“You think you're hunting him. You have no idea what you've walked into. You have no idea what Arkady has waiting.” Vesna didn’t bother to respond. The last of Oksana’s breath leaked out with the words, leaving the Matron slumped against the blood-stained stone. Taras, his breath still ragged from their skirmish, offered a steadying hand. Vesna ignored it, already moving, her gaze fixed on the faint, pulsating dot on her stolen terminal’s screen. Arkady’s snow-crawler, with its precious cargo of the pale sapling, was a distant, dwindling spark in the digital tundra. They couldn't waste another moment. The Veygosh Wastes stretched out before them, a brutal canvas of ice and wind-scoured rock. The air bit, sharp and relentless, but Vesna barely felt it. Every nerve ending vibrated with a cold, focused purpose. Taras moved with a silent, loping stride beside her, his silver-marked jaw rigid as flint. The navigation beacon led them north, across an iced riverbed, then east, deeper into territory facility patrols rarely ventured. The terrain grew treacherous, wind-whipped snowdrifts obscuring hidden crevasses. Vesna’s anxiety for Taras’s lingering poison symptoms, a dull ache beneath her ribs, sharpened with every stumbling step. “Arkady’s not exactly going for a scenic route,” she muttered, her voice brittle against the wind. “Must be in a hurry to get his botanical trophy back to his lab. Probably has a little terrarium waiting, complete with tiny frosted windows.” Taras grunted, a low sound in his chest. “He’s running.” “Or consolidating. Maybe he thinks he’s safe now. Too bad for him, I’m rather good at being an uninvited guest.” Vesna paused, scanning the horizon with a narrow gaze. The locator showed Arkady's blip holding steady, still far ahead. Her eyes caught a faint disturbance in the endless white—a faint line of tracks, partially obscured by fresh powder. Not Zhelezo treads, but something larger, uneven. “Hold,” she commanded, drawing Taras to a halt. “Tracks. Fresh. That’s not Arkady’s crawler.” They followed the indentations for another league, the cold biting deeper, until a hulking silhouette emerged from the swirling snow. An Institute supply sled, its heavy runners half-buried, stood abandoned. It was hitched to a creature that made Vesna’s cynical eyebrow twitch. It looked like a reindeer that had been cross-bred with a particularly angry badger and then cursed by a sorcerer with a vendetta against symmetry. One antler was a gnarled, multi-pronged mess, the other a smooth, blunt spike. Its fur was a patchy, mottled grey, and it snorted plumes of steam from wide nostrils. “Well, isn’t that just a vision,” Vesna drawled, approaching the beast cautiously. “What a magnificent creature. I bet it wins every prize in the mutant animal kingdom.” The beast, apparently offended by her assessment, let out a deep, rumbling growl, eyeing them with baleful, intelligent eyes. It strained against its harness, fighting the sled's inertia. “Stubborn, too,” Taras observed, a faint, almost imperceptible tremor in his voice. Vesna caught it, a fresh pang of worry. He was still weak. “We’ll take it,” Vesna decided, already circling the sled. “Saves our strength. You don’t exactly look fit to sprint across the tundra, big guy.” Her sarcasm was a thin veil, masking the genuine concern that gnawed at her. His skin, usually quick to regenerate, still showed the faint, red burn-marks from the tracking poison’s egress. The silver sheen on his lips was more pronounced today. Taras didn’t argue. He moved to inspect the harnesses while Vesna rifled through the sled’s meager supplies. Half-frozen rations, spare tarps, and a heavy, fur-lined cloak that smelled faintly of stale sweat and something metallic. She handed it to Taras. “Put this on. Arkady isn’t expecting us, but his patrols might be. We need a disguise.” She found a coil of thick rope, perfect for tying hands, and a stained, mud-caked sack. “You’ll be a captured bounty. A particularly uncooperative one, judging by your… enthusiasm for quiet conversation.” She winked, a rare, playful flash in her usually hard eyes. Taras actually chuckled, a low, rusty sound that startled Vesna. It was the first genuine laugh she’d heard from him, a deep vibration that seemed to chase away some of the cold. His pitted face softened, skin crinkling beside his temples. It was a sound that affirmed his humanity, not his monstrousness. “And you?” he asked, his voice still rough, but with a hint of amusement. “I’ll be your handler. A mute conscript who prefers beasts over company. Which, frankly, isn’t much of a stretch.” She grinned, a sliver of her old, defiant self peeking through. “Now, let’s see if we can convince this prize beast to actually move.” It took considerable effort. The beast, which Taras dubbed ‘Grom,’ snorted, whinnied, and stubbornly dug its hooves into