"If we don't find a windbreak in the next ten minutes, the kid is going to stop shivering and start turning blue, and I am not carrying a frozen civilian over a mountain pass," Zoya barked, her voice barely cutting through the relentless howl of the whiteout as she wrenched the nylon tether taut.Ariful stumbled forward, his boots sliding dangerously close to the edge of the shale drop-off before he managed to dig his heels into the crusted snow. "He's not freezing yet, Zoya, but my fingers stopped responding to commands three switchbacks ago," he panted, his breath pluming in thick, ragged clouds as he clutched his aching chest. "How much further to the logging station?""According to the map Silas threw at my head before we left, it's right on the other side of this ridge—assuming the mudslides didn't drag the whole damn structure down into the ravine," Zoya said, her eyes darting frantically across the swirling wall of white that swallowed the landscape barely five feet ahead of th

"Drop the hardware, or the kid loses an ear," Vane rasped, the rusted barrel of her submachine gun leveled straight at Toby’s trembling temple as she stepped out from behind a jagged outcrop of frost-heaved shale.Zoya didn’t flinch, her hand already blurring toward her holster with practiced, lethal speed. "Try it and I’ll put a round through your eye before your finger even twitches on the trigger.""Both of you, shut up and stop pointing guns at children," Ariful wheezed, stepping bodily between Zoya’s drawn pistol and Vane’s rusted weapon, his hands raised palms outward to show he was unarmed. "We don't have time for a shootout in a freezing ravine. Vane, right? Silas mentioned a band of outlaws working this sector. He said you were smart enough to negotiate rather than bleed for scrap metal."Vane narrowed her eyes, her scarred cheek twitching as she looked Ariful up and down, taking in the grease-stained jacket, the trembling fingers, and the heavy rucksack strapped to his back.

"Move," Zoya hissed, her gloved hand shoving Ariful hard against the corrugated rim of the industrial intake tube before he could even register the foul, sulfurous stench rolling out of the dark metal maw. "If you prefer a firing squad at the checkpoint, step back out into the open. Otherwise, get inside."Ariful coughed, his ribs protesting violently as he dropped to his hands and knees on the freezing, grease-slicked steel floor of the pipeline. "I’m moving, I’m moving," he wheezed, tasting old industrial waste and chemical rust the moment the thick, stagnant air hit the back of his throat. "Just give me a second to get my balance.""We don't have seconds," Toby snapped, scrambling past Ariful with frantic energy, his small frame scraping against the low-hanging rivets overhead. "I saw a Bastion scout drone lift off from the rear of the transport truck thirty seconds ago. It's sweeping this sector right now."Zoya ducked inside after them, dragging the heavy, camouflaged steel acces

"Don't stop here, keep moving," Zoya muttered, her voice dropping to a harsh, breathless whisper as she dragged herself out of the final, rusted mouth of the industrial slurry pipe.She hit the squelching peat moss of the lowlands shoulder-first, her fingers sinking deep into the cold, decaying organic matter that coated the outskirts of the river basin. Without pausing to wipe the gray, chemical-laced sludge from her face, she grabbed the collar of Ariful's heavy canvas coat and heaved him forward into the tall, frost-rimmed reeds.Ariful stumbled out of the pipe with a violent, racking cough, his knees buckling beneath him as his boots sank six inches into the sodden marshland. He tasted sulfur, copper, and the foul, stagnant rot of decades of industrial runoff, his chest heaving as he tried to drag clean air into his burning lungs."I'm out," Ariful wheezed, doubling over with his hands braced against his thighs, droplets of gray sludge dripping from his chin onto the dead vegetati

"I am entirely sure," Ariful rasped, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the frozen stock of his iron-framed tool bag. "If we misjudge the hydraulic stutter by even half a second, the tracking array locks onto our thermal profile. And then we are nothing more than ash on the mud.""Then we don't misjudge it," Zoya said, her voice dropping into that cold, absolute register that brooked no argument. She pulled her pistol from her holster, checked the slide with a practiced, silent click, and tucked it back beneath her saturated wool coat. "Toby, you stay right between us. If I move, you move. If Ariful drops, you grab his belt and you don't look back at the tower. Do you understand me?"The boy swallowed hard, his face pale beneath the smears of gray slurry, but he nodded sharply. "I understand. I won't slow you down.""You better not," Zoya muttered, her eyes narrowing as she fixed her gaze on the massive, humming concrete monolith fifty yards away across the open mire. "Because if th