The Ice Warrior

Chapter 10

The idea that Silv had was so simple, and yet it hadn't occurred to her sooner since she hadn't thought about it for years. It was just a tall tale that the children told each other in those rare moments before sleep when they could just be children.

At the time, she was thinking of those stories as things made up by older siblings to scare their younger brothers and sisters. However, once she joined the army, Silv learned that many of those stories, if not all, were based on facts.

The older children must have overheard their parents at some point or seen it in the news. Whatever the case might be, Silv was glad that those particular stories that she recalled were true. It made life so much easier for her.

She still remembered the way her older brother used to tell the story in the middle of the night when their parents weren't there to stop him from scaring her.

"Long, long time ago, when humans could walk the earth freely, there was a place deep down in the ground, a dark place where rare few dared go. It was a place where they thought they might find salvation in, but that was instead populated by ghosts. Ghosts of people who died before they had the chance to save themselves from the cold that they didn't predict. They were ready for many things but not for the endless winter. So they died.

They say that even today, you can find their rotting corpses in those dark, neverending tunnels. The tunnels are so well hidden that one day you might fall through and into them.

Many children have. And they have never been seen again." He would say, lowering his voice to a creepy whisper.

Silv's small eyes were wide open in fear, and it never even occurred to her to doubt the truthfulness of her brother's words. After all, he was the one who always protected her when others were mean to hear and who made her believe that her dream of becoming a soldier was possible.

However, soon enough, their parents overheard Andrew and put a stop to his scary tales by telling her the truth, that there were no such things as ghosts. They helped her learn that though her brother would protect her from everyone else, Andrew would still play tricks on her and scare her whenever he got the chance. It was his unique way of showing her that he cared about her.

Later on in life, Silv learned that those dark places he had mentioned in his tales of horror were real. They were built by the humans in a vain effort to protect themselves from the impending doom that they knew was coming.

They were naive enough to believe that once the end of their world came, it would be a gradual affair, and they would have enough time to find shelter. Those shelters were called bunkers, as far as Silv could remember, and they were as ridiculous as they were well-stocked.

In the end, the problem with the bunkers wasn't lack of supplies, or the strength of the material they were built with, it was the suddenness with which the end came.

There was no time to prepare. No time to run.

Not when that first wave came with its unimaginable coldness. It only spared the lucky few who found themselves in warm buildings at the time, or were resistant enough to cold to be badly hurt but not killed.

Some of the bunkers were said to be even bigger than 2000 square feet for one family. More importantly, those underground bunkers were said to be connected through a set of tunnels. Silv thought that the initial idea might have been to create a whole network of underground cities, but she didn't know for sure, no one did.

As a soldier, she was required to possess a wide range of knowledge about the world they lived in to be able to predict future issues and security threats before they occurred. Silv couldn't help but find it funny that although she had predicted and resolved many problems, she had never seen Denis' betrayal coming.

Her mind started swirling into unwanted places, thinking about what that said about her military prowess, but she stopped herself as soon as she lost control. It was not practical to indulge in self-doubt when they had so many things to do.

The threat assessments she did in her beginnings required of her to investigate the earth of the past and which of the remnants of the old society could pose a threat so that they could be dealt with in advance. At the time special attention was paid to underground buildings of any sort.

They were told that the reason for that was the fact that they possed an immediate threat since they were obscured by the snowfall and accidents involving people falling in were likely.

At that point, Silv couldn't help but laugh out loud.

"Silv alright?" Wir Eis asked.

Silv could see that he was startled by her behavior, but she couldn't stop herself. She found it hilarious that the cover story they came up with actually came true when she fell into the secret base. Yet, it was clear that wasn't the main reason they were looking for underground facilities.

"Yes, I am sorry. I guess I am just realizing how ridiculous my situation is and how wrong it was of me to trust Denis." Silv said.

Wir Eis said nothing, and Silv wasn't sure if it was because there was nothing to say or because he didn't understand what she meant. It didn't matter, either way, she knew what they had to do, and Wir Eis was ready to help.

"When I was younger, I had to do a lot of research about underground places. If they were in any way a threat to our lives, I was supposed to report it to my superiors, if not I wasn't supposed to bother them and was supposed to file it away." Silv said.

Seeing Wir Eis' confused expression, she quickly hurried on to explain.

"One of those days, I found quite an interesting one. It was actually under our base, but the tunnels leading to and from it led under the whole city. Since no one was aware of those tunnels and they were in no way a threat to us, I filed them away into the 'Unimportant' folder, which is never checked by anyone. There are too many important ones to deal with, after all. But I was curious." Silv said.

She could see that Wir Eis was starting to get where she was going with the story, and there was an expression on his alien face that Silv thought she knew, hope.

"I tried to find the entrance to the tunnels, and I succeeded. There were entrances all over the city, and you could exit the city without ever going through the security check. I might have sneaked out through them once or twice." Silv admitted, sheepishly.

"There is one close to my house that we can go through. That way I can let my grandmother know what happened and get some supplies we might need to get into the base. Once there, we can steal a few of the more sophisticated devices since none of the tunnel exits allow us to enter the base itself because of the reinforced floors and walls that were added as the technology advanced." Silv said.

"Wir Eis agree. Let's go." Wir Eis said.