Page 27

Mark Davidson stumbled through knee-deep snow, one arm pressed against his bleeding side. The research station loomed ahead—a concrete bunker half-buried in the mountainside, its entrance barely visible through the thickening storm.

Just keep going, he told himself. You're a dead man if you stop now.

He'd been running for what felt like hours, though his phone was long gone, so he couldn't be sure. The cut in his side burned with each step. Not deep enough to kill him, but enough to slow him down. Which was probably exactly what his attacker had intended.

The ambush had come out of nowhere. One moment he'd been setting up for a video, trying to get the perfect angle for his followers, and the next—sharp pain, his phone flying into the snow, someone moving with terrible purpose through the storm.

Mark had run blind at first, pure survival instinct driving him deeper into the wilderness. But as the initial panic faded, memory had taken over. He knew these mountains. Had grown up exploring every hidden corner with his father, back when Dad was still on ski patrol.

Including this place.

The entrance was right where he remembered—a heavy metal door set into concrete, weathered by decades of storms. He'd first discovered it when he was twelve, during one of his solo expeditions.

The door had been locked then, but he'd found another way in through a maintenance tunnel.

He and his friends had spent countless summer afternoons exploring the abandoned facility, making up stories about what kind of research had gone on here.

Now, it might be his only chance for survival.

Mark reached the door, his frozen fingers fumbling with the handle. To his surprise, it opened with a grinding screech. He practically fell inside, slamming the door behind him. The sound echoed through darkened corridors as he slid to the floor, fighting to catch his breath.

Light filtered weakly through dusty windows high in the walls. The entrance chamber was exactly as he remembered—a security checkpoint with an abandoned desk, ancient monitors covered in cobwebs, scattered papers turned yellow with age. Only now it felt less like an adventure and more like a tomb.

He forced himself to his feet, grimacing at the pain in his side. He had to barricade the door. Had to find a way to stay warm. Had to...

A sound from outside made him freeze. Footsteps in the snow? Or just the wind?

Moving as quietly as he could, Mark began searching for anything he could use to block the door. His father's voice echoed in his memory: "Always secure your position first. Everything else comes second."

His fingers brushed something solid in the darkness—an old filing cabinet. Still hefty despite decades of rust. He wrestled it in front of the door, every scrape across the concrete floor seeming impossibly loud. Would the sound carry through the storm? Was his pursuer already out there, listening?

The cabinet wouldn't be enough, not if his pursuer was as determined as he'd shown himself to be so far.

Mark found a heavy desk and dragged it over, ignoring the protests from his injured side.

Only when he'd piled every movable object he could find against the entrance did he allow himself to really look at his surroundings.

The security station opened onto a long corridor, disappearing into darkness. He remembered following it as a kid, exploring the labs and offices beyond. Back then, the facility had felt massive—an endless maze of possibilities. They'd invented wild theories about what had happened here.

Secret weapons testing. Alien autopsies. Government conspiracies.

Now, shivering in the growing darkness, Mark wished he'd paid more attention to the actual layout. Where could he find supplies? Medical equipment? Some way to call for help?

His side throbbed, reminding him that he needed to deal with the wound. He pulled up his shirt, wincing at the sight of dried blood. The cut wasn't as bad as it had felt initially—more of a deep scratch than a stab wound. But in these conditions, even a minor injury could become deadly.

Mark tore a strip from his undershirt to make a rough bandage. The fabric stuck to the wound, but at least the bleeding had mostly stopped. Now, his biggest enemy was the cold. The temperature was dropping rapidly as night approached, and the concrete walls offered little protection.

He needed to find a better position, somewhere more defensible. And he needed fire.

His hands shook as he dug through his pockets, praying his lighter was still there. It was—a cheap plastic thing he'd bought at the resort gift shop. He never smoked, but his followers had requested a sunset shoot with atmospheric smoke effects. The irony wasn't lost on him.

Moving deeper into the facility, Mark tried to orient himself.

The main corridor branched in three directions.

Right led to the laboratories, if he remembered correctly.

Left to offices and storage. Straight ahead to.

.. what had they called it? The vault. A massive circular chamber that had probably housed some kind of equipment.

He chose left. Best chance of finding something useful.

The beam of his lighter revealed rows of offices, their doors hanging open. Paper scattered the floor, crunching under his feet. Old filing cabinets stood like sentinels in the darkness. The cold here was even more intense, seeping up through the concrete floor.

Mark soon found what he was looking for in the third office—an old metal trash can. Perfect for containing a fire. He gathered papers from the floor, his movements becoming more urgent as the light outside dimmed. Soon it would be fully dark.

The papers caught easily enough, but he needed something that would burn longer. He remembered seeing wooden chairs somewhere…

A sound echoed through the facility—metal scraping against concrete.

Mark froze, the lighter flame flickering in his trembling hand. Had something shifted in the barricade? Or was someone moving it?

He extinguished the light and pressed himself against a wall, listening. Nothing happened.

You're imagining things, freaking yourself out. There's no way that guy followed you through the snowstorm. And even if he did, he wouldn't know his way around this old place.

Maybe not. But if he found his way in and saw Mark's fire…

What's the alternative? Freezing to death?

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, calming himself. Then, coming to a decision, he struck the lighter again. He had to keep warm, had to—

This time, there was no mistaking the grinding shriek of metal being moved somewhere above him as his barricade was breached.

Nor the sound of footsteps on metal.