The prey was scampering like mice, the lion was finally unchained, and a silent chill breathed its signal down the corridors of the lounge: The hunt had begun, and along with it; a feverish cold was invading the building. Each window of the lounge frosted over while networks of water pipes froze and cracked under the pressure.
"It's getting really cold in here." Dwayne said with a shaky breath, trying to preserve the heat in his thin fur. The security room that acted as his temporary prison was severely dipping to uncomfortable temperatures.
Everest's voice came through on his collar. "Is it? My fur is thicker than yours, I can't tell."
"Why isn't the heat on?"
"It... should be," his companion muttered, befuddled at the situation. "I'll figure it out later, just concentrate please."
It seemed like a frivolous complaint. They were in the middle of the snowy mountains, why wouldn't it be cold? Everest shrugged off the detail, but Dwayne couldn't put the notion past him. It refused to leave his mind, lingering like a pair of eyes staring at the back of his head. Something was wrong, something intentional; but his mind blanked on any way to put it into words.
"Right, uhm," the Dane shivered, looking off to the list he kept nearby. "There are... five phones on the ground floor; One in the lobby-"
"Which is now broken," came the dejected voice of his companion.
"One at the far left; the equipment storage, the far right in that big place, and one in a back room." He read off the list.
"Which one?"
"It doesn't say."
"Awesome, guess I'll be improvising all this as I go along." Everest said with a notable sneer. "Is that thing still in the far left?"
Quickly hitting the buttons and swapping the camera feeds, the biker squinted at the aged screen, his exhausted expression illuminated by its glow. "It is," he said, voice faltering as the creature's red-brightened shape appeared on the thermal feed.
"Then I'm moving."
Curious, Dwayne swapped the camera control with the push of the button, accessing a different feed. An image of an empty hallway was presented before him, lifelessly echoing the rickets of the building through its passage. After a few seconds, Everest slowly crept into view of the camera, and he watched her creep down the path in fascination. "I can see you." He watched the husky suddenly stop moving, only to turn around and flash the camera an irritated glare. Realizing his futile attempt at small talk was only making things worse, Dwayne sighed and switched back to watch the creature.
"Don't watch me, you idiot!" Everest hissed through the radio. "I can just tell you where I am!"
"Okay okay, sorry!" The Dane had to restrain himself from growling. "I'm just trying to keep calm, looking at that thing is making me anxious!"
The husky's voice filled with annoyance. "I hate to tell you this Dwayne, but we're currently in a situation where you'll just have to make do. Now tell me where the creature is."
"Fine." He frowned and muttered under his breath. "You don't have to be bossy about it." Swapping back to the feed, he noticed immediately the giant red beacon that labeled the creature was absent. Alarm flared in his mind, his posture spiking up like an electric shock had jolted him. Frantically he took to the controls, "wait, Everest, it moved!"
"What, where?"
"Uh..." He stammered, tripping over his own words. "Give me... a moment." He paws smacked off the buttons, rapidly cycling through camera feeds. His panicked eyes searched for that unmistakable heat signature: A hallway; nothing. Another hallway; nothing. Another, darker corridor without windows; nothing. The upstairs landing; nothing. The lobby; a noticeable glaze of frost but no sign of the creature.
Everest seemed to sense his panic over the radio. "Dwayne, where is it!? I need to know!" Her voice was breaking, her breaths coming out as rapid churns as if she were fearfully running in all directions.
"I said give me a moment!" The Dane cried, already going back through cameras he'd already been. "It's- it's gone!" The distant screech of scratching metal floated around his ears, but he was too lost in distraction to hear it. "Just call any of them!" He said desperately, not noticing the metal-coated scampering was getting louder.
Was it truly gone? In his panic, he'd gone through the cameras so many times he may as well have seen each one dozens of times. Shaking in his seat, Dwayne tapped his sweating paws on the table sporadically. "M-maybe it left? Maybe it just went out into the snow." A weak laugh left him, a meek attempt to ease his fears. "Maybe... maybe everything's okay!"
Then he heard it. Dwayne stopped, his ears picking up a sound becoming progressively louder. A distant echo of deforming metal was filling the room, prompting his puzzled eyes to look around. Nothing in the room had changed, nor was changing, was it all in his head?
"Dwayne?" Everest called out to him through their connected line.
His heartbeat picking up, Dwayne nervously jumped down from the chair, erratically scanning every corner of the room. A frozen chill went down his spine, intensified by the winter air pumping in from the vent above him. His pads stung on the floor, his bare skin reacting to the frost-coated tiles. Rapid puffs of breath were visible in the air, the Dane hyperventilating as fear climbed his skin. The metallic noise became louder. Closer.
