Chapter 65 - The Frozen Citadel
The screen of the satellite phone flared bright red, rebooting into a terminal sequence that I had seen only once before—on the black screen inside the scuttled yacht in the Atlantic.
*SYSTEM OVERRIDE: PROTOCOL VANCE-OMEGA.*
*BEACON ACTIVE.*
"It's a tracking loop," I gasped, throwing the car door open and dragging Lily out into the freezing wind. "Arthur didn't call us. The system simulated him to steer us here!"
"Mom, my backpack!" Lily cried out.
"Leave it!"
"No! The drive is in the lining!"
I lunged back into the passenger side, tore the silver drive from the seam of the small nylon bag, and hurled the satellite phone deep into the snowdrifts beside the ditch. Taking Lily’s hand, we plunged into the dark forest on foot, the sub-zero air burning our lungs like swallowed glass.
Behind us, two miles down the valley, a flare arced into the night sky, illuminating the snow-covered ridges of the Presidential Range in an eerie, blood-red hue. Ground vehicles were advancing along Route 302. They were closing the net.
We scrambled through waist-deep drifts, following the rusted steel rails of the old mountain railway. The incline was brutal, pulling at my calves and freezing the sweat on my neck. Lily stumbled repeatedly, but each time she pushed herself back up without a whimper, her tiny boots crunching against the ice.
After forty minutes of agonizing ascent through the blinding squall, the silhouette of the Marshfield base station emerged from the darkness like a ghost ship stranded on an icy shore.
The maintenance shed was locked with a heavy industrial padlock, but beside it stood the steel personnel door with the digital keypad Arthur’s voice had described.
My fingers were so numb I could barely feel the buttons. Lily was born in 2016. Reversed: *6-1-0-2*.
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I punched the numbers into the frozen plastic. A sharp electronic beep echoed through the howling wind, and the heavy pneumatic latch disengaged with a dull *clunk*.
I shoved the door open, pulled Lily inside, and slammed it shut, throwing the mechanical deadbolt just as the drone of approaching snowmobiles began to echo up the mountain pass.
