Everest never told Jake what she saw the night prior. Either because she had convinced herself it was a hallucination in the snow, or because it had all felt too much like a dream. The blizzard noticeably died down the next morning, briefly entering a state of calm before the mountain would be soon be assaulted again.

"Morning," the husky climbed down the stairs to greet her owner.

Jake was already dressed up in his ski gear, sitting at one of the lounge tables with his pup pad. He had hardly even noticed her, his absorption into writing documents on the tablet keeping him focused. Frowning, Everest walked over and nudged his leg with her paw. "Jake?"

"Huh?" He looked down in the surprise, then relaxed when he saw his dog. "Oh, sorry. Morning, Everest."

"Don't you think it's too early to be working already?"

"Sorry, last night was… hard." He sighed, setting the tablet down on the table. Everest's eyes followed the device as he placed it, a rush of guilt swallowing in her throat. He continued, "don't try calling anyone in Barkingburg, the tower is shot."

"Anything we can do?"

"I'll have to fix the radiator and reboot the whole thing," Jake grumbled, bending down to put his boots on. "I gotta do this now, while the blizzard is still light. It'll start really coming down again in a few hours." Tying his shoes and sharply standing up, Everest had to back up out of his way. "Sorry, you'll have to make your own breakfast," he said apologetically. "I'll be back inside later and we can play board games or something."

The husky nodded in understanding, although she couldn't hide her disappointment as her owner walked away, disappearing around the corner in search of his tools. Shuffling her paws idly, Everest's eyes wandered to Jake's pup pad, still sitting on the table. It sat like a wound, a constant reminder of leaked private information she had spilled to Chase. She couldn't understand how such simple names and numbers could have such severity, but the rules were rules. Her curiosity forced her paw, Everest looked around for a split second to make sure Jake wasn't around.

Jumping up on the table, the husky approached the device one more. She remembered what Chase had said, a memory that made her heart bleed. A group of fierce-sounding dogs that hurt her friends, and a crippling sense of injustice burned inside her. Her fur gently began to spike as her expression went stern.

She had to know more.

Anything that could help, all she wanted to do was help. If she could save even one more person from getting hurt, the world probably wouldn't end if she floated Chase more information. First she daintily placed her paw on the pup pad, then flicked her eyes to it, then slid it just an inch closer, until completely pulling it into her grasp. Accessing its files, she worked diligently as she swiped through its contents until she found what she was looking for.

Jake didn't keep too much information on his actual pup pad, as the most compelling evidence was housed on the actual computers. But she refused to give up, the tablet had to have something. What Jake did keep on his pup pad, were several direct-access links to every tower on the mountain, allowing him to monitor their conditions and run diagnostics should a scenario demand it Searching alphabetically, she uncovered a page of tower data with a gripping name: Telecom four-three-zero-six, signed as "ACG." The name of the organization Chase mentioned still held a faint flicker in her mind. She opened it without thinking, and the device buzzed to life as the tower's outline was painted on screen, complete with several footnotes and numbers she didn't understand.

"What are you doing?" Jake's voice sounded behind her.

The husky spun around in surprise, jolting slightly as her body flattened. "Jake! I'm uh-" she stuttered, "um."

"Why are you going through my tablet?"

"I uh-" Everest panicked, "well… you said you were looking at damage on the towers." She put her words together hastily, "so I thought… maybe I could, help you look for them?" The dog laughed nervously, spreading the most genuine smile she could possibly create. "And I thought I… saw some on that one?"

Jake looked her up and down, confusion twisting his face as he crossed his arms. "Thanks, but I can handle it myself." He reached down and pulled the pup pad out of Everest's arms, taking it back from her. Looking down at the file she had pulled up, Everest felt a twinge of fear as she realized he was reading it.

"You saw damage?" He said, his voice almost interrogative as his eyes studied the tablet. "How? This would only show problems in the communication line, it wouldn't display actual physical damage on the tower."

