The Winter Over(66)

Until now.

With her left hand clutching the flag line, she staggered forward against a wind that, had she tried to fall, would’ve held her perfectly upright. The flurries were so savage that they turned the spray of ice crystals into a physical attack that largely ignored her three layers of clothing, dotting her neck and face with searing pinpricks and hitting her hood with a sound like radio static at full volume.

Visibility was zero. She knew that several red signal lights topped the COBRA lab building and, at just over a hundred meters away from the main station, she should be able to spot the lights from here, but the whiteout was total—she could see nothing but billions of snowflakes whipping past her face, barely illuminated by the frail red light of her headlamp.

The single piece of good news was that, with the wind rushing at the speeds it was, there was little buildup on the ground, and so no drifts to push through. If she could simply put one foot in front of the other one hundred and ten times, and not let go of the flag line in the meanwhile, she would find herself at the door to COBRA. She could drop off the cooler, put both hands on the line, and walk back to claim her reward from Pete. Struggling against the gale, feeling the ice begin to make its way down her neck and between her shoulder blades, it crossed her mind that she’d come across as seriously cheap at nothing more than two desserts and an extra glass of wine. She must’ve been food-drunk.

To occupy her mind, she began counting steps, kicking herself for not starting the moment she’d left the base. She might as well begin counting now . . . but how far had she come? Granted, it might seem like she’d been walking forever but, in truth, she’d been moving slowly, forging one step at a time. She’d only come thirty steps at best, so thirty it was. Thirty-one, thirty-two .

Her mind wandered, lighting on subjects then taking off again, landing nowhere for very long, blown off course like the flurries around her. She thought back to the conversation she’d had with Vox, about the potential that she was the subject of a psychological test meant to push her to her emotional limits, and what she should do about it.

From a number of perspectives, it seemed unlikely that she was the only one being tested. What kind of findings would they get by testing one person, under a single set of circumstances? It wouldn’t be worth it. Assuming that the theory of a station-wide test was real and not just a function of her suspicions, that meant that others were being tested in the way she was. But how many? And how often? And to what extent?

Forty-five, forty-six .

The answer was important, because three people staging a protest wouldn’t be effective, but ten times that number would. But how was she supposed to compare notes with the crew without tipping off Hanratty and whoever else was involved? What if half the base were subjects of the experiment . . . but the other half knew about it?

She shivered, and not just with the cold. Imagination was the cork in the bottle of paranoia. Open it up and there was no end. What if this season’s winter-over had never been meant to have any scientific research benefit? What if the crew members had been recruited with some kind of experiment in mind? Was she delivering a meal to Jun the astrophysicist or to Jun the psychology post-doc brought in to test and record her emotional and mental reactions?

Fifty-eight, fifty-nine .

She shook her head, a futile physical gesture. Giving in to her suspicions wouldn’t work; she needed allies. And, anyway, she’d spent too much time with them to believe she could be fooled by Jun or Ayres or Biddi. No one could keep up an Oscar-worthy performance for that long.

She cursed out loud, the words muffled by her mask and scarf. She didn’t have to give into paranoia, but that didn’t mean she was going to be someone’s guinea pig. Armed with the knowledge—or belief, at least—that she was being manipulated, she would stay alert, record the things that were done to her or around her, and face them all down once she was safely back stateside.

Seventy-three, seventy-four .

Seventy-four divided by one hundred and ten was . . . sixty-seven percent. She was two-thirds of the way through risking her life to deliver a single meal to a man because she felt bad for him and had been bribed with sugar. Actually, she corrected herself, she was just one-third of the way through. She still had to return to Shackleton to claim her reward.

She pulled back hard on those thoughts like she was sawing on the reins of a horse. Think too hard about how far you had to go on the ice, and you were laying the groundwork for surrender. Focus on the task at hand.

Eighty-two, eighty-three .

Her body swayed in the wind like a mast as she paused for a minute to orient herself. The lights of the lab were still hidden. Moving with exquisite care, she turned in place and looked back at the way she’d come. A hollow feeling raced through her chest. Shackleton, normally lit bright by red spotlights at each corner of the building, was gone.

Fear clutched at her and she squeezed the rope in her hands. Easy. Take it easy . Shackleton wasn’t so much gone as she was blind to it—her headlamp illuminated a curtain of snow that effectively blinded her beyond three feet. Even if the station wall had been an arm’s length away, she probably wouldn’t have seen it.

Well, there’s an easy way to test that, isn’t there? Swallowing her anxiety, she put the cooler down and slowly reached up to turn her headlamp off. Absolute darkness engulfed her and she had the disorienting sensation that she’d stepped outside her body. Only the relentless wind gave her any sense of place. She looked back the way she’d come.