Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
The news from my hacker friend left me stunned and speechless for a second. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight, Gus. The guy posing as Dr. Greenfield is a criminal?”
“Not technically.”
“But you said he’s wanted by authorities.”
“He is, but whether or not he’s convicted of the chargers will depend on what happens in court.”
“What is he accused of?” Noah asked, a crease between his brows.
“Depends on the location. In South America, he’s wanted for bribing local officials into revealing the location of a tourist. As well, he is linked to some gang violence that targeted a family that has since disappeared.”
“He had them killed?”
“No. By all accounts, the family is alive, just moved to an undisclosed location,” Gus explained.
I tapped my lower lip as I paced. “Where else is he in trouble?”
“China, for trespassing on Laojun Mountain. It’s forbidden to foreigners. In Hawaii, some locals claim he hired them to steal and smuggle a lizard. In Australia he’s accused of a hit and run and unauthorized departure of a private jet.”
A wide range of crimes that didn’t seem to have any kind of link. “Is he actually a doctor of seismology?”
“Not even close,” Gus scoffed. “He’s a cryptozoologist.”
“A what?” Noah exclaimed.
Unlike the captain, I knew the word. “A person who studies supposedly mythical animals. Think unicorns, or satyrs.”
“How can you study something that isn’t real?” asked the puzzled Noah.
“That’s been his life’s work,” Gus answered, his voice slightly choppy as the connection tried to drop. “He was laughed out of the science community because of his insistence dragons existed.”
“Dragons?” Noah snorted, but I didn’t laugh. Couldn’t with the dream suddenly flashing inside my mind.
“Why the obsession with dragons in particular?” was my next query.
“Dr. Malone claimed to have found the remains of one in a cave. He brought some of the bones in for analysis. However, testing proved inconclusive due to DNA degradation along with contaminants.”
“What about the comparison of the skeletal structure to other documented species?”
“They couldn’t find a match, but paleontologists said he most likely discovered a dinosaur.”
“Dinosaurs do resemble dragons in many respects,” I murmured.
“Anyhow, this Malone character ended up dropping mostly out of sight, and I’ve yet to find out what he was doing during those missing years.”
“Other than committing crimes in other countries.”
“Do you want me to keep digging?” Gus offered.
“Yes. Also, email me everything you’ve found so far.”
“Will do.”
Gus hung up and I turned to face the captain. “Do you think he was here looking for a dragon?”
“I guess it’s possible but seems odd since that’s the one rumor that isn’t floating around about Antarctica.”
“And it doesn’t explain why he’d steal a chopper only to kamikaze into a volcano, either.”
The captain stood, his height dwarfing mine. “Speaking of which, it occurs to me I should check the rest of our helicopters.”
“For what?”
“Sabotage,” his grim reply.
“You think he did something to them?”
“It’s possible he might have to ensure no one could follow him.”
“I imagine that will take you several hours.” I glanced at my wrist for the time. Early afternoon. “Shall we meet for dinner?”
“Are you asking me on a date?”
My lips quirked. “Why yes, Captain, I am. Although, skip the dessert. I have something better planned than what they’ll be offering in the galley.”
Leaving him with his jaw on the floor, I quickly made my way to my room and snagged my laptop.
Given how quickly the battery could drain, I plugged in my phone before setting up my hotspot.
I could have connected to the station’s internet, but—especially given recent events—I preferred to keep my files private, just in case.
As promised, Gus emailed me everything he had thus far.
I spent the first hour reading about Dr. Malone and watching a few videos of the speeches he gave.
Definitely the man calling himself Greenfield, albeit lacking the facial scars.
I also noted the mockery in the comments section, some of it harsh, despite his compelling arguments.
I found the images of the skeleton he’d found in a cave intriguing.
The size of it was definitely in dinosaur territory.
The small, scattered bones by the ribcage were quite possibly the remains of its wings.
However, where his story fell apart? His refusal to divulge the location of his find for independent review.
