Instead, he ran at full speed across the ice with the axe in his hand. As the ice thinned he began to be able to spot the dark outline of the massive fish, which formed a strange shadow in an otherwise light-filled lake. His chest was pounding as he sucked in the subzero air. Demyan swore out loud. If it took them a week to catch, they were going to drag the fish out of its frozen prison.
He stopped somewhere in the middle of the lake and immediately started slamming the head of the axe into the ice. It sent hundreds of shards of ice splintering out around them. Below the rapidly thinning ice, he noticed the fish turn around in one giant arc and swim toward the opening he was trying to create.
“Get the Mormyshka out! Quick!”
Beside him, Ilya worked quickly to set up the fishing line and lure, known as a Mormyshka. It was named after the Russian word, mormysh, which meant freshwater shrimp. It consisted of a metallic head made of tungsten with a small piece of gold given to them by their father and soldered onto the back of the tungsten, along with a hook. In the stagnant environment beneath the ice, fish would spot the sparkle of the gold and take a bite.
Demyan’s axe finally pierced the bottom layer of ice, into the thawed water below. The monstrous fish, swung round again, curious and interested in the sudden change to its protected environment.
“Holy shit!” He turned to his brother. “He’s coming back!”
Ilya fed the line through the small hole of the tungsten and handed it to him. “Here.”
“Forget the Mormyshka, just pass me the hook. I’m going to snatch this monster the next time it comes around for another pass!”
Ilya handed him the fishhook. “Here.”
Demyan drove the axe as hard as he could against the remaining sheet of ice at the bottom of the hole he’d dug. In his haste, he’d carved a much larger hole in the ice than he’d meant to. It was closer to ten or twelve inches wide by an equal length.
The fish snapped around, toward the opening. An ancient predator at the top of the food chain inside the confines of the frozen lake, the creature swam to the opening, unable to grasp the risk that it might not be the deadliest beast in existence.
The predator reached the surface of the opening Demyan had created. Its giant mouth opened, ready to feed on whatever it discovered, and Demyan ran the large fish hook through the side of its body, and pulled.
The Hucho Taimen weighed more than he expected. At least two hundred pounds. More than he could pull out of the hole without his brother’s help. The problem was that it would place more weight on the precariously thin ice than it could take.
Demyan racked his brain, trying to come up with a solution before he lost the best catch of his life. Something that might just keep him and his brother from starving to death.
An instant later, the damned fish turned its head, as though no longer interested in whatever it had found in the outside world, and simply dipped back into the icy water and disappeared.
Demyan ran his gloved palms across his forehead and cursed loudly. They’d lost the fish, and by the looks of things, it wouldn’t be coming back any time soon.
He and Ilya glanced down into the opening. Like the previous one he’d made, the ice appeared to reflect a prism of reds, yellows, and blues.
“What the hell is that?” Demyan asked.
Ilya carefully stepped closer. “I have no idea.”
Demyan stared at the clear waters of the freezing world beneath the ice. What stared back up at him, made him instantly forget about the loss of the fish.
An eerie glow distorted his vision. He blinked and he started to make out a series of shapes and colors he’d never seen before. Something moved from below the ice. It was too big to be a fish. Too fast to be anything human. It glowed with a radiant color of the morning sun, and then it was gone. In its place, the water was clear enough now, that Demyan could make sense of what he was seeing.
A strange city, filled with refractory metallic structures he’d never seen before, in books or anywhere else — like crystals set at unique angles and fractals, jutting out like a giant city of another world. A world filled with fractals and prismatic crystals.
Ilya took a deep breath. “What the hell is that?”
“Beats me.” Demyan remained staring at the strange city, entranced, as though he’d just witnessed the opening of a gateway to another world. He swallowed hard. “But whatever it is, I’m certain we’re not supposed to find out!”
He took a step back. There was nothing specifically to be frightened of from down beneath the ice — certainly nothing that could swim out of the freezing water and attack him — but he still felt the instinctive need to place some sort of distance between him and the opening. That ancient part of his brain that had developed out of necessity to predict danger, was acutely aware of his entire surroundings.
His pupils dilated, and his vision widened. His heart pounded and chest burned. Adrenalin surged through his body, giving him the superhuman strength required to fight or run from his predator.
Ilya kept his feet planted where they were on the edge of the opening in the ice. His eyes fixed on the strange city, and his lips curled in the tight smile of a man who knew he was witnessing the most extraordinary event of his life.
Demyan took his eyes off the opening and swept their surrounding landscape. The surface of ice remained solid throughout the lake. The edge met an area of at least a hundred feet of snow-covered hills, before a forest of stunted pine and spruce trees blocked his vision. Their environment was silent. He could hear the sound of his heart pounding in his ears, and his breath crystalized in front of him — before everything changed.
A beam of light shot up through the opening in the ice. It sent a glow hundreds of feet into the gray and somber sky. Simultaneously, an old air-raid siren started to wail.
His head snapped to the right, where half a mile away, a white military truck came charging out of the ground beyond the tree line.
Demyan yelled, “Run!”
Ilya turned and ran.
Behind him, the siren kept wailing. He kept running. He’d never seen that type of armored truck before, but he’d heard about it and his brother had previously mentioned that the occasional one had been spotted near Boot Lake. The VPK-3927 Volk was legendary in Russia. Designed as a tactical high-mobility multipurpose military armored vehicle, it was renowned as a legend among Russia’s armored division.
But why was it even here?
One thing was certain, such a truck was unlikely to have a legitimate purpose for guarding a nuclear power station in the remote wilderness of Oymyakon. And it certainly wasn't approaching them for anything positive.
They headed toward the frozen bank of Boot Lake. It would be impossible to outpace their pursuers, but if they could reach it they might be able to cut across it.
It took ten minutes exactly to reach the barbed wire fence along the eastern edge of the Boot Lake. Ilya glanced over his right shoulder. The massive VPK-3927 Volk, rounded the bend and drove straight toward them.
He hacked at the fence with his axe. It took a few strikes and part of the fence broke apart. He pulled at it with his hands, and the gap opened large enough for him to squeeze through. “Come on! Let’s cross the lake.”
Demyan looked over his shoulder. Their pursuers were driving hard in the snow-covered truck. There were no longer any other options. “All right.”
Having squeezed through the narrow opening Ilya and his brother started to run across the frozen lake. It was only a little over a mile wide where they were crossing and nearly twenty for the truck to get around the lake following the service trail. If they could reach the opposite side before their pursuers, they could flee into the snow-covered forest, where it would be impossible for the truck to follow — they just had to reach the other side in time.