It was dizzying. Disorienting. Mireille felt herself inexplicably pulled downward by the dark gash in the crystal white.
And it was just a photo.
"Satellite takes pictures on a 30 second loop," explained Dr. Patel. "Wind storms account for some of the degradation in the imaging, but if you look closely..."
Patel laid out a series of photos in front of Mireille. All taken 30 seconds apart.
"It's...changing," she said.
"Slightly," nodded Patel. "But it's not the ice. The ice is stable. The rift isn't moving. It's something inside the rift."
"This isn't just a trick of the weather?" offered Mireille.
"No," said Patel. "It's quite clear. There's something inside that rift. Something alive."
"We're going there, aren't we?" said Mireille. "Even though there's no chance that there's actually something alive in that ice, we're going anyway."
"The camera doesn't lie," smiled Patel.
"Yeah, but people lie to themselves all the time." She sighed. "When?"
Patel smiled even wider. "Now."
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Mireille hadn't been to the ice in nearly 10 years. No money. No reason. And besides, she liked teaching just fine. Pass on what you knew. Hope someone else did better the next time around.
It wasn't that Mireille considered herself a failure, it was simply that her vision had exceeded her abilities. There were no miracles in her fingertips. She could chip the ice, so the speak, but she wouldn't be the one to break it.
Such is life.
Mark Garden was the expedition lead. Mireille immediately took a dislike to the man because he was at least 10 years younger than her and seemed openly aware of the fact. He gave instructions in a deferential manner, as if he didn't want to offend the elder stateswoman. Mireille decided not to let him off the hook. If he wanted to make the next two weeks awkward for himself, so be it.
Besides that, however, he seemed a capable hand. He certainly seemed to engender loyalty from the rest of the crew easily enough. It made Mireille wonder darkly whether she was there for her expertise or to diversify the crew photos.
It took four days of travel via cargo plane, ATV, and articulated snow transport before they reached the rift. Garden and his nav lead were in constant contact with the satellite team back in Arizona. They couldn't afford to fall off-course. In the meantime they drove and slept and ate compressed rations. Mireille remembered some of the more superficial reasons why she never went back to the ice.
They stopped the transport a mile out from the rift.
"Looks stable in the images," explained Patel. "But Garden wants to be cautious."
It was the right call, but it was Garden's call, so Mireille complained anyway. She had convinced herself that no one actually cared what she had to say and was starting to openly resent being asked to come.
Still, she couldn't deny that this is what she'd always wanted the work to be. New things. Dangerous things. Things that challenged and changed old assumption.
Something real.
And yet...sometimes, when she closed her eyes, she saw that black crater....that dark smear...and she felt her stomach lurch. She felt she was falling. And all the blood rushed out of her extremities and she had to put her head between her knees to keep from vomiting.
"Why am I here?" she would mutter.
They walked the final mile. The rift was below the sightline, so they walked in a line, roped together like school children in case the head of the snake fell into the darkness.
Garden, walking at the head, stopped suddenly.
"Are we there?" asked Mireille.
Garden shook his head. "Quiet. Can you hear that?"
Mireille heard her labored breathing and cursed herself for letting go of the nice, little gym habit she'd built for herself the year before. Otherwise, though, there wasn't...
"Are those voices?" said a crew member named Reyes.
Voices? thought Mireille. It was probably the wind. The wind can stand in for a lot of familiar sounds out in the blank, white wild.
"Forward," said Garden. "Slowly. As quiet as possible."
They marched, deliberate and slow. And as they moved Mireille began to hear it, too. Voices. A jumble of muffled conversations, like you might hear as you walked past a crowded bar on an otherwise empty street.
They came at last to the lip of the rift, jagged and frozen.
"Start putting some safety lines down," said Garden. "Dr. LeGros?"
Mireille unclipped herself from the line and moved to the lip to stand next to Garden, who clipped her to his waist.
"Do you have any idea what's happening here?" he whispered.
