I brought up a few with the team, and we had a back and forth, before the conversation died for reasons having nothing to do with Etna.

I lost myself in thought and in the absentminded tracking of the sensations of power. If I paid attention to my flight while sitting in the car, could I feel the difference as we got further away, like I’d felt a difference while rising in the air?

The drive felt like it took the question mark at the end of that question and dragged it out into a long, unconscious drone. A question without firm answer.

My eyes opened as the car slowed, rumbling over a frosty dirt road that had barely been looked after. Kenzie was leaning into me, fiddling with a button, a needle-thin screwdriver, and what looked like the world’s smallest arc-welder, her cupped hand containing the brilliant light.

“Slower,” Kenzie said, without looking up. “We’re close enough they could hear us coming.”

“Okay,” Etna said. She slowed down considerably, to the point the car had trouble making it over roots that cut across the top of the road.

I opened my car door and slipped out while the car was still moving.

The woods were dense on either side of the road, and the ‘road’ such as it was, was just a strip of dirt cutting an irregular path through the trees, less like it was intended to take a straight line and more like they’d cut down as few trees as they could get away with while still getting where they wanted to be.

The house itself was half concrete and half prefab, thick walls on the lower section and the side facing downhill, slabs like shipping container walls locked into each other on the other faces. The prefab slices were construction yellow, but it had been painted over in a paint that wasn’t entirely sticking. The effect was almost cool, because it looked like it was glowing through.

The chimney smoked, and two cars were parked under one corner of the building, which was held up by a pillar.

The others gathered below, Etna momentarily looking like a deer as she bobbed up and down to avoid branches above and annoying undergrowth below.

“Do we knock?” Rain asked.

“We could,” Tristan answered. “But I don’t think that would go over well.”

“Wait,” Kenzie said. “This is my specialty. Here, Etna, take this.”

Etna took the button. “What do I do with it?”