Chapter 14
fourteen
“Listen, I tell you true,” Koos boomed, his hands spread wide for emphasis. “The penguin would not leave. He stood there, flapping his wings, guarding the outhouse like it was his throne. And there I was, stuck on the bucket, trousers round my ankles, waiting for the beast to show mercy.”
Rue’s laughter rang down the corridor, bright and unrestrained. Someone else groaned, someone else howled with delight.
Elliot was supposed to be with them, cleaning dishes after dinner, but his nerves buzzed too hard for jokes.
He slipped out of the kitchen with an excuse of needing the bathroom.
Rue caught his eye as she left. She knew he was up to something.
But that was the point. He had to find out what the hell was going on at this station.
So while half the group was in the kitchen cleaning up, and Dr. Keene and his students hunched over microscopes, examining the samples they’d managed to extract before Tyler’s spectacular fall into the crevasse, he was going to use their distraction to his advantage.
He slipped into the residential wing. The corridor stretched ahead of him, lined with those cramped quarters that barely qualified as rooms.
Starting with Dr. Keene and the grad students seemed safest. Their room was unlocked, trusting in the way of academics who’d never learned to assume the worst of people. Elliot envied that innocence even as he exploited it.
Tyler’s bunk was a disaster zone of camera equipment, notebooks filled with terrible poetry, and energy bar wrappers.
The kid’s laptop sat open, password-protected but displaying a screensaver of what looked like his girlfriend back home.
Nothing suspicious, just the detritus of an enthusiastic twenty-something.
Mia’s space was more organized—textbooks on glaciology, a small stuffed penguin that made him smile despite himself, and a journal filled with meticulous field notes. Her handwriting was precise, recording everything from temperature fluctuations to Tyler’s near-constant complaints about the food.
Dr. Keene’s belongings spoke of a man who lived for his work: research papers covered in margin notes, sample containers labeled with codes that meant nothing to anyone but a professional scientist.
He moved on to Irina’s room next. Unlike the students’, her door was locked.
Interesting. He slipped a thin metal tool from his pocket and had the simple mechanism open in seconds.
Her quarters were immaculate, almost suspiciously so.
No personal photos, no trinkets, nothing that suggested a real person lived here.
Just clothing precisely folded and a medical bag tucked beneath her bunk.
He rifled through it carefully, replacing everything exactly as he found it.
Standard field supplies, some prescription medications with names he didn’t recognize, and a small leather case containing surgical instruments that gleamed under the harsh fluorescent light.
Nothing obviously incriminating, but the clinical detachment of her space set his teeth on edge.
Camille’s quarters were next. Her door wasn’t locked, which surprised him.
The tiny space had been transformed into a bizarre luxury pod, with silk scarves draped over the harsh lighting to soften it, expensive toiletries arranged on every available surface, and what appeared to be actual Egyptian cotton sheets on the narrow bunk.
A half-empty bottle of bourbon sat on the small shelf, alongside a dog-eared romance novel with a shirtless man on the cover.
He picked through her belongings with methodical care.
Designer clothes, a satellite phone that appeared to be non-functional in their current location, a leather-bound journal filled with what looked like financial calculations rather than personal reflections.
Nothing explicitly connecting her to Praetorian, but nothing to rule it out either.
Noah’s quarters yielded more promising results.
Beneath a stack of neatly folded thermal underwear, Elliot found a small black notebook filled with what appeared to be coordinates, times, and cryptic notations.
He snapped photos with his phone, careful to leave everything exactly as he found it.
The man’s quarters were spartan, with military-grade equipment tucked alongside geological instruments.
A half-hidden case contained what looked like communication equipment that definitely wasn’t standard issue for academic field researchers.
And, interestingly, a red silk thong that almost certainly belonged to Camille Middleton, judging by the matching bra he’d seen in her quarters. So those two were sleeping together. Information to file away for later.
Koos’ room was like the man himself – boisterous even in stillness.
Colorful posters from various research stations plastered the walls, technical manuals for every piece of equipment in the facility stacked in teetering piles, and an impressive collection of small carved animals – penguins, seals, whales – lined his shelf.
The man had clearly spent many seasons in Antarctica, his quarters accumulated with the souvenirs of a life at the edge of the world.
But still nothing that set off alarm bells.
Elliot closed the door carefully behind him, leaving everything as he’d found it.
Moretti’s quarters were next. The hydrologist lived with monkish austerity—bed neatly made, a pair of boots and a pair of slippers lined up beneath the bunk, research notes stacked square on the desk. No clutter, no indulgence, no sign of personality.
Except for one.
On the nightstand, a single framed photograph. Moretti, younger, his arm wrapped protectively around a dark-haired woman with a luminous smile. His wife, Elliot guessed. The glass was scratched, the frame dented, as though it had traveled with him through years of deployments and expeditions.
