Marcus drove past the gate twice looking for the place, the result of getting his directions third-hand, and also of being distracted by the stuttering of the radio. Even this far past the holiday a woeful number of stations were still playing 24-hour Christmas music, and the only one he'd been able to pick up without it kept randomly dropping out of range. On the third pass, fortunately, the signal remained stable and he managed to look the right way at the right time, and parked as close to the gate as he could manage before grabbing his mug and disembarking.
He had not, himself, been the recipient of the flyer; that honor had gone to Dr. Ale Flores, who he would normally consider an acquaintance rather than a friend, if not for the fact that anyone whose name Ale knew was her friend whether they liked it or not. Which was not to say that he didn't like Ale—he did, very much—but rather that the two of them had only met about three times. That she should have asked him to join her in visiting this whatever-it-was had confused him since he'd first opened her email.
But he was here anyway, albeit a bit later than originally intended. Attempts to clear his schedule for winter break had been derailed by some sort of miniature plague that had struck down all the students in his lab who'd agreed to work through the holidays. Today was only his second day off in the whole month of December, and the first one, about halfway through, had mostly been spent asleep.
They hadn't talked much about where to meet once here. He didn't see any other cars, or much in the way of signs of life, other than the chimney smoke on the horizon. He stood leaning lightly against the gate for a few moments, the steam from his mug mixing with his breath in the frozen air, and when Ale failed to appear from behind something he pushed the gate open far enough to slip through, and started across the empty expanse of snow. At least movement would keep him a little warmer.
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