“Some things are best left alone,” said the Baron. He shifted around like a dog trying to wear a depression in grass, the bedstand creaking. “My wife ain’t no babe in the woods,” he added. “And neither is the Russian.” He rolled over and stared at Striker. Why were people constantly staring at her? There was a gleam in his eyes. “Think of it this way,” he said. “Could be those two need a little privacy.” He winked. “Not unlike what happened in the sauna between you and the human formerly known as Percy.”

  Striker stepped back as if she’d been shoved. She glanced over to see if Bobbi Sue was shocked by his insinuation, but the Baron’s observation didn’t seem to register with her. She remained stuck on autopilot, the sound of her spoon mindlessly circling the pot. The Baron had already turned back toward the wall (or had he never rolled over in the first place?). Striker was left clenching the rope, pulling it tight between her fists, with each tug unleashing a small snapping sound.

  “If I’m not back in fifteen, close the hatch and put a weight on it,” she said though she wasn’t sure who she was talking to.

  “I didn’t catch that,” said Bobbi Sue, finally looking up from her pot a whole lifetime after Striker walked out the door.

  “If I tug three times, start pulling nice and easy,” said Striker, wrapping the rope around her waist and then cinching it to one of the belt loops on her dry suit. “If I tug more than that, pull like hell.”

  “Got it,” said Anders. The kid was a rock, someone she could count on. Kevin, while the owner of a bottomless bag of wonders, wasn’t the person she wanted in charge of the rope her very existence dangled from. Should worse come to worst, she trusted Anders to feel the tugs and get it right.

  “I still don’t understand why we’re outfitting you for war,” said Kevin. “Didn’t you say the space is the size of a pantry?” He shook his head but nevertheless pulled out a long silver tube. A small smile warped his face. He demonstrated how, like an x-acto knife, if you pressed down and slid the button, bit by bit a blade nosed out. Fully extended it was longer than her hand. It was a different knife than the one he’d lent Vadim to cut poor shredded Alexei out of his dry suit. How many knives had the guy packed? This one gleamed in the sunlight, its edge surgical in its precision. “It’s self-sharpening,” Kevin bragged. “Each time you deploy and retract it, the casing whets the blade.”

  “Yikes,” said Anders.

  “Yeah,” said Striker. “What made you think you needed that down here?”

  “You want it or not?” he said.

  She held out her hand.

  “They probably just got turned around,” said Anders.

  “In a pantry?” exclaimed Kevin.

  Striker sat down on the ice, her feet dangling in the hole like bait. She took a deep breath. “Probably,” she lied. “There’s a lotta junk down there. Maybe one of them got caught on something.” She imagined Vadim sniffing out the source of the hum coming from behind the painting. He was definitely the type to take a peek, the Dame rolling her eyes while he disappeared into the wall. Eventually the old girl would go in after him if only so she could hold it over his head later, yet another story added to her repertoire about the time she’d saved a man’s hairy ass from himself.

  As she sat on the lip of the hole, Striker could already feel her heart starting to complain. Fucking shizer. She took another deep breath, tried to rally her body and mind around what needed doing, but the two weren’t jiving. In all honesty, they’d always had a tenuous relationship.

  “Are you seaworthy? Can you harbor the lot of us?”

  Striker jumped, startled.

  It was the voice of the starving young man she’d seen reflected in the window.

  “Hurry,” he whispered, voice raw as if from weeping.

  Striker slid into the hole like a deep-sea diver plunging into a whole other dimension.

  Once again she was standing under the trapdoor. Who could say how much time had passed since the first go-round? She glanced back up and took a mental photograph of the pale blue sky. In a few hours it would be midnight, yet the heavens would stay the same shade of day. Anders peered over the edge, shielding their eyes. Striker flashed the teen a thumbs-up though she knew the kid couldn’t see it.

  “Back in a jiffy,” she called, giving the rope a tug.