"Dwayne!?" Everest called again.
It was all in his head, just in his head. "Everything is okay," he squeaked, his voice barely an octave above a whisper. "Everything..." his legs were trembling. "Is..." A terrible feeling cursed him down to the bone. "Okay?" Dwayne slowly looked up at the gate to darkness that had been looming above him all this time.
The ceiling vent; singing footstep-like echoes. His eyes widened at the sight, paralysis locking him in place as if the cold had frozen him over. Thinking on impulse, Dwayne snapped out of it and jumped for the first thing he saw. Heart beating as if it would soon leap out of his chest, the dog jumped into a storage cabinet and shut the door on himself. There was probably a better place in the room to go, but static had invested his mind and clouded his thinking.
The sound approached, stopping at the mouth of the vent. A loud, leopard-like snarl tore through the air as a creature pressed its limbs into the sides of the duct, steadying its perch. A vile popping noise clicked off the walls, mixing with a leather-like stretching.
A loud voice continued to echo out of his radio. "Dwayne, answer me! For Christ's sake!" Blood running cold, the Dane swiftly shut off his collar, terminating the connection before it could become a screaming beacon for the threat above. Silence graced the room, broken only by tapping claws lowering to the floor.
He could see everything, yet he saw nothing. Dwayne stood petrified in a cabinet, staring through the slitted door into the room. There were only mere seconds from death as he opened the doors, ripped out its contents, and closed himself into its claustrophobic walls. Pressed as far back in the storage cabinet as he could, Dwayne's heart pumped so fast he feared it would burst. Not an inch of the room changed, still appearing as empty as it had when he first entered.
Except for the four large footprints now formed on the tile, the heat of the formless creature melting the ice under it.
A single cloud of breath appeared in the center of the room, puffing out from seemingly nothing. The silence had become deafening, it almost felt as if all time had stopped in an instant. The footsteps moved, patrolling around them with contained, precise movements. The sounds of scratching bone and metal clawed along the wall as the shape moved about, its tails leaving marks in the metal. Where in the hell was it? Was it on the floor, or crawling on the walls and ceiling like a roach? Was it on the table or the cabinets, crawling along the machines with its tails dragging on the tile?
The air in front of him emitted a gator-like snarl, unceremoniously mixing with the metallic scratching along the floor. Dwayne's vision seemed to pulse with a twist in his chest, his own heartbeat beginning to travel up his neck. He pressed himself so forcefully into the back wall his bones ached from the force. A morbid language filled the air, low bellowing caressing up the walls and fading through his ears. A sharp growl hissed out, as scraping claws etched into the wall, the creature dragging itself up to the vent. An echoing pound of metal sounded from above, then quickly scampered away back into the ski lounge until it faded out entirely.
The creature had left.
Dwayne didn't move from his hiding place until he was sure the creature had left, made difficult by rapid paranoia jerking his mind into thinking the threat was still around. He counted to ten, then meekly pushed open the cabinet door with his nose. He shakily flicked his collar on, pleading Everest wouldn't be furious with him.
"You there?" He asked weakly, climbing back up to the monitors.
"Dwayne!? What in God's name was that?" His companion snapped, although still keeping her voice low. "I thought it got you!"
"It almost did! It came from the vent, I barely had time to hide!"
"Lord." Everest breathed. "Well, you're alive now, and I need you. Now where the hell is it?"
Shaking his head of the nerves, the Dane swallowed his fears and mustered up every scrap of courage he had. The snapping of his companion somehow hurt him even more than being in the presence of death. Ignoring the piercing sting in his heart, he accessed the monitors and continued to relay her information. The biting cold of the room was begging for attention, coating his fur in shining frost. He felt his body slow down slightly, suffering immense shivers from the freezing temperature. "I'll... I'll find it," he muttered, his voice trembling from the cold.
-.-.-.-.-.-
Everest peeked around the corner, eyeing into the lobby that certainly didn't look the way it had before. Dwayne already had a close call with the creature, as did she. It reappeared in the lobby just minutes earlier, fortunately spotted by her companion's sudden usefulness. With seconds to react, Everest called the phone in the west hallway, prompting an annoying ring to echo down its corridor. The creature was swift to react, as she heard its scratchy movement travel away. She hadn't noticed it before, but the more she traversed the ski lounge, the more she became aware that something had changed. Entering the lobby, Everest felt an odd feeling stung the bottom of her paws. Briefly looking away from her destination, the north hallway, she realized with the pique of her ears the new presence she hadn't addressed before.
