They slept and when they woke Bruce returned to further explore the Soviet cave while Clark pored over the notebooks. From the logbook a story began to emerge, and the story began in 1972 as a classified operation by the Soviet Space Program. A mission that was in some ways routine became very extraordinary and then very wrong.

There was a noise and Clark looked up. "How do you do that?"

"Do what?" Bruce said, from the passage into the smaller chamber, something in his arms.

"Just emerge from the shadows." Clark clicked the pen in his hand. "Every. Damn. Time."

"I'll try to make more of an entrance next time."

Clark almost snorted because he'd meant it was an entrance but he knew Bruce knew that too. "What've you got?"

It was clothing, and Bruce shoved some of it under his arm and unfurled the other. "Flight suits."

"What?" Clark grinned. "What?"

"Yeah." Bruce looked, in that strange way he could sometimes look—sheepish. "I don't know about you but I could do with a change of clothes." Bruce dropped the suits and they fell half on the cot and half on Clark's legs. "Try it on," he said, and then he started stripping himself, pulling off panels and Kevlar. "I got the two biggest ones but it's not…" His words were muffled as he dragged the top half of his Batsuit over his head. "I've lost some weight," he said.

"You and me both. Does yours fit?"

"Hope so." He hooked his hands under his pants and stripped off the torn remains, then rolled his eyes at himself. "Move your legs," he said and Clark did. Bruce sat beside him and pulled off his boots. When he had them off he looked up from where he was setting them on the floor of the cave. "Well?"

Clark hefted the thick olive green fabric. "Pretty good shape for being forty years old."

"Better shape than either one of us ." Bruce skinned a shredded piece of fabric from his leg.

"You need to get yourself an indestructible uniform."

Bruce stepped into the legs and stood, sliding his hands into the sleeves. "Yeah. Working on that." He eyeballed Clark, shirtless and mostly pantsless under the furs and raised an eyebrow. "I was going to talk to you about putting on some damn clothes, period." He zipped himself up and ran a hand over the nametag sewn across the front of the thing and then looked at the nametag on Clark's. "Just call me Koslov, Baranova."

"They're clean," Clark said, leaning against the cave wall, folding up red and blue after he'd gotten his own flight suit zipped. It fit just fine.

Bruce grunted and looked up from the book, where he was picking from Clark's last place.

"Cleaner than what we had on."

"Clark. We're filthy."

"Doesn't that strike you as odd?"

"Hot springs."

"What?"

"There's a hot spring under the cave." Bruce paused as he made another note in the margin. "Part of what makes the cave itself warmer."

"I hadn't noticed."

"You took a bad hit when you ruined my signal tower." Bruce crooked a half-smile. "But I brought back a sample—"

"Old habits die hard, Boy Scout."

"That's you, remember?" He went back to the book and said, "I also found human remains."

"Where?"

"In one of the back chambers." He tapped the page he was reading. "Did you find any references?"

"About that? No. Not yet, anyway."

Bruce nodded. "I doubt it's anything beyond natural causes but regardless. I sampled the water for content and it's fine."

Clark sat down next to him on the cot and did not grimace when his leg screamed at him for all the movement. "You think we should relocate."

Bruce, who had pretended to ignore the stiff, clumsy way Clark had more fallen than sat down on the cot, did look at him now. "Yes. When we can."

Logbook, Day 74

Relocating and moving base camp from current location to the Soviet cave, now dubbed Camp Sputnik. Details to follow.

It was not an easy move. The break in the storm did not hold the entire distance and the wind and the snow and the ice beat down upon them, battering them and slowing them down and Bruce cursed himself for not knowing that the weather wouldn't hold and for giving in and not waiting until Clark was stronger. It took hours and in the end, Clark was staggering and then he would fall but he got up again every time. He would not let Bruce talk him into taking a break on the sled, loaded with their meager supplies, which Bruce dragged behind them, a rope pulled over his shoulder.

"There's room."

"No."

"We could rest."

"No."

It took hours longer than it would have taken otherwise, but in the end they staggered into the Soviets' cave, Bruce's arm around Clark, half-carrying, half-dragging him and they'd stumbled forward and both collapsed on a crudely fashioned cot some other men, in some other time, had cobbled together in a probably futile attempt to try and survive this hellhole. It was bigger than the one Bruce had made but they still had to turn over onto their sides and fit like spoons and Bruce wrapped his arms around Clark's newly clad body and rubbed his arms until he stopped shaking and fell asleep.

It took Bruce longer. He was dead tired but for some reason sleep didn't come, so he mentally reviewed his list: all the things they had to do before they could set off. They had the barest blueprint of a plan now, and it comforted him, both the plan and the list, a strategy and a set of steps. He breathed in the scent of the cave and reviewed the list and was finally able to sleep.