  Just as she’d feared, the grotto was empty. The same glass jars glowed on the shelves, the seal carcasses still dripping oil. Striker tried not to look, but her eyes snagged on the shriveled disc sitting in the bloody hollow, the crusty mass foul yet fascinating.

  The painting lay face up on the ice. She hadn’t remembered the ship listing at such an angle. It was practically lying on its side, everywhere sheets of ice bursting through its decks. Among the crew, only one man held his arms triumphantly up in the air. The others looked worn and resigned, suspicion clouding their faces.

  A towering figure stood front and center, the man’s face obscured by a leather mask. Where his mouth should be were two yellow teeth, a patchy beard stubbling his chin. Striker shuddered. What kind of deformity could he be hiding? Or was it something else? The man looked monstrous, his presence a hole in the center of the painting. Darkness poured out of the eye slits. An ax rested on his shoulder.

  Striker bent over and peered inside the tunnel. The cool breeze felt cleansing. She should have warned the Dame and Vadim. If they had known, maybe they could have resisted. Coulda shoulda woulda. She got down on her hands and knees. Piece of cake, she thought. I’m halfway there.

  A few feet in, the walls gleamed a milky blue. Ice on ice on ice. Ice all the way down. She tapped a spot with her knuckles. It was harder than concrete. Kevin was right. How had stranded explorers carved this passageway? It would’ve taken years and the very best equipment. Drills tipped with diamonds. One of the naturalists onboard the Yegorov had mentioned that millions of years ago during the Mesozoic, Antarctica had been tropical with ferns and palm trees and colorful fish. But that was geologic eons ago.

  “Guys?” Striker called out. Nobody answered. Her voice ricocheted through the tight space, a boomerang thumping her hard in the solar plexus. Even on her hands and knees, she had to hunch.

  Up ahead she could see where the tunnel unexpectedly widened. Everywhere the sound of glass tinkling. Quickly she shuffled ahead on all fours. When she reached the opening, she skidded to a halt.

  The ceiling was riddled with icicles. It was like looking up into a forest of chandeliers, their tips sharp enough to pierce metal. Down the length of each shaft, the ice had crystalized, creating beautiful patterns like undersea coral. In the light the icicles flashed a deep indigo. It meant they were old, ancient of days. The sound of their chiming the very fabric of time itself. She could hear them rattling in the air flow. Too much movement too fast, even the quivering of her heart, and one could come crashing down through the center of her skull.

  Striker thought of St. Teresa, the Spanish mystic. It was confounding what she could recall from Zinnia Trace. The nuns at Our Lady always referring to the saint with a dreaminess in their eyes. The saint said to have been lanced over and over with a golden spear by the archangel himself, the pain so sweet it made her moan. Striker surprised herself by remembering the word the class had learned for what had happened to St. Teresa. Transverberation. To be run clean through with God’s love. For a full week after class, her sister Ama had walked around claiming she was being transverberated anytime she hurt herself. Ama dramatically clutching her chest after skinning her knee and crying I’m being perfected, then asking for a hug.

  If one of the icicles should fall, would there be that same sweetness for Striker? A sword of ice delivering a pain so inexorable that like the saint it would make her spasm, her body forever impaled to this spot like a butterfly pinned under glass. The sudden, terrible knowledge of God. The subsequent ecstasy. Part of her couldn’t help but long for it.

  On the other hand, if she turned around now she could tell the others whatever she wanted. That part of the grotto had caved in or that Vadim and the Dame had eaten something poisonous from one of the jars. Nothing was stopping her from being that person.

  Typical.

  Look what I’m up against. Some of the icicles were several feet in length. Even if she wanted to slip underneath the canopy of spikes, she’d have to get down on her stomach. She’d be forced to inch herself along. What if she got stuck? Her body heat melting the ice just enough to slick the surface and form a fluid skin the thickness of an eyelash, then in almost the same instant the watery layer refreezing but with her stuck in it. Wasn’t that how ice skates worked—the pressure of the blade melting the surface just enough for movement. Only in her case she wouldn’t be moving fast enough not to get trapped. If it happened, she would die. Her body perfectly preserved. The tattoo of Polaris on her lower back eternally pointing north. Ten thousand years in the future, the descendants who survived sea rise would find her floating in a watery nest, her dry suit long since disintegrated. Nothing left but a mass of bones and grinning teeth in a place once rumored to have been frozen solid.

