text: [Themes: Superhero, multiple protagonists]
  
  > look at your surroundings
  Scrub bushes and sparse grasses provide a little ground cover for the otherwise rocky, sandy soil of this area. Other than the jagged mountains looming a few miles to the east, this spot seems entirely barren.
  
  A damaged road sign lies at your feet.
  
  Emily hovers a few inches above the ground here.
  
  > examine the mountains
  The mountains are a few miles distant. Their sharp, jagged peaks feel different, harsher than the solemn ridges of your familiar Sierra Nevadas.
  
  > Go east
  You consider heading towards the mountains, but something just feels wrong about that. If you were supposed to find your parents there, why wouldn't the teleporter have sent you there to begin with?
  
  What the--? For a second there you could swear you saw the air shimmer in the heat, except that there's no heat.
  
  > go to the north
  You can see nothing but more scrub in that direction. You take a few steps, then turn around when you realize the uselessness of aimless wandering.
  
  > go east
  You consider heading towards the mountains, but something just feels wrong about that. If you were supposed to find your parents there, why wouldn't the teleporter have sent you there to begin with?
  
  > jump
  You leap straight up to get a higher perspective on your surroundings. At the zenith of your leap, you can see a black, winding stripe of road some distance to the west. The mountains to the east are craggy and forbidding, and the rest of the landscape is desolate. Then gravity pulls you back down to where you started.
  
  > jump west
  With practiced ease, you launch yourself up and westwards, soaring over acres of terrain and landing by a decaying road. Emily follows your trajectory, and lands alongside you.
  
  You are standing on a decrepit country highway, just barely paved, and even that probably happened twenty years ago. The road is deserted -- it's obviously seldom used, if at all. The crumbling asphalt leads north and south in a distracted, wandering fashion.
  
  Emily stands here, looking around.
  
  > look at the asphalt
  If you were hoping to give some new shock absorbers a really good test, this is the road you'd want to visit. It's twisty, uneven, and littered with potholes.
  
  > talk to Emily
  "This doesn't make any sense!" you exclaim. "Why would our parents have followed Professor Andrews into the middle of nowhere? Why would he have been here in the first place?"
  
  "Danged if I know," says Emily, "but maybe there's more here than meets the eye. We are talking about aliens, after all -- maybe they're able to conceal things in ways we don't understand. You know, like the Klingon cloaking device or something."
  
  "Better not tell any of your academia friends you know that much about Star Trek."
  
  "Oh, it's okay. I can just claim I'm being a cultural critic."
  
  > go to the north
  It's likely you'd find somebody after following the road, but it might take a long, long time, and would probably take you off the trail of your parents, too.
  
  > talk to Emily
  "I hate to admit it," you say, "but I'm stumped."
  
  Emily smirks. "Well, even though you know more about superheroes and science than I do, looks like it's up to me to get us out of this one. Lucky for you, I have an idea.
  
  "Follow me," she says, and flies back to your original landing place. With a prodigious leap, you arrive next to her a moment later.
  
  Scrub bushes and sparse grasses provide a little ground cover for the otherwise rocky, sandy soil of this area. Other than the jagged mountains looming a few miles to the east, this spot seems entirely barren.
  
  A damaged road sign lies at your feet.
  
  She closes her eyes, and fog begins to coalesce around her. Within moments, a thick cloud of vapor swirls around you both, thinning a minute or two later to a light mist, refracting the sunlight and clinging persistently to the outlines of a structure you can just barely see.
  
  > look at the structure
  The remnants of your sister's fog cloud cling tenaciously to the outlines of a mid-sized fortress, cloaked almost imperceptibly among the shrubs and grasses. The fog is particularly thick around the doors, which look quite solid indeed.
  
  > enter the structure
  Not while those doors bar your way.
  
  What the--? For a second there you could swear you saw the air shimmer in the heat, except that there's no heat.
  
  > open door
  The doors seem to be quite locked.
  
  > smash the door
  SLAMMO! You rear back and direct a roundhouse punch at the doors, which fly open and warp on their hinges with the force of your blow! The cloak of invisibility around the fortress flickers, then blinks out altogether, revealing the entirety of the building, standing incongruously in the middle of the empty landscape.
  
  > examine the structure
  Now that it's visible, the fortress doesn't look nearly as mysterious, though it certainly still looks quite solid. Basically, it's more or less a large bunker, made of the same indestructible polymer that constituted the cat-alien's research station. The fortress doors have been smashed open.
  
  > enter the structure
  You and Emily step into the fortress, hoping for the best.
  
  Maerr's ears swiveled to attention at the distant crash. He locked eyes with Science Master Esrrua, and leaned towards the microphone. "Should we halt the procedure?"
  
  "Of course not, you tail-raiser," hissed Esrrua over the com-link. "It's likely nothing, and besides, there are security robots. Seal the room."
  
  Maerr's eyes narrowed. He growled low in his throat, but said nothing. His gaze still on Esrrua, he moved the vertical lever downwards. The sound of servos and a resonant thump told him that the lab was now sealed from the outside world, even as the glass partition separated himself and Esrrua. "Sealed."