PART ELEVEN: THE RIDGE*

If asked weeks or even days later, John's not sure he'll ever be able to explain exactly how he gets himself and his injured friend to the top ridge of Denali in one piece, and without a single toe or finger lost to frostbite.

He is sure, however, that he's fucking exhausted.

He actually slept for six hours straight, waking only once when Dev stirred, to take his vitals, reassure himself that his friend wasn't concussed, and then go back to sleep. That wasn't the problem, though. The problem, he found out upon his first attempt to get out of the tent, was that the storm had buried them under a three-foot snowdrift.

Which was a bitch to dig out of with nothing but a small foldable shovel as a tool.

But he did, and Dev awakened, took another dose of painkillers and managed to do most of his own climbing until now they're only thirty feet down from the highest ridge along Denali that leads to its summit.

Then he passed out again, and John carried him strapped to his back the rest of the way to the top.

Right now he's dragging Dev behind him, using their two harnesses lashed together as a makeshift pull. Dev's harness is secured around his chest under his armpits and tied to John's harness. John holds one strap of his harness in each hand behind him as he trudges through the deep, fresh snow, with Dev bumping along behind him.

There's only one thing he cares about now that he and Dev have made it here in one piece and the storm has cleared, and that's what's sitting on that summit up ahead. He stops, shucks off his backpack and digs inside it until he finds the instrument he's looking for. It's the prototype he and Brains developed for a hand-held cloaking detector.

Initially they'd created it to detect any kinds of cloaking shields or mechanisms given their increased availability on the black market over the past year. They'd just finished adding a new signature to the group the device could detect, but it isn't one John's expecting to register as soon as he turns the damn thing on.

Yet that's exactly the signature that's identifying itself for him on the device's two-inch-by-two-inch screen. He stares at it in disbelief, suddenly realizing exactly what this means. There is something here atop Denali, and it's been placed there courtesy of the Hood.

He feels his heart drop to his toes, tempered only by the fact that there's no way the bastard himself would be up here. The device is telling him it's minus forty degrees, and the storm has only been gone for a handful of hours. The Hood couldn't have made it up here that fast, if he had any reason to want to come up here.

John stares along the ridge to the end, to the official peak of Denali. There is a reason, though, that the Hood might want to come here, especially if he's concerned about whatever it is that's cloaked in the aftermath of the earthquake and storm.

So John's got to get to it first, just in case.

He looks down at Dev, then back up along the ridge. If he runs, Dev will bump along too much behind him and he may exacerbate any unseen injuries his friend's suffering from. If he leaves Dev here, then he's completely unprotected if another nasty storm blows up or another earthquake rocks the mountain. So John has no choice but to continue walking, dragging Dev along behind him.

As long as the weather holds, they'll be okay, he thinks, turning off the cloaking detector and shoving it back into his pack. He just gets it zipped closed and is about to haul the straps up over his shoulders when a blast unlike any he's ever heard makes his ears ring.

At the same time, the mountain shakes.

His ice-covered eyelashes stick together a little when his eyes try to widen, and then suddenly do as he takes in something he can't possibly be seeing.

Yet is.

One of the neighboring mountains just blew its top.

It's erupting.

*Ridge: A long, narrow elevation of land; a chain of hills or mountains. (Definition from www DOT dictionary DOT com.)