“You’ve changed.”
“What do you mean?” Anna wiped the sweat from her forehead as she plopped onto the grass near the lake shore. She had run the three miles to Mara’s hideout in a little under twenty minutes. “And it’s good to see you again too, by the way.”
The ground felt cool under the shade of a willow tree bending gently in the afternoon breeze. She rolled over onto her back and looked up into a brilliant blue sky filled with billowing white clouds. Mara leaned over her with her arms folded. Behind her sat a table made of the same liquid metal Anna had seen months ago.
“I’ve been tracking everything about you for the past nine weeks. The increase in your muscle mass and reaction time. The significant improvement in your equilibrioception and theta and alpha wave activity,” Mara said.
“My equili-what?”
“Your balance and focus,” Mara clarified.
“Oh.”
“But I wasn’t prepared for how different you look.” Mara gave a slight smile. “You really surprised me, Anna. I didn’t think you’d make it past the second day.”
“I do feel different. Better,” Anna said. “So, you really think I’m ready to fly?”
“Let’s find out.”
Mara reached for a silver rectangular box on the table and handed it to Anna.
Anna took the box and shook it out of habit, just like Christmas day. It was light as air and cool to the touch. There was a small indent on the top of the box in the shape of a button. Anna placed the tip of her index finger on the indent, and the package came to life. The top panel retracted like a coil. Inside was a pair of translucent wraparound glasses.
“Wow. That was weird,” Anna giggled.
“Go ahead and put them on.” Mara seemed giddy. “I remember my first pair.”
“It’s not going to shoot lasers into my eyes, is it?” Anna asked.
“Not unless you want it to.”
Anna removed the glasses and set the box on the table. They were weightless and almost invisible. No seams, no hinges. She slid them over her ears and onto the bridge of her nose, but they felt like nothing at all. She ran her finger along the edge and felt no gap between the glasses and her skin. It was an air-tight fit, as if the glasses had been molded to the shape of her head.
“Thanks. But I’m not sure I get it. What are they for?” Anna asked.
“Just tap your right temple twice.” Mara tapped her own temple to demonstrate.
“Like this?” Anna followed suit and tapped her temple twice.
Immediately, her senses were assailed with more visual stimuli than she could process at once. Blue and green streaks of vibrant color. Circles and geometric shapes. Numbers and letters projected on the surface of her glasses.
“Whoa!” Anna stepped back and shook her head. “What am I looking at here?”
“It’s the other half of your iCom.” Mara was laughing. “Now hold on for a second. Quit moving. You’ll make yourself sick.”
“Too late.”
“Tap your left temple once,” Mara said.
Anna tapped her left temple. The amount of visual noise in her field of vision was reduced by half.
“The numbers in the lower right corner of your glasses are your external readings: air composition, temperature, air pressure, gravity. Any number that exceeds a safe threshold will start blinking red. Make sense?” Mara said.
“Yeah, this is cool.” Anna scanned the horizon, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. “What are the numbers in the lower left corner?”
“Those are your internal readings. Your heart rate, oxygen levels.”
“Can you change the distance settings from meters to feet?”
“Absolutely not. Temperature maybe, but not distance and weight. Get used to the metric system. You’re going to be using it sooner than you think,” Mara said. “Back to your iCom. You can toggle through the numbers by tapping your left temple. Once you get used to it, you’ll be able to toggle through the readings by just thinking about it.”
“Oh, I get it. Just like the concentration games you’ve been making me play every night,” Anna said. “So that’s what you were preparing me for.”
“Exactly,” Mara said. “Now, see the blue circles? You can focus those targets on a distant object if you want to know its size, distance, and composition. That’ll come in handy later.”
Anna locked the blue target on Mara, and the display showed a distance of two meters. Anna looked down at her wrist. The diamond-shaped iCom, invisible for most of the past nine weeks, was now clearly visible, bright and glowing. Buttons and arrays of controls lined its edges.
“Hey! I can see my iCom,” Anna said excitedly. “Does this mean I can finally control it now?”
“Yes.”
“And I can call you anytime I want, all hours of the night, just like you did to me?”
“No.”
“Which one of these buttons starts up my antigravity boots?” Anna asked.
“Hold on. First, I need to talk about the sole reason I’m allowing you to do this,” Mara said. “Your mission.”
“My mission. Oh, I like the sound of that,” Anna giggled.
Mara waved her hand across the table. A semi-transparent topographic map of the valley hung suspended in air. Anna could make out the lake, the forest, the quarry, the roads that crisscrossed the farmland, and the town of Smartt itself. Blue lines of light bisected the miniature map like haphazard flight patterns.
“Do you know what this is?” Mara asked.
“A map of the town,” Anna answered.
“Yes. But notice anything familiar?”
“The blue lines. Wait, those are all the trails you had me run over the past couple of months,” Anna said. “They’re a pattern, aren’t they?”
“More of a map. In the six hundred or so kilometers you ran, you covered almost every area of this valley. And every time you ran, I collected data of your surroundings. Fluctuations in energy readings, changes in atmospheric pressure, magnetic waves, anything that might help us locate an anomaly, like a wormhole.”
“So I was your probe.”
“Yes. Slower, but also less likely to be detected.” Mara smiled.
“Did you find anything?”
“See this light?” Mara tapped on one marble-sized light suspended above the valley. “Based on the readings you helped me collect, this light represents the most likely location for our wormhole.”
Anna leaned over the map and tapped the light. It shimmered to the touch. “It looks like it’s a good mile above land.”
“1,982 meters to be exact.”
“Whew,” Anna whistled. “That’s really high.”
“Yes it is,” Mara said.
“Wait, you want me to fly up there?” Anna’s eyes opened wide.
“I don’t expect you to walk.”
“I thought I’d just be flying around the treetops.” Anna laughed nervously.
“Your boots can actually carry you to a low Earth orbit, so height is not a problem. Cold is, but not height,” Mara said. “And don’t worry. The boots have been calibrated for Earth’s gravity. A safety has been built in to prevent you from decelerating too quickly or hitting the ground.”
“So what’s the plan then?” Anna asked.
“The plan is to investigate the area tonight and collect as much information as you can,” Mara said. “I’ve mapped the course. You’ll be flying over an area where you won’t be detected. Think of this as a solo test run.”
“That’s it?”
“Straight up. Straight down. I’m hoping you find nothing at all. There’s no reason a wormhole should exist on its own, let alone stay open for a long period of time. But if you do find something, under no circumstances are you to get too close. We have no idea what we’re dealing with.”
“I don’t even know what I’m looking for. Is it big? Is it small? Does it make a noise?”
“You’ll know when you see it,” Mara said, then paused. “I hope.”