Everest was running out of lies, her vision flicking to the sides as her flight response was starting to kick in. "Oh… really? Cause I-"

"Wait a minute." Jake narrowed his eyes, suddenly shifting his entire focus onto the tablet. For a brief moment he forgot Everest was even there, turning slightly and staring at his pup pad as he read something that caught his eye. The husky held her breath, keeping still on the table as she watched her owner's bewilderment.

"What is it?" She was afraid to ask.

Jake sharply held up his finger at her, a gesture meaning to wait, and still he didn't take his eyes off the screen. He mumbled something his dog couldn't hear, before suddenly turning and starting to walk off. His eyes burned onto the printed data the screen displayed alongside the tower, vision glued on one single number. "That's... unusual"

Nervously walking after him, Everest barked his name. "Jake! What's wrong?"

Her owner paused for a moment, then looked at her with a befuddled expression. "It's just… technology stuff. I don't think you'd understand."

"I could try?"

It wouldn't be easy explaining certain terms to a dog, Jake tapping his fingers on the tablet as he raced to find his answer. "This tower; the one you pulled up, its bandwidth is…" he stuttered, trying to find the words. "It's exponentially higher than literally any other tower on this mountain." He said, unable to believe what was coming out of his mouth.

"What does that mean?"

"It- it means," the skier hesitated, trying to find ways to word it. "Bandwidth is like... the frequency of how much something is giving information. It means how much the network is working, if that makes sense." He looked back to the tablet, eyeing the screen. "This tower you pulled up… its bandwidth is nearly double the size of the other towers."

"Maybe it's a… big tower?"

"No." He stood up, waving off the dog. "This is just an average steel frame telecom tower, the one we built for Adventure City was three times its size." He explained, "and yet that tower barely uses a third of what this one is using." His arms slowly went limp as they fell to his sides. "I don't know how to explain this."

As her owner set the tablet down, his distress was visible. Tapping her paw on the table, Everest asked the first question on her mind: "What… would increase bandwidth?"

"Frequency." Jake said after a moment, sighing in frustration. "You more you need something to do, the stronger a network it'll need."

Turning her eyes to where he had set down the pup pad, her head tilted as she tried to understand. "And this… one tower, uses even more than the giant one connected to the whole city? What if it's doing more than we know?"

It was a valid question, one that made Jake turn back to her with an intrigued look. "That would be a breach of contract. Everything built here and it all its functions must be disclosed to me at the signing of the paper." His voice held a sharp growl, "damn it! If someone is doing something under my radar, then I'll have to investigate. But I can't with this blizzard, there's not enough time."

"What if I did it?" Everest said quickly, sitting proudly and wagging her tail. "You deal with the Barkingburg tower, and I'll go find out what's going on with the other one?"

"Absolutely not." Jake said immediately, pointing at her sharply. "This could be dangerous, you don't know what it is that's out there. I don't want to risk dropping you out in the snow, especially with the blizzard mere hours from coming back."

"But what if I just… looked?"

"I said no."

"No Jake, listen!" The husky fluffed out her fur, trying to appear as confident as possible. "I can do it! Just tell me where to go and I'll go look. I never said I'd get close! Let me at least just do some recon!"

"We don't even know what it is!"

"That's why you have a husky, right?" Everest sat proudly. "You need someone to go out in the snow and check?"

Jake was visibly losing his patience with the animal. "Everest, I'm not about to abandon you in the snow!"

"You're not abandoning me! What if I take the signal flare, my pup pack, all of it?" She argued, her desperation to be useful sharpening her voice. "Look I don't want to be cooped up in the cabin, okay? I wanna go outside!"

"You want to go outside? Fine!" Her owner threw his hands up in defeat, but quickly pointed straight at her with narrowed eyes. "But you come straight back if you see anything out there. I'm not losing another husky!"

The argument had not been a pretty one, but Jake finally gave in and started preparing his husky for her new mission. Everest found herself strapped with so much equipment she felt like she was covered in duct tape. Her pup pack was attached to her harness, and Jake fastened a special holster onto her back leg; the signal flare. As much as she wanted to ask if it was really necessary, she didn't want to risk making him angrier. Waddling to the door, her body heavy with metal and tools, Jake stopped her before she could step out in the snow.

