Chapter 113 - Flight Across the Black Pack
"Move!" Vance barked, dragging me backward as the first heavy illumination flare shot into the sky from the submarine's deck, painting the snowy expanse in violent, sputtering magnesium light.
I scooped Clara into my arms despite the cold dread knotting in my chest. Even if her nervous system was hijacked by a low-frequency Archon transceiver, she was still flesh and bone, a child weaponized against her will. She didn't struggle; she hung limp against my chest like an empty doll, her unblinking gaze fixed over my shoulder toward the advancing black gunship.
We scrambled down the reverse slope of the ridge. The permafrost shattered under our heavy boots, gravel and hard-packed snow cascading into the dark fissures below. Vance led the way toward the utility depot we had scouted prior to the infiltration—a half-buried surveyor's bunker left over from early Norwegian oil exploration.
Behind us, the first burst of heavy-caliber fire raked the ridge we had just abandoned. Chunks of basalt and ancient ice exploded into dust, showering our backs with frozen shrapnel. The concussive thumps reverberated in my chest, echoing the rhythm of the blows my father used to strike against the dining table before his hands found my jaw. The memory flashed unbidden—the smell of roasted poultry mingled with iron and terror, the clatter of silver forks as my mother looked out the bay window, refusing to see.
"In here!" Vance shoved open a rusted corrugated iron door set directly into the granite face of a sea cliff.
We tumbled inside, Vance slamming the iron latch home and throwing a rusted brace across the frame. Outside, the searchlights of the gunship swept over the cliffside, the downdraft of its heavy rotors rattling the corrugated roof like a hail of iron pellets.
In the dark, the only light came from the persistent, synthetic pulse under Clara's wrist.
Vance collapsed against an empty oil drum, his breath coming in ragged, wet gasps. Blood had pooled through his thick layers, freezing dark and sticky against the canvas of his coat. "The wound... entered the lower cavity," he grunted, pressing a gloved fist against his ribs. "Emily, we can't carry a walking radio beacon across the Norwegian tundra. The moment we step outside, they have our bearing down to the meter."
May you like
"I am not leaving her, and I am not putting a bullet in her," I said, setting Clara down on an overturned crate. The little girl sat completely rigid, her eyes tracking the dark rafters.
"I’m not asking you to kill her," Vance said, his voice dropping into a raspy whisper as he pulled a field surgical kit from his tactical belt. "I'm telling you we have to cut it out."
