"Was that a wolf?"

  Howard lay closer to the tent exit, and the creature, fleeing, literally leaped over him, leaving behind a smell of damp earth and something sour.

  "Probably a feral dog..." he replied uncertainly, rising on an elbow and peering into the darkness beyond the tent flap.

  "Neither a dog nor a wolf," Sarah didn't look up from the wound on Keila's arm, from which dark, almost black blood welled in the flashlight beam. Her fingers, quick and precise, rummaged through an open zinc case of medications, rustling packages. "It's a cave spider. Fortunately, not venomous... but its fangs are sharp as scalpels."

  We exchanged glances, unsure whether to believe this. Maybe Sarah, half-asleep, imagined something? Could spiders be that size—to jump over a lying person?

  "Tell me, Ork," Colonel Daniels's voice came from the depths of the tent. He lay on the stretcher, but his eyes shone clearly and attentively in the semi-darkness. "You are familiar with this shelter's design. What's the power source here? Diesel... or perhaps a reactor?"

  I remained silent for a long time, choosing words and recalling everything I knew about the facility. Information surfaced in fragments—reports, blueprints, snippets of rumors.

  "This shelter wasn't just planned for people," I began slowly. "In case of danger, entire labs, server farms, artificial intelligence models, and active defense systems were to be moved here. The energy required for all that would be colossal. I can't even imagine what could power it all except a nuclear reactor. Most likely—one or several small modular reactors, the very ones developed at our base. Some prototypes might already have been commissioned."

  "If there was a nuclear reactor here," Daniels spoke slowly, weighing each word, "then there must be a special storage facility for radioactive waste. Deep, isolated, with constant temperature control."

  Sarah lifted her head from the bandaging; her hands froze for a moment.

  "Perhaps somewhere in the rocks, in natural caves, there was a nest of cave spiders," she said, returning to the bandages. "They could have somehow gotten into such a storage through cracks or ventilation ducts. It's always warm there... and hardly anyone ever goes in. An ideal environment for mutation."

  Colonel Daniels nodded grimly, agreeing with her conclusion.

  "Radiation," he said curtly. "I've seen something similar before. At another base, in Utah. They also had radiation leak issues, but there we dealt with rats."

  He paused, staring at a point on the tent ceiling, and added:

  "They were the size of shepherd dogs... Had to flame-throw all the technical tunnels. Nothing else worked on them."

  "I told you, of course, a spider," Sarah muttered, tying the last knot on the bandage. She moved toward the exit, about to step outside... and immediately recoiled, bumping her back against the tent frame.

  "Rifles! Quickly, rifles!" she shouted in a breaking, sharp voice devoid of her usual irony. "There's a ton of them out there!"

  I rushed to the boxes stacked against the tent wall, frantically searching for the weapons stored there. Hands, still cottony from recent sleep, found brand-new, factory-grease-smelling M4 carbines—the very ones Hunter had taken for our supposed hunting trip in the Alaskan woods. With trembling fingers, I began inserting tightly packed magazines into the receivers. The metallic clang of the charging handle as I chambered a round sounded incredibly loud in the silence, but reassuringly so.

  Howard grabbed the first weapon; the second, already ready, I handed to Sarah, and kept the third for myself.

  Carefully opening the tent flap a centimeter, I didn't aim—just shouldered the stock and fired a long burst toward ATLAS, into the darkness. Orange tongues of muzzle flash momentarily illuminated our camp, casting sharp, jumping shadows. Something in the dark flinched; a dry, abrupt crunch and grating sound was heard—exactly like claws, or, more terrifyingly, scalpel-sharp mandibles.

  Quickly inserting a fresh magazine, I frantically yanked the charging handle and opened the flap wider. The beam from Daniels's flashlight, held behind me somewhere, helped me aim, snatching a revolting, writhing scene from the darkness: dark, shaggy shadows crawled over ATLAS's landing gear and hull, clumping into balls, dispatching wounded and already motionless kin.

