The engine of the snowmobile hummed beneath me, a low, mechanical vibration that felt like a living thing against my thighs. I didn’t turn on the headlights. I didn’t need them. The moonlight reflecting off the snow provided enough of a ghostly glow to see the jagged path ahead, and I had the internal map of the fortress burned into my skull from months of looking for an exit. Now, I was looking for an entrance.
I reached back, checking the pulse of the boy behind me. Toby was strapped to my waist with the soldier’s tactical belt, his face buried against my back. He was silent, his small body tense, sensing that the woman carrying him wasn't just his mother anymore.
I stopped the machine a quarter-mile from the western perimeter. This was the blind spot in the fortress’s surveillance a s
