Vortex (22 page)

Two metal devices shifted, curving their single, pinpoint camera eyes toward him, aligning them so for a disconcerting moment, Tom felt like he was gazing at some sort of machine man, assessing him through empty metallic eyes.

“Okay,” Tom said, “obviously you’re not pleased about something.”

The camera eyes bobbed up and down, a cold, fatal nod of a head.

And then the wall Tom was leaning back against abruptly swung open, and he realized it wasn’t a wall but a door, and it led straight to the outside. He realized this the same instant he crashed onto his back into a bank of icy snow. The door swung closed with a resounding clang, stranding Tom outside, without a coat, on the frozen Antarctica tundra.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

F
OR A FLEETING
moment, Tom lay there, absolute cold soaking into the back of his flimsy suit, and then a gust of tormenting wind battered him and his brain cleared enough to register that he was outside. In a thin suit. And it wasn’t freezing cold—it was painfully, agonizingly cold.

Tom bolted to his feet and charged toward the door. His hands slipped over an icy, stinging metal surface with no handles. He had never in his life imagined it was possible to feel this cold. His ears were searing hot pokers stabbing his head, his eardrums throbbed, and the wind felt like thousands of tiny prongs jabbing viciously at him. His skull began spiking with terrible pain. Tom pounded his fist on the door.

“HEY! HEY! YOU CAN’T DO THIS! OPEN UP! OPEN THE DOOR!”

He stumbled back several steps, shaking violently, his teeth chattering, the chill so much more dreadful where his suit had picked up some icy dampness from the ground, and he became aware of a surveillance camera mounted over the door, fixed on him—like Vengerov was waiting for him to get scared enough to beg or plead, to swear to do what he wanted.

No. No way
.
Not now. He would never do anything Vengerov wanted.

A rush of hot determination flooded Tom, and he very deliberately flipped the camera the bird even as wind stabbed its way into his lungs and tore at his gums. His nose stung, his fingers were pulsing with pain, and his mind raced frantically, looking for something to do to help himself.

Suddenly, he remembered back when he was little with his dad, when they couldn’t catch a ride one night in Nevada. The desert, so hot in the day when they were trying to thumb a ride, grew so terribly cold that night and the day’s sweat became like ice. Neil had told him to keep moving, because standing still was what killed you.

So Tom jammed his aching hands beneath his armpits and began hopping. He swept his gaze over the blank face of the massive complex that stretched off into the distance. His stinging lids scraped his eyes with every blink, and the wind bit his pupils until tears began flowing to his cheeks, only to freeze on his face like insects nipping him. But there was a window, a low one, and not too far away.

He launched himself into a run, his lungs gashed by the frantic breaths he gasped, and he felt a strange sense like he was in some distorted maze, because the window didn’t seem to be closer—it was so much farther than it had looked. He’d slipped on the ice repeatedly before he reached it. He tried shoving up the pane with his rubbery hands, but it wouldn’t give, so Tom hurled himself at it, and then kicked viciously over and over, perfectly willing to scrape his leg to break the glass, but it still wouldn’t break. His gums were aching, his teeth chattering. He willed on net-send, but the frequency was still jammed, and he grew aware of another camera boring right into him from over the window. He wished he had something to hurl at it. His gaze roved over the ground, and he spotted a rock, half-buried in snow. Tom realized with a spring of glee that he could use
this
to break the camera—no, the window! He knelt to dig it up.

A message blinked across his vision center:
Warning: Low body temperature detected. 95.2º F. Trainee is advised to seek shelter.

Tom began laughing. He couldn’t help it. “I a-am
T-T-TRYING
!”
he shouted at the message, clumsy fingers scraping over the rock’s jagged edges. He couldn’t feel the stinging cuts.

Then light flooded the corner of Tom’s vision. Tom gaped for a moment, unable to believe it: Vengerov had relented. He’d opened the door again!

Of course. Of course, he couldn’t strand Tom out here and let him freeze. It was a game of chicken and Tom had won. Tom sprinted back toward it, but it took even longer now, getting back to where he’d come from. His legs were so clumsy, he tumbled again and again, numbed hands and knees scraping the snow. His limbs were unfeeling blocks by the time he reached the door, and he felt the tantalizing blast of warmth from inside the building—and then the door swung closed again.

