Halloween Horror Stories Chapter 9: Halloween 2013: Cold War, a danny phantom fanfic

A Horror Story 9: Cold War

"You are all staggering drunks to me. Boys who would play at war when you should kennel with your mothers. You know nothing of war. War is dark. Black as pitch. It is not a God. It does not laugh or weep. It rewards neither skill nor daring. It is not a trial of souls, nor the measure of wills. Even less is it a tool…It is merely the place where the iron bones of the earth meet the hollow bones of men, and break them."

-R. Scott Baker.

Have you ever heard of Stanislav Petrov? Because odds are you are alive because of him.

Petrov was a Russian soldier who, on September 23rd, 1983, was manning the early-warning systems for his Soviet government. His systems detected what appeared to be a missile launch from the United States, something that later turned out to be a computer error. Petrov looked at what appeared to be five missiles heading his way, and made the judgment call that it was a false alarm. His reasoning was that the system was new, and that it did not make sense for the Soviet Union's mortal enemy to just fire five missiles instead of dozens of them. Perhaps, though, what saved us all was that Petrov had civilian training, unlike his colleagues, who were professional soldiers who just had military training. Such training might have made them jump to conclusions; hardened, misinformed men chomping at the bit for World War III to break out, they might have fired back without a second thought. Right place, right time, right man…sometimes that's all that it takes to keep it from all going wrong.

Petrov's not alone. A Russian officer during the Cuban Missile Crisis, one Vasili Arkhipov, made his own choice that prevented nuclear war from beginning. And accidents with nukes and their warning systems happened time and again throughout the Cold War decades. It all seems so stupid now…

My grandfather, though, he served in the war that led to the Cold War. He told my dad plenty of stories, and while my dad never enlisted, he had an interest in military history that he often bent my ear with when he could get away with it (Generally, when we played Risk). I don't remember all the details, but one thing I think of now is how he told me to never disrespect the thinking of those years. When the Soviet Union collapsed, no one saw it coming. Not the United States, not the Soviets themselves, no other country or spy agency, all of them were caught flat-footed. NO ONE knew it was going to happen until it all did, all at once. The rest is classic hindsight bias.

There's a lot of stupid, terrible things that were done because of the Cold War, that echo down across the years even now. The troubles in the Middle East. The dark possibilities of China's future. And many, many smaller things.

Like Mr. Petrov, the worst things may hide away until they rear their ugly heads.

In our line of work…nuclear war might seem like a blessing.

"So what you got for me, Tuck?" Valerie Gray said.

"Well Val, you may remember that Jack and Maddie once created the Boooomerang…so we have created the Impending DOOOOMMMerang!" Tucker said, holding up the red and black projectile, the crescent-shaped weapon about the size of the young man's forearm when unfolded.

"…You're still not cool, kid."

"Oh come on! Can't I at least get points for effort?" Tucker said.

"No."

"This is why I prefer working for Paulina. Just give her more guns and she's happy."

"She has backup. I don't. I can't just add any and all things to my arsenal just because it looks cool." Valerie said. "Fine. What does it DO, Tucker?"

"Well Val, you're a very offence-minded person. This thing interacts with your helmet, or your naked eye if it's programmed right, and it goes flying directly towards the target that's furthest away from you. It'll weave around to get there, confuse the enemy, and then when it gets there, it explodes into fire! And then it comes back to your hand, except this time it plows backwards through everyone who tried to dodge!"

"…you've been watching those old Batman films again, haven't you Tuck?"

"Hey! Maddie helped me build this! I'm sure if she thought it had NO use, she'd have said no!"

"…you can be hard to say no to, Tuck."

"I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about." Tucker said, adjusting his glasses before he unlocked the brakes on his wheelchair and directed it around the table. "Look, I'm not asking you to rework your whole fighting style around it. But it could have its uses."

"Fine, fine." Valerie said. "If it blows up in my face, though, I'm taking it out of your hide."

"Now now Val. Let's not make Danny even more jealous." Tucker said, as he leaned under the table and produced a box. "Few other nick-nacks we're working on. New gloves and boots, with these special concealed blades on them…not for fighting. They're micro blades. We were thinking more for getting a better grip on things if you have to jump or fall off your board. We're thinking if we can get them to work properly, you could even climb walls like Spider-Man…"

"You've been marathoning superhero films of all sorts, I see."

"Hey, hey. You never know when having options is good. I'm still alive because my PDA was so versatile." Tucker said. "What else…oh yeah. Lockpick gun."

"Is it a gun that fires lock picks?"

"No." Tucker said, his tone deadpan. "It's a small device that has a needle you slide into the lock, and then it injects liquid hydrogen into it. Freezes it solid and brittle, and then you can break it. Good for the times you want in without blowing the door off its hinges."

"Where's the fun in that?"

"Not everyone's a ninth-degree black belt, Val." Tucker said. "What else…um…nothing super special. I tried to built you a built-in drink holder for your helmet, but nothing I did could get around your mental clothing via phasing aspect that Technus added, which we STILL haven't been able to replicate, by the by. Oh yeah, I also tried to work on that tablet you wanted, but I still can't figure out a way to get it more resistant to damage without it weighing a ton."

"Ugh. I don't think I can plead off with Maddie that my time-passing during waiting games is worth all the money we've spent on Kindles." Valerie said. It wasn't like she wasn't careful with them either; her situations just either didn't allow something on her person to survive if it wasn't an armoured weapon, or she was taken by surprise and by the time it was over her computer was a shattered wreck on the spot where she'd been jumped.

"You should figure out a way to get games on your helmet readout."

"No. Too risky that there'll be a glitch and I'll be asked to play Tetris when something is trying to eat me."

"Not on our watches." Tucker said, rolling over to the computer as he began to type. "…So, how's Danny?"

"Danny? Danny's…the same. Fine. Fine." Valerie said. The silence that descended onto the room was almost choking in its weight. What do you want me to say, Tucker? No, the goofy kid we knew back in the old days didn't spontaneously re-appear when you weren't looking. The kid who got split into a slacker and a hammy superhero is still buried under what happened to Amity Park. What Vlad did to your family. And what that damn sword did to him to prepare him for all the shit Vlad left in his wake. And even if we fix everything, the damage is done and this is who he is now. Do you want me to come right out and say it? Do you think that will change anything?

"Valerie, your phone."

"Huh?" Valerie said, before she realized that her phone was indeed buzzing away. "How did you know that?"

"Come up on the computer when calls like that are made. Just in case something's blocked, or can't be answered…you know the drill."

"I do." Valerie said, as she fished out her phone. "Yes ma'am?"

"Get geared up Valerie. We have a problem."

"Right then. Is it a problem I can…"

"You're going in with Danny."

"Who else?"

"Just you, Valerie."

Now there was a blue moon. Maddie did her best to keep her son and her from going on missions together. Danny tended to be either off on his own with everyone else waiting nearby to jump in as backup, or they all went in together. Maddie apparently believed that Danny and her, by themselves, might be less than focussed on the mission. Which just went to show how little even Maddie understood her son. Or maybe she too hoped that under the Phantasm name, there was still Danny Fenton, kid with ghost powers, and tried to apply mission assignments as how they might have gone when Danny had been…well, Danny Phantom.

Before so much went wrong for such stupid, bullshit reasons. And Danny went from being a ghost to a wraith, always accompanied by that damned sword. His hope, his yoke, his bane, his only chance against the forces Vlad had stirred up.

"Understood." Valerie said. She tried to push the thoughts to the back of her head. Her relationship with Maddie was complicated. The woman liked her, would fight just as hard to aid her as she would her own flesh and blood…but between how Valerie had started out, and how well Maddie knew Sam, the ghost turned horror hunter had begun to suspect, every now and then, that Maddie was working an agenda with her. A small one, one that could be discarded easily in the face of greater danger…but one that was there. Always there, beavering away. For what reason, Valerie couldn't even begin to guess.

The idea that Maddie would ever set her up for negative results was unthinkable. Her own paranoia, nothing more. Danny may have changed, but that had nothing to do with her, or them.
"Where are we going?"

"You'd better run your suit's protective measures against intense weather conditions through a round of tests before you go, Valerie. Where you're going…it's far from pleasant."

"By that do you mean 'Only the serious need apply' far from pleasant, or 'You'd have to be insane or stupid to go there' far from pleasant?"

Maddie had no answer.

"Ma'am? Is the connection okay?"

"I don't think it's a Fissure problem."

Valerie felt a spark of self-loathing for it, but a shiver of fear traced its way up her spine. Ghost of a Chance handled three things. They handled ghosts like the old days, they handled the issues of the Fissures and what came through them…

And sometimes…other things. The ones they hid behind one-sentence code phrases in their reports, as if holding any memories of the events and the baleful gazes behind them would risk calling them back. Old, dark things that Valerie dearly wished had stayed safely behind the scribblings of a deeply troubled 19th century writer. Monsters from other worlds drifting through the holes in reality, demons wearing bodies stitched together in mass murder, even the horrible entities like the Unclean…

She really wished she lived in a world where those were always the worst of the worst. And not, sometimes, a measuring stick.

"Understood, ma'am." Valerie said. "What kind of intense weather conditions?"

Somewhere in Western Germany.

The average person would probably think having a suit that would allow one to operate and fight in the hard vacuum of space would ensure that there were no issues in operating in intense cold weather. After all, wasn't space colder than anywhere on Earth?

An old misconception, right alongside all the science fiction films that had epic, loud battles in space with lasers and roaring engines and explosions. Space was what it was said to be: a vacuum. There was nothing there. That meant no air to carry sound, and nothing to steal heat from a body. You were more at risk at being burned in space than freezing; outside a planet's atmosphere, and the protection it gave from UV rays, you'd be being exposed from all sides to the starlight and, provided you were in the solar system, Earth's own sun. Well, that, and the complete lack of air and pressure aspect. It was those sorts of things that a protective suit needed to deal with to operate in space.

