Alex
Walls of ice reflect an icy blue, turning the scratch paper littered over my metal desk a hazy cerulean. My gloved hands steadily manage a pen after years of practice, but many of my lab assistants and postdocs still grumble about my nearly unintelligible handwriting.
In my defense, I had to learn an entirely new written language in my early twenties.
I shift my weight on the stool beneath me and brace my elbows on the desk. Behind me, the main area of the lab is alive with murmurs, the hum of lab equipment and heaters, and the crunch of threaded boots over the sleek floor of ice.
I look back down at my notes. They’re nothing major, just personal commentary on a recent discovery in a core of ice brought up from nearly two miles below the surface–the deepest we’ve ever been able to drill without something going wrong. The chemical makeup wasn’t anything unexpected–water, of course. A few traces of the same glassy, dust-like sediment we found in another core a few feet above this one. Toby and I are both under the assumption the sediment might be the result of an ancient volcanic eruption, but seeing as the leading geologists reside in sunny Tarsian, it’s now my job to compile all the data on the samples and send it to the University of Tarsian. Maybe we’ll have an answer in a few months for this… single thing.
I take off my beanie and run my fingers through my hair before slipping it back over my head and hunching, continuing to scribble my notes on the core.
A flash of hazy memory soaks into my mind—a gray, rain-soaked morning. My mother leaning over me to guide my small, childlike hands. Learning how to write with a fountain pen–Father’s favorite. Practicing the neat, looping, interconnected scrawl so common back home.
It’s so different here.
“Dr. Scarlett?”
I turn my head to the mousy-pitched voice of Laney—a lab assistant, and the only undergraduate I’ve allowed within my ranks in the past five years. She’s pre-med, and why she wanted to be in my lab is still a mystery to me, but she’s brilliant and spends a good deal of time volunteering at the university’s clinic upstairs, which often benefits me.
“Yes?”
“I hate to bother you–”
“Fuck, man!” Toby’s voice rings out through the lab as he appears with two graduate researchers at his sides, all three dressed in their heavy yellow parkas and thermals as they breach the plastic curtains separating the main lab from the ice tunnels.
I rise so abruptly, the stool clatters to the ground. My brain ceases to function. My only thought is: What’s wrong? My eyes sweep them for injuries, for blood, for the telltale signs and sounds of the tunnels beginning to cave in, but they’re in one piece. I look up at the ice ceiling. No cracks. The silence in the lab is so thick that nothing could penetrate it. Everyone turns to look at us, holding their breath.
“We found something,” Toby says, eyes wide.
“What?” I ask sharply, my chest straining with mingled relief and unease.
Toby glances at his fellow scientists excitedly, then continues, “Core thirteen hit something big, Dr. Scarlett.”
“A natural formation? Rock?” I ask, my normally slow heart rate skyrocketing into space.
“No,” Toby grins. “Bones.”
“Uhm, Dr. Scarlett?”
I motion for Laney to shut up. I’ll apologize later. She shrinks back, pale, twiddling her fingers and glancing at the elevator to the surface while I approach Toby. “You’re sure?”
“Almost positive. We were able to pull up the core but didn’t even scrape the surface of the fossil. There’s about four inches of ice on top of it still. We can see it on the drill’s camera, bright and clear, though.”
“We’ll wreck a drill getting through both ice and bone,” one of the other scientists says.
I nod, gritting my teeth in thought. “Have Abby analyze the ice core you brought up. Do you still have cameras on it?”
“We’re going to drop one down.”
“We need to drill around it to widen the section of ice, so four more cores in each direction.” I scratch my head, pondering the logistics. “Get Mark from engineering down here and have him and his guys help. I want this done right and the fossil as intact as possible until we know what it is for sure.”
“Dr. Scarlett?” Laney’s nervous voice tries to rip through the conversation but falls flat.
“Take core twelve and fourteen offline and bring them back up to the surface. We’re going to need the space,” I add.
“It’s a half-mile down from our deepest tunnel,” Toby says, pulling a map of the tunnels from his pocket. He points to a spot on the spider-web-like map. “We can tunnel further down, open the area up to give us more space to work with the fossil closely. The ice is in great shape. It will only take a few weeks.”
“Once we confirm it is a fossil and exactly what it is, that sounds like a plan,” I reply, but Laney grabs the sleeve of my coat and tugs, just as the elevator doors open, spilling hot, unsterile air into the lab.
Chaos turns the normally quiet space into a vacuum of sound. Four armed Aurorium warriors step into the lab while my lab assistant and postdocs struggle to pull plastic sheets over their research specimens and core slides.
“GET OUT!” I shout, shoving Toby, and unfortunately, Laney, out of the way to block the warriors from leaving the elevator.
“Are you Dr. Scarlett?”
“I am, and you’re contaminating my lab! Out!” I shove the leader of the group into the elevator so hard he falls back against his comrades. My fist slams against the button that shuts the doors. “Everyone, sterilization protocol. Now!” I watch the elevator rocket to the surface, disappearing in a blur of metal against glass. “Gather your things. No one can return until it’s done.”
“How long?” Toby asks, but his eyes are on the elevator shaft.
“An hour, tops.” I curse under my breath and glance at the ventilation system. This entire ecosystem within the ice is so fragile. New germs can ruin months, if not years, of research. Excess heat can ruin the integrity of not only the tunnels but the lab itself. Microfibers from the clothing of four warriors who barged in here without going through the proper sterilization process and entering in their day-to-day clothes?
