Chapter Twenty-Seven
Crash site- Part one
POV- Oxy
I'm on my stomach.
My face burns. I can feel the blood running down my cheek and in my mouth a bittersweet metallic taste builds up. It's blood mixed with dust and small pieces of what looks like debris, or small stones between my teeth and tongue.
My whole body hurts. The pain is horrible in my left leg. It feels like I've been stuck with a red-hot iron.
What has happened?
I open my eyes and what I see is a crimson scene of flames and black smoke rising to the skies, merging with the darkness of the night. Is it night to begin with? I don't know, although it seems to be. I see really poorly and my vision is constantly moving in and out of focus. I feel like my head is going to explode and I feel dizzy. I have bruises all over my body, my clothes are dirty and stained with blood and other things I can't figure out.
I look up at the sky again and this time I can see that it is indeed night. Through the smoke filters the light of the moon and the debris floating in high orbit. They are the pieces of a different earth that came with them.
The Fractus.
I vomit on the floor, something that I suppose could well be food and maybe some piece of esophagus, or some other part of my body. I can't say for sure and for that matter I don't care either. I just wanted to get it out of me.
I don't hear very well. Just muffled sounds, as if someone had fired a gun near my eardrums. The vision in my right eye looks a reddish color. I try to get up leaning on my elbows. Everywhere I look all I see is a sea of debris, some electrical sparks and the remains of ruined instruments and structures.
What has happened?
I can barely breathe, but I try to get up when a searing pain in my left leg and stomach makes me scream, with a sound I didn't even know I could make. I can barely hear myself, but I'm screaming so much that it wouldn't be weird if I was damaging my vocal cords.
I look down at my legs and discover the cause.
I have a huge piece of debris crushing half of my tibia. As for my stomach I discover the cause soon. I have a crystal that is digging into my intestines. An animalistic scream tries to escape from my throat again, but is drowned out by a viscous gargle of blood, saliva and dirt.
The pain, now I understand. Damn it!
My hands tremble and wound themselves on the sharp edges of the glass, as I tear off the piece with one pull. I grit my teeth, and tears mixed with blood begin to pool in my eyes.
Now comes the worst. Many say that the pain is felt most when they are hurt. Those who say that have not experienced what it is like to regenerate a fey.
I feel a tingle first. That's heaven before hell. Then comes a burning, as if someone has poured boiling alcohol into my stomach. I am aware that, if had I been fully awake, this kind of pain would be much worse. The only good thing is that I know my regeneration is good and after thirty seconds the pain goes away.
I can feel cracking in my back, hip and ribs, I must have broken a few things. But the worst is yet to come.
At the slightest movement I make with my left leg I feel a much greater pain. I know that the foot is totally crushed and that the continuous regeneration and destruction of the bone and tissue is what is causing this to be much worse. I must have woken up at just the right time when I could have died, due to the process of blood loss and constant regeneration. My core has kept me alive, but it has a limit. I have to free my leg and keep it from losing blood, so the regeneration process will be complete. The piece crushing the limb is large, but I should be able to move it.
I'm not in the best physical condition, but I must have been a pretty active girl from the Other Side, because I've never lacked strength, even though I'm lazy as fuck.
I have to do it fast. Despite my regeneration I'm tired and the headache is so horrible I don't even know how I'm conscious.
I straighten as best I can half of my body. Should I move the block? or just crawl over and cut the limb off completely? No, that would be more painful. Better to leave the bone structure, even if it is destroyed. I'm not sure if my core could handle regenerating a complete limb and, from what I've seen, that's much more painful.
After two minutes of pushing and shoving, whining and screaming I manage to remove it, it must have weighed at least a hundred kilos.
The excruciating pain begins once again. First the bone and some of the nerve tissue is put back together. It is like feeling hundreds of needles being stuck in. Because the regeneration is not layered, and occurs simultaneously for all parts, parts of the nerve tissue are damaged again, while the bone is rebuilt. Rebuild, destroy, rebuild again.
I groan on the floor and pound the ground with my fists, feeling my knuckles hurt. That's how the first five minutes go. In the final stage comes the burning of the flesh again as the muscle tissue and finally the skin pulls itself together.
This has never happened before. I have been tortured, shot, slapped, and once gored by a rhino, but I have never injured a limb to this extent.
