Date Saturday 06/03/2060, Location 43.5821, 39.75945

The team looked over at the slumped, slumbering pair, then across to the hotel receptionist who stood with a scowl on his face and his hands on his hips. Kai raised his hands upwards and outwards, making a reassuring gesture.

"Ok, let's get them up to their room and sorted out." Hunter moved over to Marius and grabbed his arms, pulling them back and over his head. With a grunt, he lifted the torso slightly and then dragged him up the stairs, none too gently, letting the German's body bump off of every stair and corner. Marius remained unconscious through it all, collecting a set of bruises and bumps in some very unusual locations. Shimazu grabbed Nadia, but was considerably more gentle, scooping her up into his arms and slowly climbing the stairs and following in Hunter's wake.

Reaching their rooms, Shimazu laid Nadia carefully on the bed, rolling her out of his arms and onto the rucked up sheets, being careful not to touch the bed or bedding itself. The room was still a mess after their time together, and it was clear that the staff had followed the "do not disturb" sign, and the bed showed clear signs of two people who'd been intimate. Shimazu glanced up as he heard the shower turn on, and saw Hunter shoot a stream of cold water down on the still clothed form of Marius, who groggily waved his hands around to try and prevent the soaking.

Words of protest started to emerge from Marius as he regained consciousness, if not competence. After another thirty seconds of hosing down and feeble attempts to stop him, Hunter relented and lifted Marius up and out of the tub, then quickly stripped him down to his underwear before propelling him to the bed and letting him fall next to the still clothed form of Nadia. A hand at the back of the neck lifted slightly, and Marius's jaw opened by reflex, allowing Hunter to pour fresh water from the complimentary bottles down his gullet. After a full bottle had been consumed, he lowered him back down and moved away, returning with a bunch of towels from the bathroom which he started to cover the damp body.

"Why don't you put him under the sheets?" asked Shimazu.

"Do you want to touch those?" Hunter replied, not looking up from his task.

"Fair point, well made. I think Nadia is fine still dressed." After a moment's thought Shimazu put the second water bottle on the night stand next to Nadia, and then slid the bin over to just by her face, just in case.

With both of them safe, Shimazu and Hunter left the room, reporting back to the rest of the team on their state, finding Tads and Aswon staring at each other as they sat at opposite ends of the bed, their legs crossed and hands resting lightly on their knees.

"What's going on?" asked Hunter, looking over at the motionless pair.

"Tads wanted to practice her new spell, lets her link her mind with the target to enable some kind of telepathy or instant message sendings. I think that's what she said. But the other person has to be willing, and Aswon volunteered. Hunter and Shimazu watched them for a few more seconds with Kai, and the room was as quiet as a crypt.

With a start, Tads blinked and looked away, and a touch of colour flushed her cheeks.

"Do you really feel that way?"

"Of course. You are a spirit talker. And I can't hide how I feel from you like that." Tads coughed and turned away, grabbing a drink from her own water bottle, and refused to make eye contact with anyone for a short while. Aswon unfolded his legs and rolled lithely to the side, rising like an impossible jack in the box to his full height, his impressive mane brushing against the ceiling. "Spirit talkers hold a sacred trust, a bond with the land and the people, guardians of wisdom that guide our lives. Of course I deeply respect you." Aswon spoke with a very matter of fact voice, as if what he was saying was obvious, and beyond contestation.

They settled down to rest, watching a bit of local TV and brushing up on their Russian, enjoying a long bath, cleaning equipment and checking on the slumbering forms in the next room every thirty minutes or so, ensuring they were ok. During the night, Aswon and Hunter worked out an alternate route to the docks, just in case Marius had said or done anything that might have jeopardised their initial route. There were a couple of pinch points that could not be avoided, but it was sufficiently different that it avoided a number of good ambush spots, they hoped.

Tads made a point of checking on Marius and Nadia during the night as well, checking on their astral forms. Shimazu joined her, and they spoke softly, sharing information and insights as they evaluated the forms that lay before them. Their essence, their intrinsic wholeness and somatic integrity had been damaged by the abuse they had heaped on their bodies, and in the case of Marius had left him with precious little humanity left to examine. But, they seemed not to be affected by any magical taint or problem and it was likely that their essence would recover as they rested and recovered.

