The journey north took weeks. They crossed borders in darkness, using back roads and David's carefully arranged bribes at checkpoints. Through Poland, Belarus, into Russia—the world growing colder, flatter, emptier with each passing day.
Inside the trucks, community formed in the close quarters. They learned each other's stories:
Erika had been a gym teacher in Stockholm. She discovered her strength when she stopped a runaway bus by standing in front of it. The impact broke every bone in her body. She healed in three days. Pierre was sixteen, from Lyon. He fell from a cliff while hiking, shattered his spine. Woke up in the hospital walking. His parents reported him to authorities, afraid of what he'd become. Thomas, the oldest at fifty-eight, was a carpenter from Manchester. He'd watched his hands reshape wood without tools, the grain flowing like liquid under his fingers. His daughter Chloe had been taken "for her protection" the day after he demonstrated his ability to her by bending a steel bar into a heart. Leila spoke little of Mumbai, but sometimes in her sleep, she murmured in Hindi, calling for her parents.
Aris collected their stories, cross-referenced with medical data. She was building a profile of the mutation—its triggers (often trauma or extreme stress), its manifestations (strength, durability, sensory enhancement), and its psychological impact.
"You're not just physically different," she told Kael one night as they camped in a Belarusian forest. "Your brain activity… you have almost no theta waves. That's the state associated with daydreaming, idle thought. Your mind is either fully engaged or in deep, restorative sleep. No in-between."
"What does that mean?" Kael asked, chewing on dried meat that tasted like cardboard.
"It means you don't waste mental energy. It means your consciousness is… efficient. Focused." She looked at him. "It might be why you're adapting to leadership so quickly. Less doubt, more action."
Kael thought about that. He did feel less conflicted than he should. The weight of responsibility was there, but it didn't paralyze him. It directed him. "Is that good or bad?"
"It's different," Aris said. "Like everything else."
On the seventeenth day, they reached the edge of the Siberian plateau. The roads ended. Before them stretched an ocean of snow and ice, glittering under an endless gray sky.
"From here, we walk," Leila announced.
They unloaded the trucks, distributing supplies on sledges they'd built during stops. Each Longevo could pull thousands of pounds, but even for them, the scale was daunting. The plateau stretched for three hundred kilometers in every direction, featureless except for the occasional rock outcrop or frozen river.
They walked. Days blurred into nights. The cold, which should have killed them in hours, was merely uncomfortable. Their bodies burned calories at a ferocious rate—they ate constantly, tearing through rations.
On the third day of the crossing, the first storm hit.
It began as a thickening of the air, a metallic taste on the wind. Then the snow came horizontally, driven by winds that screamed like dying animals. Visibility dropped to zero.
"Circle!" Kael shouted, his voice ripped away by the gale.
They formed a ring, backs to the wind, hands linked. The temperature plummeted. Aris, in her baseline body, began shivering violently despite her thermal suit.
"We need shelter!" Erika yelled.
Kael looked around, his enhanced vision piercing the whiteout for only meters. Then he felt it—a vibration through his boots. A deep, resonant hum.
"There!" He pointed to what looked like a snowdrift. "Something solid underneath!"
They dug with hands and strength, throwing aside tons of snow in minutes. Beneath, they found metal—a curved dome, frosted over, with a sealed hatch.
"Soviet weather station," Leila guessed, brushing ice from a Cyrillic plaque. "Abandoned."
Kael gripped the hatch wheel, frozen solid for decades. He pulled. Metal groaned, then shrieked as the mechanism tore free. The hatch swung open, revealing darkness and the smell of stale air.
They descended into a time capsule. The station was small—a central room with decaying instruments, a bunk room with six metal cots, a storage closet with canned goods from the 1970s. But it was shelter.
As the storm raged above, they built a fire from broken furniture and ancient paperwork. The heat, combined with their body warmth, made the space almost comfortable.
Aris tended to a few frostnip cases—mostly on the baselines, though even the Longevos showed pink patches on their skin that healed as she watched.
"Remarkable," she murmured, applying salve to Pierre's cheek where the skin had crystallized. "Frostbite reversal in real time."
"It itches," Pierre complained, but he was smiling. They were alive.
That night, as the wind howled above, they held their first formal council. Thirty-seven people, crammed into a space meant for six, deciding their future.
"We need principles," Kael began. "Not just survival. How we live. Who we are."
Thomas spoke from the corner, his voice quiet but clear. "We're not gods. We can't forget that."
"But we're not human either," Erika countered. "Not like them. We saw what they did at Gobi."
"They were afraid," Aris said. "Fear makes people monstrous."
"Then how do we not become monsters?" Leila asked. "With this strength? With this time?"
They talked through the night. Ideas were proposed, debated, rejected, refined. Kael listened more than he spoke, watching the emergence of something fragile but real—a collective identity.
By dawn, as the storm subsided, they had the beginnings of a creed:
Non-Aggression: We will not initiate violence, but we will defend our existence. Self-Sufficiency: We build our own future, dependent on no one. Memory: We remember where we came from, and those left behind. Growth: We embrace what we are, but seek to become more than our abilities. Sanctuary: We offer shelter to any of our kind who reach us.
"We need a name," Pierre said. "Not what they call us. What we call ourselves."
Silence, then Thomas spoke: "The Aeon Compact. Aeon for the time we've been given. Compact for the promise we make to each other."
Heads nodded. The name settled over them, fitting like a well-worn glove.
Kael stood, looking at each face in the dim light. "Then we are the Aeon Compact. And we will build a home worthy of the name."