Pure, beautiful frost was glistening on the tile floor, reflecting light and providing an irritating sting as it met her paws. It may as well have been an entire sheet of ice, glazing over every surface it met. The lobby windows were fogged over, the fake plants Jake purchased to beautify the room were coated in small icicles, and the air was uncomfortably freezing. Her breath was almost completely visible, puffing from her muzzle into the chilling atmosphere.
A creaking groan echoed throughout the building, sounding of sagging wood and weakening foundation. Everest looked around for the source but couldn't see anything. She was about to walk forward when the groan came again, this time emitting from the walls. She flashed an odd look at the frost-covered surfaces, wondering if the lounge was shifting from the snow.
"This... this isn't normal." She said with a shiver, as even the fur of a winter-bred husky was struggling to keep out cold of this magnitude. "Dwayne, are you okay down there?"
A weak voice came from his collar. "Fine." His reply did little to quell Everest's fears. The fur of a Great Dane was nowhere near insulated enough for such environments, and worries for his health plagued her.
Traveling carefully, fast enough to dodge the walking death in the hallways yet slow enough to not slip on the ice, Everest shuffled forward. "If you can, try to find a coat or something down there," she whispered. "A blanket even, that would work too."
"Don't you want me to watch the cameras, though?"
"Well yeah but-" Everest paused, searching for her words. "Just... try to find something warm for you, okay?"
"I'll look."
The path to the saferoom was only a jagged line at most. A few twists and turns here and there, and she'd arrive before long. She hastened her step as she entered the hallway, approaching a right turn. "Where is it?" She asked. A sudden moan emitted from the walls, whispering the cracking of wood and weakened metal. It made the husky jump, facing the wall with flattened ears. What the hell was the sound? That wasn't the creature, that was something entirely different coming from the building.
It was a few seconds before Dwayne answered. "It's moving around upstairs." He said, obviously trying to hide his shivering voice. "Also, I just noticed something: Literally all the windows upstairs are broken."
"What?" The husky stared out in surprise, her mind taken away from the odd noises. "Why? How long have they been that way?"
"Given all the snow that's piling in the bedroom, probably a few hours."
Everest shrugged off the thought, knowing there were more important things right now. "Tell me if it moves or goes into the vents." Knowing the danger was far, Everest let herself accelerate slightly. Turning the corner in the path, she came to a paralyzing scene that stopped her in her tracks.
The entire corridor was completely frozen over. The walls and floor were shining with ice, the ceiling littered with sharpened icicles threateningly hanging above. Some of the ceiling panels had detached and fallen to the floor, allowing the ice to travel into the walls, lurking through every corner of the ski lounge. The vent in the middle of the hallway was breathing with chilly air, further encapsulating the area in snow. The entire building was slowly freezing over, a revelation that made Everest's heart sink. For years she had loved the cold, frolicked and lived in it, it made up every aspect of her life. The winter had turned on her, shrouding the ski lounge and holding her friend hostage. If that creature didn't kill them, the cold would certainly love to.
"Dwayne, it's gone to hell down here." She said, nervously looking around the ice as she trudged down it. Walking under the icicles was wracking her nerves, each one gleefully appearing as if they were mere seconds from dislodging. A creaking hiss sounded from above, initially sending a surge of panic in the husky, assuming the creature was nearby. Frantically looking around for the threat, the noise sounded again, only this time a weakened creaking followed it. That confounded noise again, Everest thought with agitation. It came from above, the husky craned her head, expecting to see a vent opening or some terrible being about to pounce from above. She saw only the ceiling, nothing but its frosted surface.
A ceiling that was sagging downward, flicks of water dripping through it.
Everest spiked her fear in alarm. "Oh shit!" With all the reaction time she could muster she leapt backward as quick as she could, just as the ceiling fractured from the excessive weight above it. It tore open like paper, caving in an avalanche of snow and frozen water with a booming crash. "Aaahh!" Everest yelled in surprise as she was bowled over by an assault of wind and snow. She was knocked away as if her body were made of sticks, the sheer force of frozen nature strong enough to tear through the lounge. It all collapsed to the floor in a powerful crash. Shredded debris hit the ground first, smashing into dust and metal pieces on impact, only to instantly get buried under an onslaught of frozen slush. Snow erupted in all directions until it coated the hallway in beautiful white. Through the freshly created hole in the ceiling, the upstairs bedroom was visible, along with every shattered window inside it. The winter had invaded through the broken walls, building up inside the bedroom until the floor simply couldn't hold it up anymore.