I feel tired and am likely to pass out at some point. My core must be quite exhausted from so much work. I should rest. But I can't, I have to move. Maybe after this I should have a period of inactivity. I've never had one in over a hundred years.
I am regaining some of my hearing, I hear distant explosions. Horrible, unintelligible screams from voices that seem to have little or nothing human about them. It is despair, madness. Calls for help that I can't answer right now. There are too many among the crackling of the flames. I think I can make out shapes running, but their flight is soon cut short as they end up being caught by the whips of fire from the flames and fall to never get up again.
This should not be like this. Now I remember.
The linear accelerator.
No. This can't be happening! I'm part of the team that works here.
What went wrong? We did all the right calculations. What is this? Sabotage? An enemy attack? Do they even know what we're trying to do here? No, that's not possible. Tokyo's early warning system is good. We should have known in advance if there were any fractus swarms in the vicinity or some of those crazy fanatics who worship them as gods.
I don't want to believe it. If something went wrong... does that mean that over twenty-four kilometers there is nothing but destruction? No. What the fuck went wrong? Perhaps a problem at the initial Minato station or a problem at the other substations with the cooling system? The synchroton radiation had been checked and there were no problems like last week. The simulation was fine.
Zuriqth! Oh, no. He was in the mirror capsule.
"Zuriqth!" I say slowly, and my lips tremble as I pronounce his name. There is no way he could be okay. He was the target of the energy beam, then the jikanium particle separation. This can't be happening. "Guys?! Is anyone there? Zuriqth!"
Zuriqth where are you?
This isn't real.
A hand lands on my shoulder. I turn around hoping it's him. That he's okay. Please.
Zuriqth...
***
Wednesday, March 21. 7AM. 125 S.A.
Lake Lemac, Lugrin. France.
"Hey, is something wrong?" Oxy turned around and saw herself reflected in Mai's green eyes, which looked at her with a mixture of concern and bewilderment. Her small hand had landed on Oxy shoulder and she had shaken it a little, seeing that she had stopped and froze for a moment.
Oxy looked around. They had just gotten off the ship and everyone had activated their tactical masks from their turtle backpack. In the air they could smell burning flesh and a strong odor of jet fuel. Possibly some of it had not burned and had been sprayed all over the place.
All around them there were aeronautical technicians and forensic experts, and there were soldiers guarding the place. Everything was a hive of activity. Destruction everywhere in the area. Oxy looked to the side of the shore and saw the long line the plane had drawn on its path, as it smashed into the ground.
She understood it, but it didn't make her happy.
That line reminded her of that fateful night, when more than two million people died on the surface of Tokyo due to an accident trying to unravel the nature of a type of fractus core found in the Kuril Islands, in the year 2098 of the Ancient Era. The subway linear accelerator had proven to be a good way to unlock the secrets of such cores. But it had gone wrong.
"I'm fine, it's nothing." Oxy swallowed hard and gave Mai a weak smile that didn't quite hide the fact that she was shocked by the scene. That memory was the reason she disliked tragedy scenarios and tried to stay away from scenarios involving such events. Physics and academic research was her refuge. "Let's see what this is all about," she said and again, tightly gripping the two suitcases she was carrying, she continued on her way, trailing behind Philip and Zi. Mai watched her walk with a determined step, but knew that the scene must have shocked her a little.
The entire team had parked in a clear patch of vegetation, designated for ships, and had come down carrying some of the equipment. Carissia meanwhile would remain waiting for orders in the ship.
Several modules had been set up in the surrounding area and quite large tents had been erected. That would undoubtedly take days. Many of the soldiers there looked young, perhaps they could be pseudo-immortals, although Mai couldn't tell for sure. Almost all of them wore safety goggles, in addition to their masks, possibly a support unit to help with the search. Then Mai remembered that Natsuki was there too. Possibly those goggles helped those who couldn't see her to detect where she was moving around.
Mai looked at Oxy again, when Lizbeth from behind called out to her. "You're not worried about that?"
"The what?" Mai asked in confusion and Lizbeth pointed to the back, a few meters away from where they were standing.
Shin had fallen behind the group. Although due to the armor he had a bit of facial paralysis that prevented him from showing emotions, at that moment his brow was a bit more furrowed, as if he was upset about something.
He was looking around along the coast, where the plane had crashed. His vision was not focused on the technicians and military personnel who were deployed in the area. He was looking at the wreckage of the plane scattered all over the place and out into the lake as well where several boats were gliding around deploying underwater drones.
