"Let go of me! Officer, that's my equipment! There's a Pulitzer-worthy exclusive on it!"
Ellesmere Island, inside the Arctic Circle. The polar-night blizzard slashed across the ice field like knives.
Lois Lane clutched her DSLR camera and violently shook off the U.S. Army second lieutenant's tactically gloved hand.
"Miss Lane, this is your final warning!" the lieutenant shouted over the storm, impatiently waving his assault rifle. "This is a military exclusion zone with the highest security clearance! Take one more step and I'll cuff you for espionage!"
"Espionage? Screw your espionage!" Lois glared back without yielding an inch. "You dug up an alien spacecraft more than ten thousand years old, yet you're telling the public this is just a routine geological survey? People have a right to know!"
"Take her back to the helicopter!" The lieutenant waved his men forward, done wasting his breath.
The two soldiers were about to approach when a deep, muffled tremor suddenly came from beneath the ice.
Rumble-
The entire camp's searchlights flickered wildly, and alarms blared.
"Sir! We're detecting a high-frequency energy signature underground!" a radio operator shouted, clutching his radio.
Everyone's attention shifted at once. The lieutenant immediately drew his sidearm and rushed toward the edge of the crevasse.
"Now's my chance." Lois gritted her teeth and used the chaos to roll behind several crates of supplies.
Crouching low, she slipped out of the military's sight under cover of the blizzard.
Guided by her keen reporter's instincts, she avoided the main drilling site and circled around to the sheltered shadows of the crevasse.
There, she found an impossibly smooth tunnel through the ice, two meters across. There were no signs of drilling equipment, as though some terrifying heat had melted it open in an instant.
"My God..." Lois raised her camera, took a