The night passed uneventfully, and most of the team rose with the dawn. Aswon, Hunter and Shimazu went for a morning run before returning for showers, while Tads carried out her morning rituals. They breakfasted quietly, bringing some black bread and orange juice up with them and waking up Nadia and Marius for a simple breakfast to get them going for the day. They looked bedraggled, but ok, and the room smelt of sweaty bodies and fluids, so they were left to clean themselves up as quickly as possible.

Nadia and Marius emerged a while later, having showered and changed and looking much more human. The rest of the team had packed, and Kai went down to the reception desk to check out. He winced as he saw the bill, but paid the thousand Nuyen, figuring that with the damages and cleaning cost, a lack of police presence and the cost of a taxi for two days, it wasn't too bad. Marius climbed into the driver's seat and jacked in, and his voice sounded steady and in control as he confirmed that everyone was ready to go.

The journey to the docks took forty five minutes – a disgusting amount of time for the short journey and a testament to the awful traffic. Still they arrived down at the docks without incident, and pulled onto the large concrete apron a good distance back from the waterfront, the drizzle sending rivulets of water cascading down the windows. Inside the truck was quiet though, the rain and wind being blocked by the heavy armour and weight of the vehicle.

Looking around, they saw three heavy tractors with twelve metre trailers, waiting in a line, presumably for the same freighter. Tads cracked open the roof hatch a tiny amount, and started to concentrate, making subtle gestures as she called on the spirit of the area to bargain with it for protection. The spirit appeared to be somewhat feisty, as Tads sat down somewhat hard at the end of her ritual, looking slightly bug eyed. Aswon passed a couple of painkillers and a squeeze bottle of water to her without a word, and she took them with a nod and a smile before bolting them down. He turned towards Marius and asked a question to fill up the silence.

"So Marius, how was your night out? Have a good time?" There was a pause as Marius listened, but it was hard to tell if Aswon was being sarcastic or not. In the end he decided to treat it as a genuine question.

"It was fine. We had a good time. And we made arrangements for doing business in the town, and paid off the Vory, so no problems there." The truck lapsed back into silence as they looked about them.

Out to sea, they could see a small freighter on the grey and choppy sea heading towards them. Hunter raised a hand and the end of his finger lifted up on a tiny hinge. Several of the team stared at in in fascination, having never seen it before, and Tads gave a little shudder as she contemplated inserting artificial components into her body. Hunter didn't notice though, as he was concentrating, lining up the finger with the freighter as it rolled on the waves. An invisible beam of laser energy emanated from the emitter built into his finger, travelling across the distance between them at 300,000 kilometres per second. The built in sensor detected the impact of the beam, 5.3 microseconds later, and fed the information through the router to the display system in his cybernetic eye.

"Approximately 1.6 kilometres out, and closing at 25 kph."

"Really? That seems fast."

There followed a short discussion between Marius and Hunter as they checked and rechecked the data from his laser designator and rangefinder, until they concluded that yes, the freighter was coming in pretty fast, and showed no signs of slowing. Marius checked on the sensors, but couldn't see any other vessels out on the water, although visibility was pretty miserable. A minute ticked by, with the boat continuing to close with no change.

"Ok, this is weird. Tads, can you check the bridge?" asked Kai. A moment later, he saw her body slump as she catapulted her astral form across the intervening distance. First of all she checked around, looking for any patrolling spirits or mages, but found nothing in the area. Next she flew over to the ship, examining the bridge and finding the wards that protected it. She checked around, and found no holes or gaps in the ward, and then tried to press through. The ward was strong though, and resisted her efforts, the drain of bargaining with the spirit making it difficult for her to concentrate and force her way through the weave of magic. She sped back to her body to report.

"No magical activity, and strong wards on the bridge – but that means that the crew probably haven't been affected or controlled by anyone."

