Hydra Heart

III

III: Smoking Espresso Pack

Florence was not an outdoorsman. He had made the mistake of bringing a tarp instead of a tent, and he thanked his lucky stars he had chosen somewhere warm to get rained on. He withdrew a tiny hard drive, the manifestation of his Kit, Water Table. It was a little object that every member of the Horizon Core held, and it enabled them to share information easily with each other, as well as store an infinite (as far as he knew) amount of information. If not for the fact that a few others existed and had access to the same information, it would have been the most valuable object on the planet.

So, he threw it as far away from himself as he could, and willed it not to return, a trick he had been practicing for some time. He could feel it sitting in the mud, a dozen or so meters from him. Time elapsed.

--

Florence blinked and rubbed his eyes. An albatross had descended near him, in the clearing where he had thrown his drive. He looked on with awe, before thinking, that kind of sea bird shouldn't be so far inland. It pecked down at the earth, and Florence strained his vision to see what it was doing without disturbing it. It seemed to already have something in its beak, and it was using its talons for something. He crawled forward, almost close enough to get a good look, when the falcon suddenly took for the skies.

Florence got up and ran after it, jumping over tree roots and rocks, trying to follow the creature. Eventually, it was out of sight, and he had no choice but to recall his Kit. He examined it.

It had a fishing bobber attached to it.