The Icarus Project

by Laura Quimby

  “So I grabbed a coat and ran out into the compound to try and rescue Randal. Only, when I reached him, it wasn’t Randal at all. It was a tarp.”

  “I could have prevented this. Next time, come and get me,” Dad said.

  “I’m sorry. I promise,” I said, sniffling.

  “You were trying to help.” Dad leaned over and kissed me on the top of my head. “You did a good deed. Or thought you were doing one.”

  Karen appeared in the doorway and hurried over to my bed. Her hair was a wild mass of curls. Kyle, who was right behind her, hung back, sitting on another bed in the room.

  “I’m so sorry.” Karen twisted the sleeve of her robe. Tears welled in her eyes.

  “It’s not your fault, Karen,” Dad said.

  “When I woke up and you weren’t there, I was so worried,” Karen said.

  “You’re lucky Karen woke up and got West,” my dad said to me.

  “Next time, wake me up. OK?” Karen squeezed my hand.

  “I swear I heard him calling for help. I didn’t think that I had time to get you, Dad.” I realized how dumb that sounded. Why would a grown man like Randal ask me for help? He wouldn’t.

  “She took action. I like that. I’m glad she’s got my back,” Randal said from the doorway. Jake weaseled his way into the room. His goggles were perched on his forehead, and his face was red from the cold.

  “What did you do to my equipment?” he demanded. “I had cameras set up for a night shoot, and then all of a sudden West is running around yelling for you. And where do they find you? All over my stuff, that’s where.”

  Randal put his hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Not now, Jake. She’s had a scare, a tough night.”

  “She’s had a tough night? What about me? My night has been ruined,” Jake said.

  “I didn’t touch the camera. I didn’t move it.” I wanted to tell someone about the snow ghost, but Jake was too angry. He would just yell at me and tell me keep away from his stuff. So instead I said, “Did you see anything on the camera playback? Was anything out there?” The camera would prove that I saw something.

  “I haven’t had time to go through all the footage.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “So I can’t tell yet.”

  “Did you trick me?” I asked. “Did you have something set up out there? Some kind of special effects, like a film projector, flashing images on the snow?” I didn’t trust Jake. He was just the type to pull some elaborate hoax to embarrass me.

  He snorted. “You’ve got to be kidding. I wouldn’t waste my time with tricks. I’m a serious filmmaker.”

  “But I saw something!” I shouted.

  Everyone was staring at me, and I went mute. My throat tightened.

  Jake glared, like he wanted me to shut up. “Probably a lot of snow. And wind. That’s all.” He turned and left the room, but I think we both knew we shared a secret.

  “Get some rest, everybody,” Randal said. “We have another big day tomorrow.” He followed his nephew out of the room.

  “Did something happen outside?” Dad asked.

  “I saw … lights.” I didn’t know how else to describe the beautiful woman.

  West stood behind the doctor. “We’re all chasing mirages. I told Jake that there was nothing out there. But does he listen to me? Nope.”

  “Mirages?” Dad asked.

  “The snow plays tricks on the eyes and the mind. Plus the extreme cold causes people to see all sorts of things in the snow. It’s not real. Some people don’t believe it and want to keep on looking,” West said.

  “Jake’s an explorer, too. He just uses a camera instead of our type of equipment,” Dad said.

  “A remote explorer—that’s what he is. It’s not real. It’s virtual. I told him to stow his gear before someone got hurt, but I thought it was going to be him. Not one of the young ones,” West said, looking at me like I was the runt of the litter.

  “I’m not hurt. I’m fine. What was Jake trying to capture on film?”

  “Don’t you worry. Nothing to capture,” West said.

  But I didn’t believe that. Not with what had happened the past two days. There was a lot to capture.

  My leg rubbed against the blue nylon rope as I trekked between buildings. My arms were loaded down with books about the Arctic, covering every subject from climate and weather conditions to indigenous species, and also the natural and anthropological history.

