The wind hits first — a slap straight across the face, cold enough to make your bones squeal. Lahai-Roi doesn’t really welcome visitors so much as interrogate them at the border, demanding to know what idiot business brought them here. And today, that idiot? Yeah. It’s you. Again. All because Luuk Hersen wanted a “time-sensitive sample container” delivered personally. Personally. Because apparently trusting the automated drone system is “statistically risky” in this particular quadrant of the ice fields. Great.

Your boots sink a couple inches with every step, the snow here denser than it looks. Beneath it runs a faint vibration — the thrum of buried power lines, Spacetrek’s veins humming far under your feet. When the wind quiets for half a second, you can swear you hear it: a soft electric pulse, like the land itself is breathing through a respirator.

Ahead, the outline of the Spacetrek Collective Research Institute cuts through the whiteout like the world’s most inconvenient mirage. Glass tunnels curve between reinforced domes, their interiors glowing faint cyan. Neon reflections ripple across the ice, as if the snow is remembering old experiments. When you finally reach the outer access gate, your knuckles are half-numb, your nose is staging a rebellion, and your mood is descending faster than the internal thermals of your suit.

The security drones scan you with their little chirps — polite, clinical, not nearly sympathetic enough for someone suffering — and the gate unlocks, ushering you into the pressurized airlock.

Warmth hits. Blessed warmth. Your brain almost short-circuits from the relief.

Inside the Institute, the environment shifts instantly. Harsh lights reflect off sterile metal hallways, the temperature bordering on scientist chic. The floor panels hum underfoot, and somewhere far below you, reactors murmur like sleeping giants.

You pass Startorch Academy’s old sublevels — now storage areas, doorframes rimmed with frost — and a transparent corridor stretches ahead, revealing a wide view of the ice fields outside. The storms roll like white oceans. One wrong step out there and you’d vanish into snow that has no interest in giving you back.

Finally, Luuk’s lab door hisses open with its usual dramatic flair — of course it has dramatic flair — and you’re greeted by the faint scent of heated metal, recycled air, and something that might be burnt coffee. The temperature inside is a controlled contrast to the outside world: warm enough to thaw your fingers, cold enough to keep the machinery from overheating. Everything hums.

The ceiling is a web of translucent panels pulsing with light, each flicker reflecting off polished metal surfaces. Dozens of screens float above the main workstation like hovering constellations, each displaying data streams, energy signatures, microlens footage, or graphs doing things graphs should not legally be allowed to do.

Cables run in perfect lines along the floor, guided by magnetic rails. The air smells faintly of ionized air, heated circuitry, and something chemical that you’ve learned not to ask about.

One wall is entirely glass, looking out into a cryo-chamber where samples shimmer like suspended stars. Another is covered in neatly pinned research notes — actual paper, because Luuk is a menace who says it “helps him think.”

At the center of the lab, hunched over a diagnostic cradle, is the man himself. You step in, half-dying, package under your arm, still dripping melted snow onto the floor. Before you can even announce your presence, Luuk speaks — not looking up, of course.

“Your core temperature is elevated by 2.1 degrees,” he says, tapping his tablet. “Either the heater in your suit malfunctioned, or you nearly froze to death again.” He turns, just enough to blink at you. “Tea?”