The high-altitude nocturnal cycle was an exercise in absolute, sensory deprivation.
Inside the shallow, ten-foot elevated overhang, Chloe slept a heavy, death-like slumber, her fragile human biology completely shut down to repair the massive micro-tears in her muscles. The heavy military thermal blankets entirely shielded her from the sub-zero draft, her slow, rhythmic breathing the only sound in the freezing dark.
Ren stood exactly at the jagged edge of the shale ledge.
He had not moved a single muscle in seven hours. His towering, two-hundred-and-seventy-pound frame was as perfectly still as the ancient stone beneath his heavy combat boots. The matte-black ballistic canvas of his trench coat hung heavy and completely motionless in the dead air. Beneath the thick fabric, the dark, tungsten-sheened Iron Skin of his broad chest radiated a faint, localized thermal aura, keeping the immediate atmosphere around him from freezing solid.
