft descended from above. Its shape truly resembled an enormous vault safe. The drone drifted closer, slowing as it approached, then slid beneath Big Tom—and simultaneously appeared as a translucent form within the hologram.
We watched as it docked to the glider’s underside. I felt no impact at all.
Text appeared across the holographic display:
ARC Safe-Drone No. 11
Container retrieval procedure initiated
An image of one quint-box materialized. We saw it glide downward and transfer seamlessly into the docked drone. The image vanished.
Retrieval, 1 of 2
Status: successful
Art and I watched in silence. I realized I couldn’t hear a single sound—as if everything were happening in a vacuum.
The drone extracted the second quint-box just as effortlessly.
Retrieval, 2 of 2
Status: successful
The drone’s image detached from our glider at once, and a moment later it appeared before us in the hangar itself. Rising smoothly, the safe-drone gained speed and headed toward the far wall. Just ahead of it, a smaller circular aperture opened in the stone—the same diaphragm mechanism, only scaled down. The drone slipped inside, and the segments closed soundlessly behind it. Once again, the wall became a flawless, unbroken surface.
A message appeared on the hologram:
Transfer to vault—in progress
Awaiting confirmation
Almost immediately, it changed:
Received:
Container No. 1: 7056α
Container No. 2: 4823α
Status: successful
Then the hologram vanished.
Art leaned back and nodded with quiet satisfaction.
“Well then. Mission complete. Time to go home—and sleep.”
As the vault doors sealed behind us, Big Tom increased speed slightly and glided back into the night air.
Below us stretched a valley threaded with silver ribbons of roads and warm constellations of light. The city thinned gradually, dissolving into scattered clusters, then fading into darkened hills and forest.
Yet the lights did not disappear entirely. Ahead, another illuminated ring emerged—a loose constellation of soft, shifting glows that seemed to pulse with a life of their own. Tom descended calmly, and I began to distinguish small cottages nestled in greenery, gently lit from within. As I understood it, this was the residential complex for Agency staff.
It resembled neither a village nor a conventional town. More than anything, it felt like a nocturnal garden, where luminous houses had sprouted from the earth itself—not aligned along streets, not arranged in rows, but grown organically from the landscape.
The cottages stood at different elevations along a gentle mountain slope. Between them stretched layered lawns—sometimes terraced, sometimes rolling in soft waves—dotted with flowers, low trees, and shrubs that glowed faintly from within. The light did not seem to come from lamps; rather, some of the leaves themselves appeared to emit a steady, subtle radiance.
“There’s yours,” Art said quietly.
I followed his gesture. The cottage he indicated looked… especially welcoming. Its walls, made of a smooth, warm-toned material, glowed with a soft amber hue. A wide terrace wrapped around it, and the short stairway leading up was framed by flowering shrubs dusted with silver blossoms.
Big Tom descended almost without a sound. A small level landing pad lay before the house, clearly designed for gliders like him. Tom hovered above it, rotated slightly—as though offering his side to the moonlight—and settled gently into place. Once again, I barely felt the touchdown.
Silence filled the cabin.
Art stretched, then rose in a brisk motion, as if shaking off the last of his fatigue.
“Welcome to your new home, Mac,” he said with a faint smile. “Tomorrow won’t be an easy day. Get some rest. You’ll need it.”
He headed for the exit.
I followed, feeling a slight tremor in my knees—not from exhaustion, but from that strange awareness that life had just divided irrevocably into before and after.
Outside, the night was quiet and crystalline.
The cottage truly was “submerged” in flowers—like a small island of calm in a valley of stars. The fragrance made me slightly lightheaded in the most pleasant way.
We stepped inside, and soft light rose from floor to ceiling as if greeting us. The living room was spacious but not empty: low sofas that seemed to grow out of the floor, transparent tables shifting in tone with the ambient light, and a panoramic wall revealing dark trees and softly glowing lawns beyond.
To the left, through a wide opening, lay the kitchen area. It was nearly invisible when unattended, but as soon as one approached, the smooth surfaces awakened—control panels appearing, functional sections sliding open without a sound.
Art walked farther in.
“Bedroom’s here,” he said, gesturing toward a wall that parted silently to reveal a room with a softly illuminated headboard. The bed’s surface rippled slightly in response to my approach, as if inviting me to lie down.
“And the bathroom’s here.” Another wall opened. “You’ll figure out the controls easily—everything’s smart. It’ll know what you need.”
He paused for a moment, apparently checking whether he’d forgotten anything. Then he nodded to himself and turned to me.
“I’ll be back in the morning. Afterparty’s at eleven—you’ll have time to sleep in. No need for an alarm.”
He smiled and shook my hand.
“Welcome to Variant One, Mac.”
I looked at him with sincere gratitude.
“Thank you, Art.”
He stepped outside. Through the panoramic window, I watched as Big Tom lifted smoothly from the landing pad. His light brushed the trees, then he accelerated confidently and vanished into the night sky.
I had just enough strength left to reach the bed, which seemed to gather me into a quiet embrace. The thoughts crowding my mind receded quickly, leaving only one.
Soon, I would see Zara again. She was somewhere nearby now.
Nearby, I realized, now simply meant in the same world.
At that thought, I smiled—and slipped into sleep.