Date 31/01/2060, Location 41.26613, 31.43282

Kai strode up the wide stone steps and in through the central double doors, like a reigning monarch returning to his throne, with the rest of the team trailing after him in a column. Inside the reception area was a large space, filled with pictures, sculptures and seats – at some time in the past this had been designed to wow people, and display a sense of power and importance, but once the initial impression could be seen past it was noticeable that the paint was peeling in places, the pictures undusted and the carpet threadbare.

Bahri led them to a large lift and motioned them in, standing to the side and holding the door open with an outstretched arm whilst the team crammed in. It was a tight fit for the eight of them, and the lift mechanism groaned and complained slightly, barely managing the climb to the third floor. On arrival, Bahri led the way to his office – a large corner suite overlooking much of the town and highway system to the west and south. He motioned for them to take seats on the couch and chairs, and then moved to a coffee machine set against one wall

"Would anyone care for some refreshment?"

Hunter, moved over to the coffee machine, and then took a deep sniff, and made a show of connecting his tablet back to his datajack and then studying the results.

"Not from this. Water, if you don't mind. From a sealed bottle. From out of town."

The others started to smile, and then hid their faces, either with coughs, or in paperwork. As Bahri looked at Hunter, the others chimed in, also asking for the same. The factory manager moved to his desk, and punched in a comm code, connecting him to some flunky somewhere, and then spoke quietly, with his back to the team – for what little good it did him. In the quiet of the office, he could still be heard clearly enough.

"Get me some bottles of water. There must be some on site somewhere. I don't care whose, just bring it. Yes, bring a whole box. Slab? Whatever, bring it!" He turned to face them, and composed himself. "Ahh, they'll be along shortly. So sorry for the delay."

He was 'saved' from the silence as the team stared at him by a tap at the door, and a tired-looking middle-aged man in a very cheap suit pushed in a trolley full of equipment. A pop-up screen was placed against the far wall, and then a powerful projector was linked to the manager's desktop computer and set up. Moments later the title slide appeared from a presentation, and the underling from IT was dismissed from the room. Bahri moved and sat down behind the desk, and then started to give his presentation. As he worked through the material, he appeared to relax slightly, feeling at home with the familiar material.

The team watched in silence, as he worked through the first four slides, detailing the history of the plant and the importance of it to Turkey and the economy. He was interrupted again with another knock at the door, but hid his annoyance as a youngish-looking lady arrived holding a case of water wrapped in plastic. These were quickly distributed amongst the team, and after Hunter had sampled one carefully, then nodded, were opened and drunk from.

Bahri looked to be ready to continue his presentation, but Kai spoke up before he could get back into the flow.

"This is all very interesting of course, though much of this is already known to us at the Ministry. Whilst I would love to watch through your very interesting and well-prepared presentation – I fear we must actually get on with inspecting the site. Please make arrangements for the tour, so we can examine the aspects of production required to sign off on the environmental approvals.

"What? You mean you want to actually see the site?"

"Quite so."

Bahri looked confused for a moment. Slides whizzed past on the projector as he fast forwarded through his presentation, stopping at slide 56 which showed a table of data detailing the performance of the air scrubbers over one of the furnaces - and unsurprisingly, proclaiming that everything was fine and there was no pollution to worry about.

"Normally the inspectors just want to see the data here, and sign off that we have it…"

"I'm afraid that the new regulations are in place this year, and require us to have a visual inspection of how the data is gathered too. I'm sure you understand." Kai managed to convey a bored dis-interest while he said this, and then casually waved at Tads and Aswon. "Of course, whilst we are out on the tour, you can show the capacity and excellence of the plant to our guests from the international community. And whilst they are inspecting the ability of our industry to meet their needs, we can step aside to give them some room to contemplate, and discuss matters, privately."

A light dawned on Bahri's face as he added two and two, and got to about five – filling in the unsaid parts of the conversation with his own preconceived ideas. Aswon though saw where Kai was angling with this, and leant forward in his chair and added fuel to the fire.