It was another set of issues that were needed to handle a howling blizzard on the upper part of a mountain, which is exactly where Valerie found herself when she emerged from her portal transport, the wind catching her board immediately and trying to carry her away to god knew where. Maybe a better place than this.

It wasn't the wind that was Valerie's (main) problem. It was the trees. Whatever kind they were, it was the kind that lost their leaves in the winter, leaving the air a mass of waving, eager clubs that would gladly smack Valerie off her board or jab a frozen, hard wooden tip into a bad place. Her equipment was tough, but tough didn't mean invincible, and Valerie utterly loathed when the world decided to pipe up and remind her of that at the worst time. That left her two choices; fight the wind, or remove herself from the fight.

She picked the latter, her board vanishing into the hammerspace ether she stored it in. It was a fifteen foot drop to the ground, but her suit could take that kind of impact without issue…

Provided she didn't hit a patch of concealed ice. Which she did. Valerie let out a low curse as her momentum and weight abruptly shifted from the loss of balance. For one brief, painful, horrifying moment, Valerie thought the shift in weight was too much, and that she was going to dislocate her knee.

Fortunately, her joint held up well enough so that all Valerie did was plant herself into the ground, pain slamming up her shoulder and hip as she hit the ground, the snow providing little cushioning. Valerie exhaled another low curse…

A curse that trailed off when she saw her viewpoint had fogged up.

It wasn't supposed to do that. Clear surfaces fogged because of sudden temperature differences. Her equipment was specifically designed to counter that. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was long enough to be noticeable.

The cold hit her next. It almost made her forget about her hurting knee.

Because the cold seemed to be trying to claw through her outfit and into said knee, and the rest of her body. The hair on the back of Valerie's neck rose. She'd been in intense cold weather situations. She'd had her outfit tested against Danny's freezing-based abilities. She knew cold, natural and unnatural. This cold, the second she seemed helpless, had gleefully sprung over 'unnatural' and gone straight to 'predatory'.

Like it has a mind of its own. Like it WANTS to get in and suck every bit of heat from me.

Valerie responded the only way she knew how. She got up and let out a silent dare for anything that wanted to cross her.

Her knee didn't hurt as bad as she thought it would. Thank God for 21 hours of isometric exercises a week. Valerie immediately switched the light on her helmet on, casting around.

Snow. Snow and trees and endless white everywhere. The light just reflected off the millions of tiny ice crystals, rendering the beam almost impotent, in a way. She was snowblind in every sense of the word. Valerie only took a moment to pop out her scanners: they were potent but also a bit delicate, and she really didn't want to expose them to this kind of weather for long.

Nothing. A brief glance at her wrist readout also came up blank. Either there was nothing there, or it was spread too thin for her to pick up.

The wind shrieked. Ice and snow danced around Valerie, a hundred fingers questing at her suit, looking for the smallest of openings.

Danny's not coming. Maddie's made her move. She's dumped you in the middle of Siberia.

Except that was ridiculous. There were more important things to address than a mother not liking her son's girlfriend. Jack had been the immature one.

Wonder if that would've made him easier or harder to read…

The faint glow pulsed at the back of Valerie's head, and she relaxed. A stupid concern.

Had he not given her the heads up, Danny putting his hand on her shoulder might very well have gotten him a wrist-cannon blast to the face. Such behaviour was about three years in the past by now, and receding faster by the day.

He wore his usual gear. His one-piece suit, still so familiar despite its alterations over the years, getting a touch of added bulk here, an tweaked color scheme there. His coat, which the wind was doing its best to rip off his body, lashed through the air, occasionally whipping Valerie. Tucker poked fun at Danny for the coat, but something filled with pockets that Danny could phase out of if he needed to be more mobile came in handy so often that Danny felt naked without it now. And of course, the ever-present third party, the Magnus Flarium, currently held in a calm grip in Danny's right hand, flickers of red and green energy twisting through the strange square focuses cut along the length of the blade, the sheath laid out over Danny's back. Danny had used his other hand to touch Valerie and alert her of his immediate presence, and he slipped around her, looking like he was meeting her outside of their main base, for how casual it was. Cold didn't bother ghosts much in general, and between his ice abilities and his later training, Danny was shrugging off the horrific wind and blowing snow like he slept in an icebox.

Like he had ice in his veins.

The smile he gave her, though, still reached his eyes. He didn't speak; it was pretty clear even if they screamed at each other, the wind might still snatch their words away. While not exactly a special forces soldier, Danny knew a few hand signals now.

Sense anything?

No, you? Valerie sighed back. Danny paused a moment, before he tried to indicate that he wasn't sure. Valerie wasn't surprised.

Danny pointed, indicating a path through the trees. Valerie nodded and followed.

The wind promptly showed another nasty card up its sleeve, its omnipresence constantly swelling and slamming into Valerie and Danny, again and again. Her suit was still keeping the cold out, mostly, but Valerie quickly realized that wasn't the only problem. The wind was shoving her around, causing her to constantly be pushed as she took her steps, snow crunching beneath her boots. Danny, again, was handling it better, but that worked against him as he briefly moved ahead and then vanished into the blizzard. Valerie stopped.

He came back a few seconds later, looking sheepish, and took her hand to be sure. The way the wind howled, Valerie couldn't tell if-

The face.

For a moment, the snow lessened, and Valerie saw it. The white, inhuman face, amongst the trees. Eyes an impossible cruel black.

Valerie, to her credit, did not scream. Instead, she just snapped her arm up and fired.

The face was gone even as she was making the motion. Valerie fired several more purple energy shots, including a few after Danny's hand had clamped onto her shoulder. Finally, she looked at him, his own eyes moving to follow the motion.

What was it? His eyes said, the Magnus now aimed in the direction she'd fired.

Don't know. Bad. Amazing what you could do with the slightest shift of your eyes and neck.

Danny looked away from her, peering over his sword. Valerie watched his mouth, and realized for the first time Danny wasn't exhaling mist every time he breathed.

Ice in his veins, a cold heart for a cold man…

That last howl of wind…that definitely sounded like a laugh.

Danny gave a slight shake to his head. Valerie nodded in turn and got her cannon tucked away again. Danny gestured for them to follow, back the way they were going.

Valerie wasn't sure how long they walked. It could very well have been hours. Time lost all meaning in the white void around them, the snow constantly around their ankles, sometimes coming all the way up to their knees, and twice their upper thighs. But, after that brief moment of who knows how long, the snow and wind began to lessen. Visibility began to increase. And Valerie didn't feel like the cold was trying to peel her out of her clothes like a ripe orange before it robbed everything that made her Valerie Gray from her any more.

A few minutes later, the communicator in her helmet crackled to life.

"Valerie?"

"Mrs. Fenton?" Valerie said, putting one hand to the side of her head. The wind had died down enough so that she could actually talk. Danny turned back to look at her, and then got out his own communicator. "How long have we been on the ground?"

"About forty minutes. The storm over that mountain's intense. We can only get through when it calms. Otherwise, we're completely cut off."

"Understood." Figures.

"One thing to report, Mom. Valerie saw something."

"What?" Maddie said. Valerie gave a brief report, even as the pair of them continued onward.

"That doesn't sound like missing skiers, Mom."

"No. I assume you've found no trace of them?"

"No. All we've found is snow, trees, and wind. If it wasn't for what Valerie saw, I'd wonder if we were in the right place."

"No, Danny. Even if I hadn't seen anything…this place is just…there's being in the ass end of nowhere, and then…there's this. It's…just not right."

"…I do have something of a tickle in the back of my throat." Danny said. "Then again, I've had that turn up nothing."

"Two guts are better than one in this case." Maddie said. "Keep an eye out for…"

"Wait…hold on Mom." Danny said, his eyes having caught something. He knelt down, brushing away the snow. The trees had cleared some…

Which exploded the cracked, damaged stone that Danny brushed the show away from. A road. Long abandoned, and it showed, but a sign of civilization…

"Danny." Valerie said. The visibility level had dropped a minute ago, but now it had risen again…revealing the vague shapes in the distance. Buildings. Clearly what the road led to.

"What did you find, Danny?"

"A road. But Val beat me. She just found what the road lead to."

"…and what's that?"

"A few buildings…fairly big…don't envy the folks who had to build that up here…"

"Danny…hold on a moment."

"…she's checking something. I know what happens when she says that." Valerie said.

"I'd rather have bad news than no news."

"Speak for yourself."

"All right…Danny, Valerie. You ended up where we were aiming for. Which means it's unlikely you've found the ski resort that's on that mountain. Not only would you be heading away from it…you're on the opposite side of the mountain where the resort actually IS."

"We've still found some buildings, ma'am." Valerie said.

"You're certain you have found some buildings."

"Yes."

Silence.

"I don't like this silence, ma'am. Why is finding a building important?" Valerie said. She wasn't sure when she and Danny had started walking towards the structures, but they were getting closer.

"Because the only buildings that you could have found on that part of the mountain were decommissioned in the early 90's."

There were several things Valerie wanted to say, mainly 'Please tell me by decommissioned, you mean abandoned', but she didn't. She knew the answer she would get.

"Decommissioned."

"Former army base. Torn down. Decades ago."

Valerie paused a moment, before she reached out and sent one of her cube-blasters flying. Not to actually shoot. Just to confirm something.

It thudded against the wall.

"…It seems pretty there to me."

Maddie's reply was lost in sudden static. The wind was starting to pick up again.

"Mom? Can you hear me? I'm going inside. We can't just stay out here, we're too exposed…don't worry, I'll watch for traps. We'll talk when things have cleared more…look, if you can hear me and are saying no, I'm sorry. But I know what I'm doing. Come on Valerie."

