"What about physical mail?" Xanthoceras asks.

"Well, that's harder, obviously. I was able to pawn some gold to get money for stamps, but the real problem is getting things into the mail system in bulk without setting off alarms. I can't just park in one of the regional distribution centers, because they actually tag mail into and out of them here, and they'd notice the extra packages. The best we can do is occasionally drop packages in low volumes in multiple cities," Yellow Birch explains. "It's a problem I'm still working on."

The others nod in acceptance.

"Still — a few anonymous monographs on medicine could be helpful, even if we can't start making massive donations. Actually — have you considered just leaving large quantities of supplies in areas that need them with no explanation?"

Yellow Birch shakes her head.

"I did one trial run. The entire supply was impounded, and it actually had a negative impact on recovery because of the attention it drew."

The others issue mild curses.

"Any other questions? Okay — what do we have for physics research?"

"We're making good progress," Xanthoceras reports. "But there's a lot to research. There are a bunch of new fundamental particles available, even if most of them have very short lifespans, because of some additional degrees of freedom in the underlying fields. If you look at this diagram, we think this is a full classification — but these particles in grey are only theorized, not observed. We're going to run more experiments after the meeting to try and confirm their properties ..."

And if Xanthoceras goes into more detail about physics than some of their other project warranted, well, nobody is going to object. They all really do prefer physics research to all of the other stuff they have to do.

Eventually the meeting comes back around to new proposals.

"I think we need to try and go through one of the portals," Zebrawood says. "I'm nearly ready to fork again, and we just have too much to learn about the source of powers, potentially. I know our physics emulation isn't good enough to try and phase through that weird crystal undetected — but we could at least do a test to see if it reacts to putting a dummy through, first."

Yellow Birch looks skeptical.

"These things are connected to people's brains, and we don't know what they do. At a minimum, they might disconnect and kill the people they're attached to. Or disrupt their powers. Or explode. If we wait to have a larger crystal — like the one planned for New Delhi — we might be able to probe far enough to get more details non-invasivly."

"That's going to take time, though, and we still don't actually know what these things are doing," Zebrawood points out. "Xanthoceras was telling us just a moment ago about the weird gravatic distortions—"

"That's not a reason to rush into things. We're growing; it won't be that long before we can get a better look—"

"If we disrupt the crystal that is around the portal, it seems likely the portal would close, right?" Zelkova interrupts.

"Sure," Zebrawood agrees.

"Well then how are we supposed to get any information back?" she questions. "We should be trying to see if we can independently recreate the portals."

Yellow Birch taps her chin.

"That would be a lot easier with some actual samples to play with. Do you think we could ... steal a portal from someone, to experiment on?" she muses.

"Alright. I'm in position, and there's just one other car nearby — the one that's been following them. Am I good to start?"

The others send her a thumbs up.

She puts a particle beam through the engine (she'll fix the road surface later), and waits until the vehicle has come safely to a halt. Then she falls toward the roof.

The roof is not vulnerable to conventional force. In fact, it has been rendered temporarily immune to select laws of physics by nudging it in a very particular direction so that it lies just outside the skin of this reality.

But it does have a location. It's not even all that far away, by any sensible distance metric — just barely out of touch with normal space.

She cuts a hole through the roof, the man with the knife enters her range. She scans him and sends his backup...

No, actually. The bus is impermeable to neutrinos, somehow. That's inconvenient. She does still have enough storage to make this work, just.

She keeps his head — that's the point — but cuts out the parts of his brain that make him him, keeping only the barest support structure for the portal in his head.

All the glass in the area shatters.

She is, luckily, not made of glass.

She accelerates toward the rear of the vehicle, repeating the procedure as she passes each member of the group—

Except for one. There is nothing inside the Siberian's shell for her to grab, at all.

However, with all her companions (save Crawler, who is being towed behind) apparently dead, she decides to make herself scarce, and vanishes with a pop.

The RV becomes permeable to neutrinos again, and she sends out a compressed burst of backup data.

Zebrawood, standing near the previous turnoff with a very official-looking detour sign, messages her.

"The car has reversed direction and is coming back this way — I don't know if that was just in reaction to seeing you stop the RV, though."

"Acknowledged. Try to get a scan as it goes past you," she responds, plowing through the back of the vehicle and into the tow trailer.

... her fixity crystal fails to get a lock. There are no recognizable human brain structures here for it to save. There is a portal, but the neural tissue around it seems to just be set up to relay commands from the other side.

Crawler opens several eyes.

"... did you kill them all?" he asks, his voice a deep rumble.

"No," the hovering orb tells him. "Your companions are safe and sound. I just stole their powers and wrecked your motorhome a little."

He snorts in disgust.

"Another namby-pamby hero who won't kill," he complains, swatting at her.