Chapter 15
fifteen
Turned out sleeping mere feet from Elliot night after night wasn’t easy.
Go figure.
She dreamed of his mouth on hers, his hands roaming her body, waking her with a heat that had nothing to do with the station’s heating system and everything to do with the man sleeping barely three feet away.
She’d jerked awake at 4:47 AM according to her phone, pulse racing and skin flushed, acutely aware of every sound Elliot made in the bunk below—the rustle of his sleeping bag, the soft exhale of his breathing, the occasional shift of weight that made the metal frame creak.
The dreams had been vivid enough to leave her aching, and she’d spent the next hour staring at the ceiling, trying to convince herself it was just proximity and adrenaline and the strange intimacy of sharing such a small space.
It wasn’t working.
And now here she was, nursing her coffee in the mess hall, trying to ignore the wind hammering the station, its banshee shriek echoing inside her skull.
The food on her tray sat untouched. Koos hummed cheerfully from the kitchen as he prepared something that smelled like eggs and bacon, though she was pretty sure it was neither.
She took another sip of coffee, grimacing at the bitter taste. Even the caffeine wasn’t helping her mood. “How are you always so damn cheerful?”
“Life’s too short not to be,” he replied, shoveling food into his mouth with gusto. “Especially down here, where the cold would kill you in minutes if you stepped outside naked.”
She looked toward the window as it rattled ominously, as if the continent were putting an exclamation point on his statement.
The storm had been going for thirty-six hours now, and the walls seemed to be closing in with each passing minute.
She’d always been someone who needed movement, needed the open sky above her head and solid ground beneath her feet.
Being trapped in this metal box while the wind screamed like a living thing outside made her skin crawl.
She watched the others shuffle in for breakfast. Dr. Moretti was first, shoulders hunched and face drawn.
He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, the shadows under his eyes deep enough to store supplies for winter.
He nodded vaguely in their direction before slumping into a chair at the far end of the table, staring into his coffee cup as if it contained the secrets of the universe—or possibly just confirmation that life was meaningless.
The mess hall door swung open again, and Camille sauntered in, looking far too put-together for 7 AM in Antarctica. Her hair was perfectly styled, makeup flawless.
Seriously, who even brought makeup to a research station?
Noah Braddock followed Camille. He nodded curtly at the room in general before taking a seat at the opposite end of the table from her.
They didn’t look at each other directly, but Rue didn’t miss the subtle glance they exchanged or the way Camille’s fingers lingered a moment too long on her coffee mug when Noah’s gaze swept past her.
Interesting.
For two people pretending not to know each other, their body language screamed familiarity. The kind that involved significantly less clothing.
Her suspicions deepened when Noah absently touched the collar of his thermal shirt, revealing a faint reddish mark at the base of his neck that looked suspiciously like a bite mark. A matching shade of lipstick clung to Camille’s coffee mug.
The grad students came in next, and one look at Tyler had her earlier concerns about her own sleepless night evaporating. The kid looked terrible—face pale and drawn, eyes bloodshot and puffy. He shuffled rather than bounced, his usual enthusiastic energy completely drained.
Mia hovered beside him, her hand occasionally brushing his arm as if to steady him. “Maybe you should go back to bed,” she murmured.
“I’m fine,” Tyler insisted, but his voice came out raspy.
“You don’t look fine,” Rue said. “You look like you’ve been hit by a snowcat.”
Tyler attempted a smile that looked more like a grimace. “Just didn’t sleep well. Bad dreams.”
“About falling into the crevasse?”
“Something like that.” He rubbed at his eyes, which only seemed to make the redness worse.
Mia guided him to a chair. “He was tossing and turning all night.”
“Ah,” Koos said with a wave of his huge hand. “He’s just got the big eye. Everyone gets it their first time on the ice.”
“The big eye?” Mia asked.
“Antarctica messes with your circadian rhythm,” Rue explained. “The old hands—what they call OAEs, Old Antarctic Explorers—call that insomnia the big eye.”
“That’s me,” Koos said, “OAE to the bone.”
The joke earned a laugh, but Rue’s attention stayed on Tyler. His skin looked sallow in the harsh fluorescent light, and he sagged in the chair as if holding himself upright cost too much. A prickle of unease crawled up her spine.
“Tyler, maybe you should see Dr. Volkova. With everyone crammed into these tiny quarters, the last thing we need is some bug spreading through the team.”
“I’m not sick,” Tyler protested weakly just as the doctor in question entered the room. “Just tired.”
“Not sleeping well can compromise your immune system,” Irina said, clearly having caught the tail end of their exchange. Her clinical gaze assessed Tyler. “You should come to the med bay after breakfast. A quick examination will rule out any concerns.”
“Good idea,” Rue agreed, relieved that an actual medical doctor was taking over.
She could set a bone and start an IV if the situation called for it, but night terrors were not in her wheelhouse of medical knowledge.
“Better safe than sorry down here. And if nothing else, maybe Irina can give you something to help you sleep.”
The doctor nodded. “If it’s warranted.”
Tyler rubbed a hand down his face, then exhaled hard. “Yeah, okay. After breakfast.”