"…what the hell would an army base be doing up HERE?" Valerie said, as the two began looking for a way in.

"Yeti super-soldiers?"

"…Danny."

"Yeah? What is it?"

"This place was supposed to be shut down. Even if it's still HERE instead of torn down…that road's a wreck. No one's used it for years."

"Yeah."

"…so why does this place have electricity?" Valerie said, having realized that, up close, she could see the faintest hint of lights within the place.

The doors in front of the pair slammed open, and the wind howled through them, a shrieking gale that sound far too close to an actual scream.

"…To be fair, that COULD just be the wind."

The noise that followed was in the vein Valerie never wanted to hear again and kept being disappointed. The choking, hitching sound of an agonized sob, the sound of pain and horror.

"…That?" Danny said, getting the Magnus in front of him. "Not so much."

"Where the hell are we, Tucker?" Valerie said. It was nearly an hour later; the pair of them had very quickly confirmed they weren't dealing with a glorified shack. The building they'd entered was huge, apparently a main barracks, with several floors of sleeping quarters, offices, and on the main floor, a dining area, a rec room, and more offices. They'd established there was a basement as well, but you couldn't pay or threaten Valerie enough to go down there to look around.

The biggest thing that raised the hairs on her neck, of course, was no longer that the building had electricity. The lights inside were either broken or mostly consisted of emergency glowing dots; the outside daylight filtering through the clouds was providing most of the illumination where there were windows. In more inside rooms, it was primarily her helmet lights and Danny's sword doing the lighting. Having settled down into the dining room, nothing having attacked them directly, Danny had produced two sticks from his coat and had his sword's strange power light them on fire, a fire that produced no smoke, little heat, and a lot of light, to supplement the little that the small windows provided. Rows of abandoned tables and chairs sat around them.

No dust. No signs of life. The barracks had had empty bunks lacking mattresses, blankets, pillows, clothing, or anything that indicated anyone had ever lived here. Offices and the kitchen also lacked the smaller basics: it was all big pieces of furniture, desks and chairs and electric ovens that weren't even plugged in. That also wasn't what had settled onto her brain's 'deeply concerned' button.

The place was abandoned on top of a mountain in winter. It should have been an icebox with its only benefit being protection from the wind.

But it had heat.

That, or she and Danny were undergoing a spontaneous case of the most beneficial hypothermia in history, but Valerie doubted that.

"You're in Germany." Tucker said.

"I knew that. WHERE?"

"You're in the Fulda Gap."

"All right. Please explain what that is." Valerie said. "Unlike Paulina, I will not assume it is a place called Fulda that sells clothes."

"Hey! I'm not THAT dumb!" Paulina's voice said in the background.

"You're on one of the mountains, a…Alfenwehr, I believe it's called? It's part of a plateau in Western Germany, which contains two lowland areas that the Soviet Union could have driven tanks through during the Cold War. Considering that there was a lot of misinformation going around during that time, defences had to be established to guard against this and other things."

"Like what?" Valerie said, still not seeing the benefit of building a base this far up a mountain.

"Well…basically, World War III. Nuclear Armageddon and more or less the end of the world."

"…Not sure how this would really help, Tuck." Danny said. His mother was off on her own computer, trying to get records of where they were. They'd been sent in because some skiers had vanished; that wouldn't have been enough to get Maddie's attention, but then some police vanished in the search for them. One of her contacts had brought it to Maddie's attention, and the hairs had been raised on the back of her neck, especially after consulting some of the witnesses reports that talked about people hearing laughter in the nights and someone seeing what they claimed was a form with an axe stalking around the forest among the ski hills. Why this meant she and Danny were going in instead of just Danny or the whole group, Valerie didn't know. She also didn't know why, if people had vanished near the ski resort, why they were on the other side of the mountain. They'd found this place, of course, but Maddie didn't seem to have been expecting it.

"Different times, man. Different times." Tucker said. Valerie knew what was coming. She knew Tucker liked to keep Danny on the line even if he rambled about nothing for hours. It meant Danny was safe and sound. Out of contact, who knew what danger Danny was in, and if Tucker had talked to him for the last time. "You were dealing with two sides that both had a main battle plan that called for them not to strike first, with both convinced that was EXACTLY what the other side's main plan called for. Striking first, that is. You're in Western Germany, so that's a NATO base. It was probably built under the idea that the Soviet Union was an unstoppable force that just needed the right day to get rolling, and then they'd just be overwhelmed…unless there were defences in place to counterattack."

"How the heck could they counter-attack up here?"

"Nukes."

"Lovely." Valerie said, and tensed up as she heard the sound of footsteps above her. Not just any footsteps, but marching boots. She and Danny had heard it a few times while looking around, and had yet to find a source for it.

"What was that?" Tucker said.

"You heard it too? Good. Place seems to be haunted, Tuck." Danny said, his tone very dry.

"Haunted by WHAT, though? The ghost of possible wars past?"

"That's as good a guess as any." Maddie said, her voice popping into Valerie and Danny's communication devices. "Danny, Valerie, the storm's moving back in. I don't know how long it will take before we can renew contact when it's cut off."

"What you'd fine out, mom?"

"…that's the thing. Nothing." Maddie said. "I spoke with my contacts, I did some hacking…there is absolutely zero information about that site, that mountain, or anything that happened there. From what little I could glean, the records have all been destroyed. Decades ago."

"Oh great. This is the worst thing. We're in danger because of bureaucracy." Valerie said.

"I don't think this was a case of…" Maddie paused, searching for an appropriate description.

"People taping over old master tapes of Doctor Who?" Tucker suggested.

"Yes, Tucker, that's a good way to describe it. It's not a case of people destroying something because they assume there's no more use in it, or they're not communicating. I think these records were purposely destroyed."

"…so that it can be forgotten." Danny said, his tone quiet.

"Great, except they left a SKI RESORT KEEP RUNNING NEARBY." Valerie said. "Okay, not NEARBY, but still. If they wanted to get people completely off this mountain, why didn't they make sure that was shut down too?"

"Maybe it didn't seem important when the Cold War ended." Danny said.

"Danny, you haven't found any trace of the missing…" Maddie's voice became filled with static. "Darn it. The missing people, right?"

"No sign of them, no sign they were here, no sign anyone's here. Except us. This place…is empty." Danny said. Valerie knew what the odd pause meant; Danny had stopped himself from saying 'is a tomb'. "So basically, Mom, we can leave this place and wander around completely exposed to the elements, or we can look around this place that should not be and hope it's tied to whatever…strangeness happened to those people who vanished."

"It does seem likely that they'd be connected." Maddie said. "Danny…"

Maddie's voice vanished in more crackling buzz.

"…find you."

"Mom, repeat, I missed most of that."

"If something starts going down, just remember you can…"

More crackling.
"I can what, Mom?"

"…ve th…ain…2/19th. Born to fight. Trained to kill. Willing to die. But never will."

Danny's eyes snapped towards Valerie's. Her own had gone wide, the pupils dilating. That had NOT been Maddie, or anyone on their team. It was a voice none of them recognized.

A crashing sound echoed from behind the nearest doors. Less like someone violently slamming open a door than someone violently destroying a door.

"…Mom? You there?"

The communicator had gone dead.

"…what do you think, Danny?" Valerie said. Her calm tone did not match her inner feelings, but they were closer than most people's. Valerie was concerned, any sane person would at least be THAT, but unlike many other people, she had lengthy experience with beings that tried to climb inside your head and destroy your ability to think. They were clearly not in a good situation, but you'd have to try harder than that…

Not that that was an invitation.

"…something is definitely not right here." Danny said. "Beyond what we've seen. But neither Flare or me can put our fingers on what."

"Fissure related?"

"…That is the thing. I keep getting this sense that there's one around…but I can't pinpoint anything. It's like…if I'm holding a scoop of sand in my hand, and there's only one black grain, and I'm pawing through it with a finger certain I saw it, but unable to FIND it…"

"…you think we'll find records on site?"

"…No. No I don't." Danny said. "But I think I have another option."

"What's that?"

"I'll need to use some…other methods of communication…" Danny said, and grimaced. "…And I'll have to be alone."

"…No. Absolutely not. I am NOT playing lets split up and search for clues."

"I'd just be in the next room…"

"I DON'T CARE. This is how it starts…"

More crashing sounds above them rang through the room. A few seconds later, a faint scream echoed down the hallway.

"…If you insist, Valerie, but I think we'd be better off if we made sure we couldn't get any information."

"…I can't listen in?" Valerie said, getting more and more annoyed. She wanted info herself, but she really didn't want to have to tempt fate to get it…

"No."

Valerie ground her teeth. Which was the lesser of two bad options…

In the end, she went against what her gut screamed. Bad information had made her Danny's enemy back in the old days. She could have killed him, lost him before they even had a chance. All because of false, lacking intelligence.

"…How long will this take?"

"…Fifteen minutes?"

"NOT A SECOND LONGER. If I have to go find you, we are leaving this place and mountain immediately, and I'll be kicking you all the way down. I'm timing you. GO." Valerie said, doing her best to keep her tone as 'angry and concerned' instead of 'unreasonable bitch'. There was no ranking structure in their organization, but if there was a theoretical one she probably couldn't give Danny orders, and she didn't like that she could get around that by the fact she was sleeping with him. He probably wouldn't have suggested this if there was any other way…

Though that THING on him might be a factor too…

"Okay, okay." Danny said, and held up three fingers, which she quickly returned. When he left the room, she sat down and turned on her scanners. What an absurd sight she must have been, sitting on a table with micro-satellite dishes coming out of her shoulders, but hell, it wasn't like there was anyone there to take pictures and put it on the internet.

