Iceland from the air was another planet.
Yuki woke up for the descent and pressed her face to the window and went completely still. No trees. No city spread. Just black volcanic rock and white snow and the occasional burst of green that made no sense next to everything else, and the ocean everywhere, grey and enormous and entirely indifferent.
"It looks angry," she said.
"Geologically active," he said.
"That's a polite way to say the ground is angry." She watched a plume of steam rising from somewhere in the rock below. "Is that a volcano?"
"Geothermal vent."
"There's just — steam coming out of the ground."
"Iceland sits on a tectonic boundary," he said. "The whole island is essentially—"
"Angry ground," she said.
He looked at her.
"You were going to say something geological," she said. "I summarised."
"Inaccurately."
"Accurately in spirit." She turned from the window and looked at him. She was still in his jacket from the Melbourne flight, which she'd apparently decided was hers now and he'd decided not to address. "How cold is it?"
"Very."
"More specific."
"Minus eight on the ground. Wind makes it worse."
She looked at her white dress visible under his jacket. Looked at him. "I need the coat."
"I told you to bring the coat."
"You said one item—"
"I said one item for Australia," he said. "Iceland was always going to require the coat."
"You could have specified—"
"You could have asked."
She pointed at him. "New folder."
"You have a coat. It's in the bag."
"My Canada coat." She looked back out the window at the angry ground. "Fine. It'll do." Then, quietly: "It's beautiful though."
He looked at the landscape below. Black and white and vast, the steam rising in columns, the ocean at every edge. "Yes," he said.
She glanced at him sideways. He was looking at the window. She smiled and went back to looking at it too, and his hand found hers on the seat and stayed there, and neither of them said anything else until they landed.
The Reykjavik liaison was waiting on the tarmac.
Young, serious, visibly relieved — the kind of relieved that came from ten days of watching a Floor 44 gate sit in your city with no solution and then two people arriving in a private plane.
"The gate is in the old harbour district," he said, walking quickly to keep up with Kairo's pace. "Smaller than we expected for the floor level — the pull radius is contained but the interior environment has been affecting surrounding electromagnetic systems. Communications within four blocks are unreliable."
"That's a new one," Yuki said, from Kairo's back. She'd climbed up on the tarmac without ceremony, Canada coat on, white scarf, chin on his head. The liaison had looked at this arrangement and filed it under normal, which was the correct response.
"The floor does that," Kairo said. "Floor 44 has an electromagnetic variant. It's not the boss — it's the environment itself. The floor generates interference as a mechanic."
"So your Detection—" Yuki started.
"Partially degraded inside," he said. "Which is why you're range."
She nodded, thinking through it. "My ability doesn't use electromagnetic signals," she said. "It should work at full capacity."
"Yes."
"So I'm actually the primary sensor in there."
"Yes."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "You could have led with that."
"I just did."
"You led with 'you're range' which is very—" she paused, "—supporting role energy."
"You're the primary sensor in an electromagnetic interference environment," he said. "Is that better?"
"Significantly," she said, with dignity.
The liaison was looking between them with the expression everyone eventually got. He'd stopped walking to keep up and was just walking normally now, which was the correct adaptation.
Reykjavik in November was exactly as cold as minus eight with wind made it.
Yuki had her face buried in the white scarf from the moment they left the car. Only her eyes were visible, red and bright, tracking everything above the fabric.
"I can't feel my nose," she said, muffled.
"You've been outside for thirty seconds."
"It's very fast cold." She pulled the scarf tighter. "Tokyo cold is polite. This cold is aggressive."
"You wanted to come to Iceland."
"I wanted to see Iceland. Seeing it is great. The temperature is aggressive." She looked at the harbour — grey water, old coloured buildings along the front, and the gate visible past the marina, a black circle against the grey sky. "Actually it's beautiful," she said, quieter. "Even the cold."
He looked at her profile — eyes above the scarf, red against all the grey. "Yes," he said.
