The Icarus Project

by Laura Quimby

  “You could have been hurt—electrocuted, even.” West took Kyle by the shoulder. “Are you sure you’re OK?”

  “Fine,” Kyle said, though I could tell by the tone of his voice he was disappointed that West had stopped the light show.

  “It was so … real,” I said. I pulled up my sleeve. All the hair on my arm was standing straight up. “I could feel it.”

  “Is that what magic feels like?” Kyle asked, wiggling his fingers.

  “No! That was nothing strange,” said West. “Nothing magical or supernatural. It was just good old Tom Edison and Ben Franklin. Lightbulbs and electricity.” With that, he turned and stomped out of the room and headed down the hallway.

  Ivan hurried out behind him, pale as a ghost.

  “Keep telling yourself that, West,” Kyle said after the man had gone.

  Something strange was going on, and Ivan was right—we could all feel it.

  Kyle went to his room and I went to mine. Karen wasn’t in bed yet. Unable to sleep, I lay in bed and stared at the underside of the top bunk. Finally, I pulled back the covers, slipped out, and went to the lab to look for Dad. At this hour of the night, I became aware of the emptiness of the hallway, which was the color of lumpy oatmeal—unofficially, the color of blandness. But the situation at the station could hardly have been described as bland. Not anymore.

  I found Dad sitting on a stool, staring at the computer screen. He had dark circles under his eyes.

  He jerked up, surprised to see me. “Maya, what are you doing awake?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. The Arctic is giving me insomnia,” I said. “Why are you still up?” I asked, turning the conversation back on him. “You look tired.”

  “I couldn’t sleep, either.” He ran his hand through his hair.

  “Why not?” I climbed up onto the stool next to him.

  “I had a really weird dream last night.”

  “Maybe you should talk about it,” I said, wondering if strange dreams were contagious. “Sometimes if you tell someone your dream, it makes it less scary.”

  “How did you get so smart?” Dad asked, a faint smile on his face.

  “Osmosis.”

  “It’s kind of cool, really, when I think about it.” He shrugged.

  “Tell me.”

  “I had this dream that I was awake—but I had to be dreaming.” Dad shook his head. “It just felt so real. I went to see Randal, and we were standing in his library. All of a sudden, the wall with the fireplace on it flipped open, revealing a hidden room.”

  Dad had discovered Randal’s secret room in a dream! How could he have known that it was there? Kyle and I hadn’t told him about the room or the miniature park. “What happened next?” I asked.

  “Well, Randal and I walked into the room. He had a table covered with a big display, but we got distracted, because it started snowing—right there inside of the room. Wild dream, huh?”

  “Yeah—really wild.” Snow was better than water, I thought.

  “And then Randal and I were standing in a frozen landscape, and there were mammoths.” Dad’s face lit up. “Whole herds of mammoths lumbering along a snowy plain. There were mothers and calves. And I saw caribou and polar bears.”

  “Sounds like you walked into a dream come true.”

  “Exactly. It was the most amazing dream I’ve ever had.” He twisted up his face. “Except it was cold, really cold. And that was strange. I have never had a dream that was so lifelike.”

  Listening to Dad talk about his dream, I was hit with a flash of inspiration. “It’s like a dreamscape. A place that feels real but is so fantastic that it has to be a dream.”

  “That’s right. Then it got a little scary. The animals were getting close to us. Too close for my taste. I didn’t mind watching them, but the last thing I wanted was to get trampled by a woolly mammoth, dream or no dream. Except that when I tried to run, to escape, and get back to the station, there was a fence all around us, and Randal and I couldn’t get out.”

  A fence. The image of the model mammoth park filled my head. There were fences penning in all of the mammoths. It was as if Dad had shrunk down and gone into Randal’s model.

  “I was cold—and awestruck at being in another world with the mammoths. I could feel their thick woolly hair and hear their calls and snorts. I love mammoths, but they’re wild creatures and very protective of their young.”

  “Sounds intense.” I didn’t know what else to say. I wanted to tell him about the light show that had happened to Kyle in the genny room and about seeing the light inside of Charlie, but I was too nervous.

