Lights snapped back into life around me. The room hummed with power, alive again after centuries spent dreaming. I stood up, knocking some snow over the letterings behind me. Hiding the crime.

General comms lit up right after, starting with the clan lord himself. “Power was triggered in the central building. Report!”

Other voices sounded off, giving their location and general findings. Father turned to me, the winterscar armor scanning me down. I gave him an innocent shrug, lifting my hands up. He took a step forward, every motion screaming with distrust.

“For now,” Atius cut in. “We’ll evacuate the whelps. Winterscar, you’re hovering right by your own for a possibility like this, correct?”

“Yes, sir.” Father answered, momentum cut.

“If there’s an easy path out, take it. Get him out of the building, we’ll regroup halfway between the expedition and the site.”

“Understood.”

“Ironsight, Kidra is in the outer buildings, go get her. Windrunner, assist Shadowsong with his own pair. All teams, although there’s a low chance anything here poses a threat to us, move on assumption there is. It’ll only cost us a pound of snow if we’re wrong. Dismissed!”

The general comms clicked shut once everyone sounded affirmative.

“We’re going.” Father ordered. I took a step back, trying to reach the hoversled. “Wait! I need those power cells!”

“Not important.”

“Kidra’s knife is on the line if I don’t bring back those cells.”

That… did not make him pause like I’d expected. He continued to stalk forward in my direction, hand threatening to reach out and yank me off my feet if I didn’t cooperate immediately. “If need be, I will return for them myself - after you’ve been evacuated as ordered. We are going. Now.”

That worked for me so I did as asked, following behind as fast as the environmental suit could handle. “There’s a broken window wall by data center 2, we could probably reach the roof if we jumped up from there.”

“The room with the dome and snow?”

“Yeah, that one. Is the armor mapping the way already?”

Father nodded, diverting course to backtrack.

Comms lit up with more chatter on the global channel this time. “This is Lord Atius to expedition. Be aware, the site is confirmed to have running power. Recall the scavenger teams.”

“Expedition actual to Lord Atius, we copy. Knight teams are being formed now m’lord. We’re reinforcing our perimeter and pulling all scavengers behind the lines.”

Atius confirmed the orders and the global comms clicked shut, but the local ones stayed active. Looks like he still had things to say.

“Unfortunately for you four whelps, this means you’ll need to wait with the other scavenger teams before being allowed back in. I hope you got enough of a haul for the day, because when you come back, it’ll likely be with the full scavenger wave as competition.”

All according to plan.

We reached the data center room and found it lit up with consoles and holographic panels. They were opening and closing rapidly. Father and I slowed to a stop, the sheer oddity captivating our attention.

Then the terminal’s ancient speakers lit up. The voice was heavily scratched up, with an odd higher pitch, but the machine still spoke well enough to understand.

“Administrator confirmation required for this action.” Another panel appeared, it had a username and password field. A login prompt.

Asterisk stars filled up both fields on their own. What?

The panel was gone almost the same moment it had appeared. What was that?

Father seemed just as stunned, taking cautious steps forward.

“Administrator confirmation accepted. Purge protocol initiated. Error: Storage bay 1 disconnected from system. Data successfully wiped from storage bay 2. Error: Storage bay 3 unresponsive. Error: Storage bay 4 unresponsive. Full data purge incomplete.”

A flurry of holographic windows and charts appeared across the entire dome. It looked like the entire system was haunted by a ghost, running amok at speeds no human could keep up with.

A three dimensional model of the site appeared, shifting around fast. In moments, four large cylinders were zoomed in on and highlighted in red. They looked to be somewhere deeper underground.

On second look, they were just like the spire buildings outside, only laying flat.

Before I could even take a wild guess at what was happening, a glowing blue message box appeared. It floated, a two dimensional projection of light a few feet away from everything else - and right before my face.

It resized to be three times larger, shifting colors to bright gold in quick succession. Three messages appeared.

つや: Relinquished spotted the power spike. She’s breaching through the firewalls and I can’t keep her out of the system for much longer.

つや: She can’t be allowed to discover the navigation data or the station’s purpose. At any cost.

つや: I’m so sorry.

“What is…” Father muttered, but the ancient terminal cut him off.

“Safety locks disabled.” It chimed. “Idra-heavy rockets IH11, IH24, IH12, and IH17 now triggered for ignition. All personnel, please prepare for takeoff procedures.”

A warning siren started up almost immediately after across the entire building, and the outside too. That was never a good sign.

“Warning!” The station said, “Selected Idra-heavy rockets have not been deployed to launch sites. High chance of catastrophic system failure detected. Administrator override is required to proceed.”

