CHAPTER TWENTY THREE #2
"You have thirty seconds," Banner called. "Clear out. All of you. Or we find out how quickly someone can bleed out in the cold."
"Dr. Banner," Sheila called back, keeping her voice steady. "You know we can't do that."
"Then his death is on your hands."
Cooper's breathing came rapid and shallow through the wire. Sheila watched his hands, remembering how they'd practiced this—the self-defense moves she'd taught him, just in case.
"The frozen one showed you the way, didn't he?" Sheila said, trying to keep Banner talking. "Showed you how to preserve knowledge through time."
"Don't mock me. You're not a believer."
Come on, James, Sheila thought, creeping closer, keeping the pair of men in her sights. You're gonna have to help me out.
"It's going to be alright, James," she called. "Just remember what we talked about."
"Don't play games!" Banner shouted. "I'll kill him—you know I will!"
"You're okay, James," Sheila continued, ignoring Banner. "Just stay calm and stick to what we talked about."
"What the hell are you—" Banner began, but before he could finish, Cooper attacked just as Sheila had taught him to do: elbow to solar plexus, heel to instep, twist away from the blade. Banner staggered, his grip loosening just enough. Cooper broke free and dove aside.
Sheila fired, but Banner was already running for the cave entrance, disappearing into darkness.
"All units converge!" Sheila's voice carried rage and command in equal measure as she gave chase, her flashlight beam bouncing wildly across uneven ground. "Suspect heading east into the cave!"
The cave mouth swallowed Sheila like a cold throat, darkness rushing in to replace starlight.
Her flashlight beam caught crystalline formations that sparkled like frozen tears, while her boots crunched against limestone grit that had waited eons to record her passage.
Somewhere ahead, Banner's footsteps echoed off ancient stone, each sound multiplied by the cave's acoustics until it seemed like a dozen men fled through the darkness.
But Sheila knew better. She'd studied his patterns, walked through the chambers where he'd left his frozen offerings to time.
The mineral tang in the air grew stronger as she pushed deeper, reminding her of other caves, other victims arranged with ceremonial precision in spaces chosen for their preservative properties.
"Dr. Banner," she called, letting her voice carry through the tunnels. The cave caught her words and threw them back, distorted by stone and distance. "Or should I call you Professor Whitman? James Whitman, from Berkeley?"
The footsteps ahead faltered for just a moment.
"I've seen your work," she continued, ducking under a low arch that sparkled with moisture.
"The care you take with each preservation.
The attention to mineral content, to temperature, to ceremonial positioning.
" Her flashlight beam caught a fork in the passage.
Without hesitation, she took the right branch—the one that led deeper, colder.
"The frozen one taught you well, didn't he? "
"You don't understand." His voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, the cave's acoustics making location impossible. "This isn't about death. It's about preservation. Protection."
Sheila moved carefully now, testing each step. The temperature had dropped significantly, her breath visible in the flashlight's beam. Ice formations grew more numerous, more elaborate, like frozen waterfalls caught in mid-flow.
"I understand more than you think," she called back.
"You're creating vessels—maintaining consciousness through time.
Preserving minds you think are worthy of surviving centuries.
" She swept her light across crystalline walls that caught and fractured the beam into a thousand points of cold fire.
"But tell me, Professor—did the frozen one really speak to you?
Or was that just the isolation, the thin air, the desperate need to believe your work had meaning? "
A laugh echoed through the darkness—bitter, hollow, touched with something that might have been grief.
"You think I'm insane. That I imagined it all.
" His voice was closer now. "But you've seen the chambers.
The mineral content, the perfect conditions.
Ancient wisdom preserved in ice and stone, waiting for those who understand. "
Sheila moved faster, more confident now. The air grew colder with each step, carrying that specific mineral scent she'd come to associate with his work. Up ahead, a larger chamber opened like a mouth full of crystal teeth.
She knew, with the certainty that came from understanding predators, that he would be there. In the coldest chamber, where mineral-rich water had worked its patient magic for millennia. The perfect place for his next preservation.
The perfect place to end this.
"I've seen the chambers," she said, her voice carrying into darkness thick with ancient silence.
"I've seen what you've done to them. Kane.
Mitchell. Harper. Minds worthy of preservation, you said.
