James Axler - Terminal White

“Go on, speculating’s fun,” Kane encouraged.

“I hope we find nothing,” Brigid said. “Absolutely nothing.”

“Yeah, that’s the adventurous spirit we’ve all come to admire in you, Baptiste,” Kane teased.

The two Mantas sped on, cutting through the cold air like knives through cloth.

* * *

THE SNOWSTORM LOOMED up ahead like an angry ghost. Dark clouds haunted the sky, thick as smoke from a fire, a thick sheet of white snow descending from them coupled with spits of razor-sharp ice. It was almost like a curtain draped across the landscape, a thick line that no one in their right mind would try to cross.

Leading to that ominous curtain was the desolate wilderness of Canada, ravines and sweeping plains, streaks of thick forest that thinned out as they approached the static storm. Down there, occasional animals could be seen flitting among the trees, birds taking wing.

Kane and Grant brought their sleek Manta aircraft toward the snow curtain on a low approach, observing the landscape carefully, searching for signs of life. Other than the occasional wolf or raccoon there was nothing but trees and scrub dappled with icy snow.

The Mantas could travel in subspace and under the sea, so neither pilot had any fear of entering the snowstorm. Their only concern was the lack of visibility it ensured, leaving them entirely reliant on their crafts’ formidable scanning capabilities.

Grant’s voice patched over their linked Commtacts. “Nothing happening so far,” he stated. “Looks clear.”

Watching his heads-up displays, Kane nodded. “Displays are clear,” he confirmed.

And yet there was something eerily uncanny about the storm, seen from high up and this far out. It really was like a curtain, a thick line delineating one part of the terrain from another. If what Cerberus had discovered was true—that this spot had been encased in this storm for years—then it was anyone’s guess what they might find within.

Kane sent more power to his engines, accelerating toward the thick white curtain of snow. A moment later the two bronze aircraft had disappeared within.

* * *

IT WAS MOMENTARILY STRANGE. Moving from light and normality into a world the only description of which was one word: white.

Snow fell, thick lines of it fluttering diagonally across the Mantas’ windshields, painting everything the same shade of white. People wear black at funerals, thought Brigid, but white is more somber, more chilling. When seen like this, a great expanse of nothing but white and cold, that is the picture of death, the way it overwhelms and demolishes and rewrites.

The Mantas hurtled on, crossing the vast expanse of land hidden by the blizzard, their sensor displays showing the flat terrain stretching out before them.

“There’s nothing here,” Kane muttered, triggering his Commtact automatically.

“Nothing on my side, either,” Grant confirmed. “Just snow.”

The Mantas hurtled onward, crossing the dull white landscape, ice thrown against their wings and bodies. Below, the land seemed unchanging. Whatever it had once been was hidden beneath the blanket of masking white.

“Kane,” Grant radioed, “I’m picking up a heat signature on our ten.”

Kane had seen the same heat signature appear on his own heads-up display even as Grant began to speak. “I see it,” he confirmed. “You want to give it a closer look?”

“You know I do,” Grant replied.

“Yeah, anything to break the monotony,” Kane agreed.

Without breaking formation, the two Mantas vectored toward the ten o’clock, chasing the mysterious heat signature amid the falling snow.

* * *

THE SOURCE OF the heat signature proved hard to pinpoint—not least because it was hidden by the curtain of falling snow. After a few sweeps across the general area of the source, Kane proposed landing and checking the area on foot to verify whatever it was that was pumping out warmth. His colleagues agreed and within a couple of minutes the Cerberus team had brought their sleek Mantas down in the vertical landings that the incredible vehicles were geared for, dropping out of the sky like stones.

Kane drew back the hatch of his Manta and took a breath of the cold air. The cold burned against the back of his throat as he breathed in, and he had to blink back tears. While the shadow suit would regulate his body temperature, there was only so much it could cover, and inhaling freezing-cold air is still inhaling freezing-cold air.

The snow was falling thickly, cutting vision down to just a few feet.

“Brisk day for a walk,” Grant called as he strode across the snow from his own Manta toward Kane’s. He materialized through the white curtain of snow like a shadow coming suddenly to life. He had dressed in a long leather-style coat over his shadow suit, with thick-soled combat boots to augment the shadow suit’s built-in foot molds that were more like hard socks. The top of the boots could barely be seen, for the snow here was compact but deep. Grant’s coat was made from a Kevlar/Nomex mix, making it both flame retardant and able to repel bullets. It didn’t make Grant invulnerable, but it gave him an edge at least. The last item that Grant wore was a woollen hat to cover his shaved head. The hat was black, matching the rest of his outfit.

“Damn brisk,” Kane agreed as he and Brigid exited the cockpit, sealing the hatch behind him.

Consulting the tablet’s portable scanner, the three Cerberus warriors trudged through the snow toward the heat source. Brigid’s hair fluttered wildly in the wind, as did the tails of Grant’s duster. Kane had dressed in a shorter jacket over his shadow suit, its pockets giving him extra storage space, along with a belt, which contained a half-dozen pouches within which he had stored his usual armory of flashbangs and miniexplosives.

“Could be under the snow,” Kane suggested as they looked around, mystified, for the heat source.

“No,” Brigid said, checking the details on her scanner. “Whatever’s emanating heat is moving...slowly, but it’s moving.”

Kane looked at the tablet screen, swiftly making sense of the icons. “There,” he said, pointing a little way to their right.

Before Kane had lowered his hand, something large and white came barreling out of the snow curtain toward them from the right. It was like a curved wall, wider than a house, and was accompanied by the growl of a mighty engine.

Designated Task #007: Food Preparation

I am assigned to Delta Level for two days every week once my shift at Designated Task #004 has finished. There, I am tasked to prepare meals for the ville, specifically for my tower. This involves cleaning, peeling and chopping vegetables and fruit before they are mulched together in a nutritious paste-like gruel. The gruel smells strongly during preparation. On my first occasion I waited forty minutes until my allocated break, at which point I left the room and vomited, the smell too much. I have trained myself to be better now, but it is all I can do to keep myself from vomiting while I wash and chop and peel, such is the sweet malodor of the mashed components.

The food is portioned into small trays, which are then distributed to the canteens around the ville. The serving of the food is a separate Designated Task, #008.

—From the journal of Citizen 619F.

Chapter 7

Twenty feet wide and painted white, the unit was perfectly camouflaged for the environment. The noise of the engine should have given the behemoth’s approach away, but the thick snow had muffled it almost entirely until it had reached within a dozen feet of the Cerberus warriors.

Kane leaped one way, Grant and Brigid the other as the massive unit came barreling at them, accompanied by a churning engine noise that boomed like thunder in the mountains.