Page 37 of Wilde and Untamed
“Like a very uncomfortable hug.”
“Perfect.” She clipped him to a line with a carabiner. “On my count, we’re going to shift your hips to the right while pulling your knee toward your chest. Ready? One, two, three?—”
Tyler gasped as they executed the maneuver, but his leg came free with a jerk.
“Pull him up,” she called into her radio.
“Copy that,” Elliot’s voice crackled back.
He rose slowly, awkwardly, his back scraping against the ice walls as Noah and Elliot hauled him upward. Rue kept one hand on him as long as she could, guiding his ascent until he was beyond her reach. Then she waited, listening to the sounds of his rescue above—the grunts of exertion, Mia’s concerned voice, the scrape of the rope against ice.
Finally, Elliot’s voice came through her radio. “Tyler’s secure. Preparing for your extraction.”
“Copy that,” she replied, adjusting her own harness. “Ready when you are.”
Her journey back to the surface was smoother than Tyler’s had been. She kicked gently away from the ice walls, rising steadily until hands reached down to help her over the edge. Elliot’s grip was firm as he pulled her the final distance to solid ground.
She rolled onto her back, taking a moment to catch her breath before pushing herself up to check on Tyler. Mia was already examining him, her first aid kit open beside her.
“Some bruises and cuts, possible sprain to the right ankle,” Mia reported efficiently. “We should get him back to the station so Dr. Volkova can check him over.”
Tyler looked sheepish, his earlier bravado replaced by genuine contrition. “I’m really sorry, Rue. You were right.”
“Save it for when we’re back at base,” Rue replied, though there was no real anger in her voice. She’d led enough expeditions to know that sometimes people needed to learn lessons the hard way. The important thing was that they lived to apply those lessons.
As she helped Mia bandage a cut on Tyler’s arm, she noticed a dark smear on his coat near the gash. It wasn’t blood; the texture was wrong, more viscous.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the stain.
Tyler looked down, confused. “I don’t know. Must have picked it up when I fell.”
She frowned, taking his wrist to examine the substance more closely. It was almost black, with a faint iridescent sheen when it caught the light.
Oil? Was that what Preatorian wanted here?
But drilling in Antarctica was forbidden by international law, at least until the treaty fell through.
“Did you feel anything wet down there? Any water?”
“No, just ice and snow,” he said, then pointed back toward the crevasse. “But there was something weird about the ice where the drill hit. It looked... different.”
Curious despite the urgency of their situation, Rue moved back to the edge of the crevasse.
Elliot followed, catching her arm as she peered over the edge of the crevasse. “Jesus, Rue. What are you doing?”
“I’m still strapped into my harness. Relax.” She aimed her headlamp down into the eerie blue.
The beam illuminated a gouge in the ice wall where the tripod had penetrated as it fell. A dark substance seeped slowly from the fracture—the same oily black material that stained Tyler’s coat. As she watched, a drop formed and fell into the depths of the crevasse.
“What the hell is that?” Elliot asked, kneeling beside her.
“Probably just mineral runoff,” Rue said automatically, though uncertainty gnawed at her. She’d seen glacier ice with embedded sediment before, but never anything that looked quite like this. “They call this glacier the doomsday glacier because of how fast it’s melting.”
“Well, that’s comforting,” he muttered, then nodded toward the hole. “Should we take a sample of the black stuff?”
Rue hesitated, then shook her head. “The ice isn’t going anywhere right this minute, and our priority has to be getting Tyler back to base. We can come back for samples later.” She stood, brushing snow from her knees. “Let’s pack up and head home.”
As they helped Tyler to his feet and began the careful process of breaking down their equipment, Rue couldn’t shake the image of that black substance seeping from the ancient ice. She’d dismissed it as mineral runoff because that was the rational explanation, the scientific one.