"What's he doing?" Mai asked, raising an eyebrow and they both approached. "Hey," Mai said taking his hand. "Is something wrong? Did you see something weird?"
Shin turned around and looked at the two quizzically. "I don't know... there's something familiar about all this."
"How many accidents have you seen before?" Lizbeth asked, with a grin of circumstance.
"That's not what I mean." Shin looked away from both of them and looked back to the farthest parts of the accident and then up at the sky. "I feel like I've seen this before."
"Deja vu? You were once destroyed by a turbine."
"That's not it." He looked at them again and something deep inside him bothered him to no end. For some reason he felt a knot in his stomach from seeing them there. What is this? Why do I feel that there is something very wrong here? For some reason he felt like he wanted to get them both out of that place at any cost. But why? It didn't make sense.
His senses were alert for something he couldn't understand. As if he had seen that before. But there was no way such a thing could be true.
"Put on a mask," Mai finally ordered him, smiling a little and letting go of his hand. Most likely for her, all that destruction was reminding Shin of the lake and there was nothing strange about that. Shin's mind worked even more strangely than the feys', sometimes she got the impression that he thought too much about things. Or maybe it was just that the feys were too free in their thinking.
"You've finally arrived!" Ryuuji's voice brought everyone out of their musings and they turned to look at him.
He was wearing coveralls similar to theirs. He exchanged a fist bump with Zi and Philip who were ahead and then with Oxy who was still showing a self-absorbed expression. But they also clashed fists with someone Shin couldn't see.
Natsuki was also there, also in her coveralls and mask. The others could see her thanks to the active layer of detecting idogenic particles in their eyes, but Shin could not see her, even though he could detect that someone was there. If it wasn't for the device in his ear, being able to transmit what she was saying, he would have barely been able to detect her.
Although that only counted for the Neurowires of the Nevermore staff, which were specially designed to emit ideogenic two-way particles. These particles were of a virtual type at first, but then changed as they left the source of emission, to one that could pick up information from the environment. On its return to the source of emission it could transform the information captured from Natsuki, along with her interaction with the environment, into signals that were fed into the auditory and visual cortex of the team members and that they could understand.
While she could be seen by none other than Ryuuji naturally, Natsuki could physically interact with her environment, although everything she touched underwent a phase shift, due to the Eienosky emissive layer of herself, and became temporarily invisible to anyone who could not see her.
In Shin's case he could only hear her thanks to the assistance device in his ear, but that was more than enough. The other soldiers and other personnel could see her with the specialized goggles. In the event that there were any Thelesis projection users on site, they could do so without it.
They hardly noticed the other three people accompanying Ryuuji and Natsuki. All of them also wearing masks. One was a man in a military duty uniform, a bit of a lanky fellow. He was followed by a somewhat shorter man with specialized glasses, serious looking, dressed in civilian clothes, and lastly a slim young looking woman. The latter was a fey with short dark hair, and dressed entirely in black with a sleeveless coat. It was not possible to see her eyes, as she was wearing dark glasses. Upon seeing her Mai motioned to Lizbeth and she turned away and barely moved her lips but Shin, walking a few feet behind, understood as clearly as if she had told him straight out.
"It's from the Council." Lizbeth had used the thelesic ability of her voice. That was a sign that Shin was not going to do anything strange. There was no reason, he wouldn't do anything anyway. But he knew that, in case something happened, with a Council viewer there was a possibility that he would be on site not only for the investigation, but also to observe the performance of the agents.
"Miss Izumi, Professor Ishijima. Welcome." That had been the tall, lanky man who approached and greeted Mai and then Oxy. That surprised Shin, it had been a long time since he had heard Oxy's identity as a front. Apparently she hadn't changed since the time he had known her.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The protocol greetings took only a few seconds, but it was always routine. The thin man was the on-site commander of the operation. His name was Hugo Lefreve and he was the director of Crisis Operations of the French Army's Air Security Administration. Accompanying him was Pierre Allard, also director of air security crisis, but from the Swiss Army.
The woman took her time, she had a more British accent it seemed to Shin but, indeed, she was a Council observer. Her name was Jen Anderson. She greeted everyone cordially but it seemed that her tone was somewhat stilted. That became more pronounced when it was Shin's turn. But she wasn't the only one. The other two men had also stopped almost half a second before shaking his hand and looked at him a little strangely. But that was only for a couple of seconds and they greeted him just like the others who had just arrived.
