Book 2: Chapter 52: First Contact (1/2)

Dan placed his hand against the ice and focused. His veil darted out, biting into the dense material. Almost immediately, he felt his reserves plummet. The ice was unnaturally thick, and his hand already ached from the cold. His veil swept across it, pulling deeper and deeper on his well of power. Dan allowed it to drain, dipping past his normal limit and reaching into the veil that suffused his own body. He didn't need it for this.

His veil formed a passage roughly as high as his waist and half a foot deep before he ran out of juice. It didn't seem like much, but Dan could do this all day long. He triggered his veil, and a chunk of the wall vanished into t-space. There was no resistance, no trap, no issue at all. Dan smiled victoriously

The officer stared at the hole, befuddled. ”Where'd you send it?”

”Somewhere else,” Dan replied. He removed his hand, shook out the cold, then pressed his boot against the ice. His veil reached out once more, widening the hole. ”Get me some muscle to widen this hole. I'll focus on going deeper.”

The officer nodded hurriedly and rushed off.

Dan pushed in his veil, and ripped out another chunk of Coldeyes ice. This time, he made the hole tall enough for him to stand in. He took a single step forward, and ripped out another chunk. Step, veil, trigger, step, he soon fell into a rhythm. By the time his muscle arrived, Dan had made a passage almost fifteen feet deep. It was incredibly narrow, and if Dan couldn't teleport at will he'd be feeling intensely claustrophobic, but it served its purpose. The priority was to drill as far into the ice as possible, as several observation upgrades suggested the ice was less dense near the center. Dan needed only to break through.

”Well done, Daniel!” a familiar voice boomed from far behind him.

Dan ignored it, kept himself moving forward, ripping out another chunk of ice. At this depth, he was running out of natural light. Soon, he'd have to switch to the headlamp strapped to his forehead. That became an immediate concern, as Gregoir Pierre-Louise's massive bulk stepped into Dan's narrow tunnel.

Dan lacked the space to turn around, so he blinked himself into a different position. One hand clicked on his headlamp, while the other snuggled into his jacket pocket, trembling with the cold. Dan squinted towards the entrance of his tunnel, watching curiously as Gregoir shoved himself into tiny orifice. The gigantic blonde was forced to practically crawl, and his massive shoulders were turned sideways.

”What—?” Dan began to ask, when Gregoir unleashed a deafening roar.

”EXCELSIOR!” he bellowed, suddenly straightening and flexing against his tight confines. The walls broke before Gregoir's body did, and the shattered ice rained down around his legs. He continued to flex, keeping every muscle taut as he twisted in a tight circle, and his surroundings gave way to the unconventional excavation.

Dan blinked, as his tunnel's narrow entrance could suddenly fit two people standing shoulder to shoulder.

”That works,” Dan stated, before returning to his task. His hands dipped into a pocket and pulled out a tiny plastic baggie. With practiced motions, he opened the bag and slipped in the earplugs, just in time for another victorious shout to split the air. He heard the walls break again behind him, and Dan forged onwards.

It was a testimony to proper planning, Dan thought, that the raid had occurred so late at night. The safehouse location was a gym, sat beside a shopping plaza. Coldeyes had frozen the entire gymnasium, its parking lot, the road separating the building from its neighbors, and a good chunk of the shopping center itself. The timing of the raid, nearly one in the morning, meant that the plaza was completely abandoned. Only a pair of security guards roaming around on their little golf carts had remained, and they had been ushered away by the police just before the raid.

Civilian casualties were practically nonexistent, which was nearly unheard of as far as villain attacks were concerned. Perhaps because this wasn't really an attack, so much as a defense. Coldeyes had certainly seemed interested in presenting it that way, for reasons that Dan still couldn't grasp. The man was intentionally provoking a response, that much was obvious, and a response would be forthcoming. Whether the city hired outside assistance, or called in the national guard, something would happen.

Dan shook off those thoughts. It was well above his paygrade. He had a goal here, to forge forward. He'd managed to outpace Gregoir. He could still hear the loud bellows coming from far behind him, but the tunnel was completely black. Only Dan's headlamp offered a modicum of light. Dan didn't know how deep in he was, but he knew he was moving in the right direction.

His veil told him the way. A single tendril probed far, far ahead. Almost fifty yards across frozen concrete, where the plaza ended and the road began, the ice was starting to thin. It seemed that Coldeyes hadn't bothered to reinforce his glacier all the way through. That matched what he'd been told, but Dan was glad to confirm it for himself. He kept his eyes on the prize, moving ever forward.

Dan made quick progress. He broke through the thickest layer of ice in less than ten minutes, stopping only twice for a brief, thirty second break to warm up. He'd managed to carve through almost a hundred and fifty feet before his veil reported the ice losing its supernatural density. He decided this information should be known to someone higher ranking than him.

Dan blinked back to the plaza, at the edge of the glacier, and nearly staggered as something pressed against his mind. Feelings that weren't his own, an overwhelming sense of pressure and responsibility, hammered down on him. He glanced around, blinking rapidly, and his eyes landed on the source.

Captain Gable spoke to a group of uniformed officers, issuing terse orders in a deep baritone. The precinct head noticed Dan's appearance almost immediately, and turned away from his men to greet him.