  It was the morning following my late-night adventure. After asking Randal if he had any reference books I could look at, I was told that I could help myself to the stash of books in his secret library. Now I was headed back to my room to do some serious research. There had to be a logical explanation for what I had seen in the night, and I was determined to find it.

  Kyle raced up beside me. His eyes widened when he saw my load. “Need some help with your homework?”

  I eyed him skeptically. From everything he had said, books gave him a rash, so I was surprised he wanted to help me. But my arms were starting to crack under the weight, so I said, “Sure. If you really mean it. I have a ton of research to do, and I could use the extra pair of eyes.”

  Kyle took the top four books off the pile, and I sighed with relief. With my free hand, I reached down and grabbed the blue guideline. A devious grin spread across Kyle’s face. “We’re about to have a lesson … just not the kind you were expecting.”

  I had made a huge mistake. Kyle dropped the books into the snow. They sank down, right through the crust.

  “Hey! What are you doing? You’ll ruin them!” I said.

  He grabbed the two books still in my hands and tossed one onto the pile and held the other one out to me.

  “Is this what you want?” He mischievously wiggled the book and pulled it out of my reach when I dove for it.

  “Stop it. This isn’t funny.” I regained my footing.

  “No, it’s not funny. It’s ridiculous!” He examined the spine. “This book is about the Arctic.” He shook his head, mystified.

  “So? I’m doing research. I like studying. I want to learn about this place and what I’ve gotten myself into.” I stood my ground.

  “That’s the problem.” He took a few steps backward, still holding the book out to me like a taunt. “Look around you. This is the Arctic. It’s not in here,” he said, tapping the cover of the book. “You bury your head in a book so hard that you forget to look up. Look up, Maya! Look around you.” He spun around with his arms extended. “What are you scared of?”

  “The Arctic doesn’t scare me.” My stomach sank when I thought about what happened the last time I let go of the rope and wandered out into the blinding snow. “I don’t want to make the same mistake I did last night. I could have been really hurt.” My gaze drifted out over the snowy compound.

  “That’s why this is so important. You can’t let what happened keep you from taking risks. Plus, trying to save ‘Randal’ was really brave. You shouldn’t be ashamed.” Kyle raised an eyebrow and held up the book. “Come and get it … brave girl.”

  “You are such a pain.” I felt the blue line under my glove. But maybe he had a point.

  “I know. But I’m also right here, and I won’t let anything happen to you.” He held out his hand. “I promise.”

  I dropped the rope and took a tentative step toward him. “There. Are you happy now?”

  Kyle pulled down his mask for a second and winked at me. “Something is wrong with your book.” He dropped to his knees in the snow and the book fell to the ground in front of him.

  I sighed. What was he up to now?

  “It’s moving. It’s fighting me, Maya!” He was trying to hold on to the book, which did appear to be fighting him, dragging him across the snow on his knees.

  I ran to his side and tried to grab the book, but he hopped forward, the book stretched out in his hands. I scrambled to get a hold of his sleeve, but he was quicker and jumped up, holding the book higher in the air.

  “Maya, I think your book wants to fly. It w
ants to be free!” He yelled and leaped around the compound with the book in his arms, trying madly to contain it. He looked so crazy that I had to laugh.

  “No! Don’t let it go. I need it!” I yelled, chasing after him, joining in his game.

  He dramatically pulled the book down to his ear, as if listening to what the book had to say. “It hates being inside the stuffy library. It wants to experience life. Have fun. Get out into the world.” His arms shot out; the book was back in the air.

  “But it’s a book. It can’t fly.” I followed him, unable to stop smiling under my face mask.

  “I can’t hold on to it. It’s going … It’s going … It’s gone!” With that, Kyle hurled the book up into the sky. It came crashing down to the icy ground with an explosion of pages. The spine cracked and a chunk of pages went flying into the air.

  “Kyle!” I yelled. “You broke it.”

  His eyes went wide and the two of us raced around the compound, trying to snatch up the loose pages that were blowing everywhere. We grabbed as many as we could, but a large swath of pages fluttered across the snowy compound, blending with the white landscape, almost invisible.

