Greg opened his eyes.

It was silent, and for a few seconds, he couldn't recall where he was. The only thing he knew was that he was laying in a bed, and there was a woman next to him. Carefully, he began to maneuver, trying not to wake her. He had just enough time to remember where he was, and that this was Izzy, and that they'd had really good sex last night, before she woke up. Her eyes opened up and she looked around quickly, then zeroed her sights on him.

"Hey," he said.

"Hi," she replied. She seemed a little guarded. He remembered what she said, what she had requested the night before, and was fully prepared to keep to his promise.

"I think we should get up, get ready for the mines," he said.

She stared at him for a few seconds longer, then nodded. She looked a little relieved. Had she been expecting him to ask for morning sex? He admitted, he was tempted, and had really been hoping she'd be the one to bring it up, but was fully prepared to say nothing.

"That's a good idea," she said, and she pulled the blankets back, then groaned.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yes, just three bad things hit me all at once: it's cold, I'm sore, and I freaking reek."

"Basically same for me," he agreed.

"We should wash. We can just melt more snow," she said as she got up.

He found his eyes drawn to her bare ass. She was in amazing shape. "Yeah," he agreed, and got up as well.

As they began going about their morning routines, he noticed that she began to relax, which made it easier for him to relax. He remembered waking up a few times and tending to the fire in the night, but otherwise he recalled nothing save for their encounter before sleep. Which was good. It was deeply satisfying, actually, to have no dreams that he could remember. Greg was surprised that he'd had no nightmares.

They had left their supplies near the fire, so the water was at least lukewarm, as opposed to freezing cold, which went a really long way towards a pleasant morning. They washed themselves with soap and rags that they found in the bathroom. This time Greg dried his rag near the fire, then wrapped it around his bar of soap and slipped it into his backpack. He quickly pulled on his uniform, then his armor, and then he looked out the window built into the front door. It was a clear, bright day outside, and he couldn't see any vargs.

"Could you get the fire going full again?" he asked as he moved over and grabbed the two small pots they'd used to cook the soup in last night.

"Yeah, sure," Izzy replied. "You gonna check the perimeter?"

"Yeah, and get snow to melt for water," he replied.

"Okay. Yell if you need me."

"I will."

He first rinsed out the pots with some more water and some napkins he found in the kitchen, then set them on the floor beside the front door, then checked out the window once more, then, after hesitating for a second, he did a quick walk around the cabin and looked out the other windows. Everywhere looked clear, no signs of varg or drub or anything else. He moved back over to the door, unlocked it, and opened it up. The cold air that hit him was surprisingly welcome, it was a little refreshing and helped sharpen him up. Greg pulled out his pistol and stepped out, then closed the door most of the way behind him.

He spent a few minutes checking around the perimeter to be double sure, and once he was, he returned and grabbed the pair of pots. By the time he'd packed them with snow and returned, Izzy had the fire going again. After setting the pots atop the stove, he sat down and began waiting. Izzy sat next to him and rubbed her eyes.

"I'd kill for coffee," she muttered.

Greg grinned. He'd anticipated this, actually. Well, sort of. He moved over to the dresser he'd pushed in front of the window and opened the top drawer. There was the can of Mountain Dew Supernova he'd stored, as he didn't really want it getting warm, as warm soda tasted awful. To him at least. He'd been banking that it wouldn't freeze and burst, and it hadn't. In fact, it felt perfectly chilled. He returned and set it down on the table.

"Wanna split it? All we got for caffeine," he said.

"Yeah, sure," she replied.

He popped the top and they began passing it back and forth between them.

"You're weird," she said after a few moments of silence.

He laughed. "What? Why?"

"Not in a bad way. You just...you're oddly straightforward and kind. Those two things don't usually go hand-in-hand, in my experience."

"What do you mean?" he replied, honestly curious.

"A lot of Marines are blunt. That 'I say what I think and don't pull any punches!' attitude. Which is actually just, 'I want to get away with being an asshole without any consequences'. I've never really seen you be a jerk to anyone. As far as I can tell, you've never tried to deceive anyone. There's this simplicity to you, but not in a bad way. I guess, you don't seem like you have much else going on beyond what you're doing in the moment, you know?" She sighed. "I'm not trying to say you're stupid or anything..."

"No, no, I get it," he replied. "I...like to stay focused on the task at hand."

"Yeah, but you do that all the time. You've got this laser focus, and I've seen that before, but I can't tell where it's coming from. When people have a laser focus, it usually comes from a bad place. They're pissed off, or they have something to prove, or they're trying not to do bad things. Where does yours come from?"

"Well..." He thought about that. "All of that's true, I guess. I'm not so pissed off anymore, for the most part. But...I've done bad stuff in the past. I was an angry person once. A violent person. I...when I signed up, I swore to myself that I would leave it behind. The anger, the hate, the rage, the depression..." he hesitated, and looked up at her. "Sorry, that got heavy and...personal."

