Mustang kicks my foot, disrupting our rhythm. I try to match it again. Where is the surface? There’s no sun to greet us, to tell us we’re near. It’s wildly disorienting. Mustang kicks my leg again. Only this time I feel the ripple of the water beneath as something large and fast and cold swims in the depths below.
I slash down blindly with my razor, hitting nothing. Impossible to fight back the panic. I’m swinging at the darkness of the two kilometers of ocean that stretches beneath me and pumping my legs so desperately that I swim into the ice crust atop the water almost knocking myself out. I feel Mustang’s hand on my back. Steadying me. The ice is dull gray skin that stretches above us. I stab my razor up into it. Hear Mustang doing the same beside me. It’s too thick to push clear of. I grip her shoulder and draw a circle to signal my plan. I turn so my back is against hers. Together, nearly blind and out of oxygen, we cut a circle in the ice. I keep going until I feel the ice give slightly. It’s too heavy to push up without traction. Too buoyant to pull down with just our arms. So I swim to the side so Mustang can savage the cylinder we’ve cut with her razor. Mincing the ice enough to push the emergency box through first. She follows and extends a hand to aid me. I slash blindly back down at the darkness and follow her up.
We collapse headfirst onto the rock-hard surface of the ice.
Wind rattles over our shaking bodies.
We’re on the edge of an ice shelf between a savage coastline and the beginning of a cold, black sea. The sky throbs deep metallic blue, the South Pole locked in two months of twilight as it transitions to winter. The mountainous coastline dark and twisted, maybe three kilometers off, ice stretching all the way, punctured by icebergs. Wreckage burns on the coast’s mountains. Wind rushes in off the open water ahead of a coming storm, whipping the waves into calamity so salt and spray hiss over the ice like sand buffeting through the desert.
Water geysers into the air fifty meters closer inland as someone fires a pulseFist from underneath the ice. Numb and frozen, we rush toward Holiday as she pulls herself free, Mustang trailing behind with the emergency box.
“Where is Ragnar?” I shout. Holiday looks up at me, face twisted and pale. Blood pools from her leg. A piece of shrapnel sticking through her thigh. Her sealSkin has kept her from the worst of the cold, but she didn’t have time to don her suit’s hood or gloves. She tightens a tourniquet around her leg, looking back into the hole.
“I don’t know,” she says.
“You don’t know?” I rip free my razor and stumble for the hole. Holiday scrambles in front of me.
“Something is down there! Ragnar pulled it off of me.”
“I’m going down,” I say.
“What?” Holiday snaps. “It’s pitch-black. You’ll never find him.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You’ll die,” she says.
“I won’t let him go.”
“Darrow, stop.” She throws down the pulseFist and pulls Trigg’s pistol from her leg holster and shoots it in front of my foot. “Stop.”
“What are you doing?” I shout over the wind.
“I will shoot your leg out before I let you kill yourself. That’s what you’re doing if you go down there.”
“You’d let him die.”
“He’s not my mission.” Her eyes are hard. Unsentimental and clinical. So different from the way I fight. I know she’ll pull the trigger to save my life. I’m about to lunge at her when Mustang flashes past to my left. Too fast for me to say anything or for Holiday to threaten her as she dives into the hole, a razor in her right hand, and in her left, a flare blazing bright.
I rush to the hole. Water laps peaceably at the edge. The ice is too thick to see Mustang beneath the surface as she swims, but the flare glows gently through the meter of dirty ice, blue and wandering toward the land. I follow it. Holiday tries to drag herself after. I shout at her to stay and get the medkit for herself.
I follow Mustang’s light. Razor skimming over the ice, tracing the light underneath for several minutes, till at last the light stops. It’s not enough time for her to run out of breath, but it doesn’t move for ten seconds. And then it begins to fade. Ice and water darkening as the light sinks into the sea. I have to get her out. I slam my razor into the ice, carving a chunk free. I roar as I jam my fingers into the cracks and lift it up, hurling it backward over my head to reveal water churning with pale bodies and blood. Mustang bursts to the surface, crying in pain. Ragnar’s beside her, blue and still, pinned under her left arm as her right hacks at something pale in the water.
I stab my razor into the ice behind me and hold on to the hilt. Mustang reaches for my hand and I haul her out. Then we pull Ragnar out with a roar of effort. Mustang claws onto the ice, falling down with Ragnar. But she’s not alone. A maggot white creature the size of a small man has latched itself to her back. It’s shaped like a snail in full sprint, except its back is tough, hairy translucent flesh mottled with dozens of shrieking little mouths rimmed with needle teeth that gnaw into her back. It’s eating her alive. A second creature the size of a large dog is stuck on Ragnar’s back.
“Get it off!” Mustang snarls, slashing wildly with her razor. “Get it off of me!” The creature is stronger than it should be and crawls back toward the hole in the ice, trying to drag her back to its home. A gunshot echoes and the creature jerks as a slug from Holiday’s bullet hits it square in the side. Black blood pulses out. The creature shrieks and slows enough for me to rush to Mustang and scalp the thing from her back with my razor. I kick it to the side, where it spasms as it dies. I cut Ragnar’s beast in half, skinning it off his back, and hurl it to the side.
“There’s more down there. And something bigger,” Mustang says, struggling to her feet. Her face tightens as she sees Ragnar. I rush to him. He’s not breathing.
“Watch the hole,” I tell Mustang.
My massive friend looks so childish there on the ice. I start CPR. He’s missing his left boot. The sock’s halfway off. Foot jerks against the ice as I pump his chest. Holiday stumbles to us. Pupils huge from painkillers. Her leg’s bound with resFlesh from the medkit. She collapses to the ice beside Ragnar. Tugs his sock back on his foot like it matters.
“Come back,” I hear myself saying. Spit freezing against my lips. Eyelids crusty with tears I didn’t even know I was shedding. “Come back. Your work isn’t finished.” The Howler tattoo is dark against his paling skin. The protection runes like tears on his white face. “Your people need you,” I say. Holiday holds his hand. Both of hers not equal to the size of the massive six-fingered paw.
“Do you want them to win?” Holiday asks. “Wake up, Ragnar. Wake up.”
He jerks beneath my hands. Chest twitching as his heart kicks. Water bubbles out of his mouth. Arms scrabbling at the ice in confusion as he coughs for air. He sucks it down. Huge chest heaving as he stares up at the sky. His scarred lips curl back into a mocking smile. “Not yet, Allmother. Not yet.”
—
“We’re fucked,” Holiday says as we look over the meager supplies Mustang managed to scavenge from our vessel. We shake together in a ravine, finding momentary respite from the wind. It’s not much. We huddle around the paltry heat of two thermal flares after having humped it across the ice shelf as eighty-kilometer winds shredded us with cold teeth. The storm darkens over the water behind us. Ragnar watches it with wary eyes as the rest of us sort through the supplies. There’s a GPS transponder, several protein bars, two flashlights, dehydrated food, a thermal stove, and a thermal blanket large enough for one of us. We’ve wrapped it around Holiday, since her suit’s the most compromised. There’s also a flare gun, a resFlesh applicator, and a thumb-sized digital survival guide.