by Ann Gimpel
I reached the end of our prison fast. A jumble of rocks—that were really stones and not bodies, this time—angled upward. I tested one. It held. The next two rattled downward the moment I put any weight on them. Shit. Crap. I’d need to watch myself if I didn’t want to end up with a twisted ankle—or worse.
I’d never wanted out of anywhere more than I wanted out of the chromium dig site, but I forced myself to slow down and assess the tangle of rocks. Some of them were big enough to do a lot of damage if the whole pile avalanched. I moved to the side of the rockfall, thinking perhaps it would be more stable than the middle.
The waterfall sounded different. I angled my head, trying to hear better. Had it changed course? Was it threatening the cocoon I’d made for Johan? Minutes ticked past as I listened. I was on the verge of going back to check when I sorted musical notes from the characteristic rush of water.
Crap! Had I started hallucinating? The specter of my head injury rose to taunt me. The central nervous system could appear fine and go south really fast if pressure—or bleeding—built up where it didn’t belong.
I scrunched my eyes shut and listened again. This time, the notes stood out. Single chimes running up and down the scale. Fear made my teeth chatter. Or maybe it was the cold. I had to be hallucinating, and it didn’t bode well for my future. No way a musical instrument could be within a hundred miles of here.
Maybe it’s the Russians, and they set up a camp on the beach.
Impossible. They’d want to be gone as quickly as possible. Before some other ship showed up and hailed them. The Darya and its research staff had been a permanent fixture in Antarctic waters for months. We’d become friendly with several other research expeditions.
Surely, the Russians knew as much.
The music wrapped around me, soothing and urging action, but it was just as impossible as Russians having set up shop outside the chromium dig site. Determined to get outside, see the lay of the land and what I had to work with, I ignored the music and started to climb.
Narrowing my focus to one step at a time, I tested each one before committing my weight to it. It was maybe a hundred feet to the top, not far at all. I was close. Only half a dozen steps from victory when a roaring filled my ears, and I knew the precarious pile of rocks had let go.
It took a moment before I started to fall. Amid crashing and creaking and pounding and choking dust, I tumbled into darkness so profound no light penetrated. Instead of hitting with enough force to break every bone in my body, I floated the last few feet.
Floated and touched down gently.
That freaked me out more than falling and dying on the spot would have.
And how the hell could I have fallen farther than the hundred feet from the cavern floor to the top of the rock pile?
I should have panicked, but my first thoughts were for Johan. He must have heard the rock avalanche, and he’d assume the worst. That I was dead, buried beneath tons of rubble.
Without me, there was no hope for him, either.
“Hang on,” I yelled. He wouldn’t hear me, but maybe, just maybe, he’d pick up on some random vibration of knowledge that I wasn’t dead.
Not yet, anyway.
Chapter 2
I got to my feet, cursing my burned-out headlamp. My eyes were useless, so I extended my arms in front of me, determined to find a way out. Part of me—hell, most of me—was convinced I was doomed, but I muffled my inner pessimist until I’d done everything I could.
Staring into the blackness, I willed some sliver of light from somewhere, anywhere, to pierce it. My gloved hand touched something. A wall studded with sharp objects? I didn’t push hard, afraid of another unstable stack of rocks, but I worked my way along a barrier of some kind. As I moved, I realized it was warmer down here. A whole lot warmer than it had been above.
Another impossibility. It was tough to estimate how far I’d actually fallen, but even if I’d tumbled five hundred feet, which seemed unlikely, there should only be a few degree difference between where I’d begun and here.
I was starting to sweat, which made no more sense than anything else. I stopped moving and took stock of my body. It actually felt stronger than when I was scaling the jumble of rocks.
“Erin!” The word bounced off everything, reverberating all around me.
I cupped my hands around my mouth to project my voice upward. “I’m fine.”
“You can’t be.”
“I am. Aw crap, Johan. You moved. You probably fucked up your leg again.”
“I didn’t. I was careful. It stopped hurting, and I feel stronger.”
I closed my teeth over my lower lip and bit hard enough to hurt, so I wouldn’t lecture him about leaving the nest I’d created. Protection that would have wrung a few more hours out of his life—if he’d remained where I left him.
“I’ll do my damnedest to get back up there.”
“Do not take risks on my account. You know how stupid that would be.”
I waited, but he was done talking. I could only imagine how much dragging himself seventy-odd feet to the end of the cavern had cost him. He only thought he felt stronger. It had to be an illusion borne of wishful thinking, pain, and a buttload of adrenaline.
“Did your dig have a second level?” I hung on, heart thudding against my chest. If he and the team had excavated down here, it meant ladders or a series of ledges with ropes.
“No.” Johan hesitated before a string of words emerged. “I took readings and found nothing except solid earth beneath the cavern. Where you are should not be there. How is it you did not injure yourself in the fall?”
“I have no idea.”
“Can you see this?”
I tilted my head back, staring upward. Impossibly far above me, a light winked on. “Yes.”
“I am going to drop a flashlight. Try to catch it. It may not survive otherwise.”
