Alex
Toby grunts with effort as we move the patch in place. It’s nothing more than a sheet of steel to frame one of the smaller tunnel entrances in the lab, creating an archway leading down into the glacial, blue-tinged darkness below.
“Shit!” Toby huffs.
“Just hold it in place a moment longer,” I say through gritted teeth, my gloved hands slipping over the metal while trying to get a good grip. The whirling screech of the drill echoes all around us as I drive several screws through the steel and into the ice. Sensors secured to the tunnel are supposed to catch cracks before they spread, and so far, none of the sensors are going off.
“One more,” I rush out, breathless, and send the last screw through the metal. Toby eases the pressure before letting go entirely, his hands falling to his knees in an attempt to catch his breath.
Puffs of cold mist leave my mouth while I examine my work and check the sensors.
“Well,” Toby remarks, chuckling, “good thing the dean doesn’t know about this.”
“He wouldn’t care. He hasn’t been down here in six years, and I doubt a tunnel collapsing would make a difference on that front. Who’d it fall on?” I ask, smoothing my gloves over the metal.
Toby shrugs. “Some idiot engineering graduate student testing drills down in the ice core storage area.” He points down the incline into the darkness. “He’s fine. Spooked him, is all. He thought the whole tunnel was collapsing.”
As much as I hate having engineers in my lab, they do have the tools we need to expand the tunnels and drive drills deep into the ice to collect samples. I tolerate them as much as they tolerate my presence–because I have a habit of watching their every move. One fuckup and the entire tunnel system is coming down, and this is my lab. My research. My lab assistants and students. I’ve made sure everyone knows that.
I chew my lower lip in thought while gathering our tools and following Toby up into the main area of the lab, which is at least thirty degrees warmer than the ice-core tunnels.
A wide, circular room of ice expands around us, the ceiling just high enough that Toby, also a tall man like me, can walk comfortably without having to crouch. Several more ice tunnels branch off the main lab. I hold a single class here at the graduate level. Otherwise my lectures are upstairs, past the ice, in the sparkling glass towers. This space is used primarily for research on the ice, and I mean to keep it that way, even if the occasional curious onlooker from another department begs for the key code to the elevator.
It’s Saturday, which means the lab is mostly empty of graduate students, research assistants, and postdocs, but a few mingle in their bright yellow thermals and insulated bibs around microscopes or at workstations made of pure ice.
I don’t speak to any of them. I rarely do. I have a reputation to uphold, of course. A totally unintentional reputation.
Some people call me a demon. A monster. A fucking dick.
I just don’t like being wrong.
I don’t like others fucking up and not living up to their full potential, either.
Toby, thankfully, has never fallen into that category.
“Did Garret get those blood samples from Aurorium that I requested?” I ask Toby before he reaches the exterior door of the lab.
He punches a few buttons to activate the elevator and turns to me, nodding, pulling off his beanie to run his fingers through his flattened hair. His cheeks are dusted red from the cold. “They’re in the specimen fridge, top left shelf. Hey–” The elevator door opens, and he holds it while stepping in. “What’re you doing tonight?”
“Me? Why?”
“I’m taking Abby to the club for a few drinks to try to get on her good side again now that the weather warning has passed and the terminal reopened. You should come. Skye’s coming, too, from what Abby said.”
“Why would I ever go to a nightclub with my postdocs, let alone another professor?”
Toby doesn’t react to the dead, dry tone of my voice. He shrugs, smirking. “Don’t ya get lonely, Alex?”
“Never. Not once.”
He steps into the elevator, which is nothing more than a janky metal tube, and disappears through the layers of ancient ice, where he’ll pop out on the surface in the washroom, going through all the mandatory sterilization steps everyone who steps foot in this lab must do before entering and leaving.
Meanwhile, I go to the specimen fridge, doing my best to block the sound of Dr. Skye Abbot’s name from my head.
I’ve known who she is for years. It was hard not to hear about the double-major-physics-prodigy the physics department was worshipping like a deity day in and day out. Her admittance to her PhD program came with money and royal family connections, something the other departments, including mine, could only dream about. It left a bitter taste on my tongue, to say the least.
At first, I figured that’s all she was–a princess with the money and connections to get her into such a prestigious institution without so much as batting an eyelash.
That’s not what she is. Not really. Not at all.
Skye Abbot is a freak of nature. She’s impossible, actually. I still don’t want to believe she was able to swing two PhD programs, but she did. One in theoretical physics and the other in observational astrophysics, which is where she shines. I’ve seen her work only because I find the observatory a warm and quiet place to sit… not because I’ve ever been interested in the stars and heavens.
I like concrete evidence, not speculation.
Which is why I hate theorists.
Which is why I have to hate her.