"I have also checked the boat out from here – it's a little dirty and polluting, but there is no stain or taint on the boat, no sense of evil or death. It feels just like a normal boat." Aswon added.

"Just with a very reckless skipper it seems" said Marius over the speakers. A moment later they saw the three tractor-trailers start up and start to back away from the dock, slowly. Marius started up the truck and followed suit, carefully backing up away from the waterfront.

Finally, the boat seemed to do something. The nose of the ship started to turn, ponderously, heeling over slightly to port. Marius jacked out for a moment, his eyes fluttering open as he checked visually what his sensors were telling him. Hunter, too, seemed agog, his mouth open and he shared a look with Marius. The rest of the team looked confused, but picked up on the edge of tension building between them.

The boat shuddered, and water erupted from the stern of the ship, along with two smaller swirls near the bow. Slowly the boat righted itself and then lent the other way, the nose inching round, back past the teams view and turned the other way. They saw someone run out of a door on the superstructure, looking down at the dock for a moment, talking animatedly into a handheld radio. A few seconds later, the figure turned and ran back inside, sealing the hatch behind him. The boat now slid sideways towards them, a large bulge of water rising up several metres and racing towards the shore driven before the freighters bulk.

They could only imagine the frantic activity on the bridge and in the engineering spaces, and how close the manoeuvre came to going horribly wrong. The ship shook – visibly, with containers on the deck bouncing around a little as the deck vibrated underneath them. Even past the wave racing towards the dock they could see the huge churning maelstrom as the docking thrusters laboured to halt the movement of tens of thousands of tons of ship.

The wave hit the dock, rocketing up into the air in an explosion of spray nearly eight metres high, temporarily obscuring the ship. As the water descended, thousands of litres of brackish sea water raced across the dock – but the force of the wave had been broken, and the flood water was only a few centimetres deep, posing no real threat. There was a deep booming noise as the hull of the freighter impacted with the concrete wall of the dock, but the sound was muted and flat – the result of the entire side of the ship hitting the wall, rather than just one area. Impressive as the noise was, it meant that there was not likely to be any major damage.

As the rush of water dissipated into the drains, the three tractors started up again, and drove slowly forward, pulling closer to the ship. Above them, the port crane swung into action, and with the direction and assistance from the ship crew, plucked a twelve metre container from the deck and swung it gracefully through the air, dropping it onto the waiting trailer. A man walked down from the small office at the end of the dock, a tablet tucked under his arm. As the locks were engaged on the trailer, mating the container to the chassis, he reached the cab and spent a few moments obtaining a thumbprint and ID swipe from the driver, before backing away and giving him a thumbs up. The first tractor pulled out with a roar of diesel engine noise, to be replaced with the second, and then the third – each time the crane dipping like a huge mechanical claw onto the deck and selecting its target.

The third truck pulled out, and the crane dipped one last time, this time selecting an olive green container only six metres long. It dropped it onto the dock, just inside the painted line for the holding area. The dockmaster looked at his tablet for a moment, then glanced over to the truck and the waiting team. He tucked the tablet back under his arm, and turned on his heel, heading back to the office. A second later they spied movement in the crane and watched as the operator swiftly slid down the ladder, dropping from floor to floor, and then walking swiftly to catch up with the dockmaster.

They watched and waited as they both entered, then a few seconds later, emerged from the office again, this time with their coats on. Neither looked back as they started to wander up the road, heading towards the coffee shop on the junction.

"Think this is our cue. Everyone get ready. Let's go, Marius." Kai looked around as he spoke, checking that everyone was in position and ready to move. Marius kicked the truck into gear, smoothly driving over and pulling up next to the container so the back of the trailer matched up with the doors and then stopped – but left the engine running. Tads looked out, keeping an eye on the astral plane and looking for attackers or observers, while Aswon, Hunter, Shimazu and Nadia moved over to the container and examined the doors, finding them unlocked – just latched shut. Kai headed to the trailer and opened the back door, then climbed inside, ready to help push the cargo into position.