"Listen, head Southeast from the resort until you pass the ACG tower." He explained, a notable unease in his voice. "Keep going in that direction until you see… whatever it is that's connecting to it."

"How do you know it's that direction?" The dog cocked her head.

"I had to access our server farm and painstakingly pick apart every single connection visible on the mountain." He grumbled. "Eventually I found it and ran the IP address."

"Why didn't we just do that to begin with?"

"Everest, I have very little reason to even go near the server farm on any given day." He said, expression going cross. "I never even knew there was a foreign connection until you brought it up on my pup pad."

The shifted under the weight of her equipment. "You could always add it to the list of things to do everyday."

"You mean spend two hours in a room that feels like an oven, going over a hundred lines of code? Please." He laughed, "tell me when you find someone willing to do that. Now get out there before I change my mind."

Nodding in quick understanding, Everest pulled her snow goggles on and raced outside into the tense snow; the clouds above looming with frozen wind.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Everest had trekked in the snow hundreds of times, many of which under more extreme conditions, so there was little worry on her mind as she hiked in the frozen slush. She was slightly uncomfortable in all the gear Jake had practically stapled to her, but she had already overstepped enough just getting to this point, it was better to keep her muzzle closed for now. She walked for what felt like hours, the wind gradually starting to get colder and faster by the minute. Still she was fearless, passing by the ACG telecom tower without a thought in her mind.

Traversing what felt like a white infinity for a while, a shadow suddenly came into a view. Hurrying forward, Everest approached what she thought was a large igloo, to see such was rare on the mountain but they had turned up before. As she got closer, her eyes widening in astonishment. It was more than just an igloo, it was an entire structure of metal and steel, a solid building positioned far out where no one would see it.

The outpost was nearly consumed by snow, the main building was almost unrecognizable while the satellite towers stuck out like arms reaching out for help. Not even the flashing red lights atop the towers were functional, the entire building was a chilled shell buried away.

"Um, Jake?" Everest had to yell over the frozen winds pounding in her face. "I found the source of the signal!"

"What is it? A tower?"

"Not just a tower, it's-" she paused to shake some frost off her. "It's a whole outpost! Like an entire base someone set up!"

"You're kidding…"

"I'm looking right at it!" She shook her head of the snow on her face, confusion brimming her mind. "This outpost is practically frozen dead, how is an intact signal coming from here?"

"I don't remember any place like that. Find a beacon and read me its number, I may be able to run that." Anxiety bled from the radio, Jake's voice on edge. "And for God's sake, once you find that get back here! The blizzard is starting to come down."

Squinting her eyes, the husky tried to see through the freezing fog that veiled her vision, hunting for the light-up marker that was policy to be set up outside. They existed for a reason, the light meant to be seen through the blizzard and provide lost souls with direction to the nearest shelter. Every single outpost and satellite tower was supposed to have one, yet Everest couldn't see a thing.

"It's either broken or-" the husky had to move against the wall of the outpost, hiding from the wind's direction. "Buried in the snow."

"Um," Jake tried to think of a solution. "Try to find a piece of equipment. It might have a name or something on it, something I can search in our database."

"I can't see any vehicles out here, I may have to… go inside." Her ears flattened at the thought. "I'll… try to find something."

Jake sounded like he was more than ready to argue, a hesitant breath coming through the line. Yet even he could see the severity of the situation. "Alright, do that. I'm gonna be occupied for a while." Her owner said apologetically. "The blizzard has been harsher on the towers than I thought… it's going to take a long time to get them all in order."

Turning her face against the wind, Everest trudged to what was supposed to be a door. The front entrance was buried in snow and ice, baring anyone from entry unless they were good with a shovel. "Do you need help?"

"Yes, actually." His voice strained on the other end, likely from pulling himself up a tower. "But I don't think you could help me." Stopping to breathe, a fumbling sound came through the radio before he spoke again. "I need mechanics, not snowboarders. You think maybe the PAW Patrol can help?"