"My country will soon start mining a number of precious ores and materials. We believe that we have found a large and very high quality deposit of Tantanite. To extract this, we will need much equipment, many thousands of tons of steel, to build rail heads and extraction equipment. We need a partner who can supply us with this. If a partner then has a market for the ore we extract – well, we already have a trade agreement in place. Shipping routes. Cordial relations. So much the better for us."

Bahri looked at him, and you could almost see the cogs whirring, as he thought about the backhanders and tax evasion possible with a closed loop supply system like this, and managed to give a broad smile.

"Of course. Let me make a call, and we'll happily show you the plant. We're very proud of it." Once more he activated his comm and gave instructions for the two buggies to be bought around to the front again, along with drivers.

He led the way out of the office, glanced at the lift, and decided instead to walk down the wide staircase that bent around the lift shafts. As he walked the party down, he continued to describe the operation of the mill, their capacity and a number of projects around Turkey that had been made possible due to their steel. The team listened, mostly in silence – happy to let him do all the work. Occasionally they asked for more information, or responded with a redirect, just to keep him talking.

They came out of the stairs into a long open-plan office, and headed to the door back into the reception area. As they walked through the room, they saw staff – a lot of staff. From the paperwork, posters and files around the place, they were obviously in the Human Resources area, but the department seemed to be huge – even for an industry that might still rely on a lot of cheap manual labour to get things done. More than that, a bunch of them appeared nervous. Several of the team noticed certain tells – dry lips suddenly licked, nervous movements of the hair, rubbing hands across the throat. They shared a look, and pressed on, out of the room without comment, and into the grand reception room.

"Oh, if we're going on the tour, I expect we need hard hats, high-visibility clothing and scrubber masks, won't we?" asked Hunter. Kai and several of the others stared at Bahri, with their stylus hovering over their tablets.

"Of course, I was just about to say the same. If you'll just wait here…." He saw several of the team make conspicuous "ticking" motions, and then hustled out of the room, reaching for his portable comm as he did so – and leaving them alone for a minute.

The team had a rapid but muted conversation – keep it low-key, try to ignore things, make good noises. Don't attract attention, be pliant. Check.

Bahri came back through the door with a pair of assistants, loaded down with safety gear – after a bit of work they were all fitted out with masks, safety glasses, hard hats and vests, and were on the way out to the waiting golf buggies outside. The drivers set off, and they drove down the length of the main building and wound their way through the mill to the massive ore heaps close to the shore.

Bahri started to describe the ore transportation process, and how the raw product was managed and contained. The team listened and nodded – apart from Tads who stared in horror at the ground and the pollution seeping into the land. Seeing the look on her face, Kai flicked a glance at Aswon and nodded down the track between massive mounds of ore.

Aswon took her gently by the elbow and pointed at a heap of ore, nearly twenty metres high and started to talk about how his country would soon exports materials like this, with the help of their new Turkish allies. He walked down that way, Marius, Shimazu and Nadia joining them and drawing attention their way. Hunter and Kai closed up on Bahri, and turned away from the rest of the team.

"Right, let's get to business, shall we, now those international busybodies are out of the way. Of course there's no problem with the inspection – we just have to make it look good for the foreigners. You understand our position, of course – we NEED this contract. They want hundreds of thousands of tons of steel, and will mine ores we need for our industry and economy to grow. We must impress them, and win this contract. The ministry will not forget how much you have helped us in the future… but for now, we have an arrangement in place?"

Bahri nodded, and reached into the footwell of the electric buggy, and pulled out a small tan briefcase and handed it to Kai. Kai immediately passed it over to Hunter, who returned to the cart and sat in the rear seat, popping open the top for a quick glance. The inside was roughly divided into three areas. The left was stuffed with notes of large denominations, actual honest-to-goodness cash, rather than credsticks or certified funds. The middle had a stack of what looked to be bearer bonds and government notes, and the right was full of stock certificates. He had no idea of the value or worth of the contents – so he looked at Kai and gave a serious nod, as if this was exactly what he was expecting. Kai, in turn, clapped Bahri on the shoulder with his left hand and gave him a firm handshake with the right, blasting him with a thousand watt smile at the same time. Before the factory manager could say anything, he called over to the rest of the team, telling them they needed to push on with the inspection.