As they opened the door to the container, they saw embossed onto the inner surface a subtle logo – Ares Arms. It was not entirely surprising to them, Ares was one of the ten biggest corporations in the world, with fingers in every pie, and Ares Arms was a premier supplier of weapons, ammo, arms and armour. Inside the container were eight dark green boxes, each about a metre long and half a metre wide and high. Made of a dull and heavily granulated plastic, they were corrugated deeply, and had a handhold at each end, with the lid being hinged along the long edge, and secured with several clasps on the opposite side. Through a small hole, a slender wire ran in a loop, the loose ends being inserted into a digital cypher lock. The boxes were devoid of markings, symbols or logos.

"Marius, got a six digit electronic lock on these crates, feeding into some kind of wire loop that is holding them shut. Reckon you can crack that?"

"Six digits shouldn't be too hard, is the lock on the outside? Can I get at the back face?" He heard Aswon grunt in response. "Sure. Do I need to come over and do that?"

"No, I just wanted to know what our options were. I think I'd prefer not to know what the cargo is – but it's good to check." He grunted with the effort as he grabbed one end of the first container, while Shimazu leant over to grab the other end, and they manhandled the heavy load out of the container and over to their truck. With a certain amount of flexing and effort, they got one end lifted and onto the load bed, and Kai took over, pulling the crate in whilst the other two pushed.

It took a few minutes, but one by one the eight boxes were lifted from the container and carried to the trailer, then stowed on the floor in two parallel lines. Kai climbed down, making room for Marius to slip inside with his bug scanner, which was carefully run over each of the boxes. Three minutes passed as every side of the containers was checked, but then Marius turned off his device and gave a quick thumbs up, before climbing down and returning to the cab and jacking back in.

Shimazu and Tads stopped for a moment, and then flipped into astral space, to examine the cargo containers and be sure that there was no magical tracker present. As they did, both of them gasped at the sight. The bright ward around the trailer filled their peripheral vision, the edge of Tads' lodge clearly visible from the inside as a blinding white barrier of force. But the boxes in the middle of the floor were the opposite. A pit of blackness, all engulfing and consuming, with no astral energy visible at all. Tendrils of darkness worked around the outside, an event horizon of negative energy that plucked and pulled at motes of mana from the air. Tads pulled out from the sight by reflex, turning away from the source of the mana warp and taking a step or two, physically distancing herself from the horrible sight. Shimazu was not so lucky.

With limited experience, and his natural curiosity driving him to examine everything, he continued to look. He saw patterns emerge in the darkness as his astral sight steadied, a whirling vortex of power sucking in mana from the world into the maelstrom of astral blight centred on each box. He stared at the patterns, the lights, feeling himself drawn into the middle of the nearest whirlpool, wanting to peer closer and closer at the very centre of the effect, where surely there were things to be seen that were a true glimpse of power.

The others saw him totter, then suddenly fall forward as if struck with a powerful blow to the back of the head. Their outstretched hands missed him as he fell, poleaxed to the floor. Neither of his hands raised to arrest his fall, and his gaze was locked far away, looking at something alluring in the distance. The impact, and shock as his head slumped forwards and impacted the concrete jarred him from the astral, returning him to a world of damp and pain. Fortunately his body armour and well developed chest muscles had absorbed most of the impact, and after wiping his face to get rid of the road dirt, he escaped with only minor scrapes.

"Ok, don't look at the box in astral. Kinda sucks you in a bit, it seems." Nobody seemed inclined to argue with him or test it out, and after checking he was ok, they got ready to leave. Aswon and Shimazu climbed up into the trailer, and pulled the door shut behind them, while the rest of the team climbed back into the cab. Marius pulled the truck and trailer round in a tight loop and headed out of the dock, onto the main road and past the coffee shop, past the two dock workers who sat with their backs to the windows, nursing a steaming mug of soycaf.

"What do you think is in the boxes? Could it be… could it be nukes? Would that make that kind of effect?" Kai's question hung in the air, but nobody answered. Whether that was from ignorance, or from not wanting to know the answer, was something that was hard to say.