“All right. Ready.” I kept my gaze glued on the light as it plummeted downward. The same ground cushion or other weird geothermal phenomena that had halted my fall, did the same for the flashlight. I scooped it easily from the air and swung it in an arc, examining where I was.
“Got it,” I yelled.
Breath stuttered in my throat. Crystals surrounded me, thousands of them. I was in a circular space lined with uneven crystalline formations. They reflected every shade of the rainbow as I played the flashlight over them. Were they the source of the heat? I loosened the zipper down the front of my suit and pushed my hood back.
“Erin?”
“Yup. Still here. This place is incredible. A geologist’s paradise.”
“Tell me later. You are at least a hundred feet down. Do you see a way out?”
“Hang on.”
Now that I had a light, I made a quick transit of the space. It wasn’t very big. Back in my not-so-idle youth, I’d enjoyed free climbing. One spot had enough nubs and knobs I thought I could make it back to where Johan was.
“I’m going to try to climb out of here.”
“Odds?”
I smiled at the scientific detachment in that one word. We played odds in medicine too, but even decent percentage points in your favor were a disappointment if you happened to be one of the 10 percent who didn’t respond to a particular intervention.
“I honestly don’t know. They’d be better without these clunky boots, but I’d be worse than a fool to leave them behind.” I glanced at my bulky polar footwear. No laces, or I’d have tried tying them together and looped them over a shoulder.
“Go for it,” he called down to me. “I will attempt to locate a rope. We had a supply chest in here.”
“Stay put,” I screamed.
“Erin. My leg is better. Your job right now is to climb. Do not worry about me.”
His leg couldn’t be better. Better would take weeks.
Yeah, and I should be dead. Falling a hundred feet should have done me in, but here I was. This was not the time or place to think too hard or too deeply about anything.
Johan had a good mind. Once we got out of this, we’d establish what had actually happened.
My eyes opened wider. Somewhere along the way, I’d started expecting both of us to survive. How had that happened when I’d been dead certain our lives could be measured in hours, not days?
“Everything will keep,” I lectured myself. Answers wouldn’t be forthcoming. Not in the bottom of this pit.
I removed my heavy gloves and attached their lanyards to my suit. No way I could climb with them on. Pushing everything but the path beckoning to me aside, I attached the flashlight to my suit, angling it so it illuminated the wall and started to climb. I should be clumsier, yet I moved not fast but with more grace than I believed myself capable of.
My earlier exhaustion faded, giving way to enough energy to find the next hold. My boots that I’d been certain would trip me up and send me plummeting back down gripped the rough wall far better than I’d expected.
Was our luck finally turning? Or was I riding high on adrenaline and not thinking straight?
I kept my gaze glued to the wall. A route showed itself where I needed it, sharing secrets one at a time, like a Chinese puzzle box. Darkness reigned below, so it was tough to judge how far I’d come.
I also had no idea how long I’d been at this. My sense of time passing had deserted me. The next two moves were hard. I was certain one of them would be the end of me because it was such a long reach to the next hold. Breath whistled through my teeth, and my heart pounded from tension.
Small chips rattled down around me from places the wall wasn’t as solid as I’d hoped. Shit! Would this be like trying to leave the upper cavern? Where I got close enough to taste freedom only to lose everything?
I stopped and forced myself to breathe. Deep and easy. I didn’t know if I had it in me to do this again, which meant I had to make it work this time.
“Just a little more,” Johan called from above me, his voice much nearer than it had been before. “You are maybe two meters from the end of a rope I have secured around a boulder.”
Rope? A rope?
Hope jabbed me so vigorously, it made my stomach hurt. I started to lean my head back to look, but it nearly unbalanced me. I bit down on my lip hard enough to hurt to force myself to keep going. Two meters may as well be fifty if I couldn’t get there.
I saw a hold, but I’d have to jump for it, so I scanned the wall, hunting for something more conservative. I looked three times, but nothing showed itself. Frustrated, I glanced down to see if I could improve where my feet were.
Yes!
I’d have fist pumped the air if I wasn’t hanging on with everything in me. Curling my fingers around their holds, I carefully moved my right foot several inches upward. Once it was stable, I moved my left.
I was panting from effort, but the higher position allowed me to grasp the two holds above my head. I flailed around some but located two more footholds. Christ! Where was the rope. I was certain I’d climbed six feet.
Stop it! My inner voice was harsh. Before I knew there was a rope, I was only counting on myself.
One move at a time. Maintain three points of attachment. Keep breathing.
Instructions from long-ago teachers ran through my head. They steadied me, and I inched upward. Enough light filtered in from above I no longer needed the flashlight, but I couldn’t reach over to shut it off, either.
I saw the rope now. It was close but still beyond the range of my arms. Sweat ran down my face, making my eyes sting. I blinked it away.
“Erin. Come on,” Johan urged.
“No more holds.” I gasped out the words even as I searched desperately for one more protrusion, even a small one.
“Here. This will help.”
The rope snaked down another few inches.
I checked my footing and swiped a hand upward. My fingertips brushed the end of the rope. “I need a little bit more,” I muttered.