The lounge had struggled to stand against the blizzard, causing creaking groans to emit from its foundation. Its walls and ceilings cracked and moaned in their hopeless battle, ice leeching along their inner workings and burying into their supports. It tried with every fiber in its being to stand up to the cold, only for its integrity to finally give up. The first ceiling finally crashed in, a symbol of incoming devastation.
"Unng-" was the grunt forced from the dog as she rolled to a stop. A sheet of frost glazed her in seconds, ice leeching down the floor like a white infection. The temperature plummeted in mere seconds, even lower than it had been before. She pushed herself up, her fur cracking as the formed ice broke from the motion. "Dwayne! The ceiling caved in down here!" She yelled into her collar, holding up her paw to shield her face from the wind.
"Can you get through?"
"I- I can try!"
"Everest, we don't have much time!" Dwayne's terrified voice came through. "I can see the temperature reading on the monitors. We need to get to Jake fast!"
"What? Why?!"
"The cold is breaking down my cameras!" The Dane cried. "The one in the north hallway froze over, the whole building could get shut down at this rate! We'll be powerless against the creature!"
"I-" Everest couldn't get a word in, as a powerful gust of wind traveled in from outside, buffeting her face and glazing her in ice. The winter was merciless. It only needed a little while to completely solidify the whole building in ice, calling upon the final hour to shut down all power and systems. Everest and Dwayne were cornered; a realization that hit them both at once, both the creature and the winter stared them down with menacing grins. They had only a short window of time to get Jake out from the safe room, before a frozen fate doomed them all. "I- I won't let," the husky struggled to get out, "him down!"
A violent rumble of vibration shook the ski lounge, an echo of splitting wood and crashing metal bellowed throughout the corridors. "Dwayne, what the hell was that?!" Everest shouted into her collar, trying to trudge through the snow-infested hallway.
Her companion responded with a shaking voice. "I saw it on the cameras, three rooms upstairs just collapsed from the blizzard! Everest, it's not safe to be here!"
"Like hell! I'm not leaving my owner!" She almost had to scream over the roaring wind, her paws gone numb as they were dipped in frozen slush. "I'll get him out of here if I have to drag him through the ice! This is what huskies were made for!" The snow was coming up to her chin as she moved. "Where is the monster!?"
"It's uh-" Dwayne replied with a stutter. "It's in the lobby! Wait... I think... it looks like the walls are moving in there."
"What!?"
Throughout the lounge, water pipes within the walls were helpless against the freeze. The metal began to cool, until its temperature dipped beyond what they could handle. The rushing water inside gradually slowed to a stop, freezing into long segments of ice that built tremendous pressure on the pipes. The radiators in the floor -courageously making their last stand against the cold with what little heat they had- were mortally crippled when their water intake stopped. All the pipes in the building froze until the pipes were completely solid. The water pressure expanded into the thousands, until the pipes simply couldn't take it anymore, fracturing all at once in a chorus of frozen agony. Plaster and flecks of paint shot forward as holes tore through the walls, water spraying like uncontrollable firehoses into the hallways and rooms.
The sudden water latched onto the ice that already coated the areas, freezing over and multiplying the winter's attack in mere seconds. Dozens of walls were splashed with icy water, cutting into its foundation like cavities, weakening its supports. How trivial in that it only took a few broken windows to invite the blizzard inside, dooming the lounge to an inescapable fate.
Dwayne saw everything happening on the cameras, what few remained intact once the water broke through. It was becoming difficult for him to move, the freezing cold attacking him in all directions as his body temperature plummeted. His heart sank with a hopeless gaze as he watched the screens, walls snapping through like glass while the upstairs floors crumbled under the ice and snow. The glistening light of the frost reflected off his face, painting his horrified expression in sparkling lights, glittering victoriously as the building fell to nature's might.
Everest refused to surrender to the cold, gritting her frost-covered teeth as she pushed through the cutting blizzard. Jake wasn't far now; she knew in her heart she could make it. The winter was supposed to be nothing to her, she was a husky, dogs bred specifically for the snow. If there was any time to prove herself, it was now. Determination increased her pace, the puppy pushing through the ice that attempted to coat her limbs. Jake was leaving here, alive, and the saferoom was the only logical place he could be. True owners never abandoned their dogs, and they shared a bond unlike any other.
Fighting through the snow, Everest charged into the blizzard.