“Rue, what the hell—” He skidded to a halt, eyes narrowing at the sight of her mid-break-in. “Was it really that hard to stay put for one goddamn second?”
She opened her mouth to retort, but the words caught in her throat. He was flushed, out of breath, a tangle of frustrationand worry written across his face. He’d probably run the whole length of the station for her.
He always ran to put himself between her and danger.
When she didn’t respond, his gaze narrowed on her. “Rue?”
She was too tired to hide her fear and sadness, and she was sure every bit of it showed in her expression as she held out the notebook and the fox figurine. “These were Maren’s.”
“Jesus.” Instead of looking at the notebook, he stepped forward and enfolded her in his arms, pulling her tight against his chest. “Oh, Trouble, you’re shivering. Come on, you need to warm up.”
“No.” She pushed him away and turned back to the door. “I have to see what was inside.”
Before he could protest, she turned the handle and shoved the door open.
twenty-three
Stale air rushed out,carrying a smell that made Elliot’s stomach clench—antiseptic overlaid with something organic and wrong. He held his arm out, blocking Rue from entering.
“Let me go first.”
“Not happening.” She ducked under his arm, limping into the darkness beyond.
Goddamn this woman. She’d march fearlessly into the fiery pits of hell if the situation demanded it.
And goddamn him, because he’d always follow.
Unlike the orderly abandonment of the rest of the station, this room showed signs of panic—shelves overturned, equipment scattered across workstations, papers strewn across the floor. A biocontainment suit hung from a hook on the far wall, its fabric torn at the shoulder.
“Something went very wrong in here,” he said, keeping his voice low.
Rue moved carefully between the workstations, examining abandoned equipment. “Look.”
She pointed to a row of sample containers. Inside each one, something black and viscous clung to the glass—similar to the substances they’d seen in the ice caves, but more concentrated, almost alive in its density.
Elliot leaned closer, careful not to touch anything. The samples reminded him of the black filaments in the ice cores at Thwaites. The chill rattling down his spine had nothing to do with the temperature.
“There’s another door,” Rue said, already moving toward the far end of the lab where a circular hatch was set into the wall. Unlike the entrance, this one was sealed with manual bolts like a bank vault.
A placard beside it read: “COLD STORAGE - LEVEL 4 CONTAINMENT - AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY” in bold red letters. Below it, someone had scrawled a single word in what looked like black marker: “QUARANTINE.”
“Rue, maybe we shouldn’t?—”
“Help me with these bolts,” she interrupted, already working at the first one.
The mechanism was frozen, requiring both of them to put their weight into turning each bolt. His injured shoulder screamed in protest, but he kept working, driven by a mixture of dread and grim determination.
Whatever lay beyond this door, they needed to know.
The final bolt gave way with a sound like breaking bones.
Rue pulled the handle, and the hatch swung open on surprisingly well-oiled hinges. Cold air billowed out, even colder than the rest of the station—artificially cold, like a walk-in freezer. It carried a sharp tang of antiseptic and metal, sterile and wrong.
Bodies. At least a dozen of them, stacked against the walls like wood, half-encased in gleaming ice. No, not stacked. Arranged with clinical care, each one tagged with a plasticwristband bearing a number and date. Men and women in torn lab coats and survival gear, their skin a waxy blue-white, eyes open and glazed with frost. Some seemed peaceful, as if they’d simply fallen asleep; others wore expressions of agony, mouths frozen in silent screams. Some of the ice encasing them had a faint black tinge, as if the same substance they’d seen in the samples had somehow been incorporated into the freezing process.
Rue made a choked sound beside him. “Oh my God. What happened to them?”
Elliot reached for her hand instinctively, finding it ice-cold and trembling. “Someone quarantined them in here. We should leave.”
