Book 2. Chapter 1

Ivan’s POV

NOVEMBER 2012

It could have been a day like any other. Exactly the same as the previous one.

Right now I’m not really sure what day of the week it was, just that for a few months now, the color of the sky had varied between nothing more than light purple and black (with occasional northern lights in vibrant shades of phosphorescent green and deep red), and that was always the case as the winter solstice approached. It’s because of the latitude. Anchorage is further north than any town I had ever lived in, and it was significantly colder than the harshest winter I would have had in Bratsk, the city where I grew up.

Setting up a base there was much more than a strategic decision. Alaska is one of the least densely populated inhabited territories in the world, with almost impossible access by land and even better: with limited satellite coverage. A brilliant idea. That piece of the United States was lost enough to the hand of God that very few