"No, it's fine. That's...kinda what I wanted," she admitted. "I mean, I, you know...last night...if I don't hate a guy after that, I do like to get to know him more."

"Fair enough," he said. "I'm glad you don't hate me."

She laughed. "No, definitely not. You're a good guy, I at least know that."

"That's good to hear," he replied.

They waited for the snow to finish melting, then boiling, then they replenished their stocks and set about making breakfast. She ended up taking the can of sliced peaches and a breakfast bar, and he took the remaining can of black beans he had and another breakfast bar. They ate and drank the Supernova until it was gone, then drank some more water. After finishing breakfast, they did a weapons check, made sure they'd gathered everything back up, put out the fire, (in case they needed to come back here for whatever reason and didn't want to run the risk of burning it down), and then at last headed back out into the sunshine.

"I...suddenly feel less good about this," Izzy murmured.

"Same," Greg said.

The walk from the cabin to the mine entrance had lasted about fifteen minutes, and had been pretty pleasant. It was maybe a few hours past dawn, the sun climbing slowly into the sky, bathing the area in wonderful golden sunshine. The winds were down and the temperatures were up. It was actually half-decent out. So naturally they would be going into a mine, into the cold, dark underground. And now, upon arrival, they found several bloody bones scattered around the main entrance. It felt like a very dark omen.

"We don't really have a choice," Izzy said finally.

"Yeah..." Greg murmured. He sighed. "Let's just...make it happen."

"We should find a map."

He nodded. "Let's go."

Greg activated his flashlight, frowning when it flickered, then tapped it a few times. The light flickered a bit more, then steadied, and he began to make his way into the mine. The entrance was a large, broad opening in the side of the mountain, basically a square twenty feet by twenty feet, reinforced with heavy, weathered steel girders.

"Do you have a flashlight?" he asked.

"No, just this," Izzy replied, pulling out a lighter.

"Okay, I guess try not to use it too much and we'll look for another flashlight."

"If any of this crap even works."

She had a point, he figured. They looked around the main entryway, which was a huge, open room with a lot of old, rusty equipment scattered across the way, lots of tools everywhere, tables set up in a few makeshift work areas. They performed a basic sweep of the area, checking the shadows. But, despite the remains and the faint whiff of cold death, they seemed to be alone here. Had vargs made a home here? Or a drub? It was possible. There were a few exits, three smaller, regular-sized ones, and a huge tunnel. It was probably the way they were going to have to go if they wanted to make it through the mountain.

The first door led to a quartet of squalid, miserable barracks-style rooms and a few bathrooms and a shower area. Nothing worthwhile in there. The second door led to a cafeteria, which initially got him excited, but as they found empty cabinet after bare cupboard, his hopes dwindled and he began to wonder if maybe this was an abandoned mine. Made derelict before all the awful crap had gone down on this island. Well, it'd make sense. This island didn't exactly seem like a beacon of prosperity. After the disappointing search of the first two rooms, they came to the last area and discovered a sort of command center.

This place seemed to be a little more promising. There was a small infirmary, a break room, a pair of conference rooms, and a control room. The pair of them began to make quick work of searching the area eagerly for supplies. They talked as they searched, moving slowly through the rooms, checking every place they could think of, mostly telling more stories. Funny stories, close encounter stories, party stories.

Honestly, he was feeling pretty good, despite everything. Then again, a good sleep, a meal, a wash, and some...pleasant interaction with someone like Izzy, as well as her continued company, was going a very long way towards helping him cope with this nightmare he found himself in. He hoped he was having a similar effect on Izzy. Based on all he knew about her, she was a good person. He liked her a lot. And he found himself thinking of the previous night a lot. Greg wouldn't say that he had a tremendous amount of experience with sex. Maybe about average...but what was average? It seemed like almost everyone lied about sex, so it was impossible to get a real read, but what did it matter? As far as encounters went…

Izzy was amazing.

He didn't know if she was just good in bed in general, or if maybe she was just really compatible with him, or maybe he liked her even more than he thought. Despite how a lot of people seemed to approach this kind of stuff, he found that he tended to enjoy the experience more if he liked the person. He'd slept with a few very attractive women who he just...did not like. It had been a decent experience, to be sure, but definitely went towards the low end of the spectrum. And it wasn't like they seemed unskilled at the art of making love.

Greg eventually derailed his train of thought. Besides the fact that it was distracting, (which was really dangerous in this kind of situation), he didn't want to even unintentionally hype himself up too much for the possibility of a repeat performance. Izzy seemed to have enjoyed herself, but she might decide not to keep going for any number of reasons, and he wasn't going to be difficult if that was her choice.

So he focused on the search. It proved to be a pretty decent expedition. They found enough medical supplies hidden away to refill his own depleted kit, and put together a second kit for Izzy. They also found her a flashlight. Not a huge haul, but it definitely helped. They also managed to track down a map of the mine.

