Hey Folks-

A little slow trying to lay out the scene of what Mac and Jack are walking into so-to-speak. Also trying to build up the mystery without getting too convoluted, but I may be tottering on the edge of being boring. Don't worry, action should start once the two agents join back together.

::Jack- Nearing the Science Station::

Jack swung his ice ax above his head for what felt like the thousandth time. It had been a little under two hours since his last check in with Mac, but past and present seemed to have telescoped down into this ground hog moment of ice wall after ice wall.

He was so tired of ice walls.

Nothing had really been too grueling or too vertical, but still, every time the terrain got jagged enough to warrant using the sharp tool to haul himself up a steep incline, it delayed the Ex-Delta by another 10 minutes, then another, and another.

He was going to be late and probably a little sore. Maybe he was getting too old for this.

Jack let out a big huff as he hoisted himself over the crest of the latest ice/snow obstacle. His breath had been building fine layers of ice around the slits of his white balaclava for the last 10 minutes, so he scraped his gloved hands across the cloth to shake some the larger chunks loose.

He felt like a snow cone and probably looked like one too.

Jack hated this place.

For some reason his partner was obsessed with this god forsaken snow globe, which was quickly becoming a complete mystery to the older man. The kid obviously had some crossed wires in that noggin of his.

For Jack, the excitement had fizzled right out shortly after the first ice waterfall, or glacier cube, or whatever you call a frozen obstacle that had blocked his progress during the first hour of his hike to his designated surveillance point.

He was going to give his young friend an earful about how to do a proper coin toss. Minus 10 degrees Celsius or not, gloves need to be stripped off in order to get sufficient air on a quarter. Next time they were going to play rock paper scissors to determine who got the princess route vs. the traverse from hell.

The North Pole was so overrated.

Jack stood up, re-holstered his ice ax, and scanned his surroundings. As he scrutinized the landscape, his eyes landed on a dark patch amid what was almost a pure white backdrop. Although he could barely make out the outline of the structure, he had no doubt that that was the science station.

He was close. Even better, there was nothing but rolling snow hummocks between it and his current position.

'Finally' he thought as he let out a sigh of relief, 'no more ice ax'. He glanced at his watch and immediately his mood shifted from sour to ecstatic.

Resisting the urge to whoop and holler across the winter wonderland that stretched before him, he instead beat his chest with both gloved hands and let out a guttural growl.

'Jack,' he thought, 'you are a snow leopard man…a white tiger… a sasquatch of the north born to navigate the arctic with stealth. You are ahead…of…..schedule!'

He loved this place.

After a quick double check of his gear to make sure he had maintained a 'white out' appearance, he pulled out a pair of specially shielded binoculars that prevented glare and more importantly reflection. He wanted to assess the condition of the station ASAP and make a tally of how many scientists might be roaming about the grounds doing their…..well…..science stuff.

He would surprise Mac with a surveillance update ahead of schedule and the young agent could eat crow about ETA's and such.

Bringing the main structure of the station into focus, Jack knotted his brow in concentration. He then froze. As his mind processed what he was seeing, he could feel his body making all the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. A chill suddenly ran down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold.

Shifting the dial of his binoculars to focus on other parts of the camp only caused him further alarm and the excitement he had felt only moment ago fully evaporated.

Shock and disbelief started to settle in at the base of Jack's skull.

"What the Hell," escaped his lips before he knew he was even saying it.

Damn he hated this place.

::Mac- At Surveillance Point West::

Everything about this was wrong.

In his vast experience with both the army and several intelligence agencies, operations that started with bad intel always went to hell six ways from Sunday fast. The well-oiled machine that had been this Sermersuaq mission only an hour ago was quickly blowing itself apart.

Mac closed his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck as best as his thickly gloved hands could manage. All his muscles had tensed up since he had first laid eyes on the science station.

"What a disaster", Mac mused under his breath.

No matter how hard he pressed the heel of his palm into neck and shoulder, he just couldn't work out the fastly developing kinks. He pretty much felt like a walrus with all his padded arctic gear on, but there was nothing he could do about it.

After picking up his specialized binoculars for what felt to be the 100th time in the last 30 minutes, the young agent scanned the SEAC camp again for any signs of life.

Once again, nothing.

Yet another bad sign to add to the ever growing list of bad signs.

Upon his arrival to 'Ground Zero' about an hour ago, Mac had immediately gone on high alert. What he was observing at the station, combined with his confusion concerning what he found back on top of the ridge, left his brain spinning in overdrive. His mind kept working through scenario after scenario trying piece together all the facts he had collected into a coherent narrative. So far nothing was making sense.

The most recent jigsaw piece that didn't fit was the science station itself.

What was supposed to be a quote '3 week old' makeshift ice coring camp was actually a fully established winter compound. That alone was a problem, but what made his chest tight and all the muscles of his shoulders tense was the fact that the compound looked like an absolute war zone. After recovering from his initial shock, he soon reasoned out why none of Riley's satellite images had shown the full extent of the field camps facilities now laid out before him.

Aside from the main building that did appear in all the sat photos, there were also smaller secondary structures capped by bizarrely sloped white shells half hidden by snow drifts. The effect of the strange domed architecture was to make the buildings nearly invisible on the ground and probably damn near impossible to see from any sort of aerial view. Mac couldn't tell from his current position, but some of the structures might actually be inset into the ice itself. In addition to the actual buildings, there were row after row of squat looking rectangles at the far end of the property, again capped by those gently sloping protective shells. All of the camp structures curiously appeared to be facing inward towards a central point like spokes on a wheel.

Mac guessed that the domes not only acted as camouflage, but also blocked any heat signatures and who knew what else. This setup was much more advanced than what the Phoenix camp was equipped with, and very much more expensive.

SEAC had outdone themselves setting this place up, but why?

The second red flag for Mac was the damage. This had been a bit more difficult to discern due to the snow that had collected in and around most of the site creating a clean blanket of icy white. No doubt ice crystals scoured from further north and blown into the camp like sand during the Piteraq nearly 36 hours ago. At least the meteorological part of the DOE's story was proving to be true.

The most obvious of the camp's equipment problems was a large satellite dish that lay mangled in a twisted heap half hidden beneath a hill of snow that was in the process of swallowing up the wreckage. There were also two snow cats that looked as if they had been tossed by a gigantic toddler through the camp center causing additional damage to one of the larger buildings. A few of the domes covering the squat rectangle containers along the periphery of the compound had also caved in, but managed to stay in place only because they had filled in with even more snow.

What agitated Mac were the subtle things. The shallow crater that had remained clear of snow in the center of camp. The black shadows that licked the sides of at least two buildings indicating that fire had broken out at some point. The jagged hole that had peeled back the metal of one of the snow cat's passenger side cabs. None of this had been caused by the natural forces of a Piteraq. In fact most of this looked very much like a tactical assault, but it was hard be sure from this distance.

He needed to get closer.

As far as he was concerned, this was no longer a passive surveillance job and it was time to improvise. In order to do so, he needed Jack on-board, which meant he had to sit tight and wait for his partner to arrive.

"Nothing like having time on your hands to indulge in obsessing over the motives of secretive governmental agencies and attacks on their radioactive camps" Mac lamented aloud to no one in particular.

...