  “I guess people have dreams that feel real. I was literally caged like an animal in a zoo, but the snow was alive, swirling with energy that came from all around us. The feeling was overwhelming. It was magical.”

  “How did you get out? I mean, how did the dream end?”

  “That was strange, too. Randal kept yelling, ‘The dream is over. I know you’re out there. I’m here to help you.’ And then the mammoths lumbered off and the snow stopped falling. And we were back in Randal’s library. The fake fire was blazing and the dream was over.”

  “Wow—that was some dream.” I felt like a traitor. I should have said something. One thing stood out in my mind and that was the feeling. Both Dad and I had felt an overwhelming sense of magical energy. It seemed like everyone was having strange dreams. The visions were spreading through the station like a virus.

  “Speaking of dreams, you should head off to bed. How about I tuck you in?”

  Dad got down off his stool and walked me back to my room. I crawled under the covers. My bedsprings creaked. I punched my pillow over and over and tried to clear my head. I told myself that sleep would make things better.

  But I was wrong.

  I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of someone calling my name. Sitting up in bed, I listened hard. I heard it again, but I couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from. Was it Kyle, or was I just imagining it? Didn’t Karen hear anything? I crawled out of my sleeping bag and crept over to her bed. She was sound asleep, so I jostled her.

  “Karen,” I whispered, but she rolled over and faced the wall.

  I pulled on my pants and boots and tried not to trip over the remnants of Karen’s yarn matrix. With my sweatshirt hood pulled up, I peered out of the room. The hall was dimly lit and totally deserted. I inched down to the guys’ room. Dad’s familiar snores drifted out from beneath the door. He was sleeping, and since there was no light on, I was sure that Kyle was sleeping, too.

  The howling wind seemed to carry my name to me over and over. A chill climbed up my back. I shook it off. It was nothing, I told myself. Just go back to bed. But I had come this far.

  I went to the nearest window and peered out through the snow-crusted glass. A figure was hunched on the icy ground. The relentless wind battered the crumpled form. Whoever it was appeared to be wearing a big puffy coat … just like the one that Randal always wore! My heart raced in my chest. Had he stumbled outside and fallen? He could be hurt. A person wouldn’t last long outside in the cold and the wind.

  I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing. I had to help him. I should get Dad, but I didn’t know how long the person had been out in the snow. Dad would take forever to wake up. Plus, he always needed a reason to take action. He would want to know why I was awake this late, why I was wandering the halls, why there was someone outside at this hour, and so on. I didn’t have time to explain or to persuade him to hurry up. More important, Randal—or whoever—didn’t have time. I needed to move.

  A line of coats hung on hooks by the door. I grabbed one and pulled it on. It was a man’s coat that engulfed me and practically dragged on the ground. The sleeves hung below my hands. I didn’t have gloves, but I had put on my boots. I grabbed a pair of goggles and pulled the hood up over my hoodie. It would have to be enough.

  I passed from the warmth of the hallway into the mudroom. The cold grabbed at me, tried to warn me
off. If I thought too hard, I would chicken out and run back to the bunks and it might be too late. Just go, I told myself. I shoved the door open and plunged into the freezing darkness. I stepped into the windswept snow, and my boot sank about four inches, but I kept walking. A crust had formed, and with each step the ground crunched under my feet.

  The wind attacked, yanking me off balance. I scrambled for the guideline and grabbed the blue rope through my coat sleeve. The line was a thick vein keeping me from being blown across the compound. I followed it as far as I could, keeping my eyes on the figure in the big brown coat. My face burned, so I pulled my sweatshirt up to cover my nose. I should have turned around and gone back, but then I thought I heard a groaning. He was alive! He needed me.

  I had gone as far as I could with the line, but to reach the person I would have to let go and hope that I could make it to him on my own. On our first day at the station, West had told us all to always hold on to the line and never leave the path. The wind gnawed at my limbs with its needle teeth. If I let go of the line, I would be at the mercy of Mother Nature, and she had no heart. Her howling wind would eat me alive.

