The Winter Over(75)

Biddi had been watching her and nodded grimly. “It’s suicide.”

“But they were willing to give it a try before Hanratty’s speech?”

“They were willing to talk about it.” Biddi gave a dishwater-thin smile. “Then they did the same figuring you just did and decided to hear what their station manager had to say for himself instead.”

“So, my situation is to hang tight and let some kangaroo court decide my fate,” Cass said bitterly. “While one of them is manipulating everyone. In fact, whoever the Observer is must’ve predicted this, right? When all the social norms start to break down and accusations start to fly, a full-scale revolt is the only logical outcome.”

“If you say so. My bet is on Keene.”

Cass waved her hand dismissively. “He’s not smart enough.”

“Maybe playing dumb is part of his master plan. Maybe it’s an act.”

Cass snorted. “Nobody’s that good.”

Biddi smiled again, then her face fell into sober lines and she stood. “I’ve got to get going, Cass. If anyone catches me here, they’ll lock me up, too. Then where will we be?”

Cass grabbed her friend’s hands and squeezed them. “Thanks for sneaking in, Biddi. Be my voice, okay?”

“Of course.” Her friend looked at her closely. “Are you holding up all right?”

Cass thought about it. Her initial reaction upon waking up had been fear and shock that Hanratty and Keene had actually stooped to imprisoning her. But those emotions had been burnt away by a cold, seething anger . . . and a desire to get even. She wasn’t sure where the newfound confidence was coming from, but if it was fueled by anger, she was prepared to use it.

“I’m good. Ready to punch Hanratty in the mouth if I get a chance. But good.”

Biddi nodded, satisfied. “That’s exactly how I predicted you’d handle this. Take care, birdie. I’ll be back when I can.”

Cass watched her slip out the door, closing it quietly behind her and turning the key in the lock, the sound every prisoner in history had dreaded.





CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT


“You’re sure there’s nothing I can do to help?”

Carla’s smile was a just-courteous baring of her teeth. “Unless you double majored in astrophysics and advanced biology, no.”

Anne’s face closed down like a light had been turned off. “Sorry. I’ll just sit in the corner, then.”

Carla turned back to her desk, her smile turning into a grimace. Her friend had a martyrish streak to her that hadn’t been obvious before things at Shackleton had started going to hell in a handbasket. As the chaos around them had gone from the manageable to the unimaginable, Carla had fled to her work in the lab for solace, counting on the structure and stability of science to help her make sense of the madness that had taken ahold of the station.

Withdrawal wasn’t a logical reaction, she knew. Sticking her head in the sand made little sense; rationally, the deaths of some colleagues and the imprisonment of others meant that the survival of the base was at stake. And, if the station—as well as her life—was in jeopardy, then it followed that her work was, by most measures, irrelevant.

But Shackleton had changed her. She had attempted to take charge during the power outage, trusting in and valuing her own innate authority and intelligence. The results had been terrifying, even aside from her own injury. Even now, remembering the chaos and the primal fear that had overtaken the crew took her breath away. Forced to sit in her darkened berth for days, nursing her concussion, she’d come to the conclusion that they’d all been at the mercy of the environment since stepping foot onto the continent. Whether it was through the actions of other people as Cass would have them believe or freezing to death on the godforsaken plain outside the station, she’d come to realize that drive, ambition, and intelligence didn’t mean shit in Antarctica. Your plans, hopes, and dreams were about as meaningful and permanent as footprints in the snow on the other side of this wall.

The thought jogged her memory, and she remembered some old-timer during training telling them that Antarctica wanted to kill them. He’d been wrong. It didn’t just want to kill them; it would kill them.

In the face of that, she was comfortable with, perhaps even proud of, her own newfound myopia. If extending oneself outwardly didn’t work, she might as well turn inward, and for Carla, that meant her work since her time in the lab was simply an extension of her identity. To lose her life would be only slightly more jarring than losing her work—ergo, she’d prefer to die rather than sacrifice her experiments. Had she been a laborer on the Titanic , she would’ve been polishing handrails and setting tables while others jumped for the lifeboats. Let someone else man the oars or shout hoarsely from an upper deck.

Anne, on the other hand, seemed unable to cope with either the change of circumstances at the station or the particular tragedy of Jun’s suicide. She had refused to go back to work at the COBRA building or even the instation astrophysics lab down the hall, putting a huge amount of stress on the remaining two astrophysicists to do the work of four and drawing Hanratty’s ire. Many of the other staff members, without the luxury of being able to stop working, weren’t happy with her, either.

Carla, unable to comprehend the mind of someone who preferred not to work over any other option, would’ve resented Anne, too, had her friend not come and begged her to let her stay in the biology lab. Initially reluctant, Carla had given in after one of the scientists had told her something that only a few knew: Anne’s father had hanged himself when she was a little girl. On the first shift after Jun’s death, Anne had trekked out to the COBRA building to sign on for her twelve hours, only to return screaming, claiming she’d seen her father’s body hanging from the top of the antenna.