They toured more of the yard, seeing the water pumping station and holding tanks, the rail head and storage yards. The pipeline bringing in slurry from some distant quarry for sand casting. As they moved around, they saw more and more signs of neglect, pollution and cost-cutting, lazy workers and poor maintenance. They passed a furnace just as a worker stumbled and spilt some liquid onto the hot floor, and watched as it burst into flame, the conflagration dancing metres high as other workers ran up with portable firefighting equipment – only half of which appeared to work. Kai made a point of "distracting" the foreigners by pointing at something, and cast a glance at Bahri, who was once more sweating profusely.

As they pushed on through the hot-rolling mill, Hunter and Marius caught sight of the clouds of dense rolling smoke up in the rafters, belching out from the machinery and furnaces full of molten steel. It roiled around the extractors on convection currents of hot air – but not into the extractors themselves. As they moved along the shed, it became clear that the anti-pollution filters were not doing their jobs, because they weren't turned on.

They continued, and though they had no experience with steel milling – their various skills in chemistry, engineering, logistics and management showed them that the factory was in an appalling state – corners cut everywhere, and poorly-trained and equipped staff just "making do". They also didn't appear to be anywhere near as well-staffed as they had expected, from the size of the Human Resources department…

Whenever they spotted something bad, they jotted a quick note into the pad, beaming it to Kai. Kai in turn "distracted" the officials, then glanced at the cause and glared at Bahri. By the time they were almost back at the main office, they'd caught employees tipping caustic chemicals straight into the drains, throwing empty containers of supplies into the furnace to avoid taking them to the bins, numerous health and safety violations and a whole string of operational issues that would affect the finished goods quality. Kai's smile vanished, and he was soon frowning at Bahri. As they returned to the office, he moved to the side of the door and stood next to Bahri – waving the rest of the inspection team inside first. When just the two of them were outside, he whispered into his ear as he passed.

"We will be lenient, as you were not expecting an actual inspection. But this is going to cost you extra this year. Don't disappoint us." Kai glared at him, then swept inside, and guided the team to the lift and ushered them in. As Bahri walked towards the lift, Kai made eye contact and made a small gesture – rubbing thumb and forefinger together – hidden from the rest of the team. He let the lift door close, leaving Bahri in the reception area, and pushed the button for the third floor, letting out a breath as they started to move. He hoped he hadn't pushed too hard.

They moved into the office, grabbed fresh water bottles and stripped off the safety gear, leaving it in a messy pile on his desk. Frantic text messages flowed between them as they worked out their next bit of plan, trying not to speak out of their assigned roles, in case the office was bugged. Bahri took nearly five minutes to get back to his office – when he returned he was holding a large rock in his hands. His shirt collar was damp and sweat trickled down his cheek – he'd certainly been exerting himself.

"Ahh, so sorry to keep you waiting. Um… ah, as you know, it's traditional to award a memento after a visit, so we have this geode. Of no value, of course, but very pretty, and would make a lovely desk decoration in the ministry?" Kai nodded graciously, and gestured towards Hunter as his designated assistant. Bahri handed over the rock to him carefully, refusing to let go at first. Hunter looked at him with confusion, then nodded as he saw the cut through the rock – it was already split in half, and needed to be held together. He adjusted his grip, and held onto the rock tightly, keeping the two parts aligned.

Aswon spoke, half to Bahri, half to Kai – saying that he had seen the capacity of the mill and was pleased, and would recommend to his government that they commence negotiations for a half million ton contract. Kai nodded and then rose to shake his hand, and gave Bahri a smile and a nod. Whilst he was distracted, Marius made a quick call from his internal comm, calling Kai.