That almost always happened, so Shin didn't mind at all. There was something that always made people look at him a little strange at first. Almost as if they knew he was neither a human nor a fey at all. It wasn't something exaggerated like what that young soldier had done just a few days ago in Kolsay, that was probably due to the meteorite. This was more subtle, but it was still there. In fact even some of the technicians and soldiers had given him a sidelong glance. It wasn't hostility, just strangeness.
Some things never change, Shin sighed to himself and raised a fist slowly. Almost instantly he felt another invisible fist colliding with his own.
[How have you been big guy?] Natsuki had approached and Shin tried to quietly tell her and Ryuuji about the last few days. Meanwhile Director Lefreve and Allard were talking to Oxy and Mai.
"Since when are you working here?" Mai asked.
"We've been here all night," Allard replied, sighing.
"It's an old plane, isn't it?"
"Yes, Ancient Era. Please come with me to the command center and I'll give you all the data."
The woman named Jen Anderson took the floor. "I want to be clear. The reason you are all here is to collaborate together in the investigation."
"...Ok?" nodded Mai.
The entire group entered a rather large tent, the interior of which had not been modified with an SDD. That was for sure to preserve the condition of the place in case more evidence had to be collected. Although the tents themselves were much further away from the site of the tragedy by at least a couple of hundred meters. Upon entering, Lefreve and the other two removed their masks and so did Mai and her team.
Inside the tent were other people working on holographic projectors and others on measuring screens that, as far as Oxy and Shin could tell, were monitoring atmospheric and terrain parameters over a fairly wide radius. Others were monitoring and receiving reports from the perimeter fence, to prevent anyone from entering the site without authorization.
A perimeter polygon had been established to the east that reached almost as far as Port Valais, in the east, following the lakeshore line. But where they were was inside a perimeter circle that had as its zero point the Vindry Beach, where the first contact of the plane with the ground had taken place. A radius of about 3.83 kilometers and about 24 kilometers in circumference. But the first sighting of the plane in the sky had been established by primary radar and satellite alert almost on the border separating France and Switzerland on that part of the lake, just before reaching the Saint Gingolph area.
Other people in the tent were from other agencies. Many were dressed in civilian clothes, but with their respective IDs. There were so many acronyms that Shin could barely memorize them all. Air traffic, aviation security, stratospheric security, crisis departments, surveillance agency and navigation protocol, military, air force, disaster prevention, Dark Events control, the Council, and who knows what other agencies were involved in the place.
In all that group Mai stood out as the smallest, yet it could be seen that many of those people even stopped doing their jobs to stop and look at her. As far as Shin knew, her face was not public due to the number of enemies Nevermore had made over the years. Yet many organisms knew who she really was, so everyone in that tent must have known who she was.
While not all the details of the war were known to the world, Mai's stories had spread. Even more so since at that time she had dark hair as legend had it that she had been the girl who had ended the war with a bow. Many stories were lies, or rather, half-truths.
Mai felt those stares, but took a short breath and followed Lefreve, while both Lizbeth and Shin noticed a slight tremor in her shoulders and her ears flushed slightly.
Our girl doesn't like attention, thought Lizbeth.
That attention lasted only a few seconds and soon after almost everyone returned to their work. Lefreve led them to the main table where a group of soldiers were at a holographic terrain projection, which showed the whole place being investigated. Apparently that plane had been missing parts for several kilometers before reaching its final destination. That explained why the polygonal perimeter was much larger and covered part of the lake on the Swiss side. The director asked for the table and the soldiers stepped back.
The group stood around the table and paid attention to the projection, all except Zi, who for some reason looked suspiciously at Jen Anderson. The woman felt that look on her face. What's wrong with her, she thought. Jen felt that for some reason she sensed that Zi had been looking at her from the moment their eyes had first met.
"All right. This is what we have for now," Lefreve said and then, moving his hands over a menu on the tactile surface of the table, he activated the corner projectors and a new hologram was displayed on the operations table.