the snow, requiring a surprising amount of coaxing, and even a few stern words from Taras in a guttural language Vesna didn't understand, before it finally relented, lurching forward with a grumpy snort. They traveled for hours, the wind whipping their faces raw, the device's blip pulsing with greater urgency. The landscape transitioned from wild wastes to a more structured, though still frozen, expanse. Ice-shrouded, skeletal trees gave way to barren plains, and then, in the distance, a looming, grey silhouette began to resolve itself against the bruised sky: the Zhelezo Institute. It was a sprawling complex, less a single building and more a jagged collection of brutalist towers and utilitarian hangars, all interconnected by covered walkways, ringed by a high, humming fence line and searchlight towers sweeping the frostbitten perimeter. Vesna directed Taras to approach from a less-guarded quadrant, using the cover of a series of abandoned, frost-rimmed outbuildings. She drew the hood of her borrowed wool coat low, shadowing her cheekbones. Taras, now bound with cord and feigning utter defeat, slumped on the runners, Grom grumbling under the yoke. “Remember,” Vesna murmured, her voice almost lost in the wind, “you’re a mute, dangerous capture. Don’t speak, don’t resist. Let me do the talking. Or, rather, the grunting.” Two guards, bundled in heavy thermal gear, emerged from a small sentry post as they neared the main gate. Their sidearms rested unholstered, expressions rigid under frosted visors. Vesna hauled Grom to a stop, the beast’s hot breath clouding the icy air. “Trapper, Sector 8. Bringing in a stray for processing,” Vesna grunted, dropping her pitch to a flat drone. She displayed a generic stamped pass, taken from a dead sentry at the redoubt, shoving it toward the closest sentry. The guard, a man with a ruined nose and a twisted sneer, inspected the paper without interest. His eyes lingered on Vesna, then slid over to Taras, tied on the sled. “Another one of these hulking brutes, eh? The wastes keep yielding fine stock lately.” He stepped closer to Vesna, his gaze raking over her frame. “You’re new. Haven't seen your sort working this perimeter before.” He reached out, a gloved hand moving to touch the side of her face, his sneer widening. Before his fingers could even brush her cheek, Taras moved. It wasn’t a wild, uncontrolled lunge, but a calculated, precise snap. His tied wrists snapped outward, a blur of silver-sheened skin. The guard’s reaching hand was caught, twisted at an unnatural angle. A sickening *crack* echoed through the frigid air. The man’s eyes bulged, his sneer dissolving into a silent, gaping O. He didn't even have time to scream. The second sentry fumbled with his sidearm, gaze whipping from his crippled partner to the silent figure on the sled, then to Vesna, who merely shrugged with deadened eyes. “He’s a touch protective,” Vesna muttered, eyes narrowing with venomous amusement. “Gets agitated when strangers try to touch his handler. Good for keeping the specimen under control, though.” She gestured with her head towards the now whimpering guard. “He’s clearly not fit for duty. Perhaps you should call for medical, before he bleeds out from… shock.” The remaining guard, pale-faced, seemed to weigh his options. Two against one, one of them a hulking mutant with surprising speed, and the other a cold, unreadable hunter who didn’t flinch at a broken bone. The voucher, though generic, bore an authentic departmental stamp. He holstered his weapon, his gaze flicking nervously to Taras. “Right. Fine. Just… get him to the loading bay. Over there.” He pointed a trembling finger towards a vast, unlit hangar further down the perimeter, then hurried to his injured partner, already pulling out a comm unit. Vesna gave a curt nod, her lips curving into a subtle, satisfied smirk. “Good boy, Grom,” she murmured, giving the mutant reindeer a pat. “Just like we practiced.” She led the sled towards the indicated loading bay, Taras still slumped, face vacant, though a faint twitch at his mouth betrayed the same grim amusement. The massive loading bay doors hissed open, revealing a cavernous interior filled with the rumble of machinery and the frigid air of a perpetually cold processing area. Vesna brought Grom to a halt beside a stack of supply crates. Her stolen terminal pulsed between her stiff fingers. She pressed a button, bringing up the Institute’s internal schematics, overlaid with Arkady’s current location. Her smirk vanished. Dread, cold and sharp, pierced through her. The glowing dot, the sapling, the key to their survival, was not in a secure lab or Arkady’s personal office, but moving steadily deeper into the most heavily guarded sector of the Zhelezo Institute. The digital layout showed it clearly: directly into the pediatric quarantine ward.

The Sled and the Smirk