  A groan echoed from the bundle on the ground, and I could have sworn someone said, “Help me.” Randal! It had to be him. I let go of the line.

  I steadied myself and crouched low to the ground. Then I took off running, and the wind seemed to lift me, carrying me faster and farther. I tried to drop to my knees, and I grabbed at the ground with my coat-covered hands, but there was nothing to hold on to. Because of its slickness, the fabric slipped on the icy ground. I pulled my sleeve up, but the snow dissolved in my bare hands, like burning salt or sharp sand. Panic choked my throat, and I bit back a scream. I covered my hands and scrambled as fast as I could. I sucked in the cold air, and my lungs felt as if they were swimming in ice. But I had gone too far to turn back.

  I crawled on all fours, so the wind wouldn’t lift me up like a kite and blow me across the flats. Randal was much farther away than I had originally thought. Distances were deceiving in the Arctic. With my head down, it was hard to see clearly, but each step brought me closer to him.

  The mass shifted, growing in size the closer I got. I sensed that he was about to roll over, so I hurried forward and finally reached him. I slammed hard into him. His body was solid.

  It wasn’t Randal.

  When I touched the form through my coat, I realized it wasn’t a person at all but a giant tarp strapped to the ground. No hunched body … no Randal. How stupid. I had crawled all the way out there for nothing. My face hurt. My throat burned. I felt like such an idiot. But I had heard him. The voice had been so clear in my mind. Had I been sleepwalking out in the cold, and had I finally woken up, stranded on a tarp island, yards away from the safety of the station?

  I felt exhausted, like I had just run five miles. My legs were weak. I pulled up the thin lip of the tarp and crawled underneath, wedging myself inside the tentlike space. I slumped to the ground and leaned against something hard.

  The tarp was covering a stack of crates, which mercifully blocked the wind. I wanted to rest, but I knew I needed to get back inside the station, where it was warm and safe. I couldn’t stay out there in the cold and freeze. But I was so tired.

  Inside the makeshift fortress, my breathing was loud. Then I heard a grinding, beeping sound. It was something I had heard before—an annoying sound. I pushed myself up onto my knees and looked in one of the crates. Inside was one of the cameras that Jake was always carrying around or placing at the station to capture the action.

  The camera was running. The lens stared out of a small hole in the tarp. Why would Jake put a camera out here in the middle of the night? The place was deserted. Was this a trap? Had Jake lured me out here? That was a crazy idea. He had no reason to trick me, and he had no way of knowing that I would wake up and stumble out there. The camera was pointed away from the station and out into the emptiness, the vast snowy wilderness.

  What was out there? What was he trying to film?

  I stared into the distance. The minutes dragged on. The darkness seemed to grow around me. The floodlights of the station flickered.

  Something far away moved, but I didn’t trust my own eyesight anymore.

  The wind settled. The weather quieted down, and a silence fell over the world. It was like the start of a movie, when the lights are turned low. Then, at the very edge of my vision, something lifted up off the ground, as if a trapdoor in a stage had opened.

  As I watched, a beautiful creature floated out. A gauzy, sparkly form of a woman with feathery wings of light flew upward into the black sky, then tumbled to the ground and leaped back into the air again. Light poured out of her skin. It was a greenish color that reminded me of the flicker of light I had seen glowing inside Charlie’s ice block.

  I closed my eyes and released the breath I had been holding tightly in my lungs. I was imagining it. She wasn’t real. Just like the voice wasn’t real. And Randal wasn’t real.

  But when I opened my eyes, the figure was still there, still moving, floating, flying across the snow-swept ground. I couldn’t look away.

  Was she human? Was she a ghost? A beautiful snow ghost?

  At the bottom of one of her loops, the being seemed to catch my eye—though I wasn’t even sure that she had eyes. The dark orbs where eyes should have been looked at me. But how could they? I was hidden completely under the tarp. There was no way that the figure saw me. Maybe, like an animal, she sensed me or smelled me.

  The snow ghost hovered near my hiding place. Shivers ran up my back. The figure was greenish-white smoke in the darkness, a sheet of cloud cover, a night bird cut free from whatever storybook she flew out of. And she was coming closer.

