Chapter Thirty-Nine - Tea Time

They had tea. It wasn't very good.

Alice sipped from hers anyway, then set her cup down on the ground next to her. She and Crystal had taken over the backseat of a minivan while Vasilisa and Raivis had taken two different bucket seats. It was surprisingly cozy, though that might have been the fire between them.

"I think we should go soon," Alice said.

"You think?" Crystal asked.

Raivis perked up. "You're leaving?"

"We should," Alice said. "We're burning daylight, and I feel like we'll never reach our objective if we dawdle too much."

"Is that even a real word?" Crystal asked.

Alice didn't deign to answer that. "We intend to reach the centre of the Zone. I imagine things will only grow more dangerous from here on out."

Raivis jumped to his feet. "Let us come with you," he said.

Alice would have been suspicious of the man if she hadn't poked around in his recent memories already. Him knowing who they were, if only via what he picked up from whatever communications got out from the Camp, was suspicious enough that she worried he might have... nefarious intentions.

But no. The man was being honest. Her worries that he was holding them here and stalling for reinforcements proved unfounded. He truly did just want to talk to them because he found them curious.

He didn't believe either her or Crystal about their magical abilities. She supposed that made him a poor scientist, being unwilling to believe in the unusual just because it didn't match up to what he knew to be true already, but she didn't intend to be the one to provide him with the evidence he'd need.

"I don't see why not," Crystal said.

"Really?" Alice asked. "They'd slow us down, for one."

"Yeah, a little, but... Raivis, you've been deeper into the Zone than this, right?"

"Of course," he said. "A few expeditions have gone... relatively deep into the Zone. We lost a few members every time, and discovered areas that were impassable. Or a storm would be coming, and we'd retreat some ways for safety. I wouldn't say that I have the skills necessary to be a guide, nor do my guards."

"That's more than we have, experience-wise, right Alice?"

Alice nodded slightly, conceding the point. "Perhaps. But it would be one more person to look after. We have Vasilisa here already. No offence."

"Um, none taken?" Vasilisa said, though she didn't sound terribly certain.

The truth was, Alice would rather move on with a smaller group rather than have to babysit more people. But she set that dislike aside and tried to consider things more fairly. Would things be improved by having Raivis along?

Yes, they'd need to worry about supplies, but they had to do so with Vasilisa already. This was just adding to it, and not by that much. Four people's worth of food wasn't all that much more than one.

Her primary concern was time, which Raivis would certainly save them if he knew routes into the Zone already. The other concern she had was related to traps and some of the dangers that they might find within the Zone. Again, Raivis would be a help there.

The pros were slowly starting to outweigh the cons.

"One day," she said decisively. "If we find your company too... onerous, then after a day we'll be splitting apart. Basically, you have until we lift camp tomorrow morning to impress me with your utility."

Raivis blinked, then adjusted his glasses. "I don't think I've ever been given a test quite like that. But alright. I'm not sure if you'll be willing to go too deep into the Zone in any case. It's not a safe place here, and it only becomes more dangerous the closer to the centre you go."

"We're not afraid of nothing!" Crystal said with a thumb's up.

Alice rolled her eyes. Another in-joke that no one here would catch onto except for the two of... she noticed Vasilisa chuckle. It gave her a moment's pause, but it might have been nothing.

"Should we head out, then?" Alice asked.

"Give us twenty to pack up," Raivis said. He stood, grabbed a metal flask, and carefully poured the rest of the kettle into it. "Sorry. Clean water can be a pain to come by. I always drink boiled water if I can afford to while out in the Zone. You only need to get a stomach bug once to decide that a bit of precaution is well worth the price."

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The scientist took a moment to address his mercenary guards, who seemed... annoyed, but resigned to follow along. One of them stood watch, routinely looking down both sides of the overpass while the other got their equipment sorted.

"What's this thing?" Crystal asked as she lifted a metal tin with a glass tube in its centre.

"Radiation warning device," Raivis said. "And I have a geiger counter here, voltmeters, portable battery chargers, a few tools... I used to carry a portable microscope all over, but the darned thing kept breaking. They don't make too many things as solid as they need to be in a place like this."

"I can imagine," Crystal said. "I like microscopes. Sometimes, when I was bored, I'd make one and look at all the cool little things crawling around. Oh, and I like making telescopes too! I can name a whole bunch of constellations, you know!"

"Making?" Raivis asked.

"Mhm!" Crystal said without elaborating.

Alice just gave her a look. She wasn't aware that Crystal had that kind of hobby. She'd known her to be interested in a few things tangentially-related to her power (one of their first ever discussions had been about the validity of those social media posts about healing crystals which Crystal had both proven to be true and debunked at the same time) but Alice wasn't aware that she had... more.

This trip was perhaps the longest they'd ever been alone together. She was learning a fair bit about her companion.

The mercenaries were equipped and ready to go within five minutes. Raivis took five more than that as he puttered about and picked up a few odds and ends then sorted and resorted his backpack so that everything was tucked away securely.

"Alright, I believe that that was everything," he said as he tugged his coat's lapels on straighter. "Shall we?"

"Lead the way," Alice said.

The guards eyed her and Crystal for a bit, then one communicated to the other with a few quick signs. They probably didn't expect her to understand that the older of the two was telling the younger that the three of them weren't armed enough to be threats. The older was going to keep an eye on them anyway, the younger was tasked with keeping watch on their surroundings.

She was... not angry about that. Professionalism wasn't something she minded. They were both trying rather hard to be nondescript and impersonal, which she could also respect as long as they didn't interfere or try to cause her or Crystal harm. She belatedly added Vasilisa to that list.

"So, how does this thing tell you about radiation?" Crystal asked as she flipped that little metal tin around.

There were little beads of some sort in the glass tube at the centre which fell with every flip.

"It's a little finicky," Raivis said. He was grinning, and seemed more than happy to explain. "But the beads on the inside collect static energy when shaken. They'll cling to the walls of the tube. If there's ionising radiation, it'll sap the static electricity..."

"And the beads fall," Crystal said. She shook the tube and raised it to eye level. The beads within did stick to the inner walls. "Neat!"

"It's not the ideal way to measure any amount of radiation," Raivis said. "If the beads fall quickly enough for you to notice, then the level of radiation you've taken in that time is quite high. Still, it's better than nothing."

"Is radiation a problem?" Vasilisa asked.

"In the Zone? With the number of physics-bending anomalies around? Oh yes. A lot of anomalies, you'll notice, tend to glow a little. That's energy escaping them in the form of light. And if they can produce light as a by-product, you can bet they're producing more."

Alice and Crystal shared a look. Their magic tended to glow as a side-effect. They were used to constraining their magic so that it only produced a little bit of radiation. It had been very easy for Alice whose magic was shadows and darkness, though she'd been accused of causing radio interference in a few cities they'd worked in as magical girls.

It was a lot harder for Crystal, whose brighter spells frequently emitted a much wider spectrum of energy.

"Neat," Crystal said again. She gave the detector back to Raivis and didn't mention it again.

***