Captain Rachel Marie Keyes had seen some desolate places on Earth, but what her eyes beheld through the helicopter window took her breath away. As far as she could see, ground or sky, was nothing but unbroken white. Somewhere high up an orb glowed in the hazy, frigid air, the only sign that a sun still existed.<br/><br/>She wondered how the pilot could even guide the chopper, and figured he flew mostly from instruments.<br/><br/>"It's not always this bad!" the man sitting across from her said. "Bad luck with the storm!" Michael Lucas had to yell over the hammering thrum of the chopper's engine to be heard. Underneath his thick coat he wore a suit, and Keyes suspected his soal wore a tie as well. Lucas was a liason from the Department of Defense, charged with taking care of any protocol issues with the civilians at the arctic installation. That all sounded well and good, but someone less prone to jargon may have simply called him her handler.<br/><br/>Lucas was a nice enough guy, for a bueracrat. He had dark, thick hair and dark eyes, a strong jaw and a direct way of speaking. Rachel noticed that his gaze sometimes wandered to her chest, so he was clearly straight as well.<br/><br/>"There! Look down there!" Lucas suddenly cried, peering out a window.<br/><br/>Rachel looked out. Through the snowstorm that had surrounded them for the last hour she could at first see nothing. Then darker shapes on the tundra below became evident. Buildings, stretched out across the ice like microchips on a solid white board. They seemed weirdly out of place in this forsaken part of the world.<br/><br/>Then another darkness caught her attention. What she had first taken for a huge, round building was not a structure at all, but a massive hole in the ice. As the helicopter flew closer, she could see that one of the buildings ran right up against this chasm. Girders protruded from the wrent edge of the installation, showing where the rest of the building had ripped away, and gone down the hole as into a garbage disposal.<br/><br/>"I wonder if the others have arrived yet," Lucas yelled, still staring at the hole outside.<br/><br/>The helicopter was drawing in for a landing. Blinking red lights on the ground indicated a helipad. Smaller shapes moved out from a building, people running to meet the incoming chopper.<br/><br/>[OOC: Go ahead and post any reactions. Also, feel free to ask any questions that Rachel should know, or she can ask Lucas.]