  She was almost close enough to touch me. Maybe I was dreaming that I was awake under the tarp, under the spell of the Arctic, under the magnetic pull of the earth. I didn’t know what was real anymore.

  Then West’s harsh and frantic voice cut through the silence and boomed across the compound like the roar of a bear. Startled, I turned back to the station to see where the sound was coming from. He called my name over and over. His voice ricocheted off the darkness. Peering through the canvas tarp, this time I was sure it was really West coming to find me.

  I scrambled, suddenly afraid that West had already left. I needed him to see me, to help me back inside. I stumbled out from under the tarp and waved my arms as if I were stranded on a deserted island and a plane was circling overhead.

  I yelled, “Over here! I’m over here.”

  West turned and leaned into the wind, which was again blowing hard, and made his way to the tarp. The wind, the snow, and the cold Arctic were no match for West. Not tonight.

  I looked back out into the darkness, but the beautiful creature had disappeared. I had to have been seeing things, the same way that people trapped in the desert saw mirages of palm trees and pools of cool water when they were dying of thirst. An oasis. I was probably just seeing mirages of snow and wind and turning them into beautiful snowy creatures in my mind. Ghosts aren’t real, whether they’re made of snow or not.

  I heard a buzzing in my ear.

  The camera! The camera was seeing all this, too. If there was something out there that wasn’t an illusion, then it would be recorded in digital form. Maybe that was why the camera was there. Maybe Jake was looking for the snow ghost, too.

  West finally reached me. Without a word, he picked me up like a sack of flour, threw me over his shoulder, and trudged back to the station. He carried me all the way to the medical center. I tried to tell him that I was fine and that I could walk, but he didn’t listen. He flung me onto a gurney. Dr. Kernel was there and waiting and immediately went to work.

  She examined every inch of me, uncurling my fingers and checking my pulse, my temperature, my breathing, and my heart rate. I never had to wiggle my toes more in my life. I was covered in blankets that oozed electric heat. I felt myself starting to sweat.

  Dr. Kernel’s
hair was back in a tight twist, pulling her eyes back. Her focus was like a laser.

  I cleared my throat. “Do you think I’m crazy?” I asked. “I mean is there any logical, scientific reason for what just happened to me?” The blanket was heavy on my chest.

  “Well, medically speaking, a person in your condition could be suffering from dementia, hallucinations, or simple madness,” she said with a straight face.

  “Is that what you think happened?” I asked, thinking to myself, What kind of doctor says that?

  She smiled. “Gotcha. Come on, Maya. Look at it this way. You’ve never been in this kind of environment. You’re young and curious—maybe a little too curious.” She tweaked my nose. “But honestly, I think you’re healthy. As for what you saw, I don’t know. I only take care of the insides. I’ll leave the outsides to Randal and his guys.”

  “Thanks,” I replied, feeling a little better.

  There was a lot of whispering out in the hallway. Now that I had been diagnosed as healthy, I wondered just how much trouble I was in. Could I be punished for trying to save a man’s life? Yes. Oh, yes. Good intentions rarely got a person a get-out-of-jail-free card.

  Finally, Dad was let in to see me. His hair was poking up all over his head and his eyes were bloodshot. He had been rubbing them too much—worried about me, I knew. I felt a painful twinge in my chest that had nothing to do with the cold. I was the stress causer. He walked up to my bedside. “Maya, what happened tonight?”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just blurted out the truth. “I woke up and heard something. Someone was calling my name. So I got out of bed. I didn’t know what was going on. I just felt like I had to go—I had to get up.”

  “You should have gotten me,” Dad said. “What happened next? How did you get outside?”

  “I was looking around the station, and I wandered to the back door. I heard someone calling me from outside, and when I looked out the window, I thought I saw Randal collapsed on the snow. I was going to get you, Dad, but I was afraid it would take too long, and he would be dead by then of hypothermia or something. I didn’t think.” I clutched at the edge of my blanket, pulling it up to my face. A single hot tear rolled down my cheek. I felt so stupid. I had thought I was a hero, but I’d just caused trouble.