Which is why I will not go out tonight, even if Toby is the closest thing to a friend I’ve had since I was a child.
Which is also why I have to ignore her thick, dark brown hair and those strange, oddly familiar violet eyes that betray every rule of nature and biology–just like I attempted to do yesterday at the commissary. She’s beautiful for a shifter. She has a whimsical type of beauty that I want to study because there’s something about her that doesn't make sense and hasn’t since the moment I first saw her, first touched her.
That was years ago. She doesn’t remember. She thought we were meeting for the first time in that elevator, when she had the gall to assume I was a student here and not a leading researcher in the biology department.
I know very little about her personally. She’s a princess–I know that much. She’s Toby’s mate’s best friend and long-time roommate. I know she’s related to the royal family of Crescent Falls in some way but graduated with her master’s from the University of Moonrise, for some reason. I’ve never been to either place. I never read up on royal gossip or the news, for that matter. My life is here. On this campus. In this lab. Buried in this maze of ice older than anything else in our strange, magical world.
And it will always be that way unless I find what I’ve been looking for.
I pull the box of blood samples–little glass vials and sterile bags this time, an interesting mix–from the fridge and sort them until the few remaining lab assistants and students who have nothing better to do than try to look busy around me to win my favor, leave. Then, I tuck four of the samples in my bag and head out, shutting off the lights and checking the sensors one last time before the elevator doors creak shut behind me, and the ice closes in on all sides.
The blood is ice cold when I finally reach The Pillars. The skybridge wraps around half of campus with a view of nearby Aurorium, which is far enough away that it’s just a tangle of flickering light against the ice and stars beyond. The Pillar houses are boxes of glass that line the outside of the skybridge. I walk past a dozen front doors before reaching mine, press the key into the lock, and close myself into a familiar–but practically bare–space.
I tuck the blood samples into the empty fridge, change out of my thermals, and put on something comfortable before opening my laptop on the couch and prepping myself for a night of finalizing syllabi and going through postdoc applications. That’s when my watch alerts me to a new sensor reading at the lab.
“Fuck,” I murmur, dragging a hand down my face, and repeat the process several more times before changing back into my cold-weather gear.
It's an endless cycle. I made myself a bed made of ice, and I’ll sleep in it, so to speak. But on my way back to the lab to figure out which sensor is malfunctioning or which ice-tunnel core is on the verge of collapse, I see her.
Abby and Skye are walking along a skybridge below mine, both bundled in thick coats and hats. They disappear at the end of the skybridge and reappear in a glass elevator that whizzes down into the ice.
Below campus, there’s a series of interlocking tunnels that link the dormitories and the tunnels leading into Aurorium. High-speed rail trains cart students back and forth from the city to campus a few times a day. At ground level, there’s an entrance to the ice for shifter students dead-set on trying to shift outside in the elements. Beyond that, there’s nothing here in Lunaria but a wash of ice and pitch black darkness.
It’s not a bad setup for someone like me.
“Dr. Scarlett!”
Dr. James Kanten, the dean of the biology department, waves and jogs in my direction, meeting me halfway across the skybridge. Shit. I try to avoid the man at all costs. He’s a doctor, sure, but he spent most of his postgraduate years working in industry before stepping back into academia, and even then, he has spent little time in a real lab.
I don’t think he’s ever been to my ice lab. He prefers to stay at ground level, in what we call the “bubble labs,” which are constantly being battered by wind and ice storms—if he’s in a lab at all.
“James.” I nod in greeting, hoping he’s just jogging past, but he stops and turns to me, panting a bit while checking his watch.
“Going back to the lab at this hour on a Saturday? I figured you’d be joining the droves headed to Aurorium for a little fun before the semester starts.”
“We have several malfunctioning sensors.” I hold his gaze, hoping he’s reading between the lines and remembering the six emails I’ve sent to him personally about our dire need for new sensors. A tunnel collapse would not only kill whoever was inside, but it would erase years’ worth of research and cost the university a fortune. New tunnels would have to be drilled, new ice cores dug. He knows it, too. He just doesn’t give a shit.
“Better get on that,” he says with a breathless smile, and he continues on his run.
I lick my lips, scowling after him, my tongue catching on my pointed incisors. I make a mental note to shave them down a bit when I have the chance. “Bastard.”
It’s well past 4:00 in the morning when I finally get back to my apartment and shed my thermals for the second time. I linger by the fridge for several minutes before pulling out one of the samples and reading the contents.
Animal blood. Reindeer. Clean. A healthy animal. No diseases or injuries to speak of, which means no antibiotics to worry about. The lab uses these samples for experiments, and Aurorium keeps us stocked.
No one notices when a few go missing.
No one has noticed for the past decade.
I open the vial and tilt the contents into my mouth.
It’s not enough, but… it’ll do.
For now.