Elliot stood over it longer than he should have.
Something about the photo itched at the back of his mind.
It was perfectly normal—hell, expected even—for the guy to carry a picture of his wife, but everything else in the room was so proper, it all almost felt staged.
This photo was the one piece of authenticity.
But he couldn’t get hug up on it now. He was running out of time, and he still had one room left to search.
He rifled through the desk: research journals filled with hydrological data, technical specifications for water sampling equipment, and field reports dating back several years.
All exactly what he’d expect from a career researcher.
Which was why the slip of paper tucked into a water-systems manual stopped him cold.
A printout of a news article, dated six months ago:
“Research Team Presumed Dead in Antarctic Accident.”
The article was brief, clinical in the way news reports were when they dealt with tragedy in remote places. Last summer, a research team from Thwaites Station suffered a “catastrophic equipment failure” while out in the field that resulted in the loss of all six team members.
Why would Moretti have this?
A noise from the hallway froze him in place. Footsteps. Approaching from the direction of the common area.
Fuck.
His pulse spiked as he folded the article carefully and tucked it back exactly where he’d found it. He eased the desk drawer closed with infinite care, every muscle in his body coiled for action. The footsteps paused outside Moretti’s door.
The room had no other exit, no convenient hiding spot. If whoever was out there tried the door and found it unlocked, he’d be caught red-handed rifling through another man’s belongings. His cover story—lost and looking for the bathroom—would crumble under even casual scrutiny.
But then the footsteps continued down the hall.
He exhaled the breath caught in his lungs and waited for another handful of seconds to be sure the hallway was clear before stepping out. Too close. He’d already been away from the others longer than was smart. Every second stretched the risk.
He should cut his losses. Head back, play it safe.
But Jess’s room was right there. And he’d more than once caught her whispering with Moretti. If they were hiding something, he might find clues in her personal space.
He weighed it the way he always did—pros and cons, risks and gains.
Pro: She was cagey, nervous, and if she had something to hide, her quarters would be the place to find it.
Con: If she caught him, he’d burn whatever trust he still had with her and maybe with the rest of the so-called crew.
Another con: Rue would kill him for pushing his luck.
But the itch in his gut told him there was more going on here than anyone admitted. And the itch never lied.
A quick peek. In and out. Just enough to scratch the suspicion before it drove him crazy.
He stepped toward her door?—
And nearly collided with her as it swung open.
Jess blinked at him, green hair standing up in defiance of gravity. Her eyes widened, then narrowed. “Looking for something?”
His mind sprinted through a dozen excuses—wrong hallway, lost his way, bathroom again—but none would hold up. Keep it simple.
“Yeah, you, actually. I was hoping to send a message back home.”
“The storm’s blocking communications,” she said flatly, crossing her arms. Her fingers tapped against her bicep in an anxious rhythm.
What did she have to be nervous about? Was it the storm or something else?
He still didn’t fully trust these supposed summer crew hold-overs. Rue hadn’t known about them, and their story seemed off. He needed to get back in touch with his brother and see if WSW was able to put together dossiers on them.
“Right. When do you think we’ll have communications back?” he asked.
“Hard to say. Could be hours. Could be days.” She shrugged and pulled her door shut, testing the knob to make sure it was locked. “Interference happens a lot this time of year. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
She eyed for a long beat, then scoffed as she turned to walk away.
Elliot watched her go, the knot in his stomach tightening. That went about as well as sticking his hand in a hornet’s nest. Jess was definitely hiding something—the locked door, the nervous finger-tapping, the convenient “communications blackout” that prevented him from contacting WSW.
He glanced at his watch. He’d been gone too long already. Time to get back before someone else came looking for him.
But first, he had to contact WSW. The storm wouldn’t affect his own personal equipment.
Moving quietly, Elliot slipped into his and Rue’s room and locked the door.
He retrieved his secure communications equipment from beneath a false bottom in his duffle bag and powered up the specialized transmitter.
The device was WSW’s latest model—designed to piggyback on existing satellite networks, encrypt data into innocuous-looking packets, and route through multiple nodes to avoid detection.
If anything could punch through interference, this would.
The boot sequence completed, and he entered his authentication codes. The system initialized, scanning available frequencies and attempting to establish a connection. Minutes passed as the device cycled through options, searching for any available pathway to the outside world.
Nothing.
He frowned, adjusting settings to broaden the search parameters. He switched to emergency protocols that would normally override any standard interference, methods that had worked in active war zones and during natural disasters.
Still nothing.
He tried a direct satellite connection next, pointing the device toward the small window. The system searched, recalibrated, searched again. The loading icon spun endlessly before returning an error:
CONNECTION FAILED.