"Ok, Marius, as long as you drive steady, yeah, push that bit under there Shimazu, we should be ok in the back putting up a ward around this bit, ok, wait a second, let me hold this down, try again, so that should stop whatever nasty is in the boxes from getting to us, and the lodge would definitely stop it getting out, good, yeah tuck it in tighter." Aswon sounded distracted, as he and Shimazu rolled out the chicken wire over the boxes, bending and folding it in multiple layers to create a poor man's Faraday cage – just in case Marius had missed a bug. It also gave them a defined outer edge to apply their ward to, a clearly marked barrier between inside and outside.

"Hey Shimazu, what did you bring with you?"

"In here? My sword, just in case, and some food. Why?"

"Hmm. Well, I got my rifle, and a bottle of water, and an empty bottle. You know. To fill."

"Oh. Yeah, no toilet in here. Well, how far are we going?"

"I want to get as far from Sochi as we can, as quickly as we can – so we're not stopping at services until we have to. So you might need to share that bottle." Marius interrupted the conversation in the back, and they heard the dismay in Shimazu's voice.

Aswon and Shimazu finished the cage, and then started the warding process, trying hard to ignore the boxes and the subtle pull they exerted and concentrating on shaping a powerful barrier between them and the boxes. It was a somewhat hasty affair, made difficult as the trailer swung and lurched through traffic as Marius navigated out of Sochi. About twenty minutes into the journey they felt a crash, and the trailer kicked up into the air as it drove over something, but with no windows and no information from the front, they ignored it and concentrated on forming the barrier – aiming for speed rather than longevity.

Up front, Marius cursed the local who thought that he had a more nerve than Marius and had just found out how wrong he was. The front quarter of his car was wrenched off as the trailer caught it, riding up and over the bonnet and compressing the cheap plasteel into a mangled ruin that certainly wouldn't drive. Marius looked around, but nobody seemed the bothered, mostly fighting to get into the space now available in front of the butchered vehicle. It seemed the locals accepted this was the price of running the risk of cutting up a bigger truck and making a bad call.

They headed north, following the coast road and managed to make it out of the city without further incident, driving amongst heavy traffic along the highway. The heavy-duty suspension on the truck and trailer made light of the mangled road surface, and they kept up a decent speed, then slowly accelerated as they got further and further from Sochi and traffic took junctions and side roads off to the smaller towns and villages along the coastline.

Tads kept the intercom open to the trailer, listening as the two adepts worked to put up the ward, ensuring that they were not suborned by some malevolent spirit or force. The camera was not in an ideal place, but she saw them moving around often enough that she was happy they were still progressing with the work.

"How much are bio-monitors, Kai?"

"Well, it depends how good you want them – why?"

"Just thinking, for situations like this. When we have people in the back working on something. Might be worth getting some monitors to help keep an eye on them, let us know if something happens. Even if they're magically possessed by some evil spirit, chances are there would be a major spike in their vital signs as it happened."

"Hmm, good call. One to add to the list. Of course, normally, the monitors are not the main expense, it's the receiving unit that interprets the data. But we can look into it." Satisfied with Kai's response, Tads returned to keeping an eye on the two in the trailer. The truck sped north, making good time along the slick road and ignoring the drizzle and grey clouds. About 110km north of Sochi, they turned off, heading for a minor village and leaving the motorway behind.

Their speed dropped dramatically as they headed up the small lane, then dropped further as they travelled up a rutted and eroded track, the truck brushing against hedges on both sides of the road and leaving a swathe of broken branches and leaves behind them. Marius followed the directions, travelling up the shoulders of a hill, and finally leaving the track and just driving across some pastureland, completely off-road. He had to drop the speed again, until they were crawling along at around ten kilometres per hour, but that allowed the two adepts in the rear to keep working, building their ward around the chicken wire sculpture.

They circled a small copse of trees standing atop a rise, marked as a checkpoint on the map. As they doubled back on their trail, Marius ran a full sensor sweep and the crew in the front scanned the area – nothing. No sign of pursuit, no drones, no watcher spirits. Satisfied there was no tail, they hit the controls and the truck rippled, changing colour and shape as the smart materials responded to new commands.