Mireille looked down. The interior of the rift was dark, but there was movement, clearly. Vague shapes flitted back and forth through the shadows. The voices had died down.
"Is there any possibility another party beat us here?" she asked.
"Not unless they came from the far side," said Garden. "There are no tracks on this edge. And besides, this rift just opened less than a week ago. Who else could be here?"
"Captain?" said Patel, who took a certain joy in brown-nosing Garden in front of Mireille. "Look at this over here." He led the pair along the ridge. "Here. These...these look like claw marks, don't they?"
Mireille and Garden knelt down. Patel was right. There were deep, unnatural scores in the lip of the ice.
"They look like pick-drags," said Mireille. "But..." She craned her head.
"From the inside," said Garden.
"So someone did beat us here," said Mireille.
"Someone's down there?" said Patel, incredulous.
Garden shook his head. "We don't know what..."
What followed happened simply too fast for Mireille to register properly. Something came out of the dark - fast - and impaled itself into Garden's chest. It was a low whistle and a dreadful, wet thump and suddenly there was something like a crude, naked ax head tied to a line of rope embedded in Garden.
All three looked at the ax head and the frayed line of rope with wide, unbelieving eyes.
That moment was briefest of all.
The rope went taut and Garden was dragged bodily over the edge of the rift.
Mireille saw the body slip into the shadowy darkness. Then her line went taut and she was dragged over just as suddenly.
She fell only a moment. Then the other end of her line tightened and pulled.
But that lasted less than a moment, as the next person in line was dragged into the rift and the descent continued.
Down they fell, sputtering, jerking, the bodies behind her pulling and falling and pulling again. There were only a dozen on the line. One or two more and the whole thing would topple like a broken necklace.
As she fell, Mireille fought to push the terror away. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom, the quarter light. She could see Garden's body swinging in tight, concentric circles in front of her. Was he dead already?
What happened?
And as she managed to push the terror out, she heard the voices once more. Human voices. Gibbering. Senseless. Slick, wetish syllables sliding across rough, guttural tongues.
They were reaching the bottom. She saw white. She saw people.
They were wild and thin and clothed in sheaths of caked-on mud. They blinked wide, pupil-less eyes as they jumped, fingers outstretched towards Garden's limp body.
"No!" Mireille shouted. "Don't touch him!"
Could they even understand her? She didn't consider the question. Just shouted, shouted so loud and hard that lines of spittle dripped from her mouth to the floor below.
Mireille felt the line of people behind her right themselves. The descent stopped. They were anchored. They were anchored!
"Pull!" she shouted, though her voice was already ruined. "Pull us up!"
The wild, mud-caked men and women leapt for Garden's swinging body. Crooked fingers slipped through the hook of his carabiner. One had a hold.
Mireille braced herself for the tug-of-war. But there was no tug.
The man began to climb.
He crawled cautiously like a tired, wounded monkey over Garden's body. Over and around. Then he reached for the rope - the rope between Garden and Mireille. He climbed.
Mireille saw his blank, black eyes and curved, skull face and screamed.
She reached to disconnect herself from Garden but the carabiner was at his waist. The connecting rope was tied in a knot around Mireille's waist.
Her knife.
Where was her knife? Where was her knife?
The rope shook with the weight of the climber. Two more had begun to climb up and over Garden. Mireille felt the line behind her buckle. Too much weight. It's too much weight.
Where was the knife?
Then the man had his hands on the straps of her backpack and Mireille knew it was too late for a knife. She pushed at the man as she twisted the safety of her carabiner. He bit her arm. She shrieked as he climbed past her, up to her back, up to the rope.
Reaching back, she grabbed his ankle and released her carabiner.
They fell and Mireille felt an unexpected relief in that moment of weightlessness.
This is what she'd been looking for, she thought in that final moment of quiet descent. Something real. A moment to stake her name to.
She hadn't imagined the moment would be her last.
Such is life.
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