The three fingers. The rule of threes. Something Ghost of a Chance adapted as an unofficial viewpoint on any threat they faced, barring contradictory information. Ghosts and other…unnatural beings could attack three ways. They could try the ghost overshadowing technique to try and take over one's body; Danny and his weapon had more than enough protection against that, and Valerie's suit was also shielded against it. They could try to mentally assault you, either directly or indirectly with you-cannot-grasp-the-true-form kind of nonsense; Valerie's suit had filters for that too; Danny had his nature, the Magnus, AND considerable experience that had hardened him against it. That left the most basic one; physical. And, almost always, trying to attack someone physically meant you had to take some kind of form in the world to do it. Which meant you could be stronger, faster, tougher, more horrifying, more powerful, but you still had to play by the rough basic rules of reality. It wasn't much of a vulnerability, but it was enough of one. Otherwise, you might as well have tried to be fighting the air. Or an idea. As the I-Ni meme had shown, fighting a malignant idea might have been the hardest thing they'd ever done.

And speaking of malignant ideas, there were ones in Valerie's head that wouldn't go away.

This isn't a properly assigned mission. It should just be Danny. We don't know the strength of the enemy, so sending in the whole team would potentially make for targets. That means Danny should have gone in by himself. Why am I here? Why does he have to be alone? Why doesn't that damn sword spirit trust me?

…just because it's weird doesn't mean anyone is out to get you. That whatever razor, simplest answer is the correct one. Don't make mountains out of molehills…

"Hey. Valerie." Danny called through the door. "I need you. Come on."

"Coming." Valerie said, getting up. Lovely. Perhaps I'm a bitch after all, because I'm coming when I'm cal-

Valerie stopped.

She hadn't just been creeped out by this place. She'd been taking notes on it. Lines of sight. Lighting conditions. And sound.

Danny's voice sounded off. It sounded like he was right outside the door. Odds are if he needed her, he'd yell for her once where he was standing, which was likely not just outside the door. Which meant his voice would be quieter. If she didn't respond, he wouldn't have come and yelled directly outside the door, he would have come right back into the room.

So who was yelling?

"Valerie! Come on! I need your help!"

Valerie stayed where she was.

"…Valerie, let me in! I locked myself out!"

Valerie got her main gun out, aiming at the door.

"LET ME IN!"

An immense impact slammed against the door, and Danny's voice turned into the ugliest, most grating snarl Valerie had ever heard. It wasn't possible for Danny to sound that way, no matter how angry he got, and Valerie found herself backing up, Danny bellowing and roaring and calling her the most ugly names, and then screaming in agony.

"…you aren't Danny." Valerie said. Don't listen, don't listen, it's a trick, it's a lure, why can't Danny hear it, this whole building-

The voice stopped.

Valerie immediately did a sonar-based scan. Nothing. Nothing. Her eyes glanced around the room. Tables, chairs, dim lights, rectangular windows piled high with snow on the upper edges of the room…

Which the bloody face slammed into.

Valerie recoiled, her hand tightening on the trigger. It took her a split second to recognize it wasn't Danny, hell it wasn't anyone she knew. It was some woman, her face crushed against the glass, blood spraying against the window, and she screamed, she had no nose and was missing an eye and she screamed, she was wearing army fatigues in the barest glimpse Valerie could get of beyond her face and she screamed and screamed…

"HELP! OH GOD HELP ME PLEASE! PLLLEEASEEEE!"

Valerie inhaled through her nose.

You fire that weapon, you'll let the winter in.

The face was slammed against the window one last time before it was hauled away, the wind outside swallowing the agonized cries.

From her communicator, the sound came. In theory it was a laugh, a chuckle. In reality, it was all wrong. Too ragged. Too liquid. A sound of absolute malice.

The next breath Valerie took was through her clenched teeth.

The tapping sensation fell on her shoulder. Valerie jerked around, aiming her weapon. The recognition of what had been touching her was primarily what kept her from firing.

She'd trained with Danny. She knew how his sword felt being used as a club. The lighter, get your attention touch he'd used, tapping its length on her shoulder, had some of the same recognition. Evidently, he'd thought speaking or grabbing her normally would have been more of a shock.

"I heard that. At the window." Danny said. "Anything else?"

"…Called to me in your voice." Valerie said. "Danny, this place is bad. We should…"

The door Danny had come through, the door that had rattled as the voice behind it had roared, didn't bother with such a warm up this time. It just slammed open.

It stood there in the door. In the dark.

Valerie had two seconds to make out details before the door closed, Danny even less than that as he had to turn around. Military clothing, ragged and torn, covered in ice and mud. Rotten fingers that had no flesh on them, their pointed ending in sharpened bone. Torn cheeks, extending the creature's smile across its whole face, the jagged fangs within its mouth seeming too big even with its shredded cheeks. And eyes that had no bottom. No end to the vicious cruelty and hate within them.

The door closed. It stayed closed. The building was silent.

Valerie felt dryness invade her mouth.

"…I do believe, Danny…" Valerie said. "That we are being fucked with."

Danny just let out an affirmative grunt, his thumb pressing and sliding across the hilt of his sword, the blade lighting up with red energy. Absolute Energy. Valerie knew it well. Danny didn't like using it, for personal and stamina-based reasons, but anything it hit would either suffer a completely fried nervous system, or, as Danny has refined it to when that didn't work out so well, still feel like they'd been hit with a truck made out of smaller trucks.

"If it wants to play, it's welcome to come back in and say more than hello." Danny said.

"I got this." Valerie said, taking one hand off her gun, arming her grappling device and firing it towards the doors. The small clamping aspect of the device seized onto the handle. "On three. One, two…"

Valerie yanked the doors open. They swung into the room.

All that was revealed was an empty hallway. Danny immediately dashed forward to keep the doors from closing, swinging the Magnus around, looking for trouble. Nothing. The hallway beyond was empty.

"…Doubt it ran." Danny said.

"Go after it?"

"No…" Danny said, stepping back, the doors beginning to close…

Danny beginning to turn around…

The voice screamed in Valerie's head: DON'T STAND NEAR THE DOOR YOU STUPID-

The doors swung closed…or they should have. Instead, they swung backwards, like their design had abruptly become two-way, like a saloon.

In the moment the doors covered the hallway, he appeared.

Not the horrible thing with the ice-white face that had appeared in the storm. This one was even bigger. Not dressed in military fatigues, but instead a battered cold weather outfit, heavy pants and shirt, a parka with its hood up covering his upper form, hands stuck into thick gloves...and Mickey Mouse boots, of all things. He wore goggles and a cold weather mask that had been left open. Blood was settled around his mouth, the goggles partially broken, one eye red, bloodshot, and blazing with hate and rage.

And an axe. A fire axe.

That he immediately drove into Danny's back.

Valerie couldn't fire, Danny was in the way, but Danny didn't STAY in the way: he stumbled forward from the impact and then, with a snarl that sounded nothing like his impersonator, ignited his hand with green energy and swung it in a backhand. The axe man clearly didn't expect such a speedy recovery, nor did it compensate properly for the impact Danny's ecto-charged fist made as it slammed into his chest. The form staggered back, and Valerie fired a spray of shots before the doors swung into the room, closing. Danny whirled around, coughing, and grabbed at the doors, holding them closed.

"Valerie! Need one of your lines! Chain this shut!"

"Danny! Are you okay?"

"Sheath took it. Mostly. Get these doors sealed! Please."

Valerie didn't need to be told a third time, and within thirty seconds the line from her grapple was wrapped around the door. You'd need a police battering ram to get in with anything approaching ease.

Valerie had a feeling that it wouldn't matter much at all.

"Danny?" Valerie said, turning back to her boyfriend. He let out a pained grunt, having removed the sheath, a gesture from his hands turning his outfit invisible at the back. A nasty bruise was starting to form, and there was a small cut in the armoured coat, but the axe strike seemed to have been mostly blunted. It could have been worse; the attacker could have aimed for Danny's neck.

"Was that the same one we saw before?" Danny said.

"What? No. That was something else. Something else entirely."

"Thought so." Danny said, his outfit becoming non-see-through once more. "This place is bad. Beyond just snatching people. Need to know more."

"How?"

"That." Danny said, and Valerie finally saw the very large, very old looking book that Danny had brought back with him. He'd put it on a table before touching her with his blade.

"Records? You found records?"

"No. But I happen to know someone who has a talent for recovering things that have been written down. Even if they'd been lost. Maybe I can't contact Mom and the rest, but the Ghost Zone's open."

"…What the heck did you trade for this?" Valerie said.

"Stories."

"I doubt any stories…"

"Stories from Flare." Danny said, and the reason she'd been left out became clear. There were things that Danny, as her carrier, was only meant to know, it seemed. Maybe that meant that someone else could know in a trade, but not a third party.

"…Danny, this book is huge." Valerie said, opening it. Endless pages of reports greeted her. Government reports. "We could be at this all night."

"Knowledge is power." Danny said, and coughed a bit.

"Yeah…talk about having too much of a good thing."

"God DAMN it." Valerie cursed. A half hour had passed, she and Danny sitting around the table, reading by Flare's light. Though 'reading' might have been too kind a term. What Danny had received from Ghost Writer was less a book as it was a glorified, fancy file folder, stuffed to the brim with replicated military and government documents. Bad enough they were needle-in-haystacking, but a large chunk of the documents were also blacked out, the information obliterated. The nonsense of the inner workings of governments, creating endless paperwork, half of which was unreadable. It was better than nothing, but not by much.

"What is the POINT of all this? If you don't want this stuff known, then don't WRITE IT DOWN."

Boots tromped across the ceiling, voices carrying down. Voices not speaking English, though whatever they did speak, Valerie could vaguely recognize as a language that existed on Earth. There's been a variety of noises since Valerie had sealed the doors; yells, screams, cries, banging and crashing and stomping. And the wind, howling even louder outside.