Rue took another sip of her coffee, grimacing at the now-lukewarm bitterness. She knew Elliot wasn’t in the room now—he’d gone off somewhere private to check in with WSW—so she could go back to the room for ten minutes of blissful solitude…
But the double doors to the mess hall swung open with a bang, startling everyone. But it was Noah’s reaction that drew Rue’s attention. She’d spent her entire life around soldiers, and she knew
“Dear God,” Camille said, pressing her ring-studded hand to her chest as Dr. Keene burst into the room, his eyes bright with manic energy. His hair stuck up at odd angles, and dark smudges stained his lab coat—whether from coffee or something else was anyone’s guess.
“Extraordinary progress!” he announced to the room at large, not bothering with anything as mundane as a greeting. “The cellular activity has increased exponentially overnight. The viability of the samples exceeds all theoretical parameters!”
Rue’s stomach clenched. She glanced at Tyler, expecting Dr. Keene to notice his student’s condition, but the scientist didn’t even look at the pale, exhausted grad student. Instead, his gaze locked onto her with laser focus.
“Ms. Bristow!” He charged toward her table, weaving between chairs with surprising agility for someone so normally clumsy. “We need to collect more samples immediately. The storm is beginning to abate?—”
“This is Category One weather. No travel until further notice,” she cut in, already rising from her seat. She couldn’t do this right now. Not with her head pounding and her nerves frayed from lack of sleep.
“But the window of opportunity?—”
“Is nonexistent until the weather clears,” she finished, gathering her half-eaten breakfast onto her tray. “Whatever’s in the ice has been there for millions of years. A few more days won’t change anything.”
Dr. Keene’s expression shifted to the determined look she’d come to dread—the one that meant he was about to launch into a lecture about scientific imperatives and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
“I need to check the weather reports,” Rue said quickly, already backing toward the exit. “And… review the emergency protocols. You know, expedition leader stuff.”
She dumped her tray at the cleanup station and made for the door, ignoring Dr. Keene as he called after her.
“But Ms. Bristow, you don’t understand the significance of what we’ve found! The microbial structures are?—”
The door swung shut behind her, cutting off whatever revelation he’d been about to share.
Rue exhaled, shoulders slumping as the tension in her body released.
She knew she was being unprofessional, but she just couldn’t face another argument about going outside in conditions that would kill them all in minutes.
She wasn’t a coward. Far from it. But Antarctica demanded respect, and the storm raging outside was the kind that stripped flesh from bone. No discovery was worth that risk.
The corridor stretched empty before her, the overhead lights flickering slightly with each powerful gust that hit the station.
Instead of going back to her tiny bunk, she headed toward the small observation lounge—really just a glorified closet with a window facing east so the people who stayed over the long, dark winter could see the first sunrise of the year.
She settled into the single chair, drawing her knees up to her chest as she stared out at the swirling whiteness.
Maren was here just a year ago. Or at least she was supposed to have been, but Rue had seen no sign of her. Which, she supposed, made sense. Other teams had come and gone since Maren’s. All of her things had most likely been cleared out and given to her family.
Still, Rue couldn’t shake the disappointment. She’d hoped…she didn’t know what she’d hoped. To find a clue as to what happened? Or, at the very least, a sense of her friend’s life in those last few weeks.
But there was nothing here.
The door to the observation lounge opened with a soft hiss. Rue didn’t need to turn around to know it was Elliot—she recognized his footsteps, the particular rhythm of his breathing, even the subtle scent of his soap that somehow cut through the station’s recycled air.
“Found you,” he said quietly, closing the door behind him.
“Wasn’t hiding.” She kept her gaze fixed on the swirling whiteness outside, the storm a living entity that clawed at the station’s protective shell. “Well, maybe I was. Just needed space to breathe.”
The chair was designed for one, but Elliot perched on its arm anyway, his thigh pressing against her shoulder.
She should have moved to give him more room, but she couldn’t bring herself to break the contact.
His warmth seeped through the layers of their clothing, steadying her in a way she wasn’t ready to examine too closely.
“Dr. Keene cornered me in the hallway,” he said. “He seems to think you’re avoiding him.”
“Guilty as charged.” She rested her chin on her knees. “I’m tired of telling him we can’t go outside until the storm passes. It’s like he doesn’t understand that Antarctica will kill you without a second thought.”
Elliot didn’t respond immediately. The silence stretched between them, comfortable despite the tension that had been building since they’d arrived. When he finally spoke, his voice was so low she almost missed it beneath the howl of the wind.
“I can’t get through to WSW.”
Four simple words that changed everything. Rue’s head snapped up, finding his face drawn with concern, blue eyes shadowed with something that looked dangerously like fear.
“What do you mean, you can’t get through?” Her heart kicked against her ribs.
“I’ve been trying for days.”
“Well, then the storm must be?—”
“It’s not the storm.” Elliot ran a hand through his hair, leaving it standing in spikes that would have been adorable in any other context. “I’ve tried every frequency, every protocol. Nothing’s getting out.”
“That’s impossible.” But even as she said it, cold dread pooled in her stomach. “The emergency channels?—”
“Blocked. All of them.” His jaw tightened. “Someone’s jamming our communications. Deliberately.”