The boat unfolded from Vanya's storage space in a way that made even Harold — three weeks into watching her pull increasingly strange things out of thin air — go quiet for a moment.
It wasn't inflatable. It wasn't storm-rated camping gear scavenged from some abandoned sporting goods store. It was sleek, matte-black, unmistakably advanced in a way that had nothing to do with anything currently manufactured on this planet, its hull humming faintly with some internal power source that clearly owed nothing to gasoline or batteries.
Persephone studied it for a long moment before climbing in, expression carefully neutral — the same practiced blankness she'd perfected years ago, sitting through family dinners where half the table smiled at her while quietly calculating how useful or dangerous she might become to them someday.
"That's not something you found," she said, settling near the bow.
"No," Vanya agreed, offering nothing further.