  I quickly fired another long burst into the densest cluster, and Sarah, firing short, controlled bursts, almost immediately emptied her magazine as well.

  "Conserve ammunition!" Daniels's calm but commanding voice came from the tent's depths. "Gunfire only excites them. We need to wait until they start devouring the wounded and dead creatures, get their fill, and leave on their own. It's their nature."

  And indeed: very little time passed—the cracking, clicking, and strange, wet smacking ceased as suddenly as it began. When I dared to look again, illuminating the slope with a flashlight, it was empty. Only a few dark, shapeless lumps on the ground and slight, barely perceptible movement in the deep shadow under the machine's hull reminded us of what happened.

  "So you managed to move the rock after all?" Daniels asked, breaking the heavy silence.

  Only then did it dawn on me what genie we had let out of the bottle. But sooner or later, we would have gotten into the shelter anyway. Good that we learned of the danger here, on the surface, under the relatively open sky, and not in the complete darkness of narrow underground corridors. It was terrifying to imagine that encounter in pitch blackness, without light, and utterly unprepared for an attack.

  "Could those monsters have gotten into the food storage?" Sarah asked anxiously, mechanically checking the remaining ammunition in her magazine and looking toward the path we'd already beaten to the ventilation shaft.

  "Impossible." For the first time since we saw the first spider in the tent, Lieutenant Howard spoke up. "The walls, floors, and ceilings of all storage areas in shelters of this class are embedded with reinforcing mesh made of titanium rods. They're nearly impossible to breach even with a directed explosion. Everything there is built solidly."

  "God willing," Colonel Daniels sighed heavily, somewhat uncertainly. "But dealing with this filth will still be hard for us... Down there, it's complete, absolute darkness. And in the dark, any creature becomes ten times bolder."

  The wind that had howled over Clark Mountain all night subsided a bit by morning, turning into a low, humming drone, as if a giant engine were running somewhere far away. Clouds, thick and gray, still raced low over Earth, almost over our heads, hiding the peaks. The watch on my wrist showed eight in the morning. Time to get to work.

  When we approached ATLAS, the cloud layer above us brightened slightly, became less solid. Like in a haze, vague outlines of neighboring peaks emerged. We entered the clean, safe cabin and sank into our seats. The contrast was so striking that the previous night began to seem like a nightmare, a product of exhaustion and sick imagination.

  Recovering a bit, I started the turbines for warm-up. We needed to recharge the nearly depleted batteries and warm up the systems before the heavy work. Outside, somewhere beyond the hull skin, the turbines buzzed powerfully, the sound steady and confident.

  "I'll stay here," I said, turning to Sarah and Howard. "You two go and properly tie the rock with cables. We'll pull it down the slope. We need to move it for good."

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "Better we tie it together," Howard fidgeted. His face in the morning light was pale with a grayish tint. "After last night, I won't stay there alone for anything. The three of us will do it, then all return to the cabin."

  Sarah silently shrugged, glanced at the lieutenant, and exited the cabin; her look was more eloquent than any words.

  Half an hour later, ATLAS hovered at a low altitude over our work site. Sarah, proving braver than the lieutenant, hooked the steel cables to two of the middle landing feet—the "paws." I waited a bit, watching through the external camera, until she moved to a safe distance.

  From this position, we could try pulling. But I wanted to check first how securely the rock was hooked and whether the cable might slip. I input a command on the panel for a smooth five-meter ascent.

  And that decision, purely intuitive, saved us from certain death.

  As soon as the cables tightened, turning into taut strings, the turbines roared powerfully, but their steady hum immediately changed to a hoarse, intermittent bellow. Power began dropping. ATLAS jerked and started sinking downward, toward the mountainside. I didn't even have time to think what to do—when control was instantly taken over by "Alice," leveling the machine. The cables slackened immediately, the engine hum became steady, and the machine, with difficulty, literally right at the surface, maintained altitude. Just a few seconds passed—and it rose again to the designated five meters, the engines operating normally.