Everest got to work, forcing through the wind as she put her paws in the snow, starting to dig out the entrance. "I think… Rocky knew a thing or two about machines. But I spoke to Chase the other night," she grunted as a freezing patch of frost soared through the wind and struck her, coating her fur in a soft white. "Rocky isn't- aaghh!"

"Everest are you okay!?"

"Fine!" She shook herself off, knowing it was pointless as even more snow began to blow into her. "Chase said Rocky was hurt, something about a military group…" She trailed off, unable to remember the full details in her deliriousness. "I don't remember, Rocky got hurt is all I know. But I do remember this weird group of bikers from a while back." She said through the cold, kicking out snow behind her as she dug into the ground. "The… Ruff Ruff Pack I think they were called?"

"Bikers? These are satellite towers, not motorcycles."

"If you really need mechanics, they might be our only option!"

"Possible. Well maybe I can…" Jake trailed off suddenly, like he had spotted something. "What the hell?"

"What's wrong?" Everest shouted over the wind. "Don't tell me something else just went wrong!"

"I'm… not sure. The bandwidth from earlier just leveled out; completely cleared up. Whatever was connected to it just got shut off."

The husky panted in her exertion, continuing her excavating. "Shut off? Like someone went in and did it manually?"

The blizzard was getting loud enough that it could be clearly heard through the radio, Jake having to yell over it himself. "Maybe? I'm not too sure what's going on anymore! I have to contact Ryder, maybe he can connect me to the Ruff Ruff Pack. I'm sure they could appreciate some paid work for the next few days. Alright, I'll let you go, find anything you can about that outpost, whatever it takes. Jake out."

The line went dead, her owner having hung up the line, and Everest had already dug several feet into the snow. The door was exposed, a large plank of metal covered in ice, with a single window fogged with frost. "Salt, ruff!" She barked, and a hatch on her pup pack opened up, a small dispenser rotating out. There was a lingering hum, and a splash of pure salt solution shot out in a massive blast, coating the door. "I knew that would come in handy one day," she laughed weakly, aware of small icicles forming under her lips. As the small machine retracted, she jumped up and grabbed the door handle, trying to pull it open, but to no avail. She tugged with all her might, even shifting her weight in bursts, but the entrance refused to open. The biting cold already threatening to consume her, Everest whined as she fought against it. A blast of salt melted the ice that coated the lock, yet still it remained firmly stuck like concrete had been poured into the hinges. Her teeth finally scraped off the handle, their strength wasted as she tumbled into the snow. "Enng-" she groaned, her jaw sore.

Passing out in the snow was a death sentence. The blizzard would bury her in minutes, her body turning to blue stone, and she would never be found again. Wincing as she got up, breathing loudly and heavily as her nose went numb. She just had to get inside, out of the wind, out of the assaulting frost. The outpost was well farther than any other tower or the resort, and in desperation she began to cry out. Looking back at the door as the blizzard roared into her ears, she spotted the window, nothing but a simple pane of glass. Without thinking, she tore at the straps of her pup pack, her numbed paws unresponsive as they snapped the clasps. Her pack falling off her body harness into the snow, Everest grabbed it in her teeth, holding it by one of the straps, and flung it at the window with all the might she had left. It was a perfect shot. The blunt edge of its rectangular shape pierced the brittle, frosted glass, shattering instantly, and the pup pack could be heard landing inside with a clang.

Everest had seen plenty of spy movies, but never once had she considered herself an infiltrator. There was little grace as she jumped into the broken window frame, scrabbling her paws in desperation as she heaved herself through. She tried being careful to avoid the small pieces of jagged glass sticking out of the sides, keeping her motions compact and stable. Falling into the darkness, the husky landed roughly on her side, but the layer of snow that blanketed the floor had cushioned her fall. Grunting through the pain, her sore body screamed in protest as she pushed herself up. The freezing chill had followed her inside, but the wind was securely barred from entry. She was safe from the worst of the blizzard in here, all she needed now was to find warmth. Dazed, she collected her pup pack and set it aside, as her spine was groaning from the fall and likely wouldn't be able to support it for now. Looking back at the door with a frown, she searched for any kind of lock responsible for her resorting to painful injury. Her agitation quickly shifted to surprise, an unexpected sight becoming known to her:

The door was never stuck, someone had welded it shut.

