The Winter Over(57)

With the wind silenced, however, the cold had moved in and the only thing that seemed to take his mind off it were the blue and pink pills he’d found back in his room. At first, after washing them down, they made him feel edgy and irritable, but the sensation went away if he kept his mind cleared and tried to stay calm. Before long, he was lying on the frozen floor of his nest, bundled in full parka, boots, and gear, almost warm under six layers of ancient carpeting he’d torn up from the floor.

Dimly, he wondered what would happen when the pills ran out. But for now it was enough that he was holed up deep in the ice, away from the people, away from temptation, and—most important—away from the wind.





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT


Elise Simon saw blinking lights everywhere and all the time. They forced their way into her thoughts, even when she wasn’t working, showing up in conversations and idle moments. They went along for the ride into the frustrating slide into sleep that so often didn’t come, and slipped into her dreams when it did. She wanted to scream sometimes, when her sleep-self—gently tipping into the soft, velvet bank of slumber—chose that moment to invent the lights of an imaginary emergency call on the inside of her lids, yanking her awake with her mouth dry and her heart pounding.

Sometimes after waking in the absolute darkness of her berth, she would lie with her eyes oyster-wide and stare at the ceiling, sure she could see the square, gem-like greens and reds from her switchboard arrayed above her bed. Fascinated at what her mind conjured out of thin air, she would watch the imaginary calls come and go, and fill in the backstories of the people on the other end. What they needed and why. Who and where they lived. She pushed hard against reality, inventing benign calls for help, like cats up trees and requests for fire engines to make a big show at the Fourth of July parade.

When her mind ran out of happy stories and her memory started replaying what she knew actually went on behind an emergency call, the horrific reality of experience, she knew it was time to get out of bed and get to work, no matter what time it was or how little she’d slept.

This was one of those times. Elise rolled over and tapped her clock. She’d slept three hours and sixteen minutes. She groaned. A new record. Glancing to her left, she checked the small field radio she was required to keep next to her bed to cover emergencies during her off-hours. All clear; it hadn’t squawked, beeped, or buzzed. Congrats, you woke up all on your own . She kicked the blanket to the floor, slipped out of bed, and got dressed in the dark, trying not to think about the exhaustion that would set in later . . . or the mental fog that came along with it.

Unfortunately, it didn’t matter how tired she was or would be. Communications was one of the few jobs at Shackleton that didn’t work toward a goal: she didn’t paint sheds, she didn’t record computer results, she didn’t fix busted pipes. Her job was to answer calls and patch through radio broadcasts for the same ten hours every day, day after day. She’d commiserated with Pete, who had a job like hers; it didn’t matter how hungover or tired you were, breakfast got served in the morning, lunch at noon, and dinner at night. Every day. Period.

She nodded wordlessly at the few people she passed on her way to her work cube. The base was a twenty-four-hour operation, so there was always someone around, haunting the halls, but no one who was awake now was interested in chatting. A few, suffering from long-eye, stared right past her. She didn’t take it personally, since they weren’t really there. For all intents and purposes, they didn’t see her and wouldn’t unless she said something. That was fine with her, so she floated past them like a ghost on her way to the admin offices.

Her prework ritual had boiled down to the same few motions: stop to grab a cup of coffee and fill her water bottle, tie her hair back to keep it from getting caught in the receiver’s earpiece, and slap the seat cushion where she’d be planted for the next four hours. Once the necessary items were out of the way, the coffee went on her right, the water bottle on the left, and her butt went in the chair. Ready, she faced front with a sigh.

The dashboard was dark.

Not a single light was on. For a split second, her memory and imagination imprinted a false set of blinking lights, but she squeezed her eyes shut and opened them. No lights.

She punched several of the call buttons to no effect, then lifted the receiver. The familiar tone was there, but when she tapped the space bar on her computer’s keyboard and checked her screen for the network signal, a red “X” covered the familiar connection icon.

Frowning, she pushed her chair back and crawled under her desk. A short stint at a corporate IT help desk had taught her to never be too proud to check the obvious: Was it plugged in? It was. And so was everything else. Dusting herself off, she rebooted the computer, turned the dashboard on and off, checked all her connections. Nothing changed.

Elise sat for a moment, thinking things through, then picked up the receiver and called her own room. The line rang a half-dozen times before she disconnected. So, internal comms was up, external was down.

She cleared her throat, picked up the receiver again, then dialed another internal number. It was answered on the second ring, the voice on the other end creaky but clear and awake.

“Jack?” she said. “It’s Elise. We’ve got a problem.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE


“So the test continues?”