10 The Trip to New Netherlands

The flight began quietly. Maybe it was the loud propellers or maybe it was just an awkward ride. Booth tried to pull out his phone, but there is no signal in the middle of the pacific ocean.

"Damnit," Booth sighed. "I forgot to text my... mom."

"I didn't know you needed permission from your mother to go bounty hunting." Maria said with a straight face.

"No, just making sure she's recovering well from her... car crash..." Booth responds. "and cancer".

"Oh." Maria looks apologetic. "What cancer does she have?"

"Tooth Cancer." Booth brings up. "Anyway, pilot dude, why didn't put up these sound proof walls before we were halfway to New Zealand?"

"I thought you would like the fresh ocean air." The pilot laughs.

"I live in New York," Booth gives his point. "I could smell fish droppings any free day I have."

Maria was thinking. She was thinking about why Null was heading this way. Why did Null want to go to New Zealand? Most importantly, why did everyone at Mascheracheaiuti understand english? Some may never be answered.

As they get closer and closer to their destination, Maria tries to explain the plan.

"To run it through." She begins. "We'll drop Booth off in the South Island and I'll be dropped off at the North Island. We spend a month looking for Null, keeping track with the tracker. If they don't show up in a month, British forces and New Zealand Forces should continue the search. If he leaves or one of us finds it, we tell the others to follow. Got it?"

Booth is asleep and The Pilot was focusing on flying.

"What?" The Pilot asks.

"Just tell me if you know the plan." Maria holds in an intense amount of anger.

"Yep, we are almost at the South Islands." The Pilot says. "You ready Booth?"

"Booth is most likely suffering with sleep paralysis." Maria nonchalantly claims. "We should head north first."

"You got it!" The pilot still heads toward the nearby South Island to refuel. As the heli lands, Maria's questions get interrupted by a phone call.

"Hello?" She answers the call. "Why did you try to call me 40 times within the last hour?"

"Maria!" The voice says with a feel of similarity. "So I wanted to talk abou-"

"McKinley?" Maria recognizes the voice. "This is perfect! I've wanted to talk about something."

"Let me guess, Null?" They both say at the same time.

"Wait?" Maria says "What do you want to know?"

"I heard that you got hired by the US and UK to hunt them down." McKindley recalls. "I saw it on TV. I do wanna know why they didn't call me to help, I guess they thought I was busy. Anyway, I've decided to try and send help to the Falklands to pacify and capture Null."

"Capture?" Maria repeats. "We don't need to do that. Null must be completely destroyed. Also, I'm not in-"

"Null is made of so many precious materials!" McKindley justified. "You don't know how long it took to code it's AI. We don't have a copy. But this can be salvageable! We could repurpose Null!"

"We can't have this repeat!" Maria tries to make clear. "I am going to make sure that Null will be destroyed completely and you can't stop me!"

"It's a race then." McKindley states. "And I will win. Goodbye, Maria." He hangs up.

"Idiot," Maria mutters to herself. "He doesn't know that Null is heading to New Zealand, but we might learn soon. We've gotta hurry."

"Alrigh-," The pilot is about to announce he has refueled the heli, but he forgot something. He runs back into the nearby building and comes back with a note and a stapler. "We don't have any time to wait for him."

Before Maria could even ask, The Pilot staples the paper to Booth's right hand. Booth is motionless like a corpse.

"He won't feel it until he wakes up." The Pilot explains his plan. "We don't have the time to wait for him to wake him, he can read the paper if he forgets what we're doing, now let's go!"

"Did you really need to staple it?" Maria can't take her eyes off the paper.

"It makes sure the paper doesn't fly away." The Pilot seems to be in a hurry. "I also couldn't find a nail gun, so I had to make do. NOW LET'S MOVE!"

They make their way back to the heli and fly to the North Island. The flight is completely quiet and no spoke. Maria kept thinking of things on varying levels of importance when they finally made it.

Maria waved to the pilot and made sure she was there legally. After rigorous checking at a nearby airport, she was finally ready to find Null.

A slight problem was that it had turned night quite a while ago. Maria is pretty tired and after a while, found a small motel to sleep in. She got a room relatively quickly and took a look at it.

The room wasn't the greatest, but the point is that she has a place to finally rest. Maria thinks about what she will do once she finds Null. There is no talking Null down and Null seems way too strong to take down herself. She does get an idea on how to take on null, and it involves explosives.