Kai answered, and reacted with surprise, then shock. He pitched his half of the conversation so it would carry clearly, and it soon became obvious that "there was trouble". He hung up and explained to Bahri that there were issues with the nuclear plant to the east, and that terrorists had attempted to destroy it… and there was new information that needed to be dealt with. He pulled out the wooden stamp and ink pad, and stamped the anachronistic forms on the manager's desk, certifying that the steel plant was all in accordance with the regulations and requirements of the Turkish government for another year.

Once more, they were escorted down the stairs and out to the waiting buggies, then driven to the entrance and the guard hut. Bahri looked around for a car, clearly expecting important ministers to be collected in a limousine or the equivalent. Sensing questions starting to rise in his mine, Kai insisted on the guard coming out, and then gave him a glowing recommendation to the factory manager for his thoroughness on checking his ID and speed of service. The guard, expecting a chewing out from the look on his face, stood at attention, and chose to say nothing, but Bahri felt it necessary to also congratulate him in front of the guests. By now the poor man didn't know if he was coming or going – but the question of the car was no longer in the forefront of his mind.

"Now, thank you for your time – we just need to walk over to the rather dreadful motel over there to get our bags. The new regulations said we had to take air readings from the surrounding areas, so it seemed the least bad option. Our transport is parked around the back." While Bahri struggled to process this, he shook his hand firmly and clapped him on the shoulder again, using positive body reinforcement to sell the lie, and then getting the 'foreigners' to do likewise, before turning and walking off at a brisk pace towards the motel. Bahri stood in the gate for perhaps thirty seconds, watching them go and trying to process what had happened, before he turned and sat in the buggy and was ferried back towards his office.

Once they were around the corner, the pace accelerated.

"I think we pushed our luck a lot there. Let's get the hell out of this town and to Constantinople," said Marius – and nobody disagreed. They returned to the truck and fired it up, and Marius spared no time getting them underway. The roads were relatively quiet half way through the shift, and they made good time heading west, out of the city.

As Marius was driving, they went over the briefcase with a bug scanner, finding it clean. They sorted through the contents, and found that there was about fifteen thousand Nuyen in cash, twenty thousand in bearer bonds and gilts, and another fifteen (at current prices) in share certificates. Once they had then all sorted, they bagged them up separately, and then opened the top hatch. An expert throw from Aswon catapulted the briefcase into the back of a farm truck heading the other way – just in case.

The geode was also checked over, but appeared natural. When it was split in half, a small pile of gems trickled out of the inside.

They examined the stones, and compared them to pictures downloaded from the matrix. It looked like a few each of several types – apatite, druzy, malachite and turquoise, with a smaller number of other random stones they couldn't identify with confidence. Tads looked over them with a critical eye, but sighed and pronounced them worthless – at least magically. They'd all been mined mechanically or with explosives, treated with industrial chemicals and whatever magical potential they may have once had, they were ruined now. They were still pretty, of course, and valuable from a mundane point of view – but no good for enchanting.

They travelled for an hour along the coast road, cutting through numerous small villages and towns. The road was, reasonably maintained and they made good progress though the light traffic. As they drove, they could often see the water to their right, sometimes no more than twenty metres away down a sandy bank covered in scrub vegetation or anti-erosion netting, sometimes two hundred metres or more, on the far side of rolling dunes or wide stretches of scrubland or gritty beaches. Approaching Karasu, the road widened and became a dual carriageway, and they picked up a little speed on the straighter sections, cutting through the middle of the town on the main road whilst feeder roads ran off to the sides.

The road angled inland a little here, with many buildings and hotels to their right between them and the sea, but they pushed on – trying to make up time and get far away just in case someone rumbled their ruse. They crossed out of town and over a bridge, and the transition was abrupt – there were almost no houses here at all beyond a very thin strip of old dwellings actually on the main road itself. Woodland built up on either side of the road, and there was no sign of agriculture or development.

They rounded a bend, and saw a large brown sign by the side of the road, which Hunter translated for them – The Acarlar Floodplain Forest, part of the municipal area of Karasu. The trees grew taller and taller, but the vegetation was strange to either side – it seemed to grow in bands, almost like a rainforest with its double or triple canopy. Whatever caused it was unknown, but even in the middle of winter it was clean and fresh, an area of natural beauty. Tads pressed her nose up against the window, almost perched on Hunter's knees.