She turned and caught him looking. Even with half her face covered he could see the ears going pink. "Observe the gate," she said.
"I am observing the gate."
"You were observing me."
"Multi-tasking," he said, and kept walking, and she made a sound into her scarf that was trying very hard not to be a laugh and mostly failing.
The gate was smaller than Melbourne, larger than Fukuoka, sitting in the harbour district with the old buildings around it looking faintly offended by its presence, like the architecture had opinions about black void circles in the neighbourhood.
The electromagnetic interference was immediate — he felt it as a pressure in Detection, the ability going patchy, his range dropping to barely ten metres. Unreliable.
Yuki's ability left her in a clean pulse.
No interference. Crystal clear.
"Eight contacts," she said immediately. "Spread in a loose ring, approximately thirty metres. They're not moving but they're oriented inward — they know something entered."
"They're waiting," he said.
"All of them at once if we approach the centre," she said. "They'll converge."
"Split them first." He looked at the floor environment — stone interior, low ceiling, the interference making the air itself feel textured. "If I Flash Step around the outside of the ring—"
"They'll turn to track you and break the inward orientation," she said. "The convergence pattern collapses."
"Yes."
"Go," she said.
He went.
The ring broke on the third pass — contacts turning to track his movement, their coordinated inward orientation dissolving into individual responses, and once they were individual responses they were manageable. Yuki called position and distance and he moved through them clean and certain and the electromagnetic interference meant nothing because she was better range than Detection had ever been in here.
Six minutes.
The gate closed.
They came back into the Reykjavik cold and the colour of the old harbour buildings hit differently after the stone interior — warm reds and yellows against the grey sky, the water, the mountains beyond the city.
Yuki looked at all of it with her scarf still pulled up.
"I love it here," she said, muffled.
"It's minus eight."
"I love it anyway." She slid off his back and turned slowly, looking at the harbour, the buildings, the mountains. "If we ever come back—"
"We'd have to clear another gate."
"Then I hope another gate opens here." She faced him and reached up and pulled his scarf — which she'd wound around him at the hotel that morning — more firmly around his neck. He stood still and let her. She looked up at him from very close. "You were perfect in there."
"You were the range," he said.
"We were perfect in there," she corrected.
He looked at her. At the red eyes above the white scarf and the Canada coat and the white hair going slightly wild in the Iceland wind. He reached up and tucked a piece of it back.
She held very still.
He leaned down and kissed her forehead — the only accessible part of her face not buried in scarf — and she made a muffled sound and grabbed the front of his coat with both hands.
"That doesn't count," she said.
"It counts."
"The scarf is in the way—"
He unwound the scarf just enough and kissed her properly and the Iceland wind went on being aggressive and she held his coat and kissed him back with everything she had and somewhere nearby a seagull made a noise of strong opinion.
She pulled back laughing. "The seagull—"
"Ignore the seagull."
"It sounded so judgmental—"
"Yuki."
She was still laughing when he found the node — the solid fog against the harbour wall, exactly where she'd have found it if she'd been looking.
She touched it.
"Origin sequence confirmed. Harbour North instance. Eleven remain active."
Eleven.
She looked at the number like she was doing arithmetic. "Eleven," she said.
"Eleven," he said.
She looked at the harbour. At the mountains behind the city. At the seagull, which had relocated to a nearby bollard and was watching them with obvious opinions.
"We should eat something," she said. "Before the flight."
"There's a flight to catch—"
"There's always a flight to catch." She took his hand and pulled. "Twenty minutes. Real Icelandic food. We're here."
He looked at the seagull. At her pulling his hand. At the coloured buildings along the harbour front.
"Twenty minutes," he said.
She lit up completely and pulled harder and he followed, because he always followed, because she was right that they were here and here was worth twenty minutes and the fish was apparently very good and eleven nodes could wait until they'd eaten.
Some things were very simple.