And there was no car in sight.

I just thought about the possibility of it being someone we know from before that doesn’t usually stick to Brockton Bay, such as one of the heroes who showed up to fight Leviathan. Maybe even a bigshot like Legend or Myrddin.

Plenty of those can fly. Maybe the person she’s meeting doesn’t need a car.

Sighing, humiliated, she donned her shoes, opened her car door and prepared to leave.  She wouldn’t speak of this to anyone.

“Leaving?  After coming all this way?”  The voice was female, rich with hints of a French accent, but the English was probably better than her own.

Called it!

Well, not who it was, but the part about getting ready to leave and then being interrupted by the person’s voice (this is why I suggested the person showing up behind her).

French accent, huh. Canadian, maybe? Possibly a Vasil?

She turned, then stepped a few feet in front of her car to look inside the barn.

A woman stood there, dark-skinned, with her hair cut into a short style that was more utilitarian than stylish.  She wore a doctor’s lab coat and held a white plastic clipboard with both hands.

…ohh.

I think we’re dealing with Cauldron.

So much of what our POV character has been suggesting makes sense with that in mind – the secrecy, the potential of it being a hoax, it all clicks with that lab coat.

Prediction: She’s going to conclude that she did get played and then someone’s going to show up (possibly behind her) right as she’s getting ready to leave.

For some reason I’m imagining a bearded pirate-like man, perhaps with a hook hand, but I kind of doubt that’s where this is going.

Her weight shifted from foot to foot, as her impatience manifested in restlessness.  Eight minutes before she found out if she’d been played for a fool.

She used her shoes to kick a few loose stones from the dirt driveway, smoothed it out, and then kicked them off.  Barefoot, she planted her feet a shoulder width apart, then bent her knees as though she were sitting down in a chair, her arms outstretched in front of her for balance.

Hehe. Gotta do something.

Boredom is something we avoid at all costs.

She bent low, straightened, then repeated the process several more times.

Deep breaths.

Is this some kind of yoga or meditation thing? Or maybe she’s got a power that involves this.

Centering herself, she began on the next form, placing her feet perpendicular to one another, and transferring her weight from one foot to the other, from toe to heel to the heel of the other foot.

Really seems like some sort of yoga.

Her digital watch interrupted her exercises with a steady beeping.  She’d set an alarm for the meeting deadline.  Right this minute, she was supposed to be meeting someone.

Those were some of the quicker eight minutes in this story. I think more time might’ve passed in the last four paragraphs than in several chapters of Parasite.

What if this wasn’t just meant to waste her time?  What if it was more sinister?  If there was a gang of men waiting for her, ready to drag her off somewhere…

This lady’s life just sounds more and more intriguing.

She shook her head.  She knew how to defend herself.  Her father had taught her, and she’d taken classes.  They didn’t necessarily know she was a woman from her email address. She’d left a note with her roommate, sealed with instructions not to open it or read the details unless she failed to return home.

So someone… contacted her via email? Or did she contact them? The latter sounds more likely since she seems to think the email is their only source of knowledge about her. But if she contacted them, why would she think it was a setup? I guess that would imply she thinks they may have spread the word about whatever this is in order to lure her into contacting them?

…I think I should just keep reading.

Topping it off, the necklace she wore had a built-in GPS.  A gift from her sixteenth birthday from her dad.  If there was trouble, the note she’d left with her roommate had instructions to contact her dad and track her down using the necklace.

Huh, that’s pretty handy, at least as long as you trust the people who know how to use the tracker to find you.

Every action had an equal and opposite reaction.  It was the way things were supposed to work.  Action and consequence.

Unless Siberian is involved.

Driving to the middle of nowhere was the action.  But what was the consequence?  Wasting two hours of her time on one of the last weekends of freedom she had before she was due to start school?

Alright, that gives us some idea of our POV character’s age. She’s old enough to be driving, but young enough to attend school.

For a mere chance she might get what she needed?

Hm, interesting. And this thing is something that might be a hoax?

Could it be evidence of some kind, for something our POV character is working on?

She had to stop and reverse to reread a number on a mailbox.  2062.  She steered into the long dirt driveway.  A farm sat in the distance, with a rotted-out grain silo and a barn nearby.

Looks like she’s approaching her destination.

She couldn’t shake the idea that it was a hoax.  Three times, she almost turned around and headed back home.

Hm… what exactly? It’d be hard for the Shattering to be a hoax, so I doubt it’s that.

Twenty eight miles west from New York City, down the 202, to where there were more trees than houses and the roads hadn’t been maintained for too many years.

Oh hey, we’re out of state!

We know someone from New York, Flechette, but a) she’s probably still in Brockton Bay and b) she’s already had an Interlude-like chapter and I would think the chapters of an Interlude Arc like Sentinel still count against the unstated but fairly obvious rule that each character only gets one Interlude.

So what’s up this way that could be a hoax?

It hadn’t rained recently, but there were murky puddles in the road where the water had settled into broad depressions.

We’re out of Brockton Bay and we still can’t get away from the water.

Water sprayed as she deliberately aimed for one puddle.  Forty five minutes of driving, trying to convince herself this was real, not seeing anyone on the road for the last ten minutes, she’d started to feel lost.

I haven’t really read anything of the genre, but this gives me New England (possibly eldritch) horror vibes to some extent. Maybe we’ll be dealing with Dandelions?

Then again, 28 miles west down the 202 is a pretty specific location, as opposed to the sort of vague middle of nowhere rural setting one might find in horror.

I’m torn on whether I should look at a map. I think I’m going to leave it for now.

The concrete action of steering into the puddle and getting the expected result seemed to ground her.

Like pinching yourself to make sure you’re not dreaming.