01.01: Allora

Maine was the epitome of quaint, certainly on the coast, it was picture postcard pretty, Jack Cooper had never really been inland here before. He was a little perplexed, he knew they were in the right area, but there were so many damned trees.
“Are you having problems Jack?” asked Jamie, his English accent was pure Downton Abbey.
Jack had learned never to mention that as it annoyed his student intensely. When Jamie hacked off some of his teammates they called him Downton and he got really annoyed.
“Far too much nature for a city boy like me.” He sat back in the driving seat of his new Audi R8, if they had to go off road they were using Jamie’s SUV. He looked at the data from their portable cerebro that had come up on the dashboard display.
“Are you going to be okay if we have to go traipsing through this forest Jack?”
When he was seventeen Jack had been in an F6 racing accident and as a result he had lost parts of both his legs. The tech available at the Institute had equipped him brilliantly and he had a wide variety of prostheses but he wasn’t quite all terrain capable. Right now he had walking legs on with hiking boots for grip.
“I’ll manage thanks Jamie. But if there is any running to do that’s down to you. OK?”
“Sure thing boss,” Jamie said with a grin. “Are you seeing what I am seeing?”
Jack said he was. The girl was close by but the woods were unspoiled and so made spotting her or moving through them problemaical.
“Jack I may have found something.”
Looking across he saw Jamie crouched down. There was a dark crystal like stone cluster on the dirt of the path.
“That doesn’t look natural to me Jamie.”
Jamie agreed as he turned his head this way and that slowly. “It looks like five toes and the ball of a foot,” he said, he glanced up the path a little and saw the clear print of a sneaker. “I think she lost a shoe.”
“Interesting. Can you sense her?”
Jamie stopped what he was doing and began to settle into concentration. When Jack spoke he held up an index finger and Jack knew to stop talking. No interruptions.
A few moments later he nodded into the woods in the direction the footprints were heading.