  I exhaled with relief, feeling my heart pounding somewhere in my throat. Recovering a bit, I activated the emergency diagnostic program.

  An alarming message flashed on the central screen: "Insufficient oxygen and hydrogen in the atmosphere for optimal combustion... Concentration below critical..."

  "That's it!" the reason for what happened dawned on me. Thin, poisoned air, and at such altitude. I gave the command to connect the reserve tanks of compressed air for the combustion systems. But I didn't want to risk a heavy maneuver again. Lifting ATLAS to the full length of the cables, about twenty meters, I then sharply lowered it ten meters down, where the air was slightly denser, and again commanded a sharp ascent with maximum thrust.

  This time, the engines ran smoothly, without interruption. ATLAS swayed from the jerk, hung for a moment with cables taut as strings, then surged upward. A dull, drawn-out grinding sound, like tearing metal, was heard.

  For a moment, I thought the cable had snapped. But, looking out the side view port, I saw something entirely different. Something huge and dark, raising clouds of dust and ash, rolled down the mountainside, crushing the sparse remnants of vegetation and exposing bedrock. We had finally managed to topple the accursed rock. And only then did I understand that ATLAS, once again, had saved us.

  "Go on, dear," I whispered, running my palm over the warm control panel. "Time for you to rest."

  The machine, as if understanding, smoothly turned and began landing at our old site.

  This time, exiting the cabin, I firmly closed the doors until they clicked and retracted the entrance steps. When I approached the ventilation tunnel opening, Howard and Sarah had already managed to pry off the remains of locks from the mangled grate with crowbars, and now they stood at the edge, peering down with a mix of fear and disgust.

  I approached them and looked over their shoulders into the shaft.

  Deep inside, a view opened up of a huge ventilation chamber—a concrete well about ten meters in diameter. The floor and walls, as far as the morning light reached, were draped with repulsive-looking webbing. These were dense, layered, gray sheets, in places several centimeters thick, covered in dust and stirring from the icy wind rushing into the shaft. The scale of this "decoration" was so monstrous that it was frightening not just to descend—but even to approach closer.

  "Yeeeah," I drawled, feeling a cold weight settle on my shoulders. "Scary. Going down there without powerful light is suicide."

  "We could take the spotlight from ATLAS," Howard said, but the familiar note of defeatism sounded in his voice again. "But where to find such a long cable? We need about three hundred meters, at least."

  His tone, always emphasizing the hopelessness of our situation, this time didn't just anger but infuriated me. I turned away and began frantically considering options, discarding them one after another.

  Tormentingly trying to find a solution, I mechanically took hold of the end of that very power cable on which our work spotlight hung. Its rubber sheath was torn in places with marks of teeth or claws. Beneath it, a bundle of dozens of multicolored copper strands in thin insulation was visible.

  Thoughts in my head arranged themselves into an instant, clear scheme. Cable length—about fifty meters. To power one powerful spotlight, only two strands are needed.

  "What if we unravel the cable?" I began, already expecting the usual caustic objection from the lieutenant. "Separate it into individual strands. Their length should suffice with spare."

  But, to my surprise, Howard, despite all his cowardice and vileness, turned out to be a competent specialist. He instantly assessed the idea.

  "Twenty-five strands... about fifty meters each, probably enough," he quickly estimated by eye, examining the damaged sheath.

  "And if it's not enough," I picked up, feeling weak but crucial support now, "we'll prepare a landing pad for ATLAS right at the entrance itself."

  Without wasting time, I began right there, on the spot, removing the outer sheath with a knife, freeing the first bundle of multicolored wires. The rubber yielded reluctantly, but nevertheless, the work proceeded quickly.

  Meanwhile, outside, evening was already falling, and darkness began descending again, immediately reminding us of the dangers of the previous night.

  "Spending the night outside is no longer possible," I said firmly, tearing my gaze from the cable. "It's unsafe. We urgently need to dismantle the tent and move all food and belongings back into ATLAS. The lieutenant and I will stay here and work on the cable; we can't lose a minute. You, Sarah, go down to the girls and the colonel, and do this yourself."

