An endless expanse of white entered Visha's view. She never thought she would have the chance to do something like this. Honestly, she wasn't sure if she would make it out alive.
She signed up for this on a whim. There are always countries looking for able-bodied men to do tasks they would never allow their special researchers or military to do.
They are always simple tasks, and yet, so many people end up dying.
Visha has done at least three of these "simple tasks". There was one where they needed some soil samples from an endless sinkhole. Anything electrical would basically short-circuit. There was another for an endless waterfall; they couldn't find where it ended. The last one was a burial site.
She did all these things and still lived. She didn't think an ice wall would pose a problem. They made sure to pad Visha from head to toe. The temperatures are below freezing. There are craters she could fall into and end up who knows where.
She was tethered, simply to make sure they didn't lose her.
She walked on top of the ice wall as its first human to do so, and she was absolutely freezing. Her teeth chattered and her body kept shivering. It was much colder than either she or they anticipated.
She looked out at the white around her and wondered briefly if she would end up with snow blindness.
She decided not to waste any more time. She carefully traversed the ice block. The further she walked, the colder she got. She thought about the insulators they had given her. They were already placed; all she had to do was press on different parts of her body to make them warm up.
She did it and started to feel a slight warmth on her body.
She could still feel the chill, but the slight warmth gave her the courage to continue. She walked for what felt like forever. She looked behind her but couldn't see anything but white.
At some point, the winds started picking up. Yet she continued moving forward. It wasn't until she realised the wind was almost picking her up that she stopped moving.
And when she stopped moving, that's when she noticed it. Something was moving. In all the time she was walking, she hadn't seen any hills. Everything around her should be flat.
But she saw it, she was sure of what she saw. There were multiple hills, swaying from left to right, as if carried by the wind.
Despite the warmth she still felt from the isolators, she couldn't help the chill that ran down her spine. She started walking again, making sure to take note of how far she was from the hills.
The more she walked, the more she noticed that the hills weren't stable. They were moving towards her. Not fast, at the moment, but quickly enough that she would notice it. She looked behind her, hoping to turn back, only to realise that the hills behind her were closer than the ones to her left and right.
Visha started panicking. She didn't know what those things were. She couldn't go back, so her only option was to go forward, and so far, she couldn't see an end in sight.
So, she kept walking, glancing in all three directions, praying that there weren't any up ahead.
Now, they were getting closer, and her heart was hammering. She had tried her distress signal, hoping to feel the tug of the tether soon, but there was nothing. She even pulled on the rope itself, hoping they would notice.
What she didn't realise was that while she was pulling, hoping to make the tether taut so they could pull her away. She didn't notice the tether had already been cut.
She kept pulling. It was only when she didn't feel anything else to pull that she looked down and noticed the tether had been torn to pieces. Seeing the frayed end made her feel miserable.
She knew she didn't have much time. The winds were starting to die down. So she decided to make a run for it. As fast as she could, she took off sprinting.
Her running seemed to excite the hills, because she saw something she hadn't seen during her entire walk. Red eyes. Those walking hills had eyes that glowed such a deep red, she didn't know how she hadn't noticed it before.
She didn't look around anymore and just kept running; she didn't care where she was going. She didn't care if she was swallowed by some icy river; she only knew she needed to run.
Her body was getting heavier, but she kept at it. By some miracle, there weren't any in front of her. She briefly wondered if they were really carried here by the wind.
For a moment, a really stupid moment, she wanted to look back. Then she felt it. The cold on her back. It seeped through her outfit. She knew what was happening. At some point, one of those things caught up to her. It tried to take a chunk out of her.
Adrenaline kicked her into overdrive. She began to speed up, breaking her limits. Her lungs burned, but she didn't dare to turn around or stop. If she did, she would have truly seen what those hills looked like.
Their bodies were all white, their eyes red like blood, an abnormally wide mouth and rows of sharp teeth. They looked like demonic seals.
The cold continued to seep into Visha's clothes, but she knew she couldn't stop. She couldn't see anything other than white. She knew she couldn't go back, so her only way now was to go forward.
She didn't notice, however, that up ahead, she was about to fall off a cliff.
It was only when she lost her footing that she noticed she was able to reach the end of the ice wall.
[Initialising...]
This was the last thing she heard before falling into the water and losing consciousness.