Gemma was just as surprised as Zesiro at Twain’s abrupt change of plans. Her arm burned and her head pounded as she piled napkins on the table to mop up the mess. There was no doubt that something out of the ordinary was happening just north (northeast?) of town. The site couldn’t be far at all, definitely within driving distance, but they had a mission, didn’t they? No matter how big this whole… [i]situation[/i] ended up being, MOON came first. 

But the feeling burned bright, fading slowly, if at all. This was big. She flexed her hand and focused on the magnetic field, really trying to determine where the feeling was coming from. It wasn’t terribly important; the place held steady like true north, but she’d been putting off figuring out her compass. Now was as good a time as any.

Once she had, and the mess had been mopped up with plenty of apologizing on her part (she hoped they understood; she didn’t speak a word of Russian), they left the place, heading for the van. Icarus followed closely behind Gemma, but she was feeling better—at least, until she stepped outside, where the brightness stung her eyes and aggravated her headache. The wind buffeted her and froze every inch of her exposed skin and she cursed the Russian weather. 

Once in the van, she gave Twain a direction and they were off. Maybe he thought that this could have some connection to MOON’s disappearance. She couldn’t imagine what made him think that, but she trusted him to know what he was doing. The man was rife with hidden talents, and something as simple as intuition could mean the difference between success and failure in a seemingly dead-end mission like this one.

It felt dead-end, anyway. All they had were photographs of the team and a goal—every step in between was still a mystery. “So why Russia?” Gemma asked, when she got Helena’s picture. The girl was from an English-speaking country, if her diploma was anything to go by. “What was a girl like her doing here? Was she running?” Running from TRIDENT would be unlikely; Gemma herself had never even heard about the organization when they approached her. They had had a file on her, too. “Or did she disappear?”

A pulse of something dark made her skin crawl, and Gemma looked out the window. Smoke was rising from a mountain not too far into the distance, thick, black smoke that stood stark against the white sky and the snow. That was the source. Her stomach sank. Like a white hole, the place was vomiting particles and energy, sitting on the edge of her attention. “That’s the place,” she said. They’d be there soon, at the pace that Twain was going. 

She looked back at the picture of Helena, and then at the four pictures of the members of MOON, all piled up on the center console in front of her. She never liked trusting her intuition—she was a scientist, after all—but something about this whole situation begged for a connection. Inexplicable, paranormal events like the things TRIDENT studied were few and far between, after all, and to have three (if you counted Helena’s likely disappearance) events happening in just as many months in the same city was nigh unheard of. Unless there was a connection.

Gemma tossed the photo she was holding onto the console to sit with the rest of them. Hopefully Twain would have an answer. If not, the only thing to do would be to wait until they could take a look at whatever they’d be facing on the mountaintop.