Chapter 1
Ice Tunnels, Burke-Ruhe Research Station, South Pole
Air whooshed from the dying man’s lungs as he landed on hard-packed ice. He couldn’t move, couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. Was he conscious?
He shifted and groaned, the sound swallowed up by darkness.
Hurts.
Yes. Yes, conscious, once the wave of pain passed. Barely.
Only one eye opened. The other was swollen shut. It made no difference anyway. The world was pitch-black, the absence of light so complete that he could be in only one place—the tunnels beneath the ice.
Entombed.
Something frantic and animalistic twisted inside his chest at the thought, shoving at the pain, giving him the strength to roll to one side, press a bare hand to the ice, and scoot up to a seated position, his back to the frozen wall.
He wheezed through three inhale-exhales, making an effort not to think of the blood bubbling from his mouth or the way the hole in his chest whistled with every breath. By God, they’d torn him apart.
He’d never met anyone like the men who’d questioned him. They’d beaten every inch of him until his body was nothing but a bag of pulp and splintered bones. They’d broken him so methodically that this decision—to let him die alone and afraid in this underground tunnel—most certainly had to have been purposeful.
Just when he’d accepted that it was over for him, they’d grasped him under the arms and heaved him into this terrifying place, as carelessly as a child chucking a chocolate wrapper in the bin.
He pictured the man who’d led the interrogation and flinched. Pure evil.
“Think I’ll kill you?” the leader had asked, his smile almost tender. He’d leaned close and whispered against his face, “I’d rather count the minutes as you take your last breath. Know you’re suffering while everybody else is up there, partying it up.” The bastard had winked, rubbed gloved knuckles down the side of his face with something like affection, and thrown him in here.
A violent shudder overtook the dying man, rattling his bones and clacking his teeth. He shut his eye and stopped fighting for a few seconds. Fighting hurt so damned much.
He dragged in a lungful of frigid air. It snapped through him as quick as a current, deadening his nerves and easing his pain. A number popped into his brain, as they were wont to do: forty-three below zero. The average yearly temperature in these tunnels.
Thirty seconds. That’s how long it would take for his bare skin to freeze. And frostbite was just the first phase. He’d be gone soon.
If he just stayed here, it wouldn’t hurt anymore. If he didn’t fight the ice’s pull, then that horrible man couldn’t change his mind and return for him, find new ways to torment his shattered body.
He couldn’t feel his feet, which was…good.
A sigh left his mouth—so much simpler than the struggle for deeper breaths, so much less work. Oh, this was nice. No worrying about frostbite, no bothering to swipe the rime from his beard or wiggle his fingers to get the blood flowing. I’ll stay here. For just a bit.
Can’t! He pried apart flash-frozen lashes, the lassitude briefly fading. Have to warn the others.
He found his gloves in his pockets.
So cold in this place. Where was he again?
Concentrate.
Antarctica. The tunnels. Right.
He’d only been here a few times, but he could envision it, carved from the ice deep under the station. If he could stand and walk, he could find a way out. The way out, since he couldn’t very well climb the emergency ladders in his current state. If they’d even left them for him to find. Perhaps he could open the door, locate someone, warn them, stop those people from doing the terrible things they planned.
His attempt to rise was pitiful, pointless, his muscles no longer functional.
The pain had changed, he realized in a detached sort of way. It didn’t crackle sharply through nerve endings like it had when they’d shot him or beaten him or hacked at his fingers. Now it filled every cell, swamping him, melding with him so that they were almost interchangeable. On some level, he wondered if the deep throbbing was keeping him alive.
Something clanged outside, and fear hit him like a religious experience, set him—an atheist—to praying as only near-death could do.
A laugh tightened his abdominals and shook his chest. Mum would be pleased to know that he had finally found God. There was an odd comfort in that thought. That he wasn’t alone down here.
No, focus. Walking out of here wasn’t an option, but he could leave a message, in the vague hope that someone would open the tunnel door and discover him in the morning, before it was too late.
Slowly, as if wading through thick, near-frozen water, he patted his pockets in search of something, anything… It was all gone. No pens—not that a ballpoint would work in this cold. No phone. Nothing to communicate with at all.
A hard, razor-sharp cough wracked his body, scraping the bottom of his lungs, sending a rush of warm, thick fluid spewing from his mouth.
Blood.
That was it. If he’d been in better shape, he might have laughed at the old sense-memory urge to turn to one of his students and offer up his palm for a high five. Oh, he’d seen the way they looked at him when he did that, knew they thought he was an absolute wanker. A “science geek,” as the Americans called them. But he’d never been one to waste time caring about what people thought.
Look how little it mattered, after all.
Slowly, his limbs robot stiff, he removed one of the gloves he’d just struggled to put on, reached for his wound, dipped an unwieldy finger into his own oozing blood, and felt for a surface. When he tried to slide his finger, it wouldn’t budge. Stuck to the ice. Shit.
He pulled it away, the digit too numb to register the pain of tearing skin.
There had to be something else he could use. He pictured the tunnel, cold and blue-white, its walls shimmering like glittering diamonds.
Slowly, hoping that he’d got his directions right, he worked his way toward the left, the movement scraping, insect-like. A thrill ran through him when his palm thunked lightly against a slab of wood. A storage crate of some sort. Perfect.
Another touch of finger to blood before he pressed it awkwardly to the surface, just stopping himself from wasting time on explanations or articles. He’d add them at the end. Wouldn’t want to leave them with improper punctuation. Perhaps, while he was being fanciful, he’d add a footnote. A bibliography.
The blood kept solidifying on his fingertip, so he wasn’t sure if the C worked or not. And then, because he needed his final thoughts to be good ones, he decided that yes, it had most certainly worked, and so would the next.