"The hell?" The husky said aloud, her voice cracked of exhaustion as she observed the melted metal that sealed the door. "Who- … how did…?" Her aimless questions only trailed off, nothing around to answer them.

All she had was the outpost, and if she wanted answers, she'd need to find them herself. "Ugh. Flashlight, ruff." She barked weakly, looking toward her unresponsive backpack. Several seconds of silence went by, and the husky growled in annoyance. "Or for the love of- … flashlight, ruff!" She snapped, her voice piercing the chilled air. The pup pack gave a meek wheeze, before a flashlight slowly extending out of the front hatch, its mechanical arm limping in the cold. The freezing temperatures were not being kind to her own equipment, forcing Everest to wrench the tool off its grip and use it manually. Holding the light in her teeth, she walked through the outpost.

Nothing electrical worked. The cold had fractured the water pipes and froze any piece of hardware to uselessness. She traversed through dark hallways of snow, nudging stuck doors and leaving paw prints in the ground. More questions sprung in her head as she moved; why hadn't the heating systems prevented this? Even if no one had been here for some time, most outposts on the mountains had some sort of functional system to keep water pipes running and the electrics safe. What had happened here? Passing her beam of light over every inch of the empty hallways, Everest searched for anything she could take back to Jake. Eventually she found a door that she could open, although by a meager amount. She had to press her entire forehead and put her back into the motion, grunting as she forced it open by a few inches. It was enough for the husky to barely wedge through the small gap, a tight squeeze that left an ache in the shoulders.

Shaking the pain out, Everest sneezed some dust out of her nose and shone her light around. Like a gift from the heavens, her beam glided over a tablet sitting on a table. The screen was frosted over and its case worn out, but Everest was quick to run over to collect it. Turning it over in her paws, she wiped off a layer of frost on the backside, exposing an indented symbol she didn't recognize. The only legible part: Five simple words engraved underneath it.

"Property of…" she squinted, reading the words aloud. "The… Archline Foundation?" Her mind drew a blank on the name, another question left unanswered. Hitting the "home" button on the tablet, the screen brightened to life, but Everest was quickly met with a spiderweb of jagged colors and lines. The screen was broken beyond function, its touch accessibility unresponsive as well. There was clearly some kind of document opened behind the fractured mess, and if she squinted, the puppy was able to make out a few words.

The top right corner of the screen was intact enough that she could read a piece of the heading. The only visible words she could see were in a cut-off sentence that only showed a third of its text. There was nothing she could do with that, and a frustrated whine left her muzzle. However, there was a visible date. "That's…" Everest narrowed her eyes as she read it. "That's… like a week ago." Scanning the rest of the screen, the husky was able to pick out words from the document, one's that evaded the fractures in the screen: Subect. Platform. Release. Guild. Adventure. Unknown. City. Conceal. Parasite. Mayor.

Even with their obscurity, Everest still a feeble attempt to piece the words in her head, a fruitless endeavor. There was a sentence visible that caught Everest's eye, a sentence with words she didn't understand: "Endure secure transport of… the Feroxmalis…" she read aloud, tilting her head. "And… the Mentiarga?" Confusion rung in her head, she had never heard such names before. The screen was locked on the document, the accessibility too broken to allow her further access in the machine. Jake would likely know what to do, so she attached the device to her harness, weaving the straps around the electronic to keep it firmly in place.

The entire room had a strange aura of tragedy, a wave of unease passing through her with each step she took. She stopped moving suddenly, a flicker of paranoia climbing her as she shone the light around at all angles. Had she heard something? Why did she feel afraid? She didn't know, and couldn't understand why. The beam of light glided over upturned file cabinets and what looked like discarded pieces of body armor on the floor, each fragment lined with torn threads of black fabric. A shiver ran down her bones, one alien in nature, a shiver not from cold, but fear.

