Velron 22

Veldron's Saga 22: Backtracking

FrostWing hadn't turned up.

Neither had StarFyre.

I knew this because a few days after returning to my base, Shadow contacted me via the number I had given CYBR after breaking out of prison. I explained that the Ultimate Justice Squad didn't seem to have FrostWing and weren't aware of her disappearance before I had told them. Neria hadn't resurfaced either, according to Shadow; I gave her a better idea of exactly when she had disappeared, in the eight hours or so between the dolphin attack and her failure to report to the Squad.

Shadow pressed me for details of my capture, but I refused to say anything – everything I'd noticed there was either potentially valuable information or related directly to my abilities and vulnerabilities, which were none of her business. I did trade the approximate location of the base I had escaped from for a number to contact her directly, which she guaranteed would be good for three months. Her condition was that I not share it. Shadow moved around a lot and could be quite difficult to contact unless she wanted to talk to you.

StarFyre's disappearance was confusing, but I could probably track down where it had happened. I brought up the log of where my island had been in its absence. Random submerged drifting is part of the defence protocols if I'm gone for any length of time, so only the position log would tell me where the island was. I matched it up with the times for her escape and found that she'd apparently been nabbed somewhere near Antarctica.

Australia, Mexico, Egypt, Antarctica... how had they even known where she would be? Had they followed my island? Perhaps they'd run into her somewhere else, before she'd contacted anybody? Unlikely. She would've headed straight for a phone.

But she would have had to fly to one from Antarctica. It was quite likely that she'd simply gotten lost. I was sort of worried about her, actually – two weeks in Antarctica couldn't be good for a girl dressed in a light jumpsuit. Of course, she did have all the fire she wanted, but I hoped she'd found civilisation. Or, since that was unlikely given her missing status, been captured by somebody.

Still, I... might have had an actual scene of disappearance on my hands, if she was captured near the place that she escaped. If not, it might still be possible to follow her flight trail. The scene shouldn't be contaminated. She had left a deserted area of the world surrounded by ice and ocean, it was hardly going to be a hotspot for flying superheroes.

But my instruments were designed to detect levitation as it happened. Nothing that I had would be sensitive enough to follow a cold trail. I needed the Trabethan Jewel.

I needed the damn Trabethan Jewel.