"How far from Constantinople are we?" asked Aswon from the front seat. Hunter struggled to access his pad, until he had to push Tads back into the centre seat to be able to access his screen, and tell Aswon they were about three to four hours from the capitol. "We should stop here, I think. Have a walk and check this place out, it looks nice." Almost before he could finish, Marius responded over the speakers.

"Nein! We push on, enough delays already, let's get this job done."

"No, think about it. It's the first really nice natural area we've seen that looks managed – it's possible we might be able to go looking for stuff. If it's only a few hours from the city, it may be that we can come back here while the IDs are being made, and go looking properly – we're not stopping long, maybe an hour now – just to see if it's worth coming back…."

"They did say that we'd need to be present for the scans, then just be around for a few days while they got the IDs together. That makes a certain amount of sense," Kai chimed in, "if it helps us get some magical supplies together, that's got to be a good thing, right?" They heard some grumbling from Marius, but Hunter was already pulling up the local map, and directed them to a small picnic area marked up as a visitor attraction. It pulled them off the main road and into the interior, but it would also put them under overhead cover and off the main road – any pursuit would probably lose their trail.

As they pulled in and stopped, it was immediately obvious that the area was closed for the winter. Sturdy benches in an extruded brown plastic with wood effect pattern were scattered around the car park, but the building was closed and storm shuttered. There was a strange aura of desolation around the area, and it was very quiet with the engine stopped.

Marius got on the phone to Andre, one of the two guys he trusted in the city. After going through the usual rigmarole of convincing him that he wasn't dead, and answering questions to prove it, they finally got around to business. He arranged to meet him in town for lunch tomorrow, and Andre promised he'd sort out a place to stay for them – and also warned them not to go anywhere near the north bridge if they could help it.

Kai called his ID manufacturer in the Far East, Ngo Dinh Diem, chasing up the IDs he'd ordered some time ago, and was pleased to hear that they were finally ready. On hearing they were near Constantinople, she agreed to get them air-freighted over immediately.

Whilst they were making their calls, Hunter, Tads, Aswon and Shimazu wandered around the area, checking it out. Tads tried to show them the sort of things she was looking for – but it became apparent that the area immediately around the visitor centre was treated or managed in some way – the area was barren magically, though it looked natural. They found a forest trail leading south east, and started to hike along it.

The trees were mostly devoid of leaves at this time of year, and the vegetation had died back, with a thick layer of mulch covering the ground. The path was raised somewhat from the surrounding area, and gently wove its way through the woodland. Overhead they saw birds flitting from tree to tree, caught sight of insects crawling through the ground cover, and heard the scurrying of small creatures hunting them and hiding from the team as they wandered.

Once away from the visitor centre, the environment changed. Whatever pesticides or herbicides or management techniques they used, only covered the first one hundred metres from the car park. After that it got wild – and magically unspoilt. There wouldn't be much in the way of rock or mineral telesma, but plants abounded, and it would only be a matter of time if she searched carefully enough. She pointed out the types of things she was looking for, mainly for the benefit of Aswon and Shimazu, figuring that they had a better chance to spot them with their magical sensitivity. Hunter listened carefully, though, and proved to be equally adept at spotting the types of things she would want to examine carefully.

As they were looking around, Tads felt a gaze upon her – and looked up into a pair of large unblinking luminous eyes. She blinked in surprise, then focussed on the eyes' owner – which was a small monkey or large possum perhaps. It stood stock still in the cleft of a tree branch, staring at her. Moving slowly, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her commlink, then took a photo of the creature. Shimazu spotted what she was doing, and followed her gaze, staring at the monkey for a few moments. Reaching into his pockets, he searched around and found a small bag with some oats in the bottom, and then tipped them into his slightly cupped palm until they formed a small mound, then extended his arm outwards and towards the creature.

