Weakness made my legs give way, and I had to hold onto the seat handrails to reach the exit. The opening button clicked under my finger, and the door panel hissed aside.

  Outside, a thick, milky fog stood. After taking a few steps from ATLAS, I looked back. Its hull dissolved in the whitish haze, leaving only a vague silhouette in the gray, foggy mist.

  The day before, as Colonel Daniels had ordered, we collected rainwater samples and ran them through the analyzer. Numbers flashed on the screen—as expected, the external radiation levels were off the charts, so ever since, every trip outside meant donning rubberized hunting ponchos. It seemed like another lifetime, not just a few weeks ago, that the ever-prepared Hunter had packed them. The heavy, rubber-and-dust-smelling fabric squeaked at the joints, hindering work.

  Howard and Emily were already carrying out the tent modules—lightweight sections with camouflage covering—while I, taking a hammer, began driving the frame's anchor rods into the ground. The frozen earth under the ash layer yielded reluctantly, each blow echoing pain in my wrist. After assembling the tent, our first task was to move Colonel Daniels inside, laying him on his aluminum stretcher and setting up a portable "blower"-type heater next to him; for light, we hung a lantern from the central pole.

  Then the unloading began. The back-and-forth trips quickly turned into heavy, monotonous drudgery: heavy toolboxes, weapons, numerous ammunition crates, tools, dishes, and sacks of food. Every time I entered the tent, I saw Daniels turn his head toward me, his voice clear through the rustling of packaging:

  "Take out everything you can; twenty-five tons is a lot indeed. Every extra kilogram counts."

  When the ATLAS cabin was empty, revealing seat mounts and empty baggage niches, Howard and I tackled the jack. Its lattice steel body weighed an incredible amount, and we dragged it, leaving a deep furrow in the ash. The three-conductor power cable for the spotlight and jack trailed behind us like a thick, black hose.

  By noon, the fog over the mountaintop began to tear and slip away down the slopes, but the sky didn't clear—it remained dirty-lead gray—but visibility improved somewhat. Neighboring hills and rocky spires emerged from the haze like blurred spots. We, almost too tired to speak, set up the jack under the upper edge of the boulder on the gentlest part of the slope, and Howard plugged the cable into the power source and flipped the switch.

  The jack's hydraulics whined and roared, delivering incredible power. The steel ram strained, pushing against the stone, but the boulder didn't budge. Instead, the jack's base plate, with a quiet, relentless crunch, began sinking into the ground, burrowing into the mixture of ash, rubble, and frozen soil.

  "This won't work," I turned off the power. The sudden silence pressed unpleasantly on the ears.

  "We need a solid pad under the plate. Otherwise, it'll just dig itself into the ground."

  "Maybe try shovels?" Howard suggested, though without much hope, wiping his face with his sleeve.

  "Won't work. They'll bend like foil."

  Sarah and Keila approached us, dragging a heavy, tightly wound coil of synthetic cables with difficulty. The cables were flat, elastic, dull brown, and looked very strong.

  "The jack needs something wide and flat. Like ATLAS's landing feet," Keila said quietly, almost in a whisper, then immediately looked down embarrassed, as if saying something out of place.

  "Right," I fully disconnected the jack and smiled encouragingly. "We have no other option. Well done, Keila."

  The four of us went to ATLAS and began inspecting its landing gear—six massive steel "legs." Each, made of thick profiled steel about forty centimeters in diameter, was fastened to the hull with huge bolts and large, rust-covered nuts.

  After inspecting, we brought the emergency tool kit, selected the largest socket wrenches and keys, and tackled the nearest leg. The heavy nuts wouldn't budge; the metal groaned but didn't turn.

  Closer to lunch, wind unexpectedly struck from the north—a steady, icy stream carrying fine sand and ash. It blew away the remaining fog, exposing the black, empty mountainside, and began rattling like dry shot against ATLAS's hull. Our hands, wet with sweat and covered in sticky grime mixed with oil, instantly froze, and the wrenches began slipping from our fingers.