It took them two hours to cut the corner and head down the other side of the shoulder and back to the highway, but that gave them ample chance to ensure that they really were not being followed. Just as they pulled back onto the highway, they heard the team in the rear call out that they had finished. They'd managed to erect the ward in just over three hours of concentrated effort. Shimazu risked a glance in astral, ready to duck out the moment he saw anything nasty – but the ward held the horror at bay, and all he saw was the outline of the ward on the wire. He most definitely didn't probe too hard, having no interest in piercing his masking on the ward.

They picked up speed again, heading north east now on the old M4 road. True to his word Marius pushed the pace, flashing past the turn offs for Defanovka, Moldovanovka, Khrebtovoye, Kluch. The truck charged on, the diesel engine roaring as it dragged the armoured vehicle along at just below its top speed, chewing up the distance. As they approached the junction for Korenovsk, Marius hit the intercom.

"Ok, rest break coming up, there's some services here just off the main road. Twenty minutes, and I'm going to top off the fuel, just in case."

The services were small, a single shop and gas station, with toilets that were very definitely third world – though a biologist might find them fascinating as an example of bio-diversity in a small eco-system. Marius refilled the fuel tank, watching the counter on the pump rise and rise. Fortunately the certified credstick had plenty of funds on – at least as far as fuel costs were concerned. They stretched their legs for a few minutes, topped up on bottled water and some snacks, and hit the road again eighteen minutes after stopping.

Picking up speed, those in the truck watched the countryside flash by. The weather was still dismal, and the grey clouds and drizzle limited their view considerably. The land to each side of the truck was divided into regular fields, and they saw automated machinery crawling back and forth over the fields of soy, planting and plucking, spraying and distributing fertiliser. It was an uninspiring view, and the small settlements they saw from time to time were just as dismal, grey concrete blocks put down with no thought or love.

The road was agreeably straight though, and traffic was moderate – some trucks, but mostly private cars. Half of them were old and battered, labouring the pass the truck and looking ramshackle in the extreme. The other half were newer, corporate drones driving to or from enclaves, thundering along the highway in high performance vehicles and trying to cope with the ruts and potholes that littered the surface of the road.

The truck drove on, and as the day drew to a close and the sun set behind the heavy clouds, the light grew dim. Ahead of them, the clouds grew blacker and darker. Marius examined the sensors as something caught his eye – a large fork of lightning in the distance.

"Storm ahead, might get windy."

Tads cast her eyes forwards, away from the fields on the side of the road, and by habit flicked into the astral.

"Sweet earthmother! Stop the truck, turn us around!"

Ahead of them, stretching from one horizon to the other, was a huge mana storm. The currents of astral space, normally flowing like a gentle stream instead were a raging torrent, a river full of spring melt water. Lightning erupted from the dark clouds, striking the land to both sides of the highway.

Marius started to slow, then they felt the truck drift for a moment, as all his attention went elsewhere.

"We have a problem. According to my readings, that storm is generating winds over 110kph. And it's coming straight for us. Wait." They waited in silence for a moment, while Tads continued to stare in horror at the approaching behemoth. "There's no way we can avoid it. If we turn, it will catch us, and if we go to the sides, we can't get enough distance to avoid it before it over-runs us. Pushing through is probably the best option."

Kai and Hunter both turned to Tads, while Nadia clutched at Marius, tightening her seat belt. Tads swallowed visibly, then looked at the storm again, then round at the truck.

"He's right. We should be ok in here. The ward will stop anything but the most powerful magic from entering the vehicle, and it should blunt the effects a great deal. And I can put all my defensive power on Marius, to try and keep him and us safe. As long as he can handle the physical effects, we should be ok. Unless it gets really weird in there."

"What do you mean, really weird?" asked Kai, hesitantly.

"Well, if the storm flinging out spell-like effects, it really depends. If we're lucky, it will be making the trees grow faster, or making nuts appear on the side of the road. If we're unlucky, it's meteors, fireballs and layers of grease a hundred miles wide. Can't say for sure what it will be. How lucky do you feel?" Kai winked at her, smiled and sat back in his seat with a wry little smile.

