There was no sound on the other end. Cass continued.
“Then, Keene interviews me, but shows no sympathy or compassion. Instead, it’s as if he thought I knew something, was part of something. Like I was part of a conspiracy or a plan. Say, like faking a crew member’s death.”
“But if he knows what is going on, why would he ask those questions?”
“Vox, hold on.” Cass, lying on her back with an earpiece in one ear and three layers of clothing around her head, could barely hear the wind rushing outside. But she felt, rather than heard, something—a thud, a bang, something—come through the floor, nearly stopping her heart. Moving slowly, she rolled onto her belly, pushed herself to her hands and knees awkwardly, and crawled to the hatch that led down to the ice tunnels.
There it was again. Softer now, barely felt through the floor, but noticeable. Pulse pounding, she got a flashlight ready in her right hand, then yanked the hatch open with her left. Cold air wafted upward, hitting her in the face. The beam shone down the tube, illuminating the white ice riming the metal walls and rungs.
Nothing.
Ignoring the shock of cold, Cass ripped away her parka and hood so she could listen to the empty space, hoping the tube would act like an amplifier.
Was there a scratching, scuffing sound? Or was it the fabric of her parka? Her mouth was dry and her pulse pounded in her temples as she strained to hear.
Nothing.
After a moment, she heard Vox’s tinny voice calling over the earpiece. Reluctantly, she lowered the hatch over the tube and crawled back to her shortwave, but kept her flashlight on. She screwed the earpiece back in.
“I’m here.”
“Good. I thought they’d kidnapped you and were performing mind-control experiments.”
“The first one, no,” she said. “The second one, we’re still trying to decide. Anyway, what were you asking?”
“Why would your psychologist ask you those questions if he already knew what was going on?”
Cass pulled the drawstring of her hood tighter. It was cold . “I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t in on the entire plan to begin with and was hoping to learn more? Like I said, when I didn’t give him the answers he wanted, he seemed worried. Or scared.”
“Which leads us back to the big question. Why would your superiors fake a crew member’s death?”
“Right.”
“In my country, when such deceit is used, it is to observe how you would have acted had such an event happened.”
“A test,” Cass said, slowly, thinking aloud.
“Yes. Now, what would they be trying to test? Your loyalty?”
“No. You’re still thinking like the KGB is after you. There’s no cult of personality at a research base. Not one that matters, at least.”
“What, then?”
“Maybe they wanted to rattle everyone, see how they reacted to a terrible event. Like one of their own dying right before the doors close for the winter.”
“Surviving a winter here isn’t enough?”
“Hundreds, maybe thousands of people have wintered over and survived more or less intact,” she said. “A series of short, sharp shocks might send different people around the . . . corner in different ways. Ways you could study or report on.”
“How did the woman Sheryl’s death—or fake death—affect you?”
How did it affect me? Good question. Should I say picking her legs up reminded me of watching the first responders carrying bodies out of a tunnel? Or that I couldn’t see past the ruse of Taylor not allowing me to lift her ski mask because I knew it would bring back all the faces of the people who’d been suffocated after the mooring collapsed?
A particular, caustic burn caught at her throat, a clutching of the muscles there. The imagined feel of Sheryl’s wooden body—to hell if it hadn’t been real, the emotions it dredged up were —mixed with the memories of a subway tunnel, an engineering failure, a knot of people trapped in the urban equivalent of a miners’ cave-in.
“Blaze? Are you there? Cass?”
She cleared her throat. “I’m here.”
“How did Sheryl’s death affect you?”
“Why do you want to know?” It came out as a harsh accusation. She hoped the radio’s white noise took some of the edge off. But she had the wild, unreasoning thought that maybe Vox was involved somehow and was baiting her, asking her to confide in him.
Vox continued, oblivious. “Because their reaction to your reaction might tell us something. Nobody does nothing in a case like this. Is not possible.”
“What do you mean?”
“Most base administrators, even Russian ones, would offer you some kind of support after the death of a colleague, yes? The compassionate ones would offer sympathy, while even the most heartless would want to know when you could get back to work. But saying nothing, doing nothing? Then you are being studied.”