  Finally, we collapsed on the snow, exhausted from running around, our arms filled with pages. “Well, at least some of them made it to freedom,” he said, motioning toward the horizon.

  “I think that was the last chapter,” I said. “I’ll never know how the book ends.”

  “That’s the point!” Kyle elbowed me. “Now the Arctic can read about itself.”

  I smiled. Maybe he was right. Maybe flying off toward the horizon wasn’t such a bad thing—as long as you didn’t go out by yourself, with no way of getting back to safety.

  Kyle picked up the books he had dropped and walked me to the main building.

  “You really have a thing for flying, don’t you?” I said, remembering how he had wanted to help Justice with the helicopter.

  “Yeah, it’s cool. And I’ve never had this kind of access to a pilot and helicopter before.”

  “You could get your license and be a pilot one day,” I said.

  “Maybe.” He got quiet and stared down at his boots.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked as we made our way inside. I started pulling off my gloves and hat.

  “It’s nothing,” he said, stripping off his face mask.

  “It doesn’t sound like nothing.” I hung my coat on a hook.

  He sighed. “It’s just this wild dream I had last night, but…”

  “But what? Tell me about it,” I prodded, my interest piqued.

  Kyle sat down on the bench in the changing room. “It was great. The best dream ever.” His face lit up. “When the dream started, I was flying in the helicopter and something went wrong. Justice and I had to eject—which I don’t think is even possible in a helicopter.”

  “In a dream helicopter, maybe,” I said. “Um … so far this doesn’t sound like a great dream.”

  “Wait—it gets good. See, I saw Justice float to the ground in his parachute, but I didn’t have one and I panicked. Then I did the only thing I could—I flailed my arms. And suddenly I was flying!”

  “Cool. I love flying dreams.” I sat down next to him on the bench.

  “But that’s what was weird. It felt so real—like it was more than a dream. And it got even better.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I grew wings! And flew even higher and faster. I was soaring like a bird.”

  “You had wings…” I said enviously. That was a great dream.

  “Really big white ones. Just like Charlie’s.”

  “Sounds magical.”

  “It was the best feeling ever,” he said.

  That day, the battle over Charlie was in full force. Katsu and Ivan wanted to break the ice and get a sample of real solid flesh and bone, but Dad and Karen wanted to wait until more research could be done. They wanted to transport Charlie, ice and all, back to the States. Randal was in the middle. He saw both sides, but he had a contract with Katsu, so it wasn’t looking too good for Dad and Karen. Plus, Randal didn’t want anyone taking Charlie away from him, so getting samples was the obvious solution to the problem.

  In the afternoon, everyone took a break and Kyle went to check out the hangar, so I was alone in the lab when a burst of static filled the room. It started as a low humming sound, like someone had left a radio on. I looked around the room, but I couldn’t find a radio. Was it coming from an intercom system? I couldn’t tell. The longer I listened, the more it sounded almost like a muffled voice, a scratchy one on an old radio. I searched the lab for a stereo system, or for a computer that had been left on, but I found nothing. It was starting to grate on my nerves.

  “Maybe it’s a ghost. Maybe the station is haunted,” I said aloud.

  It was probably nothing.

  I don’t know why, but I opened the heavy door to the freezer. The seal broke and a wave of frosty air floated out. I wasn’t wearing my coat, so I stayed in the doorway, rubbing my arms and peering inside. No change with Charlie. No glowing light.

  The noise got louder and turned into a buzzing sound, like a swarm of electric wasps. Overcome with dizziness, I leaned on the door frame. The buzzing noise kept getting louder and louder. I put my hands over my ears. The annoying buzz was too much to handle—I had to leave the lab. So I tried to shut the door to the freezer. I pushed hard on it, but before it closed completely, the ice encasing Charlie cracked.

