Adrenaline is a hell of an anesthetic. While Dmitry swung the chainsaw, hauled cables, and barked orders at the winch, he felt like Iron Man. But the moment he killed the engine and slumped back into his seat, biochemistry demanded its due. The adrenaline receded, leaving behind nothing but the toxic waste of exhaustion. And the pain.

  It didn't come all at once. It rolled in—a heavy, searing wave. First, his shoulders began to throb, twisted by the brutal load. Then his knees flared up. But the epicenter of his universe was his lower back. Where living bone fused with the titanium frame, a fire now raged. Muscles, spasmed by cold and tension, clenched into stone knots, pinching every nerve ending. Dmitry tried to stand and gasped as his vision went dark.

  “D-damn...” he wheezed through gritted teeth. “Overdid it. Hero, my ass.”

  Every movement was an act of will. He managed to crawl out of the cabin and into the living module. He didn't have the strength to scrub the floor this time. He just stripped off the wet, mud-caked coveralls, dumped them in a pile in the "dirty zone" by the threshold, and stepped over them. Mud trailed across the floor. He didn't give a damn. Cleanliness was tenth on the priority list. First was simply not falling down.

  A ragged limp carried him to the medical cabinet. His reflection stared back from the glass—a gray, sunken-eyed stranger smeared with grease stains. He looked like a miner pulled from a collapse. With trembling hands, he cracked the "Emergency Aid" kit. Pills were useless here; his stomach was a cramped, empty knot. He needed the needle. Ketorolac. Three ccs. He snapped the ampoule’s neck with a glassy crunch and drew the syringe. He didn't bother with his pants—just jerked down the waistband of his thermals at the thigh. The needle sank in, and the solution bit into the muscle with a cold, chemical sting.

  “Now... Now it’ll let go...” he whispered, sliding down the wall.

  He sat on the warm teak floor, hugging his knees and rocking slowly, waiting for the drug to hit. The silence in the module pressed against his ears. Outside, it was pitch black. The void of an alien night pushed against the glass again, but Dmitry didn't care. His world had narrowed to a single, pulsating point in his spine.

  Ten minutes later, chemistry won. The sharp needles of pain dulled into a muffled, cottony hum. The muscle spasms began to release their grip. Dmitry took a deep breath. For the first time all evening, air filled his lungs completely.

  He stood up, white-knuckling the edge of the table. He had no appetite—his body was in shock and rejected the very idea of food. Но the engineer's mind dictated the terms: calorie expenditure had been colossal, the tank was empty, and refueling was mandatory. He pulled a container of yesterday’s dumplings from the fridge. Cold, congealed lumps of dough and meat. Heat them? Wait? He didn't have the strength. He ate them cold, right from the container, chewing and swallowing mechanically. It wasn't food. It was just biomass to sustain combustion.

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  Finished, he poured a cup of strong, over-sugared tea and sat at the desk. Sleep was a heavy weight on his eyelids, but he couldn't lie down yet. He needed a path forward.

  “Daily summary,” he said to the empty room. “Spent: six hours, five liters of gas for the saw, a liter of sweat, and a million nerve cells. Distance covered: five meters.”

  He brought up the drone's map. The scale of the disaster was undeniable. Ten kilometers to solid ground. Five meters a day. Two thousand days. Five years.

  “Absurd,” Dmitry muttered. “The winch isn't the answer. I'll die before I get there. Either the diesel runs out, or the cable snaps.”

  He needed a new strategy. He zoomed in on the high-altitude drone shots. The gray, pockmarked surface of the swamp looked like chaos, but Dmitry’s eyes searched for patterns. Here—the water was black, open. Depth. A death trap. But there—a chain of hummocks overgrown with brush. They stretched in a winding, jagged line.

  “Roots,” he realized. “Where bushes grow, there’s a root system. Woven together for centuries. Natural rebar.”

  If he drove strictly along those "veins," never falling into the "windows"... the ground might hold. It would be soft, but it could support low-pressure tires if he kept moving. Dynamics were everything. In the mud, the main enemy is stopping. As long as the wheels turn, you "float." The moment you stop, you sink. Today’s mistake was trying to use brute force.

  “I need a navigator,” Dmitry decided. “Someone to fly ahead and call the shots: ‘Hole on the right, stump on the left, keep to the middle!’”

  He didn't have a navigator. But he had the Matrice. The "Follow Me" mode was useless—it would only trail behind. He needed the opposite. He couldn't pilot the drone and the rig at the same time; his attention would scatter, and he’d drown them both.

  He dove into the drone's Mission Planner. He could plot a route by waypoints. Set the altitude to 15 meters—just above the canopy. Speed—3 km/h. A walking pace. The drone would scout ahead, its camera broadcasting a top-down feed to the cabin’s main screen. He would see the road from above. A third-person perspective. A tactical HUD that would show him the quagmire fifty meters before he hit it.

  “Three kilometers per hour,” he calculated. “Ten hours of daylight... thirty kilometers. In theory, I can clear this swamp in one day. If I don't get stuck. If I don't miss a turn. If the root ‘rebar’ holds.”

  The risk was colossal. If he hit a pit at speed, the inertia of twenty-six tons would bury him so deep no winch could ever pull him out. Но crawling five meters a day was just a slow-motion suicide. A breakout was his only chance.

  “Sink or swim,” Dmitry chuckled, his eyes finally closing.

  He killed the monitor. The plan was insane, daring, and the only one he had. Tomorrow, he would turn his all-terrain vehicle into a moon rover controlled by instruments. He stood up, feeling the painkiller begin to fade, a dull ache returning to his back.

  “Sleep. Tomorrow is race day.”

  He went to bed without even thinking about a movie. The silence of the swamp no longer scared him. Now, it was just the silence before the start.

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