Winter wants to get in…

"I sometimes wonder, when I become an astronaut, if I'm going to have to write these black things myself. Do I have to fill in each line by hand, or do I get a stamp or a paintbrush? Or maybe a pasting program…" Danny said, paging through some more nigh-useless bureaucracy before something caught his eye. "…Huh."

"What?"

"If I am reading this right…this base was not built by the United States. It was a repurposed German base." Danny said. "Specifically, a Nazi base."

"…so we're dealing with evil ghost Nazis?"

"…no. That would be…simpler, I think. You know, with us, and you…" Danny said, before shaking his head in disgust at the concept. "They wouldn't be able to resist. Wouldn't be as…subtle as they've been."

"I'd hate to see what you call non-subtle."

"Murdering a whole town wearing the skin of a violent video game."

"…fair point." Valerie said. "So, this place was used again when they wanted to have a base for the Cold War, I assume?"

"…pretty…much…geez." Danny said, looking at his papers. "It gets better. It wasn't just a Nazi base. It was an SS training camp."

"Those were the Nazi secret police, right? The REALLY nasty pieces of work?"

"Yeah…and they trained here."

"Okay, and this did…what?"

"…hard to say. It wasn't the start, though. I feel that happened earlier…" Danny said. The next fifteen minutes were spent trying to get a coherent timeline.

"This can't be right." Danny said. "Four separate incidents in the 80's? There must be some overlap…"

"Four incidents might explain why the records were destroyed. The deepest denial possible." Valerie said. A very ugly story was starting to be put together of the things that had happened here. "Okay…one of them seemed to have been a theorized attack by the Russians. Special forces sneaking in to steal information. This place…Danny, it might have been used to store chemical and nuclear weapons. Or stuff regarding their placement and use."

"To hit back when the enemy did, I'd gather." Danny said. "That wasn't the first incident. About a month or two before that, if I'm reading this right, there was another attack on this place."

"By the Russians?"

"No. The claim, which seems to have been somewhat disputed, was that the barracks came under attack by one person…wearing cold weather gear…and wielding an axe." Danny said. Valerie felt an itch between her shoulder blades. She would not be surprised if it mirrored where Danny had been struck.

"…seriously?"

"Twenty people were stationed here at the time. There were seven survivors…despite claiming to have stabbed the attacker to death, no body was ever found nor was the person's identity ever confirmed. No one was ever able to make sense of the attack. It just…happened."

Like calls to like…to come into the cold…

"And they came back. A month later."

"Where the Russians attacked them."

"Did they come back after THAT?"

"Think so…there's another incident here…it basically says cabin fever set in and everyone went crazy and started attacking each other. I think there was something before that, all this black makes it unclear…but the cabin fever one seems to have been the last straw. That's when the place was decommissioned…"

"Torn down or left up? We need to know that Danny."

"…I can't find if it says that."

"Keep looking." Valerie said, paging through the blackened pages with great frustration. She had no luck herself finding what she was looking for.

She found something else instead.

"…Hey Danny, got dates on those incidents?"

"Sometime in the later 80's. I think."

"This place looked to have been found and moved into in the mid 80's. Apparently, the first group wasn't there long before there was a fire. It burned down the original barracks."

"Were there survivors?"

"Yes…but here's something. There seem to have been other incidents before that. Strange noises, batteries failing…but I've found something in two debriefings. Someone disappeared."

"I'm guessing they didn't wander outside."

"They went into a bathroom. No windows. One exit. A dozen people saw them go in. They were hanging around the door the whole time, it was just off from the rec room. He never came out. They went inside, found his shaving kit and his shoes. Nothing else. No trace of him. A Private Tandy…"

Danny stiffened.

"What?"

"Finish."

"…they found his body months later. Outside. Miles from the building. On the other side of the mountain. They claimed it was taken by melt water."

"After he vanished out of a sealed room with one door that no one saw him come out of."

"Yeah."

"…I know that name. It came up in all these reports."

Danny dumped them in front of Valerie, pointing out words scattered among the blackness.

"I thought it was some poor bastard who was here for the whole thing. Now…not so sure."

The shadows in the room seemed deeper.

Then that low, liquid chuckle slid across the room. Valerie couldn't pinpoint the source. It seemed to come from everywhere.

"…what the hell is going on here Danny?" Valerie said, looking around. "Nazis, multiple aberrant incidents, buildings that might not actually BE here that are HERE ANYWAY…we dealing with an Unclean?"

"…no. As far as I can tell, nothing happened here between the early 90's and now. An Unclean wouldn't stay put. It'd go looking for fresh prey."

"How about something that that town where you encountered that Cassie woman? The Nazis loved to screw around with magic occult junk. Think they called something up that hung around?"

"No. Like I said. This seems…longer. A longer cast shadow."

"Then what?"

"…you remember that report the Titans sent us? About the incident in the New Orleans swamp?"

"The one with the thing they called an Übelgeist? Which we call an Imprinter?"

"Yeah. You remember the theory they attached at the end?"

"…no. Been too long."

"Savior and Raven theorized that there might be something beyond an Imprinter. A…Megaladan or whatever it was called to an Imprinter's shark. They called it after something from Lord of the Rings, translated to 'Oldest and Fatherless', I specifically remember that. Something like an Imprinter but much worse. Something that stains an area, instead of being stained by it."

A crashing noise sounded through the room as something slammed into the door. After a moment, Danny could hear what sounded like tap dancing behind it.

"…I think whatever's here has been here a long, LONG time. We've just seen shadows of it." Danny said, as he ignited Absolute energy on his sword again.

"What does it want?"

"…it hates." Danny said. He'd seen hatred before. Ghosts of serial kills, murderous revenants, ancient child-princes…

And this, Valerie realized.

"…You'd think it'd want to be left alone."

"Yeah." Danny said, standing up, leaving the papers scattered around. "I don't think we're going to get anything else out of these. I don't think we can leave either. It's woken up again, and it's taking people. It has to be stopped."

"…Okay." Valerie said, running a quick weapons check. "What do you want to do, Danny?"

"…Well…if we're already in the mouth of the beast…might as well keep going. Down into the belly." Danny said. "See if we can come to a disagreement."

Valerie didn't know what they'd find in the basement (and of course they had to go into the basement. Just once, she wanted a haunted, cursed by God location where the trouble was in the living room, or the bedroom closet, just to break up the monotony). Not in a 'no clue' sense, but rather a 'list of options' sense. The old demonic portal to hell furnace? A bunch of hands coming out of the ground as some old Nazis decided to wake up and say hello? A passage that went deeper and deeper into the Earth until they ended up somewhere else entirely? A room full of discarded, forgotten military gear, cast aside by history like the same war that it had been made to fight?

The answer turned out to be none of the above. The basement was a dark, vast, empty room with oil-smeared dirt as a floor. No footprints, no items of interest, nothing but a yawning dark chasm that Danny and her tried to light up with their usual methods. Danny's blade faired better than her helmet lights, as they started to flicker not ten steps away from the stairs.

"…you put in fresh batteries?" Danny asked.

"I always do before we leave. And it's not like I went into the nearest hardware store and bought a pack of Duracells." Valerie said, fiddling with her controls.

"It's this place. It…dampens things, it seems. There's probably some scientific reason…" Danny said, looking around. "Flare can't sense anything. Then again, she couldn't do that either before we got jumped the other times."

"I'll back her up." One quick scan turned up nothing. "Well that's seven seconds I'll never get back."

"Hmmmm." Danny said, turning around, laying Flare on his shoulder horizontally. Valerie knew that sign, and stepped next to him, putting a hand over his shoulder like she was peering at something interesting at him.

In reality, she was putting her hand on Flare so they could talk privately, without having to audibly speak and be overheard.

"…What I'm wondering is, does it recognize us as a threat…"

"What? Danny, it tried to chop you in half."

"And how many times has that happened to someone and they walked it off?" Danny 'said'. "It might be used to victims, playthings…but how will it handle something that can fight back? It will either be to our advantage…or we'll make it mad."

"These things get mad no matter what we do. I say get it over with."

"Think we should taunt it?"

"Didn't say that. But continuing to show we're not buying its little scare-games is probably a good thing to keep doing."

"Let's go then." Danny said, Valerie taking her hand off the sword. "Nothing down here."

Valerie braced herself for the ambush. The axe-wielder. The white-faced horror. Hell, maybe the Nazis would greet them at the top of the stairs, or try and yank them down when they tried to claim them.

The answer was, again, none of the above.

Valerie wished that it could have been.

They found the hallway they'd come down.

The emergency lights were on, and they'd changed color. Instead of a dull orange, they were now a sickly, bloody red.

The hallway was now filled with snow. It crunched under Danny's feet as it stepped into it. It had not been there when they'd gone into the basement.

Neither had the snowman.

Danny stopped as cold as the hallway had become, Valerie sliding around him. When she took in the full details, she paled.

It wasn't just three balls of snow with some sticks, coal, and a carrot. This snowman was dressed. It wore a bloody, ragged winter jacket, a soaked tuque on top of its head…and the features of what had once been a young person on its face. The poor bastard couldn't have been any older than sixteen.

Someone had skinned his face right off and put it on the snowman.

And as the light caught it, Valerie realized there were a pair of eyes staring back at her. Dead, real eyes. Planted into the snow, casting a window to a soul as cold as the ice surrounding it.

Danny stared.

And stared.

Valerie turned her own eyes back to him when she sensed movement; he was clenching his empty fist.

"…All right. That's how you want to play it?" Danny snarled. No inhuman rage here. Just very human, very clear anger, at this innocent victim, and the violation wrought on his body as further insult after his death. Danny didn't touch the snowman; instead he turned and began stalking down the hallway.

