Chapter 4

"I've always been the one handling comms on the shared frequency. If you open an unauthorized backup line, you'll interfere with the helicopter's radar positioning!"

He lunged for the phone. I sidestepped him.

"Interfere with positioning? I'm contacting base to pull in a backup search-and-rescue chopper from another sector. Since our great team leader's decided to fly out with his protégée, I figured I'd better find my own way to stay alive."

Chris's face went ashen. If I got through to base, everything he'd been hiding — deliberately stalling my rescue to get Angelina out first — would come out into the open.

A deafening roar sounded above the cave mouth, and the rope ladder dropped down. There was no time left.

Something hard and cruel flashed across Chris's eyes. He grabbed Angelina's arm.

"Angie, hold on tight. Go, now!"

She'd been sobbing about being scared a second ago; she climbed faster than anyone. Chris stood by the ladder and glanced back at me once. There wasn't a trace of guilt in that look — only the cold resolve of a man trying to bury the truth.

"Kate, you can blame yourself for this. You're too smart. And too selfish."

He said it low, then hauled himself up fast. Just as he was about to climb clear of the cave mouth, he stopped. He raised one foot in its heavy snow boot, aimed it at the load-bearing ice pillar teetering at the entrance, and kicked it as hard as he could.

A crack tore through the cave with a sound like thunder.

"Professor Hanks, what are you doing?!"

Todd's terrified scream was swallowed by the roar of collapsing ice. Tons of ice and snow came crashing down. To stop me from reaching that ladder — and to cut off any signal I might send for help — Chris had triggered a localized avalanche and sealed our only way out.

White swallowed my vision in an instant. Then came the suffocating dark.

The shockwave knocked me off my feet, snow burying me past the waist. In the darkness, Todd broke down sobbing.

"We're finished! We're going to die! Why would Professor Hanks do this?!"

I dragged in ragged breaths. The cold was slowly wringing every trace of air from my lungs, and yet, strangely, my mind had gone perfectly calm. I understood then — once a person sees the full truth of being thrown away, there aren't even any tears left.

The comments lit up again in the dark.

[Don't panic! Kate's got another route!]

[The underground river entrance is thirty meters to your back-right!]

[Core data chip! Confirm the chip's still with you first!]

I switched on my headlamp and pulled a silver metal case, wrapped in layer after layer of insulation, out of the bottom of my pack. Inside was the one and only core data chip from this entire expedition. Chris had always assumed the data lived on his own workstation. He had no idea that without my top-level password, everything he'd hauled home was just dead metal. Force it open, and the data would wipe itself in three seconds flat.

I got to my feet and knocked the snow off myself. Todd grabbed my pant leg, sobbing so hard he could barely speak.

"Mrs. Hanks, please save me! I shouldn't have taken their side back there. I was wrong!"

I looked down at him. He'd been stupid and hateful. But he hadn't been the one who kicked that pillar.

"If you want to live," I said coldly, "shut up and stay close."

Todd nodded like his life depended on it — because it did. I followed the route the scanner had mapped, heading deeper into the cave toward the underground river.

[Hang in there! The station's only two hundred meters ahead!]

[Don't give up! In the original storyline, Kate died right here, two hundred meters short!]

[Eat the chocolate now! No point saving it if there's no one left to save it for!]

I tore open the chocolate bar Chris had shoved at me, and bit off half. The sweetness melted on my tongue, but all I could taste was bitterness. That chocolate had been meant as bait to keep me calm and compliant. Now, it was just fuel to keep me alive.

Three hours later, I finally spotted the ventilation shaft of the abandoned multinational research station. A rusted iron grate was wedged tight against the ice wall.

Todd was nearly at the point of collapse. "It won't budge. We're not getting in..."

I didn't waste breath answering. I pulled out the one ice pick I had left and drove it into the gap between the grate and the ice wall. The screech of metal on metal set my teeth on edge. My palms had already gone numb from the cold, and every time I put weight into the pull, it felt like my wrists were splitting apart at the bone.