International Seismological Center, Vienna


    The hum and beeping of the equipment in the monitoring room always put Felix Baumgartner in a meditative state. Not that it made him sleepy, but it felt as if the world outside the room ceased to exist and he was the only survivor—tasked with monitoring readings from hundreds of thousands of earthquake sensors around the globe. The massive electronic world map on the wall before him, dotted with LED lights marking sensor locations, only heightened this impression.


    Even though Felix wasn’t the last survivor, he was still doing an important job—a very important job, in fact. There were roughly fifty to a hundred earthquakes per day worldwide, and it was critical to keep track of them. Most registered at a magnitude of 2.5 or below and were often imperceptible. But they were still earthquakes and needed to be accounted for.


    The work, however, was easier than one might think. There was no need to stare at the map without blinking—not for someone with Baumgartner’s level of expertise. After ten years on the job, he knew exactly when to focus and when to relax. This morning was one of those quiet days, and Felix sat in his chair, sipping hot vanilla-apple tea and flipping through an old travel magazine he’d grabbed from the center’s library.


    A faint beep from the sound panel mounted on the world map caught his attention. Without haste, he finished reading the sentence and glanced at the map. The signal was coming from Northern Greenland.


    Baumgartner set the magazine down and checked his computer. His brow furrowed. Greenland wasn’t immune to earthquakes, but it wasn’t a hotspot either. Yes, earthquakes happened there, but they mostly clustered along the coast. This one was nearly 200 miles inland.


    There was also something else that was strange about the earthquake—its frequency—nearly 85 Hz. Far higher than typical earthquakes.


    Such high frequencies indicated a shallow quake, caused not by tectonic plate movement but by processes near the surface. In Greenland, this often meant ice quakes. And ice quakes didn’t happen in winter.


    He considered calling O’Brian, his colleague in Ireland, but thought better of it. Was the signal weird? Yeah, definitely. Was it too weird to call O’Brian? No.


    Felix sighed, marked the event in the software, and leaned back in his chair. It was time to relax again. But even before he could read another sentence, the sound alarm chimed again. Then again. And again.


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    And then—all alarms were chiming at the same time.


    Felix slowly rose from his chair, staring at the map in disbelief. He’d never seen anything like this in his life. The map lit up like a Christmas tree. Hundreds—no, thousands—of alerts poured in, an avalanche of earthquake notifications.


    New York, Bogotá, Moscow, Berlin, Tokyo, Mumbai, even Vienna—and countless smaller towns and villages. There wasn’t a single lamp on the map that wasn’t blinking.


    Felix pulled his chair closer to the computer, silenced the alarms, and began scrolling through the endless notifications. This had to be an error. What other explanation could there be? It was impossible for the Earth to be undergoing millions of…


    He rubbed his eyes. Shallow earthquakes. They were all shallow earthquakes, just like the one in Greenland.


    He had to notify Hamilton, the station’s director. He reached for the phone, but his hand froze in the air as he heard noises coming from the hallway.


    The center was a quiet place—footsteps, occasional laughter, maybe music, when somebody was throwing a retirement party. But screams? No.


    Baumgartner rose and walked toward the door. The noises grew louder—running, shouting, crying.


    He hesitated. Should he open the door? Something told him he shouldn’t. If it was a terrorist attack, he could lock himself in and wait it out. But what if there was a fire?


    Felix opened the door and stepped into the corridor.


    People were running, screaming, some even sobbing as they fled toward the exits. But there was no smoke, no flames, no armed assailants.


    “What the hell is going on?” Felix muttered, scanning the chaos.


    In the crowd, he spotted Anderson, a senior scientist from the data analysis department. Anderson’ face was red and his shirt clung to his overweight frame as he struggled to keep up with the others.


    “What’s happening?!” Felix tried to grab him, but Anderson pushed him away, sending him into the wall.


    “Get away from me!” Anderson shouted without even looking at Felix.


    Fucking moron, Felix thought, trying to remain calm.


    Why everyone was running? Should he run, too?


    And then he saw it, at the far end of the hallway.


    A creature burst through the corridor, its massive body barely clearing the walls. Its black, jagged scales glistened in the fluorescent lights, with each spike along its spine scraping against the ceiling, as it hunched on all fours, moving as a predator chasing its prey.


    Felix ran, but maybe it was too late. The creature was fast and was already looming over him.


    He could feel every muscle, every bone, every tendon of his body as he ran. He was even sure that he had torn some muscles. It didn’t matter. He was running for his life.


    Behind him, he heard the guttural snarl and the clicking of the creature’s claws against the tiled floor. He wanted to scream, but the scream got stuck somewhere down his throat.


    And then Felix turned his head and saw that the predator behind him lunged.


    It was the last thing he saw in his life.