"I don't know what the damn Nazis did up here! I don't know what the damn soldiers did either! Maybe they brought this shit on themselves, who cares?!" Danny yelled. He was DEFINITELY pissed; he never cursed unless he was. Hell, Valerie couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten this angry, running off with a hot head…wait. "But they didn't do anything! They didn't deserve this!"

The low, horribly liquid chuckle echoed out, the sole answer Danny got. He slammed his way through another door, barely aware of a possible threat on the other side, or so it seemed.

"Danny wait, calm down, that's what it WANTS-!" Valerie said.

"I know what it wants. I'll show it what I can give it…" Danny said, his step slowing a touch, his hand clenching again. They were in the rec room…

…Rec room…

The room to Danny's left was pitch black, none of the building or Danny's light entering it.

"Danny!" Valerie said.

"WHAT?" Danny yelled, stopping and whirling around.

The hands shot from the darkness. Rotting hands with fingers that were too long, grotesquely long, the ends terminating in dull, bladed bone. The points sank into Danny's shoulders, and with one mighty yank, it pulled him backwards into the darkness.

Until Danny's sword hit either end of the door frame, Danny's hand wrapped firmly around it, the yank stopping in its tracks. There was little that would either break the blade or Danny's grip on it, Valerie knew. That's why Danny had just done what he'd done.

Valerie knew how Danny got mad. Going off half-cocked was not part of it any more. So when he did it, Valerie waited for the signal. The last clenching of his hand had been accompanied by a quick, blink and you'd miss it pointing at the open doorway, and Valerie had immediately played along as Danny baited the trap with himself, doing something to make Danny seemingly stop in ignorance.

They'd been a couple for a good two and a half years now. They knew each other pretty well. Better than this building did.

Danny wasn't just more in control of how he looked, he was stronger too. He yanked himself forward, his coat tearing as the bladed fingers lost their grip on him. He didn't bother punching behind himself this time, just getting out of the doorway and leaving it clear as Valerie opened fire into it, shooting until her gun shut down to prevent heat overload. That was one problem with her weapons; if they were damaged or she overdid it, they tended to fail rather spectacularly and catastrophically, in a 'she was lucky she hadn't blown off her own hand' once or twice. She wasn't sure if this was an accident of design or something done purposely; with their origin as Technus-created, it was a bit of a toss-up.

"Valerie, get your lights on. We're going in." Danny said, the red Absolute energy blazing up so high that Danny looked like he was holding a campfire. Before she could say anything, he plunged into the room. Valerie put aside her gun and got her hand-based blasters ready; in such close quarters…

Damn it, they were fighting THAT thing in close quarters, screw this noise…

The room beyond was a bathroom. Windowless. One way in, the way they'd just come. The way Danny had been pulled in.

It was the usual washroom. Sinks. Urinals. Toilets. A mirror. But no lights.

And no Blade-fingers. The place was empty. Valerie wasn't really surprised.

"Figures he'd cut and run…" Valerie said, before Danny held up a hand. Right. Taunting things like this never ended well. Danny began kicking the doors of the stalls open, sword at the ready. Valerie looked around for a light switch, and upon finding one to her mild surprise, tried it. The fact that it didn't work was not much of a surprise.

"That's not a zombie with a good escape route." Danny said. "It felt like it was driving icicles into my shoulders even without penetrating. Bad stuff, Val." Danny said. "Don't try and engage it by yourself, if you can. We need to stay together."

"Affirmative."

You know full well it's not in Danny's nature to come up with this shit by himself. He's a hero, but he's not a thinker, not like that. It's the Magnus who feeds him ideas like this. You're only the No 2 girl to him. She's No 1, the source of all his success since then, all the notches on his belt. You're one step away from being a burden…

"What do you want to try, Danny?" Valerie said, pushing the thought down. "Think we should repeat history and set the place on fire again?"

"You think it'll burn?" Danny said.

"…I think that based on what we read, it knows every move we could make and could…" Valerie said, her light reflecting off the mirror behind Danny and shining back in her eyes for half a second.

In that half a second, her reflection had vanished.

The nightmare man was there. Frozen, filthy military fatigues. Teeth too big for his mouth. Fingers too long for his hands. Eyes like the abyss. Smile like the gates of hell.

It was this time, this close, that Valerie saw the name tag on his chest.

TANDY.

Tandy reached out through the mirror, the surface TEARING as it came through it, and even before Valerie could open her mouth to scream a warning he had Danny, grabbing him by the shoulders again. Despite taking him completely off guard, Danny tried to keep from going, but legit surprise made all the difference.

Danny vanished into the mirror.

Then it exploded, spraying Valerie with glass and driving her backwards. Valerie immediately aimed her weapon at where the mirror was, and then turned her attention to the other mirror.

All there was was her reflection.

She was on her own.

Somewhere in the hallway, a shriek of agonized pain echoed.

"Valerie, let me out!"

The voice came from behind the closed door. Valerie ignored it, stalking past. Hanging around in the bathroom had seemed like a very bad idea "Oh god it hurts, please, HELP! HELP ME-!"

It was Danny's voice. Valerie ignored it anyway. Danny wouldn't beg (wouldn't he?). He'd let himself be tortured to death before he let himself be used as a lure to put others in harm's way. She had to…

Do what? Contact Maddie? Get out of here and let Danny handle it? Find a way to jump wherever Danny'd been dragged? Pull the best trick when lost and stay still until she was found?

The heat was gone, Valerie barely noticed. The place was as cold as the tomb {of horrors) it was.

Oldest and Fatherless…this is a bad place. It was bad when the Nazis came, it was bad when the NATO soldiers came…it's just as bad now, it's had so much more practice at being bad than you…

The next scream from behind the next closed door wasn't Danny. It was female, the same voice of that woman who'd been slammed against the window. Valerie ignored it again, getting her scanners up as she went around the corner…

The military uniforms of the figures there weren't filthy. They were covered in snow and ice, but they weren't dirty. Not with mud.

Blood stained their outfits instead. Soaked around their neck, their chests. Too much blood, no one could get around with an injury like that, except she wasn't facing men she was facing…something else, and that didn't really matter because they were still yelling in Russian and Valerie was trying to get around the corner…

The bullet clipped her side. The armor took it, but the impact still knocked her flat on her ass, burning pain shooting through her torso.

Get up. Fight. Fight like the terror you wanted to be then and still are now. They're soldiers? You're a hunter. Apex predator. All the ladies love a killer, though that doesn't do you much good…

Valerie sprang to her feet, her wrist cannon arming as she aimed around the corner, firing a few times to keep the soldiers, the Russians, the echoes of whatever had attacked this place in years past, from advancing further.

Their response was a strange metallic melodic clanking, and Valerie looked down to see the thrown grenade bounce once more as it began to settle near her.

She got her shield up.

It still blew her across the whole hallway. When she finally slammed on the brakes, she swore she could see one of the doors to the barracks room opening. Perhaps with an invitation to her to enter. One she might not get a chance to refuse.

Of course, that was assuming she stayed where she was. Not only did she not, but Valerie was in no mood to try and battle via military tactics. If she wanted to do that, she'd have stayed home and played on the computer with Tucker.

Here?

The best defence was a good offence, thinking outside the box.

So Valerie promptly called out her glider-board, leaping up on it and blazing down the hallway as she threw her shield up again, tearing around the corner and meeting the ghost Russians with a full-on blitz charge. She might have heard approving yells in German, but she didn't really care. All she cared about was breaking through, and when she did, she promptly blasted across the hallway behind the Russian entities, nearly tearing the hallway doors off their hinges as she crashed through, ending back up in the dining room.

The second the doors closed, she grabbed their handles and whipped out her line again, sealing the door closed behind her as best she could. It probably wouldn't stand up to a spray of bullets, but she'd deal with that when it happened. She backed away, waiting.

Nothing.

Quiet.

Valerie glanced at the windows. She was aware of a possible ambush…

Don't let the winter in…

The cracking noise raked its nails down her spine.

Who says the winter ever left?

The windows across the room exploded, snow and wind howling in and mixing with gummy sprays of safety glass. Valerie jerked her aim towards them, and then back at the door.

Under the wind, the chuckle whispered from outside. Tandy's chuckle. A promise of the worst things Valerie could imagine, for what little time she'd had…

God damn it, NO. She wasn't like everyone else who'd come before her. The ones without a clue, or without any authority to hand clues out. If she let it screw with her head she was little better than every other victim this accursed place had claimed. She would not ignore her fear, but it would NOT worm inside her head, it would NOT puppet her actions, and it would NOT taint her decisions…

The smoke blew out from beneath the door she'd locked. She had a feeling she knew what that meant. Someone had stolen her and Danny's idea to set the place on fire.

Howling wind flew snowflakes through the shattered windows. Already there were piles of snow beneath them. Too much snow.

A song of ice and fire. Pick your poison.

Valerie picked the one that didn't make sense, as she turned around and went for the door, yanking her wire off and throwing them open.

The smoke engulfed her, and the chill of the dining room immediately switched to the heat of an out of control fire. Going this way was suicide…normally. But in her suit with her own personal air supply, two of the three primary weapons a fire could wield against her were crippled. The last one was the pitch-blackness of the smoke, rendering her blind.

So she used sonar again, with as much confidence as she could muster. She was certain this place would try and screw with her suit. It wasn't the first, and it had been built to that specification, as she staggered down the hallway.

Back to the basement. Why? Because…

The stairs were on fire. She tromped down them anyway, the heat licking at her thighs and feet. The basement wasn't empty any more. A massive furnace now squatted at one end, a black-ironed toad of smoking, raging heat and death, the squalling crinkle of warping metal sounding like the noise of a suffering infant. An old beast from an old time, that had once tried to eat everything that had come into its mouth.

Valerie found the door and swung it open.

Fire blazed within.

A hand shot out.