But tell me, Professor..." She paused at the chamber's entrance, ice crystals catching her light like fallen stars. "What makes you worthy of choosing?"
No answer.
The cave's darkness pressed against Sheila's senses like velvet soaked in ice water.
Her flashlight beam caught crystalline formations that seemed to twist and dance at the edge of vision, their facets holding secrets older than human memory.
The silence felt absolute, broken only by the steady drip of mineral-rich water that had shaped these chambers through geological time.
"Professor?" Her voice scattered off ancient walls, returning as whispers of itself. Each step carried her deeper into the consuming cold, into spaces where the air itself felt thick with age and mineral tang.
The great chamber opened before her like a cathedral carved by patient water, its ceiling lost to darkness despite her light.
Ice formations caught her beam and shattered it into countless points of cold fire, creating an illusion of stars trapped in stone.
The temperature here had dropped significantly—this was where the cave's breath pooled, where winter never surrendered its hold.
Her light found him at last, and the sight stole her breath more surely than the chamber's chill.
Whitman knelt in the center of the space as if in prayer, ceremonial robes flowing around him like frozen wings.
The garments' intricate beadwork caught her light and threw it back in patterns that spoke of ancient wisdom and terrible purpose.
His face held the serene acceptance of a man who had found his destiny in darkness.
"You can still walk away, Sheriff." His voice carried the weight of centuries.
"Let me complete the cycle here, where the minerals sing in the stone.
" He spread his arms, the robes rippling like water turned to crystal.
"I promise I'll stay, let the cold take me slowly.
Future generations will find me, understand what I've learned.
The frozen one's wisdom will live on through time itself. "
"You need help, Professor." Sheila kept her weapon trained on him, though her hands ached with cold that seemed to seep into her bones. "This isn't preservation—it's illness. The voices you heard, the wisdom you think you're protecting... it's delusion born of isolation and thin air."
"Delusion?" He withdrew something from the robes—a bone awl. "I've preserved minds that understood the importance of cultural memory. Kane, Mitchell, Harper—they'll guide future civilizations when humanity is ready to hear their wisdom."
The awl moved to his own neck with the practiced grace of ceremony. "Now it's my turn to join them, to add my understanding to the library of frozen consciousness. The mineral content here is perfect—better even than the chamber where I found the frozen one. My preservation will be absolute."
"The frozen one chose you to carry on this work," Sheila said quickly, playing to his delusions while inching closer. "To preserve knowledge that humanity wasn't ready for. But what if you're meant to do more than just join the others? What if you're meant to guide future generations to them?"
The awl dipped lower as confusion warred with conviction on his face. "Guide them?"
"You alone understand the importance of these preservation chambers. The mineral content, the exact temperatures needed." Another careful step closer. "If you damage your brain now, who will show them the way?"
His grip on the awl loosened just slightly—a moment of hesitation that contained universes of doubt.
Sheila moved with the fluid grace of a fighter, her body remembering lessons learned in darker places than this.
The awl clattered against stone as she struck, spinning away into shadows while they grappled on the chamber floor.
Whitman fought with the strength of madness, but Sheila had the weight of justice and training behind her. The ceremonial robes tangled around them as they struggled, beadwork catching the dropped flashlight's beam and throwing fractured patterns across the chamber's crystalline walls.
Footsteps thundered through the cave system—Finn and the others, following her trail into darkness.
Their lights joined hers, turning the chamber into a chaos of shadow and brilliance as they helped subdue the struggling killer.
The ceremonial robes spread across the chamber floor like spilled ink, their patterns now just evidence rather than sacred vestments.
"You don't understand," Whitman gasped as they secured his hands. "The frozen one chose me. Showed me the way... showed me how knowledge could survive unchanged through centuries of darkness."
"The only thing showing you the way now," Sheila said as they pulled him to his feet, "is a road back to reality."
The gathered lights caught his face—a man lost between delusion and despair, his grand mission of preservation ended in a chamber that would hold neither his body nor his twisted wisdom.
The ceremonial robes hung heavy with defeat as they led him away, his whispers about ancient knowledge fading into echoes that the cave would hold forever.
Behind them, water continued its patient work, mineral-rich drops falling like time itself into darkness that had waited eons for this moment and would wait eons more for whatever came next.
The chamber's cold seemed to follow them out, as if the cave itself understood that this story of preservation and madness had finally reached its end.