If so confident, why not allow others to confirm?
The articles he’d written, none published in accredited journals, but available online via blogs—many of dubious repute—claimed dragons used to exist but that they’d been wiped out through infighting and because humans hunted them to extinction.
According to Malone, those dragons might have left behind eggs inside volcanoes to await an eruption, the extreme heat supposedly a catalyst for their hatching.
The volcano aspect had me thinking of Erebus. Had he been trying to trigger it into exploding because he thought it might birth a dragon?
I studied the areas of his crime next. Read the official reports, then looked up each location in question and discovered a pattern.
After another hour of cross-referencing, I noticed what should have been an impossible coincidence that led to me almost missing dinner.
Suddenly seeing the time, I ran downstairs to find the captain exiting the galley.
“Noah!” I huffed. “Sorry I’m so late. I got distracted.”
“Apparently,” his dry reply.
“Come with me.” I grabbed him by the hand and dragged him upstairs to my room with him exclaiming as we entered, “Slow down. We’ve got all night.”
“What? Oh. Yeah. Sex will have to wait. I found something.”
Some men might have moped or whined about me changing my mind, but the captain instead glanced at the paper strewn on my bed, floor and desk and stated, “This is about Greenfield.”
“Malone, yes. Turns out he wasn’t just obsessed with dragons. He wanted to bring them back.”
“Kind of hard to bring back something that didn’t exist.”
“Actually, that’s debatable.”
Noah’s mouth rounded. “Wait, you think dragons are real?”
“I think that, like many myths, there is a basis in truth. Likely a dinosaur that didn’t die out during the ice age, but I’m getting off topic. Malone believed dragons laid eggs in volcanoes and that, in order for them to hatch, they needed to be exposed to extreme heat, AKA magma.”
“Are you suggesting he dive-bombed into Erebus because of a delusion?”
“I haven’t figured out that part yet. But here, look.
” I began shuffling pieces of paper and pointing.
“Not long after he was in China, a volcano thought to be permanently dormant, Aibulou, began steaming and fissures opened up near the place he got caught trespassing. In Australia, Mount Napier and Mount Gambier both erupted, despite being inactive for millennia.”
“What about Hawaii? Didn’t he get in trouble there too?”
“No volcanoes erupted during his most recent trip. But…” I shuffled around my papers before yanking out the one I needed. “It did erupt a few years back, and, as it turns out, he was there in the weeks prior for a conference.”
“How the hell did you find that out?”
“Easy. I got Gus to hack the passport office and pull Malone’s trip dates. In the last five years or so, of the three dozen places he’s visited, more than half within weeks, had a dead cone reactivate to some extent. Most just spitting steam, but a few fully erupted.”
“Shouldn’t that be impossible?” asked on a dubious note.
I bit my lip. “That’s what I would have assumed too, but you have to admit, it’s a hell of a coincidence.
Here you have a cryptozoologist who is convinced volcanoes hold dragon eggs and places he visits soon see volcanoes that haven’t been active in more than thirty thousand years or more suddenly go kaboom. ”
“Let’s say he is responsible and has been doing this for years. Don’t you think by now he’d realize there’s no dragons?”
“Or he’s found them and kept them under wraps.” An alternative that didn’t convince Noah.
“In the stories, dragons are the size of cars or bigger. Not exactly easy to hide.”
“You’re assuming they’re born big. Look at any animal on the planet. We start out small and grow as we age. If he captured them as babies, it would be easy to tuck them away until he’s ready to reveal them to the world.”
Looking at Noah’s face, I could tell he didn’t believe me. Hell, I had a hard time believing it myself. However, the more I dug, the more things made sense, but at the same time, also didn’t.
“You think I’m nuts.” My shoulders slumped.
“I think—”
He never finished his sentence because the building began to shake, a quake bigger than the previous ones that led to him grabbing me and forcing us into a crouch where he covered my body with his own.
Soon as the rattling finished, the walkie-talkie at his hip went off.