It considered for a moment, and then leapt – extending arms and legs out in an X shape. Thin membranes or flesh stretched, and it glided down like a Frisbee, landing with unerring accuracy on the end of his hand. It started at him with the large round eyes, still not blinking, but then moved a hand down and grabbed some oats and stuffed them into its mouth – still fixing Shimazu with a gaze. After a few moments of chewing, it spat the oats out onto the floor, and a tiny hand dug into the pile in Shimazu's palm, conveying them into the mouth. Unsurprisingly, the second mouthful of oats was not more palatable than the first, and was spat out, too.

Still moving slowly, Tads concentrated her power and conjured forth a small handful of peanuts in their shells, and then slowly tipped them into Shimazu's hand. The creature quivered and looked to be on the verge of fleeing as her hand moved under it, but her slow movements did not trigger a response. It moved its gaze from Shimazu to her, then grabbed a peanut and sniffed it. With dextrous fingers it twisted and turned the peanut until the shell broke. First it tried the shell, which was chewed and then promptly spat out to join the oats. Then it tried the nut – which must have been much tastier. It grabbed another nut, shelled it and then stuffed the contents into its jowls, then another, and another – working through the pile until its cheeks were bulging and there was a pile of discarded shells on the floor by Shimazu's feet.

The creature turned on the end of Shimazu's hand, clenched its muscles and then leapt – bounding up nearly fifteen metres in a graceful arc and landing on a tree for no more than a heartbeat whilst the legs compressed and then extended, sending it another twenty metres through the air to the next tree. It moved with surety and grace, and bounded away from them to the east, moving from tree branch to tree branch. Its speed reminded Aswon and Shimazu of the goats they had encountered in the 'stans – but this was much smaller and certainly didn't seem to be inclined to head-butt anything.

"I didn't recognise the species, but it was definitely magically aware. I think we can see that it certainly has an enhanced jumping or movement power – but it could have others as well. I wonder what it was…" Tads looked thoughtful, and checked her commlink, ensuring that it had actually captured the image.

"Let's go see if we can follow it back to a lair or nest or something," said Aswon, and then hunted around for a path to the east. They clambered down the bank to the soft and squidgy forest floor, and started to move off. As Aswon turned to get a bearing on the route back, he spotted something odd in the tree. It was perfectly camouflaged colour wise – but it was boxy – the straight lines of the manufactured device quite clearly identified it as something "man-made" and not anything from nature.

He coughed and got everyone's attention, and then turning away from the device, pointed back up and towards it through his body, whilst telling them what he had seen as quietly as he could. Each of them turned and "looked around", trying to not stare directly at it, but to get an idea of what it was. They closed up into a huddle, and Hunter spoke up first.

"Looks like a sensor pod to me, probably a wireless transmitter for feeding data back using encrypted bursts. It's got to be set with a size threshold out here, or it'd be going off all the time from the critters. But I'd bet good money that we've been tagged somewhere." The others listened, and much like Marius with his knowledge of vehicles, they accepted that Hunter seemed to have a broad knowledge on sensors, reconnaissance and observation technology.

They moved back to the path, scrambling up the bank and onto the raised trail, and then moved along slowly. Now that they knew what they were looking for, they spotted a few more of the boxes – normally on the taller trees set back a few metres and facing in towards the forest. Stick to the paths, and you were fine… go off the path more than a few metres, and you'd be hard pressed to avoid passing a scanner.

As they moved along slowly, mapping out the sensors, Aswon's enhanced hearing picked up a high pitched whine. He warned the others, and moved to the other side of the path, trying to triangulate the source. A few seconds later, the rest of the team heard it too – getting louder for sure. It wasn't a loud noise, but the forest was so quiet, that even the faintest sound carried considerably.

Perhaps thirty seconds later, they saw the flash in the air as the microlight overflew them, the occupant looking down at them. Aswon gave a large and flamboyant cheery wave, which was returned by the pilot. They saw the aircraft circle them, once, twice, and then bank away. The pilot found a gap in the canopy and came swooping down, threading through the trees skilfully and then banking sharply onto the path. As he neared the ground, he swung his legs up and out of the bag they were in and landed at a run, slowing his progress and killing the engine. Moments later, he unstrapped and approached the group.