"Lucky. Always lucky. Push on Marius, but take it steady."

They drove on, and watched as the storm approached at a frightening rate. They could see the storm edge; sheets of water fell, obscuring the road ahead and they watched as the cars ahead of them disappeared, their rear lights fading into the storm front. Then it hit. The sound was like being shot at, and they realised it wasn't just torrential rain but hailstones the size of marbles, pelting down at speed and bouncing off the ground, adding to the obscurement. Forks of lightning flashed, and then a peal of thunder rumbled across the sky. Even with the powerful lights from the truck, visibility dropped sharply, and combined with the vicious scything wind made the highway treacherous. Marius was forced to slow, dropping the speed to around 40kph.

The truck suddenly veered hard to the left, running onto the slushy ground to the side as Marius avoided a car spun out in the nearside lane. They had a moment to catch sight of the occupant, scrabbling out of the vehicle and clawing at his eyes as he was pelted with hailstones that drove him to his knees before they were past.

"Why the hell was he doing that?"

"Stick your head outside the ward around the vehicle, and I suspect you'd see things you'd rather not…" Tads responded. "Imagine, Kai, if you saw the thing we found down in the temple, in the passenger seat – wouldn't you want to get out of the car? I suspect the storm is releasing huge amounts of mana and creating illusions – that's why we're not seeing them. They're not powerful enough to get through the ward. At least not yet."

They continued, and Marius had to swerve several more times. They spotted vehicles overturned and spun out, a few lorries that had run off the road and ended up in ditches or fields, and more people strewn around the road, several of them badly wounded or dying from the savage beating of the hailstones. Yet if they'd stopped, if they'd opened the doors to the truck, they almost certainly would have succumbed to the same horrors that befell the other drivers. They pushed on, and the mood was grim in the truck.

Twenty-five minutes after entering the storm, they burst out of the other side. To their left and right they could see the edge of the storm, a clear line of intense weather rapidly marching over the countryside and leaving devastation in its wake. The line stretched on for kilometres to each side, dark clouds roiling in the air and forks of lightning illuminating the night sky.

Ahead of them they saw the results of the storm – passing more vehicles that had crashed or spun out. Some drivers were battered and bloody, and trying to recover their cars, while others had clearly perished. Mutely they stared at the number of crashed vehicles as they passed. Tads looked at the first few vehicles, and clearly wanted to stop and help, but after they had driven past a dozen, she realised that it was futile. They would have lost days if they'd tried to help everyone who had been hurt or injured, and it would have left her unable to function if she'd tried to heal them all – and on an event this widescale, surely there would be official response. And if the authorities did come, no doubt they would ask why the team had made it through unscathed and want to know what was in the trailer.

They drove on, and another fifty kilometres passed. Suddenly they realised that there were no more crashed vehicles, the road was clear – though empty of traffic. The storm had appeared somewhere in the area they had just passed, sprung up from nowhere and headed south, and would presumably (and hopefully) peter out just as suddenly.

With the road clear, Marius accelerated back up to top speed, continuing along their pre-selected route. It took several more hours to reach Volgograd, with the outskirts of the city appearing as the clock read 22:30. Hunter got on the matrix to find them somewhere to stay, looking for a cheap motel that probably wouldn't ask too many questions. It didn't take too long to find a truckstop that advertised rooms on the south west side of the city – aimed at truckers it meant that they would have plenty of room for their vehicle, and the rooms would be basic but functional. He slotted his ID chip and reserved a couple of rooms, then marking the address on the map and pushing the updated route through to Marius.

They arrived at the truck stop, finding it to be as basic but functional as expected, and checked in to their rooms. Cheap plastic furniture, thin walls, peeling wallpaper and rattling pipes with limited hot water put the place into perspective compared to the hotel in Sochi – but the door locked, the beds were vaguely comfortable and it was at least clean – there was no requirement for Tads to stun the place to neutralise the bedbugs.

