The dawn in the northern peaks did not bring warmth. It merely exposed the absolute, raw brutality of the high-altitude ecosystem.
The pale, anemic morning light bled slowly over the jagged, towering shale cliffs, casting long, sharp shadows across the frozen canyon floor. The fierce alpine wind had stripped the heavy overcast clouds away, revealing a blindingly clear, freezing blue sky.
Inside the shallow, elevated overhang, Chloe woke up gasping.
Her lungs burned desperately for oxygen in the thin mountain air. Her unmutated human biology was entirely stiff, her joints aching with a deep, residual cold that the heavy military thermal blankets could not completely block. She pushed the thick wool off her face, her gloved hands numb and clumsy.
She crawled to the jagged edge of the ten-foot drop.
The nightmare she had witnessed in the pitch-black dark of the nocturnal cycle was magnified tenfold in the pristine morning light.