  Her knee came down hard on a frozen lump. The air suddenly smelled like a cesspool. Something was coming up behind her. She could feel its breath on her feet. Her throat swelled as if packed with bread. This time it would be a child, the one who had died in the Yegorov’s plunge pool two seasons back, the child’s face bloated from drowning.

  Striker closed her eyes. Tried to conjure up the blue sky, Anders peering over the edge. Summer nights on Zinnia Trace, the face of the full moon from Ama’s bedroom window.

  Our Father who ain’t in heaven.

  The ceiling began to rumble as though an elevated train were passing overhead. Tens of hundreds of thousands of icicles shivering.

  Come, Lord Jesus, bury us in ice. Forgive us our sins, as we never forget those who trespass against us.

  After four decades on earth, Striker gives herself over to the old ways. Holding her hands up in the air the way she and Ama used to do in Catholic mass at the moment the priest consecrated the Eucharist. Two little Black girls in a sea of white. Hands held high as if under arrest. Hands held higher in ecstasy. Amen. Everywhere icy blue needles pouring down, the sound like frozen rain shattering the

  as someone was calling her name.

  Striker opened her eyes to pitch black. She couldn’t even see her hands. She ran her fingers over the rough sides of whatever was confining her, the space barely bigger than a closet. The gritty walls felt strangely abstract, undulating like a giant paramecium. This definitely ain’t ice. A uniform heat filled the darkness. Had the others finally gone and done it, throwing her in the brig?

  The reality sank in. She was thousands of miles from anyone who might come running, anyone who cared. If she were being honest, did she even have people like that in her life? So many bridges burned. Too many times she’d slammed a hand up in someone’s face. I hate cages, she told every new therapist. I just wanna be free. Careful what you wish for, honey, one of them had said.

  “You ready to come out?” said the voice.

  “I promise I’ll be good,” Striker answered.

  “What was that?”

  Someone was pulling on a section of the stony wall. A piece of it popped out. Striker stuck her head through the hole and breathed in the fresh air. Her poor eyes! The light was blinding.

  Anders stared at her suspiciously. They were holding a leather-bound journal, their finger marking their place in it. Nearby, a wooden stool sat low in the snow.

  “You sure you’re okay?” they said.

  Striker began wriggling her way out. It was slow going. “Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked.

  The teen considered the question. They chose their words carefully. “Jane and Vadim said you collapsed a few feet from the entrance. That you were just sitting there.” Pause. “Staring at some painting.”

  “Me?”

  “Like, catatonic.” The teen sat down on the stool and pointed at her wrist. “We found your medical alert bracelet. My mom said that medication’s nothing to sneeze at, that it’s for schizo—”

  “I take Clozapine off-label for migraines,” she said. “But yeah. It has other uses.”

  “My mom said coming off Clozapine cold turkey—”

  “I’m good. Let’s drop it.”

  “Whatever,” said Anders. “You just seem a little wobbly.”

  “And why were they even down there so long?”

  “Inventory. Jane said they were figuring out what was what.”

  Striker felt annoyed that it made sense. She pulled her legs out one at a time and stood up before stepping back to study the massive rock formation she’d just crawled out of, the rock dark and shaped like a limbless person. A few hundred feet away she could see the hut perched in the shadow of the giant cairns.

  “What is this?”

  Anders lowered what they were reading. They spoke slowly as if talking to someone who didn’t speak English. “Again, it’s a fumarole tower. They form when the ground gets super hot and the steam comes shooting straight up through the dirt.” The kid shifted uncomfortably on the stool. There was something of the academic about them. “I guess most fumarole towers go cold after they form, but some stay warm. It’s like Mother Nature’s sauna.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “Didn’t you go to any of the onboard talks?” The teen sighed. “Guess you didn’t have parents dragging you to that stuff.”

