Skye
I cock my head and laugh as Abby braces her hands on my doorframe. Her fair skin is flushed pink from the cold, which means she was likely outside, possibly in one of the “bubble labs” as we call them, where a few of the departments do their experiments on the ice. Or, more probable, in the terrifying ice labs beneath the surface, where tunnels of ancient ice go on for miles.
The gray slate walls behind her gleam in the pale light in the hallway of our apartment–which isn’t much, but we have windows to the outside world, which is a privilege.
The student dormitories are in the tunnels weaving beneath the university where the sun never shines even in the summer, and the lights are specially made to give students who live there a minuscule amount of synthetic sunlight to aid the copious amounts of vitamin D supplements everyone keeps in their backpacks.
I landed an apartment in one of the towers two years ago. It was a miracle, an actual act of the Goddess, and no one can convince me otherwise. After spending the two previous years as a certified mole person, walking into a space with windows brought me to my knees, but then I met my roommate.
Angela.
A postdoctoral researcher in the psychology department who spent an entire year using me as her test subject, subjecting me to often mean, nefarious forms of psychological torture in the name of the humanities.
When she left to take her place as an administrator, in the torture department in Hell, for all I know, I actually wept with joy—and then I met Abby.
“Murder?”
“How do you kill someone without anyone knowing?” Abby leans into my room. She smells like an astringent cleaning solution and the soap that makes her hands crack so badly we block out a night once a week to soak them in warm milk, cover them in the thickest lotion we can find, and force her to wear socks on her hands until morning.
“Uh, you don’t? Who do you want to murder? Toby? I thought you guys were dating again.”
She licks her cold-chapped lips, dark eyes narrowing to cat-like slits. “Not Toby. Dr. Scarlett is on my shit list, and I’d love to see him bleed out on the ice. I’m sure his blood would be black, given that he’s a fucking demon!” She groans and pushes off the doorframe, flopping face down on my bed. “I hate him. He’s making my life fucking miserable.”
“Just go to the dean–”
“He’s not a postdoc,” she groans into the comforter. “He’s a professor, like you. All fancy, tenured, and untouchable. He also just so happens to be my lab director.” She turns her head to the side to look at me. I stare at her, the name not registering. She rolls her eyes. “You wouldn’t know him because he’s in the biology department, and unlike your heated lecture halls and labs within the towers, his labs are outside, under the ice.”
“I see.” I swivel in my desk chair to face her, closing the compact mirror I used to do my makeup in my palm.
“I have one more year of postdoctoral research, Skye. Then I’m moving back to where it’s warm. I’ll go into industry if I have to, researching fucking dolphins for all I care, as long as I don’t have to work with him ever again. I swear I will.”
Abby is from Maatua, and for reasons only a career academic could possibly understand, didn’t leave Lunaria when she graduated with her PhD last year and go into “industry” or the real world, using her skills at a mainland lab or one of the marine labs in Maatua that offered her the world, which she refused.
She’d stayed for Toby, but she’ll never admit it. Not even to me.
“I think you’d love industry,” I coax, but she frowns at me.
“I’d love to publish my research, but Dr. Scarlett is part of it and has been giving me hell about my current sea ice theories. I’ve been a mile under the ice since this summer, digging with my bare hands.” She flexes her fingers. “Must have been nice getting tenure and taking the summer off.”
“Don’t turn your anger on me.” I tsk, and she rises on her elbows, narrowing her eyes while scanning my face.
“Are you wearing makeup?”
“A little.” I blush under her scrutiny. “Why? Does it look bad? Is it too much?”
“You look like a living person for once.”
“Amazing what a little bronzer will do,” I huff, giving her my back and fumbling in my makeup bag for the ancient tube of mascara I bought six years ago, which is long expired, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
“Do you have a date?” Her excitement rings through the room, bouncing off the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking campus, a maze of sparkling, glass towers and skybridges connecting the different departments, labs, and common spaces.
“No.” I laugh, swiping the mascara across my lashes. “There’s a little ‘start of the semester’ party for the professors tonight. I feel like I have to go.”
“Ah, I see. A little gathering to decide how to torture the students this year, huh?”
“Just the undergraduates.” I smirk, catching her eyes, and she grins back. “Speaking of which, you’ll have an entire pool of new students to seduce into working as lab assistants. Maybe instead of murdering your research director, you can pawn his wrath onto someone else?” My phone buzzes, alerting me to the time. “Shit, I have to go. How do I look?”
I turn back to her, but her eyelids flutter, and she slumps into an exhausted, utterly limp kind of sleep. Fair enough. I suppose letting her borrow my bed means I have free rein over her well-stocked closet.
My normally smart, academia-leaning style isn’t much more than a thick sweater and black leggings, but based on the flyer, this is a more formal affair. I flick through Abby’s options and find a black cocktail dress that isn’t too short and drape it over my body, completing the look with a pair of her knee-high black leather boots.
My usual black wool coat is next, and that’s it. I’m ready. Ready to step into a new chapter of my life as a professor and research director.