They split up into their normal rooms, and were starting to settle when Kai got a call from Marius, asking him to come to their rooms – and to bring a med-kit. Somewhat alarmed, Kai grabbed the med-bag and bolted from the room, with Hunter following, hand inside his jacket on the grip of his pistol, assuming the worst.

When they got to the room, Nadia was in the chair, her knees pulled up under her chin, rocking slightly back and forth. Marius sat on the bed, his left leg jiggling up and down, but mostly focussed on Nadia. He waved Kai over, then froze as he saw Hunter enter the room behind him, staring at him for a few seconds. Realising there was nothing for it, he returned his attention to Kai. "Nadia is not feeling well. She's itching, and having hot and cold flushes, and feels like her head is pounding."

"Have you broken her, Marius" Hunter smiled, removing his hand from the grip of his gun and leaning against the wall. Marius scowled at him, but the disapproval washed over Hunter like water on a duck's back. Kai tried not to smile, and knelt down, breaking out the medkit and pulling out the diagnostic computer.

It took him a good ten minutes to get the results, with a fair bit of checking and paging through the diagnostics database.

"Well, there's good news, and bad news. The good news is that it's not life-threatening, or contagious. The bad news is that you're going into withdrawal, from your addiction."

That news was enough to jerk Nadia out of her fugue, and Marius joined her in denying the possibility that Kai was correct. It didn't help that Hunter was now openly smirking, a big grin plastered across his face.

Kai went over the results again, pulling up the pages detailing the chemical composition of "Nitro", the effects, symptoms and after-effects – all of which matched what Marius and Nadia was going through. It seemed that during the all-night bender not only had the vodka flowed freely, but they'd also ended up taking several doses of Nitro. A common street drug, it lead to increased aggression and waves of euphoria, diminished sense of consequences and a resistance to pain and fatigue. It also, caused blackouts and unconsciousness when the drug wore off – unless the user took another hit, to start a fresh cycle.

As he described in cold clinical detail, flashes of memory fired in both Marius and Nadia's minds, fragments of the night, of drinks, pills, food, fights. Running, laughing, and collapsing into seats. It was all fragmentary, disjointed and without reference. Marius frowned, finding it frustrating – normally his memory was phenomenal, but in this case there were large parts of the night and day that he had no recollection of at all.

"The good news is that although you've probably taken a good number of doses during your night out, you should be able to kick it fairly easily. Without access to the drug, you'll go cold turkey, and that might not be fun at all – but as long as you don't take any more, you'll be fine in a few days. You just need to stay clean. Until then, there's not a lot we can do for you. Though maybe Shimazu should do the driving tomorrow." Kai grabbed the medkit and headed to the door while Marius spluttered, and excused himself from the room, followed by the smiling Hunter.

Tads meanwhile had summoned a new spirit, asking it to guard and protect the three rooms for the night, and had agreed to stay up for the next few hours on watch, while Aswon slept. Once he'd had his usual three hours or so, they'd swap and she'd sleep until dawn.

In one room, Hunter and Kai climbed into the tiny single beds – Hunter falling asleep with a wry smile on his face. In the middle room, Tads stared out of the window at the moon, listening to the gentle sounds of breathing from Aswon and Shimazu as they slumbered. In the third room, Marius and Nadia sat, sipping from their water bottles, scratching at their arms and fidgeting as muscle spasms and nervous tics drove them into a quiet rage. Unable to relax, unable to concentrate on anything productive, they fidgeted and moved restlessly, drinking and going to the toilet, and trying to avoid talking to each other – at least after the first argument had left them both feeling aggravated with the other's inability to see just how wrong they were.

They both had enough sense to realise they were snapping at each other due to the reaction of their bodies as it craved the hit from the drugs – and by unspoken agreement after the first row, decided to avoid talking and saying things they would almost certainly regret later.

On the wall, the old fashioned analogue clock ticked, the second hand moving around the carved wooden face in jerky motions, counting off time with a steady inevitability. Slowly the minutes crawled by, with both of them sweating and itching, trying to cope with the feelings that crawled through their bodies. It felt like it was going to be a very long night indeed.