CHAPTER 4 — The Footprints No One Could Explain
Federal agents immediately sealed the underground chamber.
"No one enters without authorization."
But curiosity spread faster than any order.
One forensic investigator knelt beside the footprints.
He frowned.
"They're fresh."
"Less than twenty-four hours old."
A silence settled over the room.
"Impossible."
The bunker had supposedly been buried for more than seventy years.
There should have been no way in.
Yet someone had clearly walked through it only yesterday.
The investigators followed the trail.
It led deeper into the mountain.
The air became colder.
Their flashlights swept across faded warning signs.
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
BIOLOGICAL STORAGE.
COMMAND CENTER.
Most of the equipment had rusted away.
But one thing hadn't.
Electric lights.
One by one...
Tiny green indicator lights suddenly blinked to life.
Everyone stopped.
"No one touch anything."
An engineer slowly approached the control panel.
His eyes widened.
"There’s electricity."
"Backup generators are still running."
A lieutenant stared at him.
"After seventy years?"
The engineer nodded.
"Someone has been maintaining this place."
The words echoed through the silent bunker.
Maintaining it.
Not abandoning it.
Maintaining it.
Then...
A faint metallic sound echoed from somewhere ahead.
CLANG.
Everyone raised their flashlights.
Nothing.
Another sound.
CLANG...
CLANG...
Like a heavy door gently moving.
One young officer whispered,
"Did you hear that?"
Nobody answered.
Because they all had.
The team carefully advanced through another corridor.
The footprints became clearer.
Someone had dragged heavy equipment across the floor.
Fresh tire marks.
Recently opened supply crates.
Half-empty water bottles.
A flashlight battery manufactured only three months earlier.
Mark stared at the evidence in disbelief.
"This place isn't abandoned..."
Before anyone could respond...
A terrified scream exploded through the tunnel.
One of the rescue workers had wandered into a side room.
The others rushed inside.
Their blood ran cold.
Dozens of photographs covered the walls.
Some were black-and-white.
Others were in full color.
All of them showed the same mountain.
The same railway.
The same dangerous cliff.
Photographs dated from the 1950s...
The 1970s...
The 1990s...
Even last month.
Someone had been secretly monitoring every train that crossed the pass for decades.
Then Mark noticed one final photograph lying on the desk.
His hands began to shake.
It had been taken only yesterday.
It showed Train 407.
His train.
Approaching the mountain.
Across the bottom, someone had written a chilling message in red ink:
"Too late to stop it... unless the eagle succeeds."
The room fell into complete silence.
No one spoke.
No one moved.
Every person there realized the same horrifying truth.
The eagle hadn't acted by instinct alone.
Somehow...
Someone had known the disaster was coming long before the train ever entered the mountain pass.
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And whoever had written that message...
Was still out there.
