Chapter 100: Chapter 100: Different From the Others

The temperature outside was approaching the lowest ever recorded on Earth.

Even though they were all wearing thermal suits, a fine layer of frost still coated them the moment they stepped outside.

The snow had deepened by over a meter, but fortunately, the sleds weren’t buried.

Victor Keller led his team away. Behind them, Silas Hawthorne and Sue Lawrence skied onward, hurrying toward Theodore Frost’s last known location.

Their helmets obstructed their view, and with the low visibility, they could only see a short distance ahead. Fortunately, Silas Hawthorne was leading, so all Sue Lawrence had to do was stick close to him.

"Do you know their position?"

She asked, panting.

"I set the route and destination. If I’m not mistaken, there should be a shopping mall with a glass dome nearby."

Sue Lawrence paused. "You mean they fell through?"

If the glass shattered, the space below would be a vacuum. If the snowpack wasn’t frozen solid, they could have easily fallen through, especially since the sled isn’t light...

"Is that why you chose to go on your own, without a sled?"

’If we’d taken a sled, we both might have fallen through.’

"I don’t know. We’ll have to go and see for ourselves."

Silas Hawthorne didn’t give a definite answer, but Sue Lawrence felt he was almost certainly right.

Silas Hawthorne followed the planned route. His smart helmet was an excellent guide.

However, the snow in the city was far from a level plain. Strong winds had accompanied the snowfall, creating rolling drifts that resembled white-capped sand dunes.

With the snow thirteen meters deep, most buildings were completely buried. Only the very tallest structures poked out, frozen solid and sheathed in a thick layer of ice that gleamed blindingly in the sun.

The silence was unnerving. There wasn’t a single bird in the sky. Sue Lawrence even wondered if they had all frozen to death.

*HUFF...*

She followed behind Silas Hawthorne, gasping for breath. Suddenly, he dug the edges of his skis in, throwing up a spray of ice. Caught off guard, Sue Lawrence’s momentum carried her forward two steps before she could steady herself. Her chest heaved, and her breath instantly fogged her visor, blinding her. Fortunately, the internal circulation system worked efficiently and cleared it in a moment.

"What is it?" she whispered, her heart pounding uncontrollably. Silas Hawthorne had stopped so abruptly, and her own Perception was screaming of a danger ahead—a danger that felt like an abyss.

Silas Hawthorne didn’t turn around. He simply raised a hand and pointed ahead.

Sue Lawrence followed his gesture, and her pupils constricted.

The once mirror-smooth surface of the snow was broken by a gaping pit, five or six meters in diameter. Snow crumbled from its edges, trickling into the pitch-black maw below.

It was the weak point in the deep snowpack: the tempered glass dome of the shopping mall’s top floor. Whether it had been crushed by the sled’s weight or had already cracked in the extreme cold, it had now completely given way, forming a bottomless black hole.

A night of fresh snow had obscured the surrounding area, but they could still see the corner of a sled sticking out of the snowdrift near the hole’s edge. It was too tall to have been completely buried, and it was the only sign they needed to confirm that Theodore Frost and his team were down there.

"It’s them." Silas Hawthorne’s voice, tinged with a subtle gravity, crackled through the comms. "Theodore Frost’s sled. It fell in."

Sue Lawrence walked to the edge of the pit, crouched, and peered down.

The hole was pitch-black. The only sound was the muffled thud of snow as it continued to fall into the depths. Nothing else could be heard.

Silas Hawthorne was also observing, but from a height of over ten meters, his normal vision was useless. He couldn’t make out a thing.

"Can you make anything out?"

Silas Hawthorne asked.

Sue Lawrence activated her superpower, A Level Observation Power, and stared intently into the darkness below.

The drop was over ten meters. The snow had collapsed, but the space below was still deep. A full night of new snow had erased any tracks, but her A Level Observation Power allowed her to spot something out of place.

"There..."

She pointed to a dark space beneath a collapsed section. "There are footprints. They’re new."

Footprints?

Silas Hawthorne frowned, trying to see. For all his powerful superpowers, he couldn’t make out a thing. After all, no normal human could see clearly from a dozen meters up.

He glanced instinctively at Sue Lawrence. ’A Raider’s superpowers are really something else,’ he thought. ’They can take anything. She must have nabbed some kind of vision-based superpower.’

"In that case, let’s go down!"

But Silas Hawthorne raised a hand to stop her. His eyes swept over the smart terminal on his wrist, where the signal bars had vanished, replaced by a glaring "No Signal" icon.

"There’s no signal here. Comms are down, and GPS is offline. We have no idea what we’re getting into," his voice was so calm it was almost cold. "Beneath the glass dome is the mall’s central atrium. It’s at least a ten-meter drop, and the snow is unstable. There could be a secondary collapse at any moment, burying us along with them."

Sue Lawrence bit her lower lip as the wind scraped across her face, bone-chillingly cold.

She knew Silas Hawthorne was right. The black hole was like the maw of a great beast. The moment they entered, they would be cut off from the world, trapped in peril.

"We came all this way. There’s no sense in not trying to save them."

Hearing this, Silas Hawthorne suddenly smiled. This woman was certainly interesting. When there was something to be gained, she’d argue with him endlessly over the smallest advantage. But now, when it came to a rescue, she was just as determined.

In this apocalypse, he had seen too many heartless, cold-blooded people. Someone like Sue Lawrence was a true rarity.

"There’s no other choice," Sue Lawrence said, pulling off her gloves to quickly check the safety rope and ice axe at her waist. "Signal or no signal, we have to find them first. Theodore Frost and his team have gear, but they can’t hold out for long."

Silas Hawthorne met her determined gaze and was silent for two seconds. Then, he too began checking his gear. He cranked the light on his smart helmet to its brightest setting, illuminating the dark opening.

"Grab the safety line and stay close," he said, taking the lead. He drove his ice axe into the hard-packed snow at the pit’s edge and secured the rope. "The temperature inside will be even lower than out here, and there’s no light. If we get separated, we’ll never find each other again."

Sue Lawrence nodded, fastening the safety rope securely around her waist and clipping the other end to Silas Hawthorne’s line.

They exchanged a look, each seeing the same resolve in the other’s eyes.

Taking a deep breath of the freezing air, Sue Lawrence followed Silas Hawthorne, stepping into the black pit that had swallowed their comrades. The howling blizzard behind them severed their last connection to the outside world.

"BEEP BEEP BEEP..."

A piercing alarm blared.

It was the sound of the extreme low-temperature alarm. Even without looking, they could both see frost chasing them from behind, forming at a rapid pace.

The temperature... it seemed to have dropped even further!