  To save time and not get thirsty, Howard and I decided to skip lunch. We worked silently, ferociously, until our fingers went numb from cold and small cuts from the sharp insulation edges. And with the onset of real, impenetrable darkness, new sounds became audible. From below, from the tunnel's depths, came a clatter—rapid, staccato tapping of many hard, chitinous limbs on metal. The sound was as if a cavalry squadron were galloping over cobblestones in olden times. The creatures were gathering outside again. Judging by the sound, they were currently concentrating in the ventilation chamber itself, preparing to emerge.

  "The cable..." Howard whispered, and his whisper held pure, uncontrolled fear. "We need to take the cable away from here for the night... Otherwise, they'll gnaw through it all by morning..."

  His suggestion seemed reasonable to me. But before dragging the heavy cable coil down to our site, for some reason, I wanted to take one last look into the black maw of the shaft to assess the gathering threat below.

  The massive reinforced concrete walls of the chamber descended about ten meters. Their surface was relatively smooth, without protrusions, and the only way up was a single metal ladder welded from channels and ribbed iron. At mid-height, it was interrupted by a small platform made of similar steel grating, and from this platform, a vertical hatch led to a second ladder, all the way to the top, to the destroyed grate.

  And then it hit me.

  "Wouldn't it be better to try and lock or jam this hatch on the platform?" I said, pointing into the darkness. "Block their path to the surface from below, not above."

  I immediately saw Howard's face twist in horror.

  "Go down there?!" he pointed a trembling finger into the black maw of the shaft. "I'm not going down there for anything in the world! It's suicide!"

  I realized persuading him was useless. I'd have to do it myself.

  "Give me the rifle," I said curtly and, without waiting for him to hand it over, took my weapon leaning against the rock. I grabbed the heavy sledgehammer left from working on the rock and approached the shaft edge.

  Cautiously peering down, I felt icy shivers run down my spine.

  Hundreds of tiny points of dim, reflected light stared up at me from the chamber floor. And some creatures, the most agile, were already climbing the walls and ladder, only a few meters from the intermediate platform.

  I didn't hesitate any longer. Bracing the stock against my shoulder, I fired a long burst almost point-blank into the cluster of creatures on the ladder. Bright muzzle flashes momentarily illuminated the writhing shadows below. About a dozen creatures fell down into the midst of their hungry kin.

  Echoes of gunshots still hung over the stone well when something monstrous began below. The fallen spiders, among which several were only wounded, were instantly swarmed by others. That familiar, nauseating crunch and wet smacking sounded.

  I changed magazines, fired a few more shots directly into that bloody melee at the bottom and, trying not to look down, quickly began descending the upper ladder to the grated platform. Metal clanged loudly under my boots, and my heart beat so hard it drowned out all sounds around.

  Reaching the platform, I first struck the sledgehammer at the point where the lower ladder section was attached to the wall. Good thing the welding was done hastily, poorly. After seven or eight strong blows, the mount cracked with a deafening crash. The entire lower part of the ladder crashed down into the chamber, right onto the pile of spiders devouring dead or still-living comrades, dragging several more creatures crawling upward with it.

  Now, a smooth concrete wall about five meters high separated me from the main mass of creatures. I emptied another magazine, firing from above into the seething mass, then slung the rifle on my back and set to work on the hatch in the platform. The massive steel hatch cover was mounted on heavy hinges. I inserted the sledgehammer handle into the gap between the cover and the frame, braced myself, and leaned my full weight onto it. Metal screeched, bent, and the hatch slammed shut with a heavy thud. A few more blows—and the sledgehammer handle, jammed in the deformed opening, securely wedged it shut.

  I took a deep, painfully relieved breath of icy air and began climbing up quickly. Each step echoed in my temples with warm, bloody waves before my eyes.

  When the tension eased a bit and we retreated to our temporary camp, I felt a deadly cold descending around us. Not a night chill, but a damp, bone-penetrating cold