It could have been enough to tarnish everything these students and researchers have been working for their entire careers.
Toby starts herding people to the elevator the second it returns. I punch an alarm on the wall that sends a buzz of noise into the tunnels, and within five minutes, five more scientists breach the plastic sheet of the tunnel entrance, looking dazed and concerned. Toby and I shout commands, trying to keep everyone calm, but several postdocs are crying over the future of their slides and potions while I try to explain that the worst-case scenario is that they have to start over, which only leads to more tears and hyperventilating.
Laney, however, looks nearly gray with dread as she creeps toward me like the little mouse she reminds me of.
I frown at her, then work my expression into something I hope is reassuring, and say, “I’m sorry for shoving you.”
“Um, I tried to tell you, but the dean called down and said warriors from Aurorium are here to talk to you. I didn’t think he’d just send them down.”
“Oh,” I manage to gut out as anger rips through my body. “I see.” That fucking idiot. He’s likely the one who let them onto the elevator without going through the proper steps. “Great. Thank you, Laney. Please go with everyone else.”
She nods but looks like she’s ready to curl into the fetal position as she scampers to the elevator, where the last of the group is huddled, ready to board.
Toby and I hang back until the elevator departs, leaving us alone.
“Well, that’s everyone. I know you want to, but don’t kill the dean. You’ll go to prison, and I’ll be stuck here forever in your place.”
I rein in my anger and nod, but my tongue slides along my incisors. They’re hot, ready to sink into someone’s–preferably the dean’s–flesh… and tear.
Once I’ve had a second to cool down, I step into the elevator with Toby. Seconds tick by, and then we’re in the sterilization room, going through the motions. I punch in my credentials on a screen beside the elevator and approve the chain of events that sucks all the oxygen from the lab and pumps it full of clean, sterilized air once again.
We can only hope the damage was minimal.
The second we step out of the airlock, the warriors approach, livid. The dean of my department, of course, has made himself scarce.
There’s a lot I could say to them–a lot more I could threaten, but I choose to keep quiet, even when Toby shouts his protest against one of the warriors grabbing me roughly by the arm and escorting me down the hallway and into a conference room. The door shuts with an echoing snap. Everything is concrete and plastic down here in the levels beneath the surface, but the fluorescent lighting highlights the broad, roughened man sitting at the head of the conference table. He’s dressed for the weather in a black parka, but there’s something about his aura that tells me he’s important.
Shifters are like that. Some simply bleed energy–an undercurrent of violence–without even realizing it. They’re what we call Alphas, but this man isn’t quite that important.
“You’re Dr. Scarlett?” he asks in a deep, rolling voice.
“I sure as fuck hope so,” I grind out, clipping back my anger before it can boom through the room. I shake the warrior off my arm and grip the top of a chair, arching a brow at the man at the table. “Your warriors may have very well ruined years’ worth of research in my lab.”
He just stares at me, drinking me in, unperturbed. “I’m Ash Wilcox, Beta of the Aurora Pack of Aurorium. My Alpha’s territory encompasses the city itself.”
Should I bow? Nod my head? Probably.
Instead, I remain silent and still.
He continues. “I’m under the assumption that you’re a biologist.”
Again, I return the favor and keep my eyes locked on his. He takes a shallow breath and rises, tucking his hands behind his back. I tower over him by a foot when he comes near and stops a chair's length between us and nods to his warriors, dismissing them from the room. When it’s just us, he pulls a bundle from his inner jacket and hands it to me. It’s heavy.
Before I can ask what it is, he says, “I’m sure you’re aware that there was a rather brutal attack on a civilian of Aurorium last weekend.”
“I am.”
“There’s been another, further out, on the ice. We believed the first might have been a contained situation–a falling out, given that the victim was someone on our radar who’d recently been banished from our pack but was refusing to leave. However, this second attack was different.”
I open the bundle and feel for the contents—a file, some loose plastic bags. I pull one of the bags out and find a blood-soaked strip of fabric, then I meet the Beta’s eyes.
“The university has the technology needed to run tests.”
“On what?” I ask, not sure if this man is going to be able to tell me what I need to know. “Are you looking for DNA?”
“The body–we haven’t been able to identify it. There wasn’t much left.”
“Ah.” So DNA. “I have a few students in my department who work in the clinic and can make a genetic profile–”
“It’s imperative this is done swiftly and discreetly. We don’t want to cause public worry.”
I purse my lips as the door to the conference room opens, and warriors file back in, leaving the door open in their wake with a view of the hallway. I lower my voice to ask, “Was this a murder or an animal attack?” There are, occasionally, polar bears that wander close to the city–real animals, not shifters, as far as I know.
“We’re not sure. That’s for you to find out. Good day, Dr. Scarlett.”
I grit my teeth as the Beta leaves, followed by his warriors, and start looking through the bundle, when another presence steps into the conference room.
“What was that about?” Skye asks.
“What are you doing down here?” Tiredly, I meet her eyes. She’s dressed warmly in a thick sweater and fleece pants that completely swallow her figure. I’m not sure why I notice, but it feels criminal.
“You’re giving me a tour of the lab, remember?”
“Oh, shit.” I close my eyes for a moment. “About that.”