The bridge was silent while they waited for a reply. Seconds ticked by, and then a minute. The only sound they could detect from outside was the fluttering of thousands of wings from the swarm above. It flitted into view of the front flood lamps, a dark shoal of eyes and teeth. This was punctuated by a faint scraping as the groundmast went into the earth beneath their feet.

“Must be asleep.” 595 remarked, eventually. She’d peeled her visor back, and was studying both Vreta and Freyr closely. She watched from behind as Dr Lang scratched her neck, arms folded across her chest. The scientist was staring off at the snow-shrouded ruins in front of them.



Suddenly, a loud ping heralded a new visualisation on the holo-map. An intricately detailed 3D model of the mountain they were sitting on slowly rotated for all to see. Above it, a countdown clock spun up to six hours and fifty one minutes. Freyr looked round, before moving to the holo. “Okay. We have time. Hold on…What’s this?”

Freyr cut the mountain open with her finger, and it exploded open in a cross section. Underneath their position, the plinth was just one face of an enormous cube - it must have been two hundred metres across. Most of it was buried deep inside the mountain, with just two vertices on the top face jutting out nearby. “Fascinating, isn’t it?” called Dr Wetherall, who would have seen the data seconds before pushing it to the bridge. “Some kind of power storage?” He mused.

Freyr hummed to herself, before deciding what needed to be done. “Dr Zimmermann, prime Rübezahl Three for injection via the groundmast, please.” The fourth Human scientist, who was currently split between Synthesis and the code lab, responded: “Very good - five minutes.”