Part of it was images of the research being carried out. Images taken with three-dimensional projection of the scene and others in video. But the one that took up almost all of the three-dimensional projection was of an Ancient Era aircraft.
https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/42dd80f9-5ac6-42d5-8ccc-bcea020b6152/dgcytru-31f118f8-60b2-4164-aa65-536bac051172.jpg/v1/fill/w_1063,h_752,q_70,strp/nevermore_enygma_vol_4_chapter_27_by_hasegawakein_dgcytru-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTA2IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNDJkZDgwZjktNWFjNi00MmQ1LThjY2MtYmNlYTAyMGI2MTUyXC9kZ2N5dHJ1LTMxZjExOGY4LTYwYjItNDE2NC1hYTY1LTUzNmJhYzA1MTE3Mi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.ap4-jF2JeBTJGr2fpoO7n0mXxMlqSUtefBwmyyDolvI [https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/42dd80f9-5ac6-42d5-8ccc-bcea020b6152/dgcytru-31f118f8-60b2-4164-aa65-536bac051172.jpg/v1/fill/w_1063,h_752,q_70,strp/nevermore_enygma_vol_4_chapter_27_by_hasegawakein_dgcytru-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTA2IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNDJkZDgwZjktNWFjNi00MmQ1LThjY2MtYmNlYTAyMGI2MTUyXC9kZ2N5dHJ1LTMxZjExOGY4LTYwYjItNDE2NC1hYTY1LTUzNmJhYzA1MTE3Mi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.ap4-jF2JeBTJGr2fpoO7n0mXxMlqSUtefBwmyyDolvI]
"This is a Baering 616 type plane from the Ancient Era. Twinjet with R&R engines. They haven't been made for over 175 years," Lefreve continued.
Shin recognized it instantly, something he had not been able to do on arrival due to its wrecked condition. That type of plane had come online in the mid-nineties of the twentieth century and he had flown a couple of times in that type, before his disappearance in 1999. Seeing the hologram gave Shin the same feeling he had had when he got off the ship.
"This plane appeared late last night," Lefreve continued.
"Where did it come from? Isn't it against regulation to use this type of aircraft now?" Zi asked.
Because the Council had been terse with the information provided, all they knew was that "there was something that shouldn't be there". The plane qualified as something old but it was not uncommon for some, who could afford it, to use vintage planes from another era to travel, but with modifications to current regulations. One example was Mai's car, a type of off-road car from the Ancient Era but with modifications. This didn't seem to be the case with the airplane, though.
"That's where the weirdness comes in. This plane... disappeared in 2012 from the Ancient Era." Looks turned from Lefreve to the hologram.
"Is it an oopart?" Philip asked.
"We don't know yet. But if it is, it's the biggest oopart I've ever seen."
He's lucky, Philip thought.
"Did you check the flight data?" asked Mai.
"Yes, that's how we know it's from 2012. But that's not the weirdest thing."
"What do you mean?" Zi asked.
"This flight, it's a ghost flight. G/54. JANEF class."
"Gateway/54. Just Another Non Existant Flight," Lizbeth mused in surprise.
"WWW code?" Mai asked.
"Exactly," Lefreve nodded. "It was the code assigned by the International Flight Organization at the time. But we were able to find out the internal code from the International Security Agency. B313-MG. That's how we know it was a shared code."
"Where was it coming from?" Shin inquired, thinking about the final MG of the flight code.
"The flight plan was Maldives with destination Geneva and a stop in Istanbul," Lefreve informed him. "Only thirty passengers boarded in the Maldives, most of the passengers boarded in Istanbul."
"How many victims?"
"According to historical records, of the thirty in the Maldives, twenty got off in Istanbul and there were one hundred and ninety passengers boarding. Counting crew, we have 211 on the manifest for the final part of the trajectory."
Mai let out a slight sigh when she heard the number of casualties. "Anemi Airlines, right?"
"Yes," the director stated. "Do you know it?"
"Yes, I remember this," Mai nodded. "It was a big search that was done at the time. The news was all over the place and no one could explain how a plane could disappear in the middle of nowhere." Oxy and Lizbeth also nodded. All of them at that time did not know each other, but they could place the event because it had had worldwide coverage. Mai continued in a subdued tone. "I also remember that after a couple of years the search ended and it all came to nothing. I guess they were right... the plane hadn't disappeared. It just changed its arrival time."
Shin on the other hand was crossed his arms in thought. 2012? I wasn't here. That thought somewhat relieved him, although he didn't understand why. Maybe Lizbeth was right and he had seen too many accidents in his life. "I guess this is all because the flight was a ghost flight?"