Valerie grabbed it, pulling Danny from within the demonic construct, fire roaring around her as she did. Her boyfriend was covered in soot, his outfit smoking and his breathing a violent, wracking cough. The moment he was out, though, the fire shut off. Vanishing, like a candle being blown out. In the furnace, and in the basement.

"…Valerie?"

"Hey Danny. I played a crazy hunch. It paid off! And Deal said I was always a sucker's bet." Valerie said. Her actions had been half going where she suspected the building would never expect her or anyone sane to go, and the other half had been her pulling a wild chance out of her ass. Making unexpected moves did work in her favour, most of the time.

Danny finished coughing the rest of the smoke out of his lungs, wiping his face.

"…It's worse than I thought. This place is beyond bad…it's the mountain, Valerie. It's been here so long…since men were in caves and wearing furs…"

"What the hell does it want?"

"…It hates."

"Yeah, I'm not very fond of it either!"

"No, Val…it HATES. It wants us dead, it just hates and HATES so much…we've been spilling blood on it for eons and it's never enough…"

"None of us are getting off this mountain alive." Said the voice in Valerie's communicator. Not Maddie. Not Tandy. A strange voice, filled with resigned nihilism. The poison of this place.

Oldest and Fatherless…do you remember that more now, Valerie? The idea of something terrible warping a place to mirror it? A hunting ground, a killing field? And you had the gall to call yourself an apex predator?

"…well, if it wants to fuck around with us, Danny, then I say we show it just WHO it's fucking with." Valerie said.

"…I don't plan for it to be using echoes of us to torment others either." Danny said, standing up, Magnus ever present in his hand. "You got any ideas, Val?"

"We could send it to Vietnam."

"What?"

"Eh, you hang around Tucker long enough, you pick up the weirdest bits of pop culture." Valerie said. "Danny…is this place supposed to be here?"

"…No." Danny said. "The buildings were torn down. Left in ruins."

These buildings are a part of it. You're standing in its mouth. All you've done is whet its appetite.

"Well then." Valerie said. "I say we let history repeat itself."

There were two snowmen in the hallway when they emerged from the basement. Painted with blood. Blood and worse, and made up so it was clear who they were meant to represent. Idly, Valerie wondered when Danny had lost the hair that was stuck on the top of the snowman that represented him.

Danny slashed through the snowmen, heading back to the rec room.

"No bathroom this time. We go right to the center of this place and we-"

Danny kicked the door open.

It was carnage inside the rec room. Gunfire filled Valerie's ears, tracers criss-crossing the room. Yells in English and Russian. It was a full on war zone.

They fought here. Fought and killed each other in the snow and dark…how many even knew why?

"…Valerie, back to back with me! Through the room, shield up, anything looks at you funny, shoot it!" Danny said, the red on his sword going to a more subdued golden yellow. Valerie wasn't going to argue; there was a glorified memory in that room and the past could only hurt you as much as you let it.

That normally didn't fall under advancing through a room, bullets ricocheting off Valerie's shield as she took potshots at any movement she spotted. Danny didn't bother with a shield: he just held his sword in front of him and literally slashed any bullets flying at him out of the air, the Kickback aura from his blade helping with the finer points of his deflection. When they reached the door, Danny opened it with his free right hand.

It wasn't the axe man there. The man there was smaller, wearing military clothes soaked with who knew what, hair askew, teeth bloody, dented medals adored on his chest.

"COMMIE BASTARDS!" The man screamed, swinging the axe down.

In the space of half a second, the Magnus went from being in Danny's left hand to the right, the axe blade catching on the sword and stopping the swing, though Danny grunted in pain.

Valerie promptly stuck her hand into the newcomer's face and opened fire, blowing his crazy features out the back of his head and kicking his body backwards.

"If these walls could talk." Valerie said, she and Danny sliding through the door before they could catch a stray bullet. The body of the communist accuser vanished in the second she took her eyes away from it. Valerie wasn't surprised. "Well, in a non screaming overwhelming ancient hate sense anyway."

"It called them here. The broken…in all ways. It called them here and it tore them apart. It killed and it hurt people…it hurt them as bad as it could…it just can't stop hating…"

"Danny! Snap out of it. We didn't ask for this and neither did the people whose deaths brought us here." Valerie said. "It started this fight."

"Right. Sometimes I like to reflect anyway." Danny said, glaring down the hallway. "At least SOMEONE doesn't shrink from it like a mewling child."

Does that damn Magnus read thesauruses when Danny's not using it?

The old, already-too-familiar chuckle sounded behind the pair.

Valerie was the only one who turned. No Tandy.

The axeman ripped his way through the barracks room door to their left, the wood disintegrating beneath his charging advance. The light caught the axe head, just for a moment, allowing Valerie to read the words 2/19th Motorpool on the side, before the weapon slammed into Danny's blade, the half ghost parrying it with careful, yet notable desperation.

Valerie fired several shots directly into the axe man's back. It didn't even make him turn around, the axe man driving Danny down the hallway via the sheer ferocity of his attack. Valerie growled and tried grabbing one of the axe man's arms with her grapple line: it snapped like cheap string, the axe man not slowing down in the slightest as it forced Danny down the hallway. Danny activated Kickback, but even a greater deflection caused by his blocks didn't help against the revenant. Valerie realized, to her horror, that they were about to go around the corner where they'd found the Russians…

Except they weren't there. The axe man didn't seem to much care, driving Danny back towards the dining room. Growling in her throat, Valerie went through her arsenal and realized that her main gun had finally cooled off.

The battling pair crashed through the doors Valerie said, warring into the dining room. Valerie slammed her arm in the door before it could close, scrambling through as she disabled the safeties on the weapon. They were going for the kitchen; the second Danny wasn't behind the thing, she was going to drill it right in the back with the strongest shot she had, see if he laughed THAT off.

They crashed through the kitchen doors. Valerie was right on their heels. The kitchen was smaller, more cramped, and Danny immediately moved to make sure he wasn't cornered. Perfect…

The hissing noise registered to her even as she pulled the trigger.

The hell?

Then her helmet lit up with warnings. Gas. The air was full of it.

…THOSE OVENS WERE ELECTRIC LAST TIME…

The explosion consumed Danny and the axeman, the fire engulfing Valerie and throwing her across the whole dining room, her back smashing painfully against the wall, her visor cracking. A moment later, the shield that had probably kept Valerie was being cooked shorted out completely.

The arms came. From the shattered windows. From the dark and the cold. Fingers of cold, dead bone dug into Valerie's neck, piercing through her armor.

Tandy.

He had her. It was dragging her outside, out through the window…

"BOARD, LOCK ON MY POSITION AND FIRE!" Valerie yelled.

Tandy wasn't the only one who could pull bullshit out of nowhere tricks.

As she was dragged out of the building, her board appeared in turn from thin air, doing as it was commanded. It couldn't aim well enough to miss Valerie, but Valerie lived with the pain of being shot repeatedly with her own darts because it meant it didn't miss Tandy either. The grip on her vanished, leaving Valerie lying in the snow.

A new grip came, this time for her board. The wind outside had hit full blown storm status, and it promptly seized her board after a few seconds of resistance and tossed it through the air. Valerie could only grunt as the warning appeared on her readings, before her board hit a tree and snapped in half. The warning switched to a notice that her board was disabled and unusable for the foreseeable future.

"Danny…"

She was cold. Tandy had torn her suit. Winter was getting in.

It'll eat you all up and play with your bones for years without measure…

That damn chuckle echoed out of the dark. Valerie armed her wrist and hand blasters, her cube blasters emerging to back her up…

More warnings appeared in Valerie's screen, and then the cube blasters pitched down to the ground. Frozen solid. Dead. So quickly…

Danny. They couldn't be seper…

The clawed hand had her by the throat. Was dragging her, piercing into her, before she even knew what was going on. Valerie fired several shots into the revenant at point blank range; she had a sick feeling when she was released that it wasn't because it was what SHE wanted.

More warnings crossed her visor. Her suit was compromised. She couldn't stay in this weather, she'd die of exposure sooner rather than later…

The only shelter is what it called up.

Valerie could see it. The building, lights barely visible. It loomed over her. How had she ever missed how menacing it was? Why had she been insane enough to step inside it?

It called them…the broken…

Now Danny was lost somewhere within, and this time she couldn't go find him…

The lost come here and die. The weak and wretched come here and die. They come here in their powerlessness and their arrogance and they die…

Maddie knew, Maddie knew, she knew Danny could survive this and you wouldn't…

"If that's what Maddie knew, then she doesn't know JACK SHIT." Valerie growled. Others had fought their way off this mountain, she could, she would…

How do you fight the winter? How do you fight hate?

The clawed hand would have torn out her throat had her scanners not screamed a warning. For the damage she'd taken, her suit was still functioning, and it wasn't just wringing its hands over how Tandy could just pop out of nowhere as quick as the devil and twice as ugly. Valerie dodged, Tandy's shape a vague motion in the driving, endless snow, and she ran backwards, firing, trying to keep space between them…

The end of her path came very quickly and, thanks to the snow, without her having a clue. Her balance lost, Valerie found herself falling down into the depths, warnings shooting across her visor as she tumbled down the hill, her hands grasping at anything she could find to try and stop herself.

When the slope ended, Valerie found herself being flipped onto her knees. Her hands sank into the ground, all the way to the elbow. Too deep for frozen ground. Wrong consistency for snow. Cold, gooey…

Flesh.

Valerie withdrew her hands, guck clinging to her arms.

She was in a corpse pit.

The corpses were not human.

They were unlike nothing Valerie could understand. Between their alien nature and destroyed forms, Valerie couldn't have told anyone anything what they'd looked like. All she knew is there were dead. Dead and frozen in the winter.

Danny said he sensed a Fissure.

The chuckle whispered in Valerie's ear.

