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A wall of cold air exhales and pushes you down. A menacing tinkle in response to your yanking at the mooring.
“Now! Move! Move!”
Your team squeezes in through the slowly narrowing breach, wheezing breaths steaming, reddened faces loping past.
The gap closes with the finality of a decision made. Where before there was stark neon light illuminating storeys of transparent glass, now a damp-cold darkness stretches, enveloping you.
“Report.” A crackle in your intercom.
You shiver, whether from the cold or because the hair on the back of your neck bristles inside your hood – you don’t know. Your voice is a strangely tinny noise in your own ears.
“Entrance without complications. Team One initiating searchlights in ten minus -three, two, one …”
You blink. To your left: bottles, as tall as houses. The spotlight moves, casts its beam over a pile of massive orange logs, tangled and meshed, with pale giants resting underneath, their heads protrusions of leafy greens. Drops of condensation the size of swimming pools cling to the huge pane of glass, as much defying gravity as they are threatening you.
You watch your team: ants scurrying along the perimeter of a plastic tarpaulin.
“Object is not on first floor, repeat, no location on first floor. Team One, get ready for phase two!”
You suspend the connection, set your jaw, your mind and your heart, reach into your backpack and pull out a grappling hook. What a lunch break, you think. Quite an effort to get at a piece of chocolate.