Orr went down to his knees, covering his ears and then it simply passed and he could hear it outside the drill tower, filling the night. The bogies had abandoned the structure. He had no idea how they had gotten out. But maybe they had flown right through the walls like they were made of smoke.

Trying to catch his breath, he crawled painfully, stiffly over to the door and pulled it open.

Snow and cold blasted into his face. He saw the sky above. It was thick with heavy gray clouds and a buzzing black mass rose up into it like a swarm of hornets and vanished from sight.

He could see Kharkov Station. Targa House. The meteorology dome. The security lights marking its perimeter.

And the drill tower began to shake.

44
THE RISING

In fact, the entire world began to shake and tremble. Orr was thrown back inside the tower and the door slammed shut. He fought to his feet only to be dashed earthward again. Things were crashing and falling inside the tower. He could hear the creaking and groaning of metal fatigue. It was like the ice was being hit by an earthquake. He threw himself at the door and it flew open, tossing him aside. It came right off its hinges. He wedged himself in the doorway.

Kharkov Station buckled and heaved. A strange green light was coming from beneath the glacier. And the ice itself was cracking open, splitting asunder with jagged rents. Steam poured from it and it went to a slush that rolled and surged like molten lava. The drill tower was heaving and groaning, the ice popping and bubbling away. And from far below, that green phosphorescence was rising to the surface…a gigantic mass like some luminous sea creature breaching from the depths.

Orr saw Targa House sink into the bubbling sea.

He felt the heat of what was coming through the ice as steam and rivers of slush flowed through the doorway and he began to sink into it like an animal trapped in a tar pit. It was warm, unbelievably warm like bathwater. But it was sludgy and thick. He thrashed and fought. And what was coming from below continued to rise, burning and glowing like some molten reactor core rising from the frozen depths below and liquefying everything in its path.

You have one chance.

One little chance to end this.