She couldn't stay here any longer, her nerves refused to keep her in the area. She already had the tablet, there were likely other things in the outpost worth getting, but the mission slipped her mind. Enough was enough, she turned back to the cracked door to leave.

She stopped.

Her body locked up in paralysis. Her eyes narrowed at what she saw, her mind first believing it was a mere trick of light. Once it clicked what she was seeing, her heart began to skip, her breath quickening as her body defied to move.

Two eyes were staring into the room, looking from the darkness behind the door. They were peeking in like a nosy child, and staring straight at her. Everest took a single step back, her flight response beginning to build up. The eyes were thin and pin-pricked, like beads of light visible in the consuming blackness behind the door. She couldn't see any other feature, just glossy marble-shaped eyes staring into her.

Then it grinned.

She knew it grinned because the beam of her flashlight reflected off its teeth. Its jagged fangs emerged in the light, the wide smile twisting off its muzzle and curling up its face. It carried an expression of sadistic joy, or that of a twisted creature trying to mimic a smile. Everest's movement had been slow, but when it smiled, she began to shake. With a motion so static it seemed artificial, the face began moving out from the door, emerging through the crawlspace into the room.

"Jake!" She screamed, scrabbling backward until her back slammed against the table. "Jake this isn't funny! St-stop!"

The creature's front leg slowly extended from the darkness, gently placing its foot on the floor as it began to walk. It kept full eye contact with her as it moved, not averting its gaze the entire time.

"Get away!" The husky cried out, her instincts flaring in all directions as terror clouded her mind. The flashlight dropped from her mouth and landed on the floor, the beam coming to a rest on the intruder. Crying in distress, Everest barked and snarled as much as she could. "Get away from me!"

It moved further, and suddenly the flashlight kicked off. It broke without a moment's notice, shutting off so fast it seemed deliberate. Everest was bathed in frozen darkness, blind and trapped in the room.

Trapped with the intruder.

The following events seemed like a blur. There were a few seconds of pitch silence, nothing but her terrified heaving able to be heard. Then a single sound broke out in the blackness: A faint, low exhale; mere inches away, and a cloud of hot breath hit her face. Exploding into movement, Everest screamed for her life, panic surging through her as she began sprinting. Her body knocked off several objects as she ran, each one causing large crashes to follow. Adrenaline coursing her veins, she fled blind in any direction she could before making it back to the entrance by pure luck.

Moving with such velocity that her breathing couldn't keep up, the husky sprinted for the door, kicking up clouds of snow and completely running past her discarded pup pack. Her voice cried and squeaked as she jumped back up the window, no longer with controlled movement to save her belly from the glass. Her stomach ran red as flesh was torn, fur tearing from her body as the glass edges glided under her. A crimson glistening was left behind on the glass, shining in the snow as it stole Everest's blood.

The husky fled from the outpost, sprinting out into the blizzard for a whole new world of danger. She didn't dare look behind her for even a moment, running outside as her heart quaked and pounded in her chest. Leaving a small blood trail as she moved, a plague of dizziness followed behind. Gradually her running slowed, her vision frosting over as the freezing winds threatened to take her. With nothing but an infinite white in all directions, Everest lost her strength and collapsed forward, landing in the snow as the ice began to cover her.

Then her pain began to fade, a frozen soothe easing her in the snow. Her body slouched with exhaustion, an urge to sleep gripping her eyes. With what little she had left, she reached a heavy arm to her back leg, grabbing the flare gun from its holster. Rolling onto her back, her body barely visible as ice formed around her, she held the gun in the air and fired it. A sharp recoil swatted the gun out of her paw, and a burning beacon of red light shot into the sky. It was a hopeless utility, a final last-ditch attempt with what she had left. Unable to fight her exhaustion, Everest slowly passed out in the snow as the distant sound of a vehicle's motor began emerging in her ears.