  "That's it! I can't take it anymore!" Howard wheezed, throwing the wrench to the ground, stuffed his white, stiff-with-cold fingers into his pockets, turned his back to the wind, and froze.

  Since his "cripple" mask had slipped, the lieutenant had behaved more restrained. Though we saw how his gaze slid over food crates, how he finished his portion first, noticed his tricks and shirking, we mostly forgave him, pretending not to notice. Only Sarah didn't partake in this silent agreement, and her cold, sharpened contempt hung in the air between them like an almost tangible wall. While we struggled with the jack, she and the girls methodically, like automatons, moved the last items. Seeing me alone trying to loosen a seized nut while Howard stood turned away, she could no longer hold back. Her figure in the baggy poncho straightened menacingly.

  "Aren't you ashamed, Lieutenant?" her voice held so much contempt it seemed like a whip crack.

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  Howard slowly turned. His wind-burned, dirt-covered face didn't flinch, but a steady, venomous light flashed in his narrowed eyes.

  "I'm tired of you sticking your nose everywhere," his voice unexpectedly broke into a choked, hoarse shriek. "Prying into everyone's souls, suspecting everyone, conducting investigations... and what about you?"

  "What about 'me'?" Sarah took a step forward; it seemed another second and she'd claw his face. "Hid food from others? Stole canned goods? Simulated an injury? So know this, everyone," her voice thundered on a sudden note, "I'm almost certain this character killed his commander at 'Toiyabe Bastion' to take his place!"

  Even through the grime on Howard's face, you could see him pale. His hands trembled, and his jaw clenched so tightly that muscles played on his cheeks. It was clear how hard he was restraining himself from grabbing Sarah by the throat.

  "I'll... I'll you!.." he choked, repeating the same thing, unable to voice the threat.

  "You'll me what?" Sarah didn't retreat a centimeter. "I've seen such cowards and scum..."

  She didn't finish but sharply turned, throwing him a final, annihilating glance, and slowly, defiantly, climbed the steps into the ATLAS cabin. Everyone froze, waiting for an explosion. But Howard didn't rush after her; instead, he just looked back fearfully, wolf-like, toward the tent—had Colonel Daniels heard?—and, gritting his teeth, silently picked up the discarded wrench from the ground. His fingers gripped the cold metal so tightly his knuckles turned white.

  At lunch, when Emily brought us each a piece of melted cheese with hardtack, Howard refused to eat. Silently, with some fierce stubbornness, he continued trying to loosen the bolts, seeming not to notice the wrench slipping in his frozen fingers, only scraping off rust.

  We managed to detach the landing foot, which Keila called a "paw," only in the afternoon. The bolts gave way with a final deafening screech, and the steel landing plate finally tore free from its mounts, clanging loudly on the frozen ground. The four of us, swearing and groaning, lifted it and with great difficulty carried it to the shaft opening—heavy, awkward, threatening to slip from our frozen fingers at any moment.

  Dragging the foot over, we placed the disk under the jack's base plate, and I flipped the power switch again. This time, the jack didn't sink into the ground like before. Its hydraulics whined on a high note, the ram strained to the point of trembling, and the entire multi-ton boulder, with a dry, grinding sound of stone on stone, began to lift. From beneath it, a smell of cold and dampness unexpectedly wafted.

  "Rocks, quickly put rocks under it!" I commanded, and we rushed to gather everything around: sharp limestone fragments, large, smooth pebbles, flat slabs, stuffing them into the black crack right under the edge of the lifted boulder, trying to create additional support. Our frozen hands were instantly covered in scratches, and sand packed under our nails.

  It seemed done, but as soon as we turned off the power, preparing to move the jack elsewhere, a short but distinct crunch sounded, and our props shattered into dust. The incredible weight of the stone simply crushed them, turning them into fine, dusty crumbs that immediately trickled into the resulting fissure.