Mai turned to Shin. "The ghost flight thing isn't exactly like the ones in your time."
"It's not like the ones we did back then," Lizbeth seconded.
Mai nodded. "Ghost flights, or stealth airlines, became fashionable at the end of the 20th century due to terrorist events. Anemi Airlines in particular became quite well known because of this crash. It was a discreet airline that offered tourist tickets, but it also offered tickets for people who were highly sensitive targets, corporate executives, diplomatic pouches, movements of spies, in this particular case we never really knew what happened."
Lefreve nodded. "Exactly. The story we have is that he disappeared on March 20, 2012 at 1700 Zulu, 7P.M local time. It was a three-hour trip from Istanbul to Geneva Airport."
Oxy furrowed her brow. "That's the same time it disappeared in 2012, the same time it showed up here?
"Almost," Lefreve admitted. "Here it was detected at 1700, but it crashed a few minutes later."
Allard took the floor. "On our side the radars detected that there was only something in the sky at FL300 over Port Valais. By the time we got to Gingolph it had dropped to FL250."
"Upon detection you had no signal from the aircraft?"
"Absolutely none," replied Lefreve. "This type of aircraft at the time had seven tracking systems. Two transponders, the ACARS system, engine house monitoring system, Hanshake Ping, operating system monitoring system, and the avionics system as well. ADS system, ACSCV. Everything from that time. But there was no communication at all."
Allard continued. "Investigations at that time did not detect any anomalies before the plane disappeared. The handshake of the 1700 Zulu had been done without any problems and then it disappeared completely. Prior to that, the flight control transmission from the aircraft had been made between France and Switzerland and was estimated to arrive at the airport in just five minutes."
"If this was an DE then it could have been an accident, unless there was something on board," Lizbeth said, crossing her arms. "I think I heard a lot of theories about that time, since two other signals had appeared on military radar, which was part of what was called the hijacking theory. I think it was that they might have disappeared the plane by flying it under the radar shadow of another plane."
Oxy nodded. "Yes, I was just remembering that. The plane had enough fuel to have flown halfway across the Atlantic with no problems. I think there were theories of terrorism, hijacking, espionage and a lot of other things."
Allard nodded as well, looking at Oxy. "The investigation back then was meticulous, because it literally vanished into thin air. Primary military radars last detected it right where it appeared last night."
"Is there any suspicion of an DE? Hasn't any anomalous signal been detected?"
"Absolutely nothing so far. It just appeared out of nowhere. The first thing we thought was that it was some heavy structure, that it might have detached from some orbital station, but it wasn't. Orbital Belt weapons would have destroyed it before it even entered the atmosphere. This is something that originated here, over terrestrial airspace."
"Could it have been some terrorist attack from that time?" Shin asked.
Oxy sighed. "It was 2012, I don't think it had anything to do with it... although if it was from this time it's a very different thing."
Everyone looked at her, but it was Jen Anderson who spoke up. "And that's the reason you are here. We need to determine if this was an DE, or if it was premeditated."
"Premeditated? We're talking about transporting something in time that weighs over 300 tons over more than two centuries! We don't have that technology. You should know that by now," Oxy spat, raising an eyebrow. She understood why she was finally there.
Anderson continued. "The investigation you will be conducting is to cooperate and determine the possible causes, that may have allowed the event to happen, or if it is of a different nature, to proceed to apprehend those responsible in case it could happen again."
"This is related to the Vatican and the attack on Pyrene, right?" Mai asked, looking at the woman with suspicious eyes. "I read the report from our station in Rome. They suspect that what they had in their possession is something that has some sort of ability with time. Is the attack that occurred in Grenoble related?"
"We can't know for sure yet. That's why you are here."
Internal performance investigation and an DE investigation. This is going to be a pain in the ass, Mai thought.
"We have something else to consider," Lefreve began. "In the evidence gathering work we're doing, nothing electronic we've found so far works."
"What do you mean?" Zi asked.
"Batteries, cell phones, cameras, consoles, avionics, sensors, even watches. There's nothing that works."
"Something drained all the electronics?"
"Those planes had an emergency battery system that still gave them a range of about twenty to thirty minutes. We found those batteries, they are completely drained too. Whatever brought this plane in, it knocked out every piece of electronics on board."