“All personnel report to central comms.” An alarm went off right after, a strident shriek that demanded evacuation of the building.
“That can’t be good,” I murmured.
“Just protocol for any quakes above a certain range.” Noah drew me to my feet. “Grab your winter gear so you don’t freeze outside.”
“Is the building going to collapse?”
“Doubtful, but just case, everyone has to evacuate until it’s been checked over.”
We weren’t the only ones streaming down the stairs. People, all buzzing with excitement, and little fear, took their time descending. Guess when quakes are a daily occurrence, a bigger one than usual isn’t cause for alarm.
Or was it?
Once we streamed out the main doors, Noah leaned close to murmur. “Stay with the group until the building inspector gives the all clear.”
“Where are you going?”
“To do my job.” A vague statement that could mean a number of things.
My lips pursed as I watched him wade through the people clustering outside Building 155.
“Holy shit. That was a good one,” Joslyn exclaimed, suddenly appearing by my side. “Almost dropped my beer.”
“Perish the thought,” I teased. “Looking around, doesn’t seem like anyone is hurt.” No crying or screaming or panicked rush of people with med kits.
“That cute chef Norris banged his knee, but he’ll survive,” Joslyn laughed.
“Where’s Vernon?” The constantly moving bodies made him impossible to spot.
“That idiot ran towards the perimeter to see if the quake got the ice shelf singing.”
“You can’t be serious?” I exclaimed.
“I tried to stop him, but he told me to not worry, and he’d be back in a few minutes.”
Only he didn’t return in the next twenty, during which three more mini quivers happened.
Despite the order to stay close to Building 155, worry for Vernon led to me leaving the cluster of warm bodies.
I immediately regretted it.
While the sun might be shining, it couldn’t get past the heavy cloud cover that dropped a light snow. The cold wind that whipped it had my whole body tightening. Next assignment better be somewhere toasty warm.
Head tucked, I began trudging, not planning to go far. Noah’s previous warning of sudden whiteout conditions kept me wary.
I spotted a few folks out and about, two of them kneeling to examine something on the ground.
A fissure, I noticed, as I slogged past. The snow began falling slightly harder and I debated turning back when I heard it.
The singing. Not my first time hearing the wail, and yet for some reason, it sounded much more haunting than usual.
Visibility worsened, but knowing Vernon wouldn’t be far, I kept going, and sure enough, found Vernon, microphone out, recording the arctic melody.
“There you are,” I shouted. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Isn’t it beautiful?” he exclaimed, turning his shining expression on me. “It’s like you can almost hear words.”
“Are they saying ‘it’s cold, get your ass inside’?”
He laughed. “No. If anything, it’s singing ‘free me’.”
The shiver that went through me had nothing to do with the temperature. “I don’t hear any lyrics.”
“You have to really listen to it. Close your eyes and clear your mind.” Vernon mimed his instructions, head tilted back, a beatific grin on his face.
Despite my trepidation, I did the same. Eyes shut against the stinging snow. Wiping my thoughts clean, though? That I struggled with.
I doubted Vernon actually heard a voice. As for his claim the snow and ice sang ‘free me’, most likely he’d listened to the residents of this place one time too many and he ended up imagining—
Free. Me.
My eyes shot open.
Free. Me.
The words repeated, and I swung my head left and right. No one stood nearby, and Vernon remained slack-jawed in wonder.
Free. Me. Servant. I. Tire. Of. Waiting.
Properly spooked, I grabbed Vernon’s arm. “Time to get inside.”
“Sure. I should have enough recorded. I wonder if anyone from the kitchen smuggled out some hot cocoa.”
Off he sauntered, but I followed more slowly, my gaze flipping in the direction of the mountain hidden by the falling snow to where Erebus loomed, also invisible but more so because of dense fog.
Another tremor hit, violent enough I crouched and braced with one hand. It lasted longer than the others, and when it ceased, I couldn’t help but think perhaps I should leave this place.
Me and everyone else here.
Before it’s too late.