  “I was there,” Striker said. “Probably should’ve taken notes.”

  “My mom won’t let me go in,” said Anders, nodding at the structure. “She’s worried it might collapse.” The teen traced a circle in the snow with their foot. “I told her the explorers probably used it a hundred years ago and the thing’s still standing, but right now I really gotta do what she says.”

  The kid didn’t need to explain. Anders was all Bobbi Sue had left.

  “That’s a good plan,” said Striker. “Everything’s gonna be okay.” She didn’t know why she’d added this. Even as she was saying it, it sounded false.

  Anders graciously nodded, accepting the platitude. “Everybody else has been in except Kevin. He said it looks like a human oven.”

  “By the way, I knew that, about this tower and shit,” said Striker, lying. “I just got a little fuzzy from the heat and not eating.”

  “But we did eat, granted it was mostly broth,” said Anders. “You should probably drink some more.”

  The ocean was the same cloudless blue as the sky, white bergs floating past like drops of time. The sun felt hot on her face. It was crazy. This was Christmas Eve in Antarctica. The air had to be in the upper fifties.

  “You’re right. Maybe I should.” She was turning to head for the hut when it came floating in on the wind. The same sound as always.

  A newborn baby was crying somewhere out in the wilderness, its cries accompanied by a church organ. Then the winds shifted and the sound deepened. Striker realized it wasn’t the same keening she often heard playing in her head. This was real.

  It was the sound of a person, an adult in distress crying for help.

  “You hear that?” she whispered.

  “Hear what?” Anders said. They had folded up the stool and started back with her toward the shelter.

  “It sounds like someone—who’s not here?”

  “Jane and Vadim headed down to the beach. My mom and Kevin are puttering around the cabin. Robert’s asleep.” This last part was barely audible. “Honestly I’m not sure he’s okay. Aren’t most old people on lots of meds?”

  “Jane and Vadim went to the beach?” Striker said. She almost laughed. It sounded like a euphemism for something naughty. Like her night with Percy in the sauna by the plunge pool only feet away from where a child had drowned.

  “Why’s it matter where they went?” asked Anders.

  If I had a kid, would they be like you, Striker wondered. There was actually a lot she liked about this new generation. Collectively they didn’t know it but they were going to be okay.

  “It’s just good to know where folks are,” she said.

  “No, I get it,” said Anders. “It’s not like we have a group chat going.”

  The two walked on in silence though she could tell there was something else on the teen’s mind. A handful of gentoo penguins ambled by, headed in the direction of the fumarole tower. What the hell, Striker thought. The birds seemed like they were out on a casual hike, a group of friends out mountaineering for the day. Anders must have had the same thought.

  “You have a big friend group?” they asked.

  “Me?” said Striker, caught off guard. “I’d say it’s about right.”

  The teen gave a slow nod. “Have any white friends?”

  Ah, there it was.

  Toward the end of their girls’ night out, Striker recalled Riley telling the whole table that the reason Casey and Scarlett liked to hang out with them was because chilling with Black people made white girls look liberal. A few of the other women groaned, but Riley dug in.

  “Seriously, who remembers back on Match.com when you could type in your racial preferences?” There were slow nods around the table, people unwilling to fully commit as they were unsure where this was headed. “Remember how many dudes checked that they were down to date every race except Black?”

  “What’s that got to do with this?” someone asked, subtly gesturing in Scarlett and Casey’s direction.

  “All I’m saying is two kinds of dudes checked yes to dating Black girls,” said Riley. “The ones hoping for some freaky, down-home jungle fever, and the ones who wanted to look woke.” She tipped her drink back but the glass was already empty. “Like on Facebook when the whole world started posting those dumb-as-fuck black squares. Let’s face it. Virtue signaling is the new black. Amirite?” The table started to clear as people began asking for their checks. “What? Too soon?” said Riley. She glanced over at Striker and winked, raising the empty—