ALICE

Chapter 49: REGROUP

 It had been almost an hour of gingerly treading through the snow, occasionally punching through the thin crust of icy snow into the soft powder underneath. She kept tuning her earpiece, trying to pick up something.

 She was completly lost, until she skimmed over something that was different from the light static that was a constant with every station. Her heart lept as she gently switched back to the station.

 "Whitehawk 4 are you in the air yet?"

 "Negative Nest Zero, engine troubles."

 "Do you need an engineer Whitehawk 4?"

 "Negative, gas line is just all frosted up."

 "Alright, we'll send up Slender 1 until you're ready."

 "Got it."

 Alice grinned. She was near the base. As she kept her gun at the ready, she gently crept in the direction that her radio signal became stronger. She began to see where the morning light shined heavenly rays through the trees, implying a large clearing above. As she moved towards the clearing, she punched through the snow, but this time it was deeper, far deeper. She smashed into deep packed snow, and took an instant to see the massive tunnel she found herself in. She also saw the white shape in front of her aiming a black pistol at her. She flinched as she heard a grinding sound erupting from it.

 "Alice?"

 Her life was still flashing in front of her eyes, but she vaguely recognized Cole Redd's voice.

 "C-c-cole?"

 "Holy shit! I thought everyone was dead."

 "Yeah... Me too."

 "You would be dead if my gun hadn't frosted up."

 "You would be dead if I was LSF."

 "Fair enough." He went to work on his gun, unjamming it. "Are you okay?"

 "My arm's burnt to hell, and my hand broke, but I'm okay I guess. You?"

 "I twisted my knee pretty bad, so I decided to tunnel instead of walk and mess it up more when I punched through."

 "Have you found anyone else?"

 "No... But I think they can figure out how to get to the rendezvous point on their own. They're pretty capable."

 He went back to work with his folding trench shovel, digging through the snow. It was actually warm in here, and as Alice crawled behind Redd, she eventually broke a sweat and pulled off her tuque. It was nearly twenty minutes before they eventually broke through the wall of snow. Redd poked his head out of the hole as the cold air whooshed through the tunnel. He looked down to see a cliff of snow with just a slight incline, a hundred meters . He could see the round, egg shaped dark base that stood out on the white snow in the center of the round clearing almost three times the diameter of the base, about 1000 meters across.

 Alice grabbed Redd's shovel and dug through the right wall so Redd's small tunnel was turned into a larger one. Alice saw the huge clearing, the black stain in the center. Dug in roads were all around the base. Alice could see guards in bright orange coats everywhere, cradling a machine gun. They were almost a hundred meters below them.

 Redd was grinning as he peered down the scope of his sniper rifle. "There they are!"

 "What?"

 "The rest of em." He said. "Krew, Taco, Angel, Nine."

 "Where?"

 "The opposite ridge."

 "How are we gonna get to the ground?"