He introduced himself as Amal Juttamk, a local ranger who had "just happened" to be out flying and spotted them, and wondered if they were lost or in need of assistance. Aswon assured him they were not, explaining they were medical students, working with Doctors Without Borders, and were heading to Constantinople – but they were ahead of schedule, had seen the signs for the area and wanted to examine its beauty. They ignored the fiction of the ranger just happening to be anywhere, but otherwise stuck to their cover story.

The ranger moved back to the craft and using some kind of specialist tool folded the wings back and harnessed into a long but narrow mass of material. A pair of wheels were attached at one end, and he lifted the other, placing it over his shoulder and grabbing two straps to steady it. It became clear that he meant to "accompany" them on their walk and to act as their guide seeing as "he was already here", so they explained that they were about ready to go back to their truck anyway. He walked with them, and talked about the area to them. No matter what his other duties were with the rangers, he was a fine guide and had a good patter – clearly much of the information he was given was memorised and given as speeches to the tourists during the high season, but he had a relaxing manner and was pretty humorous.

In return, Tads engaged with him about her interests, describing her native forests to the north. She steered clear of anything that sounded like knowledge of talismongering, but she spoke with experience and passion, and it was clear that she was a fan of the natural order. Aswon and Shimazu both also pitched in and they had a good long chat on the walk back to the truck – whilst Hunter kept quiet and tried his best to blend into the background. It took them nearly an hour to get back to the truck, but the walk was pleasant and Amal really was a font of knowledge about the area.

When they got back to the car park, the ranger gave a start on seeing the truck – but they quickly reassured him it was an ex-military vehicle, and only what they had been given, but it proved useful in getting to out of the way villages to help lend medical aid. Based on the conversation he'd already had, he seemed to accept the explanation. He moved his compressed microlight and leant it up against the wall of the visitor centre, and then hunted around a little until he found a piece of deadfall timber. With this in one hand, he moved to a bench, pulled out a knife and started to whittle, engaging in casual conversation but quite happy to just sit and work on his woodcraft – and keep the team under observation. During the chat, he mentioned that they might want to get some air filters on the truck, to cut down on the pollution from the big diesel engine.

After a few minutes when it was clear he was there for the duration, they mounted up into the truck and with another cheery wave, bid him goodbye. As they pulled out, they heard quiet crying from the back of the truck, and Tads went to investigate – but was stopped when Kai grabbed her arm and shook his head. Instead he motioned for her to shut the door and sit down. When she had, he spoke quietly.

"Marius turned off the GPS signal, and we got her to call her dad and tell him she was safe, but that she'd left home. There was angry sounds, there was crying. At some point words like 'you don't understand me' and 'it's my life not yours' were used. It all got a bit emotional. So might be best just to leave her be for a bit, and let her come out to us when she's ready." The others nodded in understanding and settled down into their usual positions. Aswon and Shimazu both fidgeted a bit, realising after a few minutes that the reason it felt weird was because there was enough room again, without Nadia being wedged in next to Marius.

They headed up the access road, checking behind in case the ranger had buddies to follow them – but they didn't see anything. Mind you, they had the trees wired with sensors – they might be following the truck with those. They got back onto the main road, and as they turned west, Shimazu scrambled for his phone as it went off. They heard his half conversation, and had a horrible sinking feeling, which was confirmed after he hung up and turned to them.

"That was Turul. He's just told me that his daughter has gone missing, and thinks she may have been kidnapped and mind-controlled to tell him she's run away – she can't have left home on her own because she was happy there… but he wants to know if I'd seen her, or knew where she was, and if I could keep my eyes and ears open, in case anyone in our circles saw her…"

The clock in the cab ticked over to 17:00, the truck sped west under the overhanging branches of the leafless trees and a quiet descended on the cab as they thought about their options. In the back, Nadia lay in the bunk, furious with herself for being upset over a row with her father, and completely unaware of the emotions of the team, only a few metres away from her.