Which means mingling with people from the other departments isn’t something I can avoid anymore.
The maze of skybridges connecting the LU towers is mostly empty. It’s late evening, and any students who’ve arrived early for the start of the semester or postdoctoral researchers who remained to continue their research in the icy recesses of the north are the only people around, likely congregating in the common spaces surrounding the library at the heart of campus, a spiraling glass structure that creates a midpoint in the center of the four towers, where all the skybridges eventually lead.
It took a while to mentally map this campus when I was a new student. The crystalline towers are massive, and the spider's web of skybridges took days to figure out, and don’t even get me started on the tunnels that run underground in the ice, connecting everything at ground level. Dad has visited more than anyone as it stands, and I doubt it has much to do with me, his favorite and only daughter. He has a thing for architecture, and we’ve spent days roaming the glass hallways while he inspected every impossible curve and sharp angle.
I reach the library, digging the flyer out of my pocket. It’s still in the shape of a crane. I carefully unfold it to check the room number while I step into an elevator bound for the commons closer to ground level, scanning the page instead of my surroundings.
I slam into a hard body.
The elevator doors close behind us, and my stomach flip-flops as it drops with speed.
A tall, lean, but broad-shouldered, man clutches my arm for a moment, my vision filled entirely with the fibers of his forest green sweater, before letting me go and stepping back.
“Sorry,” I murmur, slowly looking up at him, taking in his dark jeans and black leather jacket over his sweater, then… him.
The handsome stranger just nods curtly before rolling his eyes to the door at my back. He’s in his early thirties, clean-shaven, with fair skin and dark, glossy hair. Black hair, actually, with a blue tinge I so rarely see in nature. But on second glance, I think it’s just the heavy fluorescent light reflecting off his sharp, ocean blue eyes giving off that startling color. I find him familiar in a way I can’t place.
He slowly looks down at me, catching me staring boldly. “Are you new here?”
“Me? No. No, I–sorry, I guess I’m not used to sharing elevators yet. It’s been a quiet week.” I step to the side to give him more space, but his gaze follows my progress to the transparent wall. I should say something, right? He’s probably a graduate student or new postdoctoral researcher. I haven’t seen him around before. It’s my duty, I suppose, as a tenured professor to be amiable and social with students and researchers when the circumstance calls for it.
I open my mouth with nothing to say, but the light cuts out as the elevator breaches the surface of the ice and dives down into the tunnels.
“Scared of the dark?” he asks as the elevator slows.
It’s an odd question. I shiver under the weight of the darkness and his presence. “Uh, no.”
“Hm. Could have fooled me. Your heart’s racing.”
His scent is everywhere. Cool and clean. Like the ice all around us–with a hint of laundry detergent. But when he steps closer, the underlying masculine tone hits me, and it’s warm, cozy, spiced with a gentle, non-overbearing cologne. Something woodsy and simple.
“Do you live in the dorms?” I ask, my voice hitching against my will.
“I haven’t for a long time.” The doors open wide, revealing a hallway of concrete broken up by several open spaces for lounging and gathering. I step out, but unfortunately, the stranger follows, walking a few feet behind me while I navigate the hallway as it branches, following it to the right.
And… he’s still behind me. Still matching the cadence of my steps. It takes all of my strength to resist the urge to look at him over my shoulder. I, naturally, pick up my pace as the room assigned to the party comes into view. Voices and music drift into the hallway, and at this point, I can’t help it.
I have always been, and likely will always be, a firm follower of the rules.
“This is a private event for tenured staff,” I bite out, whirling to face the stranger.
He smirks as he strides past me, his arm brushing my shoulder. “I’m aware.”
“What–”
“Dr. Scarlett!” I slowly turn back to the door as Dr. Gerralde, a professor in my department and one of my advisors during my graduate days, beams up at the stranger, his green eyes crinkling with surprise.
My eyes, on the other hand, narrow at the mention of Abby’s demonic research director.
Dr. Gerralde continues. “I didn’t realize you’d be coming, but I’m so glad you’re here. I heard a rumor that you’re looking for someone from the physics department to help with your research in the biology department. I wanted to pick your brain as to who you were thinking, but you’re a hard man to pin down.”
I step into the room. It’s dizzying. The music is suddenly too loud, and the voices screech against the concrete walls. I can’t look away from the tall, sweater-clad man as Dr. Gerralde claps him on the upper arm and motions to me.
“Ah! Skye, my dear! Alex, this is who I wanted you to meet. Dr. Abbot was one of my…” His words drown in the endless sea of sound and bodies. I’m suddenly trapped in my head, unable to move, my body doing that thing where it ceases to function.
Alex–Dr. Scarlett–turns to me ever so slowly, ocean blue eyes meeting mine. He tilts his head in a weak, half-assed silent acknowledgment of my presence. “We’ve met,” he says to Dr. Gerralde, thoroughly, bitingly uninterested, then side-steps through the crowd, falling out of sight.