It snapped through the air like a breaking branch. Caleb stiffened. He looked over at the drill, expecting to see something wrong—but everything seemed normal. The noise must’ve been the ice shifting beneath it. He stood, brushing off his coat, and moved to shut everything down.
But just as he reached for the screen, he heard it—faint and low. A dragging sound, slow and steady, coming from behind him. At first, he didn’t see anything. Just the flat stretch of snow and distant ice ridges.