“NO!” Tom screamed, hurling himself at it, but it was too late. “N-NO!” He punched it with his unfeeling fists. For a moment, he felt like his chest was going to split open. His throat seemed to be jammed. Then he reeled back with an insane laugh spilling from his lips. The camera was still fixed on him.

“OPEN UP! OPEN THE D-D-DOOR! OPEN IT! I’LL K-KILL Y-YOU F-F-FOR THIS!”

Some part of his brain warned him that death threats weren’t very enticing reasons for anyone to open a door for him, but Tom didn’t muse on it for long.

An emergency alarm blared in his vision center.
Warning: Low body temperature detected. 93.3º F. Transmitting emergency beacon.

Tom’s heart soared. Would this work? Would someone get it? And then he screamed in frustration as he read the words:
Frequency unavailable. Emergency beacon not sent. Automatic retry in twenty seconds. Nineteen seconds. Eighteen seconds. . . .

He stopped clawing his way forward, his eyes stinging as they focused on the distant window. Too distant.

He could die here.

The thought spliced through his head, sharp like a razor. A vivid image of his own body frosted over with snow filled his brain and Tom couldn’t banish it from his mind.

Vengerov wasn’t messing around. This wasn’t a game of chicken. He could really die out here. He grew wild with rage and fear, and whirled back toward the window, knowing it was his best chance. His throat felt numb. When he fell, he clawed his way forward, the wet snow plastering his clothes to his limbs. He sprinted ahead, but before he knew it, he’d plunged back into the snow. Panic tore at him. He wasn’t sure what to do. He couldn’t focus on anything other than the cold.

So cold, so cold . . .
He couldn’t fight it now. His body contracted into a shivering ball, but nothing warded off the terrible ice. He felt like he was being erased, everything human and deliberate vanishing from his mind, replaced by some nameless, tormented creature that knew only frost and could understand nothing else, and he became numbed all over, all sense of where he was, what this was, receding from him.

Warning: Critically low body temperature detected. 92.0º F. Transmitting emergency beacon. Frequency unavailable. Emergency beacon not sent. Automatic retry in twenty seconds.

He had to get up. He had to. With strength he didn’t feel like he had, he uncurled slowly, even though his legs were so numb, they felt like they weren’t even there. Standing took so much effort it was like heaving up a ton of granite. He forced the legs he couldn’t feel to move, to jog in place, but it was like moving through a swamp. Everything was dragging, and even his brain was sluggish. He couldn’t feel his face.

The window.

The window. That rock could break the window. He had to get there. It was his only chance.

He lifted his legs and set them down, drawing step by step toward the window. Each minute felt like a year. Several times, he found himself on the ground, fighting for air. He saw that the door had popped open again to spill light onto the snow. Just to taunt him. Just to offer safety and slam shut again. He kept going. He wasn’t going to fall for it.

Then he reached the window and lowered himself clumsily, pawing at the snow, trying to extract that rock from the frost. But it was too late. His fingers weren’t closing. His hands couldn’t grip, they couldn’t hold. He only knew where they were by looking at them. Horrible fear stabbed him, sharp and acrid, as he realized his body wasn’t working anymore.

Tom turned that thought around in his mind, his pulse thready in his ears, because even during the simulated deaths in the training room, it had never sunk in that he could
really die
. That someone like Joseph Vengerov could come along and simply end him. That he could get so cold, his body would actually stop moving for him. That every shred of will he had couldn’t force his fists to clench. That his life or death could hinge on something so small as his fingers.

He lurched to the window. His blood beat in his head. A strange, unnatural heat began to well up within him as he planned a kick. One good, hard kick. He could do this. He
had
to do this. It didn’t matter now if he broke every bone in his leg. He’d die if he didn’t get through that window.

He squinted at the window and swung his foot forward. His other leg buckled, the world flipped before his eyes, and he landed on the ground, hard. Icy snow shot up his nose, and he coughed weakly, his brain blurring. The snow was warm. Hot. Tom realized he was sweltering all over, like someone had lit him up from the inside. He wanted to tear off his tie, shove off his coat, relieve himself of the unbearable heat, but he gave up on it quickly. He tried heaving himself up again, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. And then he began to grow comfortable, like he was sinking into the depths of some exquisite bed.