  Nevertheless, at that very moment when the rock was lifted, we did manage to see the crucial thing. Its lower part rested not on the ground but on that massive metal ventilation tunnel grate. And its other corner lay on a powerful, rough concrete wall disappearing deep underground.

  A new plan formed instantly, without unnecessary words.

  "Next, we'll brace it not against the ground," I said hoarsely, wiping my face with my sleeve, "but right against the wall. Against the concrete."

  With new, desperate strength, we set to work. We had to reposition the jack, turning it so the ram pushed directly against the gray, rough concrete wall surface. We did this in complete, thickened darkness, almost by feel, guided by the dim beams of small pocket flashlights. Our fingers had long since gone numb and obeyed poorly, but excitement and anger at the damned stone gave us stubbornness. On the third try and with many curses, the jack finally stood correctly, and I turned it on again.

  The motor roared, shattering the silent night quiet. The ram trembled, pushing against the shelter's strong, immovable wall, and the rock—again, by those same few centimeters—lifted off the grate.

  To save power, the spotlight, connected to the cable from ATLAS, we only turned on when complete darkness fell. But when the job was done and the jack secured, neither I nor Howard had the strength to walk the two hundred meters back to the vehicle to turn it off. The only thing we could muster was to crawl to the base of the rock, sheltering from the wind on its lee side, and collapse there on the cold ground.

  We lay for a long time, backs pressed to the cold stone, when through the howl of the arctic mountain wind another sound began clearly emerging—a low, wailing hum. It came from underground, from the black maw of the ventilation shaft. That was the sound of the shelter: wind coursing through its steel pipes and concrete corridors, as if playing a giant flute.

  And then, just as consciousness began dissolving into the dark warmth of exhaustion, from that same black maw erupted a scream that froze the blood in our veins. Long, rending, full of such unimaginable suffering that it was physically felt on the skin.

  "A-a-a-a-a-a!"

  We jumped up instantly, petrified as if struck by thunder. Our gazes met in the darkness—wide, uncomprehending, filled with the same animal panic. What to do? Tear away and run to ATLAS, to the light, to the others? Or shout back, let that poor soul know there were people outside?

  While we whispered frantically, stumbling over our words, the scream underground cut off, replaced by another sound. Quiet, gurgling, infinitely terrible moaning. A sound in which there was nothing left but slow, inevitable fading.

  Howard's teeth chattered with fear—a rapid, staccato clatter clearly audible in the frosty air—while I, beside myself, fell to my knees at the very edge of the black crack and screamed into it, my voice breaking:

  "Hold on! We're here! We're coming! Do you hear?! Answer!"

  But there was no answer. Only the wind in the shafts continued wailing on one endless note. The scream never repeated.

  Utterly shaken by what happened, we got up and trudged toward ATLAS in a grim mood until finally, ahead in the impenetrable dark, a faint rectangle of light flickered—the lit entrance to the tent from within. This sight brought almost physical relief. We silently crawled inside, collapsed on the cold canvas floor by the entrance, and seemed to fall asleep before even managing to remove our frozen ponchos. We never got the chance to tell anyone about the strange scream from the shaft.

  And then, sometime in the latter half of the night, the silence was torn by a new scream. High-pitched, piercing, full of pure terror and pain. It was one of our girls screaming.

  Everyone jumped to their feet instantly, sleepy, disoriented, bumping into each other in the tent's darkness. Daniels was the first, as always, to regain composure, and in the dark, a beam from his small but powerful tactical flashlight, which he always kept at hand, sprayed light.

  The yellow beam flickered, sweeping the walls, illuminating the horror-stricken faces of Emily and Keila, Sarah frozen by her sleeping spot... and immediately snatched something from the darkness near the exit.

  Something big, shaggy, with wet, matted fur. It flashed as a tangle of dark limbs—too many to count immediately. For a moment, two narrow, wild eyes, gleaming with reflected light, full of mute, primal malice, flashed in the beam. The creature darted, squeezed through a gap in the not-fully-closed tent door with a dry rustle, and leaped out into the night.