He must have heard me because the rope descended enough for me to grasp it. I’d love to have tied it around me, but I didn’t have enough slack. Not yet. “Climbing,” I yelled before I put my weight on the rope and used it to force my way upward.
My boot soles skittered off holds, but it no longer mattered. Once the end was long enough, I stopped and looped the rope around myself. It gave me what I needed to polish off the last few feet. I paid attention, though, and I was damned grateful for the rope. Without it, there were spots I would have been stymied. No way up, and I certainly couldn’t have downclimbed my ascent route.
Finally, puffing and panting and screaming my victory to the skies—probably damned stupid if the Russians were outside—I dragged myself over the lip. Rather than being located within the tumble of rocks at the end of the cave, the hole began on the cavern floor a few feet from the rockfall.
I looked for a gash extending into the rockpile but didn’t find one. How could I have fallen through a spot twenty-some feet above me, and have it form a crater here?
Johan sat with splayed legs, the end of the rope wrapped around his torso. He’d belayed me. Goddammit. I could have unbalanced him.
“You said a boulder,” I protested.
“Yeah, that was before you needed more rope.”
“What the hell?” I staggered upright, pulling the rope behind me so I could coil it, but first I retrieved my gloves from where they dangled and slid my frozen hands into them. Then I looped the rope into neat coils, working on autopilot.
He grinned up at me. “No thank-yous?”
“Okay.” I was still panting hard enough, it was tough getting words out. “Thanks. Now, what the fuck?”
He shrugged, unwinding the rope from his chest and shoulders. “I heard music. Odd notes that floated about me as I was working my way to this spot.” Shaking his head, he said. “Everything is so bizarre, the least I can do is relay the events in sequence. I heard the rockfall. It jolted me out of whatever place I had sunk into. I listened hard, expecting to hear you scream.
“Never happened. So I worked my way out from under all that shit you wrapped around me—not an easy task as depleted as I was. Once I was free, I rolled onto my belly and used my arms to drag myself toward where you had to be. That was when music surrounded me.”
He exhaled, breath whistling through his teeth. “At first, I figured I was hallucinating, that my mind had launched a diversionary activity to protect me from being so incapacitated by pain I would have to stop.”
I’d finished coiling the rope and dropped it between us, my gaze alternating from his face to his thigh. The one where there’d been a visible lump. “Go on,” I urged, and dropped to my knees next to him where I could run a hand lightly over the fracture site.
“Before I do…” He nailed me with his blue eyes. “What did you find just now?”
“Uh, I’d have to remove your suit and mid layer and long johns to be certain, of course, but—”
“Erin.” He dropped a hand on top of the one I still had resting on his thigh and pressed downward. “It doesn’t hurt. I can walk on it.”
“I wasn’t wrong about it being broken.” Defensiveness bloomed, heating my face.
“Never said you were. I may be a lowly engineer, but even I know my leg was broken. I felt the ends slide together when you reduced the fracture.” He paused for a beat. “I also know it healed. The music coincided with me feeling stronger and…”
I understood why he’d run out of words. No matter how many he ginned up, he’d never explain his unprecedented recovery. One I’d been certain would take a month—if we lived that long. Reaching into my suit, I extracted a water bottle and took a long drink.
“I heard music too. Just before the rock pile caved in.”
Johan inspected me through narrowed eyes. “How is it you did not sustain an injury? You fell far enough to kill you.”
“I’m sure it was just some odd geothermal phenomena. It was warmer down there. A whole lot warmer, and—”
“That is not an answer. You should have brok
en every bone in your body.”
I’d been casting the occasional glance his way, but I finally looked him square in the eye. “Some type of ground cushion softened my fall. I sort of floated the last few feet. It’s how I got the flashlight too. It fell slower toward the bottom. A lot slower.”
Johan tucked his legs beneath him, a motion that made me wince, but it didn’t appear to bother him at all. “Fascinating. Could you feel warm air blasting upward?”
I shook my head. “Nothing like that. Maybe the air was thicker, or—” Or, what? I’d studied physics, and rational explanations didn’t fit, but I wasn’t willing to say that out loud.
Unexpected noise filtered in from outside the chromium dig site. It took me a moment to sort the sound bits into rough male voices spouting Russian. “What are they saying?” I kept my voice very low, a ragged whisper, and cursed my lack of ability to learn any language beyond English—and the Latin I’d needed for chemistry and physiology classes.
Johan held up a hand and cocked his head to hear better. He drew his brows together and stood, making as little commotion as possible, while motioning for me to do the same.
The buzz of voices from outside grew louder. Maybe four men judging from the conversation flow back and forth. What were they up to? Had someone gotten cold feet? Made sense. This was an established dig site for chromium, a valuable mineral. Since it was already excavated—and included in reports we’d sent to our respective countries—chances of it remaining undisturbed were low.
Sooner or later, a new team would work their way in around the rockfall area and find a bevy of dead bodies. It was cold enough to discourage much in the way of decomposition. But remains were still remains. They wouldn’t go away on their own, and it didn’t take a forensic pathologist to determine some of the corpses had resulted from foul play.
Nothing like a bullet hole or two. Just in case anyone was in doubt.