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You've seen what this rock can do, and its power is formidable. Uncle Sam needs to know. You just hope they'll believe you and take the stone seriously. That they'll study it, and not just seal it into an unmarked crate and hide it away in a secret warehouse somewhere full of hundreds of other unmarked crates.

But that is for the future. Now you need to get off this damn mountain. As you abandon your reflections and turn your attention to your surroundings, it occurs to you that this will be easier than you had expected.

You've been so consumed with getting away from the collapsing mountain that you haven't even noticed the change in your surroundings. The wind no longer howls and rakes your exposed flesh with its icy claws. A few stray snowflakes are still drifting down, stragglers from the blizzard, but the storm has abated. The clouds have cleared, and a brilliant Himalayan sun bathes the white wonderland around you in a warming golden radiance.

It's a long way back, but you know you will make it. You have a light wind at your back and the sun to warm your bones, and the journey is all downhill. You will get to the airfield, and to the Ruby, and off the mountain to civilization and to safety. The ordeal is over, and somehow, against all odds, you have made it through.

You shoulder your pack and set off, the sole remnant of a seven-person expedition through an icy hell. Your thoughts haunted by those who have been lost, you wend your way down the mountain pass in shaken silence. This stone has exacted a heavy price indeed.

And then reality glitches. The brilliant white of the mountains fizzes out of your consciousness and is replaced by the drab metallic red and gray of the cargo hold on the Semiramis. Once again, it's you and Paulus, your bound wrists and his evil knuckleduster, as the past fragments into nothing and gives way to the brutal present.

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