There was a Fissure. It disgorged something, someTHINGS out. Onto this mountain.

Except there was already something there. It killed them. It…it closed the Fissure itself. It must have, or Danny would have found it. It could do that…

Its blood got up. Its taste for blood. It needed more. It went after the people it normally ignored. Because it would bring more.

It brought us.

…Danny.

Valerie stood up and staggered across the corpse pit, her feet sinking now and then into some less than frozen solid flesh. The slope wasn't difficult to climb back up.

I have to…

This time, her sensors were too slow.

The terrible cutting cold stabbed into Valerie's neck, the points piercing in, her skin screaming as frostbite instantly bloomed on the wounds. Before she could even register his position, Tandy yanked.

Her hood tore off like it was a garbage bag. Her sensors vanished, lost with the headpiece. The howling wind rammed needles into her ears, the cold scouring its nails across her now exposed face before it immediately went numb, the cold stealing everything…

Then she was flying. Dragged and tossed.

Her head slammed against the tree she hit, and stars exploded across her vision. She hit the ground, her head almost banging against the cold earth on top of what she'd just experience. Her senses swam. She was vaguely aware of blood running out into her long hair and freezing as soon as it touched the winter.

No one gets off this mountain alive…

The cold weight crashed down on top of her, and Valerie's senses swam back into focus as agonizing pain suddenly bloomed through her whole face. Tandy had her. He was driving his fingers into her face, her skull, millimetre by millimetre. His black eyes, bottomless rage, bottomless malevolence, ever grinning, teeth too long for its face,,,

Valerie weakly swung her right arm up, her wrist cannon arming. Tandy grabbed it and crushed it AND her wrist, the pain barely registering over the sensation of him driving his claws deeper into her face, the three daggers sliding through skin and muscle, the liquid in her left eye feeling like it was beginning to freeze…

No one is coming to help you. No one ever did. Not the Templars, not the Nazis, and not the soldiers who fought and screamed and went mad and died here, fighting their silly little war. The war made so small by the greater forces of existence, their hatred small and pointless, their lives small and pointless and spent, and no one cared, no one cared, there is nothing good in this world and if you try it will be taken aw…

Valerie flailed at Tandy with her one good hand. He ignored it. His breath had no smell at all, his chuckle becoming her whole world.

Willing to die…death is just the start…a dead man is sitting on you and killing you…

Yes. A dead man. A frozen nightmare.

Valerie had finally gotten the grip she needed, after confirming her hand worked, and she yanked out her new lock pick and drove the point into Tandy's chest.

No wound will touch him…

TOUCH.

The canister in the lock pick broke open, and the liquid hydrogen shot out from the needle, injecting itself into Tandy. He didn't seem to notice.

Valerie pulled the trigger, again and again. Another canister. Another.

NOW he noticed.

Rule of threes. Possession, mind manipulation, physical form. If you want to hurt someone physically, you have to follow the rules of the existence they work on. If you want to be an ice zombie, fine, ignore being shot, ignore being struck, laugh off fire…

Cold is based around the removal of movement from molecules. When you hit absolute zero, an object had no heat left whatsoever, its molecules had become completely still. If you want to rip people's heads off in a form mirroring some poor damned bastard stolen out of a locked room, then if your cold form suddenly becomes a lot, LOT colder, well…maybe you can adapt. But if you're not expecting it…then you have to play by the rules until you did.

Things froze when they got cold. Became solid. Still. And if the thing was naturally cold and not frozen, THEN MAKE THEM COLDER.

Winter was cold, BUT SOME THINGS WERE COLDER.

YOU CAN HAVE TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING.

Tandy made no sound as he finally batted the lock-freezing gun out of Valerie's hand, the one thing she'd deemed to take from Tucker's presentation an eternity ago. His body crunched as he did so. The curse of the mountain, too used to things that couldn't affect it. It would adapt…

Frozen. Recoiling…

It had damaged her wrist gun, but hadn't deemed to tear it off. Valerie rammed its shattered mess into Tandy's chest.

"FUCK YOU AND YOUR SNOWMEN."

Valerie didn't know if she blew her own hand off when she purposely detonated her damaged weapon. She didn't know just what the explosion did to Tandy. She didn't know much, because darkness slammed into her the second after she spoke

She didn't know much for a time…except the pain had lessened.

All there was now…was cold.

She had no idea of time. Of where she was. She wasn't even sure if she was moving or not: she wanted to roll over and crawl but the cold had sunk deep into her limbs. Cold is the absence of motion…

Danny's not coming to save you.

Danny has more important things to do. He's been picked by greater forces to oppose greater forces. He can't have a life, the world's at stake. He can't care for others, there's too much that could go wrong. He won't come in from the cold, he has to be the cold now…

…bullshit.

Did she have a hand any more? Did she have a chance? She didn't care. She'd crawl…she could crawl…she WOULD…

She couldn't.

I'm sorry Danny…I did my best…maybe your mom was right…

But I'm trying…I'll help you…I'll crawl to you…

I love you…there's nothing wrong with that…

Does that even matter?

Around Valerie, the wind howled.

She was pretty sure she had stopped moving.

She was absolutely sure that the last thing she heard was the chuckle.

"Valerie?"

There was ice on her eyelashes. Her eyes felt like someone had clawed them out and that someone had skinned her face and stapled it back on. But when Valerie opened her eyes, she could see. She could feel.

"Get back to the shuttle. Get blankets, heating units. NOW! As fast as you can, Wulf!"

"Miiissss…Fenton?" Valerie slurred, her tongue feeling like a thick, dead mass in her mouth.

"You'll be all right, Valerie. Just hold on." Maddie said, her eyes briefly visible behind her hood before she looked away.

The storm was over, Valerie realized. She could see clear blue sky above her. She was lying on her back. Cold. Hurting.

The Magnus was lying on her chest, her hands wrapped around it, dimly glowing. She still had both hands, one wrapped in a makeshift bandage. Valerie was vaguely aware that it was putting out heat.

Keeping her warm. Keeping her alive. So much time had passed…and otherwise, the mountain would have long carried her away.

"…Da…nny…"

"Danny's…well, he's…there." Maddie said. "Don't try to get up. I'm not having you move until I can make sure you're not going to leap headfirst into hypothermia the second you let go of that sword."

"…wh..uh…hap…pen…ed?"

"Doesn't matter. Rest, Valerie. Calvary's here. Mission's over. We can work out the details later."

Valerie stared, and then the world faded away a bit. When it swam back into focus, she was wrapped in blankets, small devices placed under her armpits and between her legs emitting a steady, constant amount of heat. Somehow, she found the strength to sit up.

Danny sat in the snow nearby, legs crossed, eyes closed, and barely visible in his intangible state. He was all alone, the buildings gone. Not surprising. They'd never been there to start. His mother was watching him with worry, her head turning to follow the motion of Valerie sitting up.

The Magnus was still in her hands, but as she settled, it phased its way out of it, a faint bit of heat leaving Valerie as the sword returned to Danny. He reached out and took it, finally becoming solid again.

His face was a battered mess. His outfit was stained with green and red blood. His coat was gone, and with a start, Valerie realized she was wearing it. It was torn up, but it was something. He'd put it on her. Put it on and laid the Magnus on her to keep her warm. Keep her alive.

Then he'd sat in the cold. Sat and waited for help.

He'd finished the fight.

He was moving slowly, exhausted, hurt, but his voice was stronger than hers as he spoke with his mother in low terms. The ghost lycanthrope Wulf bounded into Valerie's line of sight, draping a heavy blanket over Danny that he gladly accepted before he walked over to Valerie, pained but intense.

"Val?" Danny said, kneeling down by her. "You okay?"

"…I feel like warmed over crap."

"Ah hah. Yeah. Me too. At least you're warm." Danny said, and gave her a gentle hug. "It's okay. It's over. We made it. Thanks."

"Thanks? For what?"

"…I don't think I could have helped make it blink without you."

"…Danny…what happened?"

"…Oldest and Fatherless. An ancient blight, purpose long forgotten." Danny said. "It tried to kill me and you. I tried to encourage it to stop. It tried to force the issue, in both our cases. So I gathered up everything it had done, to you, to me, and to everyone else it used…and I forced it back."

For a moment, Danny's eyes were as cold as the mountain. In that, Valerie knew he did have coldness in him. But not for her.

For those who would hurt her.

And even if her fears were correct…there was nothing Maddie could do to change that.

"…the wars here were over. It should have gone back to sleep. Now…that's all it will do." Danny said.

It wouldn't be until later that Valerie saw the full extent of whatever had happened after her last defiance against Tandy, an event that news reports would call a 'freakishly localized, catastrophic earthquake'.

The mountain had cracked in half.

Just like a stone that had been made too cold.

The Cold War really is its namesake. It was a war that showed how cold humanity could be. How the main players manipulated governments, backed endless proxies for their own goals, threw endless grist into the mill, all for the interests of their country. Maybe it was needed if just another part of the twentieth century lesson on how bad it can get, and why.

Maybe we're learning. I don't know. But really…it makes me think of how the expressions hot as hell and cold as hell are both equally valid.

War is hell.

But there are things worth fighting for. Even in war.

End File.

Click!

The following story's broad strokes were derived from the work of Tim Willard, also known as Fifty-Foot Ant. The stories are loosely known as 'The Damned of the 2/19th' and can be found on Creepypasta, a website called nothotbutspicy dot com, and can also be purchased in E-Book form on smashwords dot com. I will note the original stories' timeline and telling is a little loose, as it began as a series of ghost stories possibly told by two different people, and also considerably cruder (in terms of content) than my work. Credit where credit is due.

You know what…this has gone on long enough.

Next year…I think I'll finally tell the story of how this world came to be. It might be the most horrible tale of all.

See you around.

Maybe.