Chapter 3.
Alek
Antarctica
After a few seconds in the water, Alek Andrich is more afraid than she’s ever been in her life. Her thermal parka is waterlogged, dragging her down. Cold knifes through her suit. Her fingers stop obeying.
She tries to see past whales that look to be twenty, maybe thirty feet long.
A low pulse rolls through the water. Not a whale.
Not natural. The whales don’t fit any plan she can imagine.
Which means no one’s in control out here.
But she doesn’t have time for that. She starts looking for others who’ve been thrown out of the Zodiac with her.
And she’s still looking for Hannah.
We’ll get through this together, Alek had told her friend. I promised her.
Already she can see shapes floating face down up ahead—dark parkas, limbs, maybe people. Are they dead? She can’t tell. She tries to say a quick prayer for them anyway. But her lips are heavy and stiff.
She tries to scream Hannah’s name.
But her tongue is already too thick from the cold. Her lungs feel frozen, like she’s trying to breathe through glass.
The scream dies in her throat.
She starts to sink. She’s going under.
This is it.
Thoughts come too fast, out of order—like her mind is dumping files from across her life as it starts to power down.
She can’t help it. She thinks of her little sister, back when she used to call Alek the Ice Queen, from an animated film they used to watch together. It was about sisterhood. Like theirs.
Alek hadn’t been able to save her sister when a bomb hit her school, but she’s going to save Hannah before she freezes to death. She just has to find Hannah first.
Don’t you dare die on me, Hannah Wagner.
Alek finally spots a few of the others swimming toward the capsized Zodiac, looking for something—anything—to hold on to. The whales keep splashing around them, as if this is some game for them.
She doesn’t know what orcas do to a human swimming near them, but that hardly matters. It’s the water that’s going to get her first.
There’s no way out of this. No escape she can imagine.
Then she sees Hannah’s red hair about fifty yards away. Hannah’s head is bobbing face down in the ruffled sea. Alek’s body wants to turn toward the Zodiac, toward anything that floats. Instead, she turns toward Hannah.
But between her and the girl another whale surfaces, the orca now swimming directly toward her, too big, too fast. Alek is about to be hit.
“Please no,” Alek whispers.
Nobody hears her.