Arena froze before the door to Sterling’s office, her stomach turning somersaults. Did he intimidate her that much? It’s not like she really knew him.
A window framed a high-tech office with all sorts of monitors and a wraparound desk filled with piles of paper. There were some surprising touches, photos of what must be his parents and one of the Misfits as a group. She pushed open the door. He pointed at a chair and commanded, “Sit”, barely glancing from the screen.
“We’ve watched the vids and compared it to vids of surfers. You controlled the board with a surfer’s physical vocabulary. Pressure on a side segment makes it decelerate and accelerate.” He stated this with a matter-of-fact tone, still looking at the screen. Arena wasn’t sure why they needed her if they already knew what she did with the hoverboard.
“Yes, it’s smoother than surfing. Probably easier than staying on a board in the water,” she responded, trying to add something useful.
“You didn’t change elevation, though. Was there a control for that?” He turned toward her, his hands poised over the keyboard.
“Not that I could tell, but mostly I wanted to go forward and faster.” She played back the flight in her mind, trying to remember any small detail. There wasn’t a ridge on the other side that indicated a control like the flap of the speed control. There was a fin on the back on the top, in a dark color. The rest of the board was smooth and white. She shook her head. “I don’t remember anything else but the fin. I don’t think the fin had any purpose, though, which is a bit weird.”
Stolen novel; please report.
“I looked at the vids over and over, but they are pretty grainy. I couldn’t see anything else. No one but you got a close look at it.” Sterling scowled. “Since we are not certain how the hoverboards are powered, perhaps the fin has some significance there.’
“It looked like a cheap plastic fin, like on some training surfboards, except it was on the top. Fins are for stability in the water, so they’d be useless on the top. Maybe it’s just to hold.” Shrugging, she asked, “What about the lab?”
His scowled deepened into a mask of rage, and she sat back in her chair, gulping in air.
“We’ll have to wing it,” he said tightly. “If you can think of anything else, let me know immediately. At your first opportunity, write down everything that happened with as much detail as possible. Even small things might be important.”
Arena frantically replayed the chase in her mind, then nodded. He continued, “Starting next week, we will have an indoor surf simulator. I want you to give Nate and Lorna lessons on it. The more people we have trained to fly that thing, even a little, the easier chance we might have of getting another one away from the opposition.”
She opened her mouth, and then shut it again. It might be easier to ask Nate all her questions. He saw, and said “What?”
“I-I… well, I wanted… who is this opposition anyway?”
Arena expected for him to snap or yell, but he took a deep breath and said, “We’re not sure yet. Far as we can tell, they’re not any group that’s already on our radar. Recovering the hoverboards is our priority as far as that is the general purpose of our unit, but this new group has become more worrisome both for us and for the CIA. It may very well be an established group that just has some new players, but it appears to be someone completely new. We need to handle both problems as quickly as possible and we need to understand what they want with the hoverboards.” She nodded and looked at the door.
“Go.” he said. “Let Nathaniel beat the crap out of you. I’m sure it will be a blast.”
He spun back to the monitors.