The path they needed to take was, at least, simple. Whether or not it was going to be easy was another story. It depended entirely on what they found in there. All they had to do was walk about half a mile in a straight shot through the mine. That main tunnel he'd seen earlier would indeed take them all the way to the other side. After their search of the area, the pair again found themselves standing before the vast, dark maw of an opening into the earth, uncertain about proceeding. They both had (mostly) working flashlights now, and bullets. Though not many. They had training and had been through combat, a lot of it.

And yet…

There was something deeply disquieting about the darkness ahead of them. Something daunting. "So it's just a straight shot then? We walk half a mile in a straight line?" Izzy asked, finally breaking the oppressive silence that had fallen across them.

"Yep," Greg replied.

She sighed. "Let's do it then. I want out of here."

"Yep," he repeated.

They set off.

At first, it wasn't so bad. The main path was a broad tunnel of earthen walls. Mostly just rock and dirt broken occasionally by steel girders and beams and brackets. The tunnel was littered with rocks and pieces of equipment and minecarts. A few were hover-capable, but most were old-fashioned wheeled carts. Their boots echoed as they walked down the tunnel, occasionally splashing through a puddle of oily, gray water.

Greg played his light over the area, covering the left side of the tunnel as Izzy covered the right. Occasionally there were side tunnels, leading away into more midnight gloom. Shadows seemed to gather along the edges of the tunnel, swelling and shifting under the pale beams of light, made worse when Greg's flashlight flickered. At about the halfway point, they came to a huge T-junction. Another large tunnel, maybe two thirds the height and width of the main one, snaked off deeper into the mountain, back towards the direction of the observatory, sloping deeper. As they reached it, they paused and shined their lights down it.

"You smell that?" Greg whispered.

"I smell dead things," Izzy murmured softly.

So far, they hadn't encountered anything alive, and occasionally had come across some more remains. The faint whiff of death had grown worse the deeper they'd gone in: spilled blood, perforated intestines, the decayed stench of rotting meat. But now, as they came to stand here, Greg smelled something else.

"No, there's another smell," he whispered. It was laced with the stench of cold death, beneath it perhaps, faint yet there. Whatever it was, it sent a nameless terror whispering through him, his body reacting to it instinctively, like the primal feedback your body spat out when you hit flight or fight mode. An automatic thing.

"Yes," Izzy growled suddenly. "What is that? It smells like..." She hesitated, then shook her head. "I don't know what the hell it smells like..."

"Danger. It smells like danger," he muttered. "We should go."

"Yeah. We should."

They shined their lights down the tunnel one more time, then turned and began hurrying the rest of the way there. Up ahead, they could actually see the cold light of day on the other end of the tunnel. Greg glanced behind himself repeatedly, paranoid that something dark and deadly was slinking through the passageway towards him. But they remained alone.

That didn't last.

They were maybe eighty meters shy of the exit, the sunlight obvious now, and passed by another one of the smaller side tunnels that slanted off into the darkness. And something growled. Greg jerked his light towards the tunnel, then froze, his heart leaping into his throat as he spied a pair of eyes catching the light and throwing it back at them.

"What the f..." Izzy whispered.

More eyes opened. Two pairs. Three pairs. Half a dozen pairs.

"Go. Now," Greg said, and started running. Izzy joined him.

Something let out a deep growl and then they heard running footsteps. Were they vargs? It was impossible to tell yet but they had no more antidote on them. Only those growls didn't sound like vargs. It sounded like something he'd never heard before. Crap, he'd read about other things on the island in that guide...what could they be?

He turned around and saw a collection of glowing blue eyes. There were lithe shapes low to the ground, moving in the dim light, and suddenly he remembered what they were.

"Nightwalkers!" he hissed, and began running faster.

"What the hell are nightwalkers?!" Izzy snapped.

"They're like...panthers! They're nocturnal, or they're supposed to be! We woke them up! Run faster!" he yelled.

They ran harder, boots pounding the rocky ground, growing closer and closer to the light. Greg grabbed his pistol, aimed back and fired a shot blindly. Something let out a snarling growl and he glanced over his shoulder again. They seemed farther back. If they could just reach the light, he had the idea that they wouldn't follow. Or, really, the blind hope. He looked ahead again. They were closer now, maybe fifty meters from the threshold.

Forty meters. Then thirty.

His lungs burned in his chest and his heart slammed painfully. They were still giving chase, but he thought it was starting to slacken. They ran until finally they burst out the other side, back into the sunlight. Greg spun around and raised his pistol, prepared to empty the magazine, but all he could see were glowing blue eyes, staring, maybe thirty meters off. They were immobile. Izzy stood next to him, her pistol out as well.

Slowly, one by one, the eyes disappeared, until they were gone.

"Damn," Izzy whispered, getting her breath back. "That sucked."

"We got through it," Greg replied.

"Yeah. Let's hope we don't have to go back there."

Now there was a nasty thought. He turned back around and looked at the road ahead. There was still a ways to go before the military base…

But they were a lot closer now.