Chapter 6 - The Ascent to the Lookout
The quad bike’s engine whined aggressively as I fought to keep the heavy machine on the narrow, snow-packed trail. Behind us, the twin beams of an all-terrain utility vehicle cut through the swirling snowstorm, rapidly closing the distance. Mom’s operatives weren't giving up.
"Leo, they’re gaining on us!" Becca screamed into my back, her grip so tight it felt like she was trying to fuse herself to my spine.
I glanced at the side mirror. The utility vehicle was right on our tail, its front bumper aggressively smashing through the snowdrifts. If they clipped us at this speed, we’d go flying over the cliff edge.
"Hold on tighter!" I shouted, yanking the handlebars hard to the left as we reached a fork in the trail. Instead of continuing up the main logging road, I veered the quad bike onto an old, abandoned footpath blocked by a rusted chain-link gate. We smashed right through the barrier, sending rusted links flying into the dark.
The terrain here was rougher, choked with dense underbrush and hidden rocks buried beneath the snow. The utility vehicle tried to follow, but its wider wheelbase proved to be its undoing. I heard a loud, metallic crunch followed by an angry shout as their vehicle high-centered on a boulder, its tires spinning helplessly in the air.
We had bought ourselves some time, but the battery indicator on the quad bike was flashing a dangerous red. The freezing mountain air was draining the electric motor faster than normal.
Ten minutes later, the trail ended abruptly at the base of a towering, skeletal steel structure—the old fire lookout tower. Its wooden cabin perched thirty feet in the air, connected only by a spiraling metal staircase covered in a thick sheet of ice.
"Get off! Run for the stairs!" I yelled, cutting the engine as we slid to a halt at the base of the tower.
We scrambled up the frozen metal steps, our boots slipping with every other stride. Halfway up, a crack echoed below us. A high-powered spotlight flooded the clearing, casting our long, distorted shadows up the side of the tower.
Mom’s SUV had bypassed the blocked trail, arriving from the lower access road. She stepped out of the vehicle alone, her coat flapping in the howling wind, holding a long-range tactical communicator in her hand.
"Leo! Stop right there!" her voice amplified through a megaphone, cold and chillingly calm. "You can't outrun this. The federal network belongs to us. Every transmission you send is routed straight to my terminal."
I pushed Becca ahead of me through the trapdoor of the wooden lookout cabin, slamming it shut behind us and dropping a heavy iron security bar into place.
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Inside, the cabin was filled with old radio equipment, dusty topographical maps, and a heavy-duty satellite uplink console glowing with an amber power light. I rushed to the console, ripped open the manila envelope, and pulled out the physical flash drive Dad had left inside.
If Dad’s network was compromised, we needed a hardwire bypass. I plugged the drive directly into the console’s master port.