A password prompt popped up into existence again in front of the displays, but already whatever was in control had typed in the password.

“Administrator override confirmed.” The terminal said cheerfully, “Launch set to T minus fifteen seconds.”

“No, shut off!” I yelled frantically, pushing random images and buttons. Each triggered a holographic window - which would be instantly closed before the window’s purpose could be read. The ghost inside the terminal was shutting me out of the system using the most brutal method possible.

"Winterscar!" Atius's voice snapped into the comms. "We've evacuated successfully, where are you?!"

An armored hand sneaked around my waist and pulled me up with no effort.

“We’re leaving.” Father said, turning and running to the open window. He leaped at it, using his free hand to vault upwards.

We sailed up, falling back down on the roof with a heavy thud. No second was spared as he instantly barreled through the waist high snow up here, still holding me with his spare hand. Father picked up speed with every lunge. The metal groaned under us from the sheer power in his strides. In seconds we would be clearing the rooftop, heading directly away from the site.

The explosion hit first.

It began with a muted roar that shook the ground. No heatwave chased us, but the entire building buckled and undulated like a wave, as if the surface had temporarily turned to liquid and behaved just like it. Father was thrown off his footing, skidding into a tumble and disappearing into the jilted snow, while the force wrenched me from his grasp into the air.

Gravity reclaimed me in moments, slamming me down onto the snow filled roof and stunning me for a moment, burying me deep. The worst hadn’t even happened yet: The ground rose upwards a moment later. It was a struggle but I wrenched myself back above to see what was going on.

The entire roof had tilted, lifting high as the downwards slope steepened. That gave me an unobstructed view of the cause. The ground below had turned into a massive chasm. The connected buildings were being dragged into it.

While nobody sane would want to slide down into that massive abyss, the snow that covered the surrounding roof absolutely did, because gravity was a thing. It moved like an avalanche, all going at the same rate, straight to the maw.

Father erupted from that snow, breaking free, instantly sprinting in a direct intercept course the moment he spotted where I’d landed. I reached out to him, but the snow had complete control over my motions and even that simple action was impossible.

Still, he’d made it to me in seconds, one armored glove shooting out and clamping around my helmet with a vice grip. The weight was too much, and the hard hat’s chin straps started choking me.

I slapped the safety release before the straps could damage my rebreather permanently.

That cost me a few more feet down the slope. Turning on myself, my hands reached out to Father. He tossed the hard hat away, snapping his hand out to grab mine. The hold wasn’t firm, but he didn’t have time to address it. We’d drifted too far downwards and the incline had continued steepening, soon to become almost completely vertical.

I could hear the scraping of his feet on the roof, trying and failing against the weight. The edge of the roof approached, a waterfall of snow shooting out into freefall.

His free hand dove into the avalanche, searching for anything to hold. Something snagged and he instantly stopped like a rock, snow breaking off against his shoulders and spraying over him angrily.

He yanked me to a stop, but only for a moment. With a lurch, I felt myself continue to move downwards. His grip had slipped. The snow carried me away.

A terrifying second passed as I watched him stare after me, his outstretched hand holding nothing but air. That faceless helmet somehow showing the sheer disbelief at the current events.

Father dove after me a heartbeat later, almost in fury. The armor let him catch up to my position in moments and he grabbed with both hands this time, lifting me above the torrent.

The end of the roof was upon us. I felt him tense down, waiting for the right moment as we were swept downwards.

We hit the end. He leaped.

That took us clear out of the snowfall and into the air. Not enough, not by a long shot. I could tell we would be falling into the abyss at this rate. With an audible grunt, he yelled over the noise, “Keith! Grab the ledge!”

Then he hurled me forward with everything his relic armor could muster. Which was a substantial amount.

I sailed up again, propelled right at a distant collapsing spire building. Ice snapping off as the catwalk deformed, hopefully still sturdy enough to hold my weight. While I flailed around in midair, I caught a glimpse of my father.

Far, far under. Throwing me had pushed him downwards.

Time felt slow as I watched, the details burning themselves into my mind. Father didn’t scream as he fell. Instead he was motionless, almost suspended in the air. Arms and legs at peace, body growing smaller as the distance stretched. Only the helmet still moved, unerringly following me until the armor had been swallowed from sight.

Falling into the abyss.

Instinct forced me to look back up - I had to catch the railing or die to the fall. When I did look up, I was rewarded with the sight of that railing much, much closer than it had any right to be. Turns out, the spires were also falling towards the sinkhole, so naturally the railing hadn’t just been waiting around for me to land onto it. No, it had rushed to meet me with speed.

I collided headfirst into it and instantly lost consciousness.

- The First Mile Below