“Rue!” he called after her, frustration and fear tangling in his chest. If she got stuck, how would he pull her out? There were so many instances of cavers who had gotten stuck in such spaces, dying from exposure or suffocation while their companions tried in vain to free them. “Dammit, Rue!”
twenty
She didn’t reply.
Elliot cursed under his breath but began removing his pack. If she was going to get herself killed, he wasn’t letting her do it alone. He pushed their gear through first, then followed, his shoulders scraping against the ice as he inched forward.
The fissure opened abruptly, and he tumbled into a low-ceilinged passage beyond.
Rue stood there, waiting, her grin huge. She held out her arms as if to embrace the cavern. “See? What did I tell you? Nature always provides a way out.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but his retort died as his headlamp beam caught something embedded in the ice wall behind her. Not another filament formation—something manufactured.
“Rue, look.” Slowly, he stepped around her, approaching the wall. There, embedded in the ice, was a climbing anchor, its once-bright aluminum dulled with age and exposure.
“Someone’s been here before,” he murmured, reaching out to touch it.
Rue was beside him in an instant, her bare hand hovering inches from the frozen metal. “That’s top-of-the-line gear.”
He scowled at the ice screw and carabiner. “Atlas Frost standard issue.”
“Maren,” Rue whispered, her voice catching.
He turned to look at her. She’d gone ghost white, and her eyes had that thousand-yard stare of someone who had just received the worst kind of news.
“Who?”
She blinked and shook her head. “No one. Nothing.”
She was lying. It hurt more than he wanted to admit that she wouldn’t confide in him. He turned away, sweeping his headlamp beam across the walls. If there were one piece of equipment, there might be more. Something caught the light about ten feet ahead—another glint of metal, this time attached to a frayed length of rope.
“There,” he pointed, already moving toward it.
The rope was half-buried in the ice, but what remained hung free—about fifteen feet of high-tensile climbing line, still anchored to the wall by a solid ice screw. Beyond it, the tunnel curved sharply, opening into what looked like another chamber.
Rue ran her fingers along the rope, testing its strength. “It’s degraded, but still solid enough to support weight.”
Elliot played his light further along the passage. More evidence of human presence emerged from the shadows: a crushed oxygen canister, bootprints preserved in what had once been mud but was now frozen solid, and most tellingly, a spray-painted arrow on the wall, its red paint stark against the blue ice.
“This wasn’t just exploration,” he said, throat tightening. “This was an escape route.”
Rue moved ahead, following the arrow, her steps quickening. “If they marked a way out, we can follow it.”
The passage widened as they progressed, revealing more abandoned gear: another length of rope, a broken ice axe, a torn backpack half-buried in the frozen ground. Elliot felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. Whatever had happened here, it had happened fast. Nobody abandoned this much equipment voluntarily.
“Elliot,” Rue called from ahead, her voice strange. “You need to see this.”
He caught up to find her standing at the edge of a small alcove, her headlamp illuminating what could only be described as a cache. Stacked against the wall were three sealed equipment cases, a coil of pristine climbing rope still in its packaging, and all kinds of other equipment. If it wasn’t for the layer of frost on everything, he’d think the gear’s owners were here somewhere, planning to return at any moment.
“Holy shit,” he breathed, kneeling to examine the cases. The first contained emergency rations—freeze-dried meals, energy bars, and chemical heat packs. The second held a first aid kit more comprehensive than anything they carried on their own expedition. The third was locked with a combination padlock.
“This changes everything,” he said, allowing himself the first flicker of hope since they’d fallen. “With this gear, we’ve got a real shot at getting out.”
Rue nodded, but her expression remained troubled. “But who left all this behind? And why? And where did they go?”
All valid questions, but they didn’t have time to dwell on any of them. Elliot began gathering what they could use. His knee throbbed as he worked, but the pain seemed distant now, overshadowed by the sudden possibility of survival.
He looked at the arrow painted on the ice again and calculated the odds of it leading them to safety.