Some nameless time later, he was on his side. He stayed there, his face nestled in the crook of his arm, still roasting in the Antarctic tundra, his body so unfeeling, it was like he’d become detached from it. Now even his brain was slipping, slipping out of reach, and Tom realized in a detached sort of way that this was the way it would end. A stupid, pointless death at fifteen, out here all alone. But it wasn’t so bad. The pain was gone.

A strange glow pervaded him. Heat receded into warmth. Lethargy seeped like syrup through his muscles.

Tom couldn’t think of what had been so important about breaking that window. The words were like an afterthought in his vision center, searing into life and then fading:
Warning: Critically low body temperature detected. 87.2º F. Transmitting emergency beacon. Frequency unavailable. Emergency beacon not sent. Automatic retry in twenty seconds.

Something about the moment felt so right
.
He was back in the desert at night, at the side of the empty road, his dad snuggling an overlarge coat around him until his teeth stopped chattering. Then Neil hoisted him up for a piggyback ride, and they trudged farther and farther down that empty, dark road, waiting for the next set of lights to appear in the darkness. Tom wasn’t even shivering anymore.

He didn’t feel the smothering arms sweep him, crush him up against a chest. He opened his eyes dully when he realized it was harder to breathe with his face muffled against a thick coat. He felt entombed in something heavy, and a sense of suffocation made him panic and he flailed as much as he could. A clang echoed through the air, and he squinted through burning eyes to see over a shoulder. The door. Someone had brought him to the other side of the door.

Hands stripped off his soaked shirt, the strangling tie, a voice shouting about a “warming blanket.” Other words floated back, and, “We’re in the middle of Antarctica and there’s no warming blanket in the entire building? How about a bathtub? How far away are the staff quarters, then? No, too far. Give me another parka.” Some gruff swearing, and he was hauled back against something solid, a coat snuggled around him.

His brain was a muffled, cloudy thing, and Tom didn’t begin to emerge from the mire until the first electric prickles began in his face, in his nose, then spread into his ears, his lips. They grew sharper and sharper. Painful. So painful. He tried to move away from them, but they kept following, searing him. He was squashed in place beneath a smothering coat, heavy arms.

His eyes hurt, and when he squinted down he could see his hairy legs, quivering like live wires. He couldn’t feel them. His hands were gnarled, prickling claws, his fingers white like porcelain, and someone knelt in front of him kneading them. He squeezed his stinging eyes shut.

“No, leave his hands, Ashwan,” a voice said from right next to his ear.

“What about frostbite?”

“He can survive losing fingers. He can’t survive cardiac arrest if you dilate peripheral blood vessels and shoot cold blood into his chest.”

Tom stirred a bit.
Losing fingers?
But his brain couldn’t hold on to the thought.

It took him a while to finally peel his eyes open again, and he made out the ashen face, the kid standing near his knee, gazing Tom’s way like he didn’t recognize him. It took Tom a moment to pull the name up. “V-V-Vi?” His voice came out slurred, his throat like sandpaper, his teeth chattering.

“Hi, Tom,” Vik said faintly.

“If you’re going to stay here, make yourself useful,” rumbled a voice from behind Tom. “Get a wet compress for his eyes.”

Vik shuffled off.

Tom’s head flopped back against the person holding the coat around him. He was hiked up a bit farther, the grip around him reaffirmed, warmth soaking into his back. The electrical prickle in his toes and ears and nose grew into a torment, and it was spreading everywhere. He tried to say something, but the words didn’t come out as words. He had a creeping sense there was something he was supposed to be doing. Wasn’t there? He had to do something. He wasn’t safe. Something bad had happened. He wasn’t sure what, but he started pulling at the heavy weight keeping him here, trying to break away.

“Calm down, Raines.”

But he kept struggling against the overpowering bands around him, because he was sure there was something wrong, so he needed to get up, he needed to do something. A mounting sense of urgency gripped him. Fear clutched his throat. He raised his head as far as he could, agitated. He needed . . . He needed . . .

Fingers threaded through his hair and eased his head back, then a palm brushed against his forehead. “You’re okay, Tom. Just relax. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

“Dad?”

The hand on his forehead stilled an instant. “No,” said Blackburn.

He drifted in and out for a while. He didn’t stir again until Blackburn reached down and lifted up his limp arm. Tom squinted, and saw Blackburn’s thumb brush over his fingers, where the skin appeared a strange, pale blue. Tom realized after a moment that he’d seen the touch, but he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel it at all.