  As I stared, mesmerized, an enormous fissure appeared, and then the crack spidered out over the entire surface of the frozen block. The buzzing sound grew louder and then changed, shifting like a radio changing frequency. Huge chunks of ice broke off, fell to the floor, and shattered. What was left of the block began to melt rapidly. Water beaded up and dripped down the surface, pooling on the table. But the room was still cold. I stepped inside to get a better look. This couldn’t be happening! But the ice kept melting, and the puddle on the floor kept growing and spreading.

  After the ice shattered, the noise receded. I stood there, stunned. It had happened so fast, I didn’t know how to react. Had I done something to cause the ice to break? But I hadn’t even touched it or been anywhere near it.

  Water continued to spill off the table in a wave that rushed toward me. Within seconds, I was standing in a foot of cold water. The ice had melted in a huge rush of water.

  This was impossible! Ice didn’t melt that fast, and it didn’t just crack and break apart, especially in a climate-controlled freezer.

  I had no idea where all the water was coming from. There couldn’t be that much, unless a pipe had broken. I looked around, trying to rationalize what I was seeing. But if a pipe had broken in the freezer, the water would be frozen, or at least would have started to freeze. I backed up, bracing myself against a table. I had to stop the melting. I just didn’t know how. Fear washed over me. The water was rising higher and higher.

  I raced out of the freezer toward the door leading out of the lab.

  As I got near it, I turned around, taking in one last glance of the ruin left behind. The freezer door was wide open. The ice block had completely melted, and there on the table was the body of the boy we called Charlie.

  His arm twitched. His fingers stretched. His torso shifted. I tripped, bumping my hip against some shelves. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My heart pounded in my chest.

  Charlie sat up on the table and stared at me with huge black eyes. He opened his wings wide into the air. They were white and enormous, and they arched over his head. His mouth opened wide like a fish’s and he gasped, taking in huge breaths of air. A glowing bluish-green light bloomed inside his chest, exactly like the flicker of light I had seen inside the ice before. He lifted his chin and looked right into my eyes, pleading with me. He needed me. I could feel it. I could feel the glowing warmth in his chest. It was life.

  Charlie was alive, and he was trapped in the ice.

  I tried not to panic, but the water had cove
red my shoes and soaked my jeans, and it was still rising fast. A sharp, tingling pain raced up my body from where the icy water soaked through to skin. I ran the last few steps to the door of the lab, but the water flooded the room, pushing so hard against the door that I couldn’t open it inward.

  I was trapped. I banged my clenched fists against the door. My throat was raw from screaming, but no one could hear me. No one knew I was in trouble. Hot tears streamed down my face as the water lifted me off my feet, throwing me against the door.

  The water was up to my neck now, and I tasted salt. I kicked with my legs and the water lifted me up. I tried to swim, grabbing on to anything I could find to keep my head up, but I couldn’t hold on. I went under, sliding below the surface as I watched, helpless. Panic exploded in my chest. I was drowning in the middle of the day, in the lab, in Randal’s million-dollar research station. It made no sense. It couldn’t be real.

  It became harder to move my legs. The water felt thick, like gelatin, and it was hardening. And then the water surrounding me froze solid, and I was encased inside an icy block, suspended.

  My arms were outstretched and my legs were captured in a bent, kicking pose. My hair floated out in thin white wires, each strand trapped in the ice in a brittle web. It would have been a pretty thing to see, like a tragic fairy tale, a scene of a girl frozen forever.

  Was that how it would end? Would I die like this, like a baby mammoth swallowed by the melting ice? Would my father excavate my frozen body like the woolly mammoth that had always eluded him? I was the ice girl, the old girl, and I was trapped.

  But I was still alive. My heart still raced in my chest and air still filled my lungs. I was still aware of everything around me. I could see the lab and hear the faint buzzing sound. A computer blinked from the workstation where it sat. The lights still shone brightly from the bank of overhead fluorescent fixtures. Why was I not dead? It was too real to be a dream. I had to think of something, do something to help me get free. I was frozen, just like Charlie.