Chapter 73 - The Frozen Graveyard
The impact was a cataclysm of tearing metal, flying rivets, and deafening thunder. The transport's belly tore across a glacial ridge, shearing off both wings in an explosion of white powder and shattered composite plating.
The fuselage slid for nearly half a mile across the hard-packed permafrost, gouging a blackened trench through the ice before slamming against the sheer wall of a frozen plateau. Silence followed—a sudden, suffocating quiet broken only by the hiss of venting coolant and the distant howl of the Arctic wind.
Inside the twisted wreck, Naomi opened her eyes. The cockpit was cracked wide open; sub-zero air rushed into her lungs like liquid glass.
She checked herself methodically: three bruised ribs, minor laceration along her hairline, fingers fully operational. She kicked open the buckled door between the cockpit and the cabin.
Ethan was hanging by his five-point harness, unconscious, a jagged piece of aluminum pinned against his thigh. Naomi reached up, releasing the safety catch while catching his dead weight with her left arm. She dragged him clear of the wreckage through the ruptured hull.
"Wake up, Ethan," she said, slapping his cheek firmly with a gloved hand.
He gasped, his eyes fluttering open as the brutal cold hit his face. "Did we... did we survive?"
"We survived the crash," Naomi said, looking up into the gray sky where the distant sound of jet engines was already fading. "Vanessa knows we went down. She won't rely on the cold to do her dirty work. She’ll send ground teams."
She turned, surveying the landscape. They were marooned on a massive ice shelf somewhere north of Svalbard. But emerging from the white mist barely two hundred yards away was something that didn't belong to nature.
A colossal, rusted bulkhead projected from the face of the glacial wall—an old submarine pen carved deep into the rock during the early days of the Cold War. Above its reinforced titanium doors was a faded insignia Naomi knew down to the marrow of her bones: the three intertwined triangles of Generation Nine’s earliest precursor project.
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"She didn't route our navigation here by accident," Naomi murmured, her eyes narrowing. "She wanted us near this vault."
***