"What about the cargo manifest?" Shin asked. "Could there be anything unusual on board?"
"That, we are still recovering, because the plane apparently started to destroy itself in the air we have a whole area of kilometers to search. There are fragments from Port Valais to here and not to mention that many may have fallen into the lake and in the middle of a forest. The report doesn't say anything suspicious about the payload it was carrying, but we're still looking into the possibility."
"What about the local population?" Mai asked, looking at the map of the region.
"They have evacuated to hotels ten kilometers away since last night. We don't have that many people in the area, so that wasn't a problem," Allard informed her.
"What about the witnesses to the crash?"
"They have been taken to designated areas and statements are being taken."
Mai looked at the woman again. "I would like our agents to be present for questioning." Jen Anderson nodded only and said nothing. Mai finally asked what no one had said anything about and what was the pink elephant in the room of all that had happened. "What about the victims or any survivors?"
Lefreve touched a part of the hologram and some pictures unfolded, showing body bags being carried levitating in the air. Surely some thelesis user was doing it and others that were being carried by assisting drones. "We have about fifty-seven so far. They're being taken to a temporary hangar we set up about five hundred meters from here."
Mai pursed her lips and nodded.
Jen Anderson spoke up. "I'll let you conduct the investigation as you see fit. Just keep in mind that any communication with the outside will go through central control, to make sure no information leaks out. We do not want to cause any collective panic with what has already happened in Kolsay, Edinburgh and Grenoble, nor do we want the press to use this to spread more fear. The propaganda department is already trying to put out the fires that have been lit in the last few days."
"Limiting us from having access to our own resources may be counterproductive," added Ryuuji, who had kept quiet the whole time.
"You can communicate all you want, but communications will be monitored within the security ring."
"Well, let's get started then," Mai finally sentenced with a sigh.
While Shin had been with Mai all these months, he had rarely been on an operation that required working with other agents. Aside from Carissia as support, a few meetings with Liz once a month, they had worked alone. That was without counting the island support that was always available to both of them. Shin could count on one hand the number of times they had worked with agents from other groups, who had met in the same investigation. That's not counting the first time they worked together, but that time Shin was not part of the team, but rather part of the problem.
Still, on those few occasions, he had been able to see Mai's display as a team leader. It showed why she had remained in charge of special operations for so long. She knew how to give orders and be obeyed. The investigation would be conducted in accordance with the protocol established before they arrived and which complied with the regulations of the Annex for air accident investigations.
Mai would be in the main area of operations. This was because they had to collate all the data coming in from the field investigation and, at the same time, they had to compare the information with past data. There was a long list of passengers, cabin attendants, pilots, people who had been involved in the investigation in the past and all had to be verified.
Philip and Zi would be sent to cross-check the interrogations of the eyewitnesses of the crash. Natsuki and Ryuuji would continue with their work, assisting the technicians and specialist soldiers in the recovery of electronic material and parts that could solve the enigma. There was another group of five FRT agents who had been helping from before and they would continue with the same work.
Carissia would be setting up the temporary tents in the meantime, and then join the search but in a different location. While they could have used the ship as another station, Allard asked Mai for permission if Carissia could join the aerial search team in the east, in the larger polygon. In that area they were looking for part of the plane's cargo and some of it might be lost either in the lake or in the forest. One more aircraft for aerial reconnaissance could always help.
Oxy, for her part, would be with a separate control station with other technicians who were studying the terrain to find out if there was anything that could have caused that plane to teleport two centuries into the future. This would be done by scanning parts of the plane while deploying the drones brought in from Languedoc. Oxy's task was to study possible characteristics of the site that could have justified why it happened right there. If it was really an accident caused by a Dark Event, even a screw could have caused the accident.
Lizbeth in her case would be with Shin, but on different tasks. Lizbeth would be with the forensic experts who were identifying the victims. When it was his turn to find out what his assigned task would be, Mai simply gave him a look. "Dead bodies?" Shin asked.
"Dead bodies," replied Mai.
At the mention of the bodies, Allard and Lefreve looked at each other a little nervously. Lefreve spoke first. "Regarding the bodies... the batteries and electronics are not the only strange thing we found. The bodies are also in a strange state, at least the victims we haven't found all charred."
Shin looked at them both. "What do you mean?"
"If you're going to conduct an inspection of the bodies... I think you'll find out instantly," Allard stated.