Read Chapter 20: Secret Alliance

Maya came back through the gap in the rocks with an armful of twisted spruce branches, snow crusting the shoulders of her jacket. She dropped the wood by the firepit Declan had scraped into the frozen ground, then froze.

Jules was propped against the rock wall, his pant leg cut away, a blood-soaked strip of Declan's spare shirt wrapped tight around his thigh. The wound had stopped bleeding, but the flesh around it was already an angry red. Jules's eyes were glassy, unfocused, but they found Maya and held.

"What?" she said. "What did I miss?"

Declan sat back on his heels. His hands were stained with Jules's blood. He'd been about to tell her anyway. That had been the plan—bring her in, share what he knew, try to build something like trust before the next push. But Jules had cracked first, and the story had come out in a rush of feverish confession, and now the air in the alcove felt thick with it.

"Jules just told me why your brother's expedition was really out here," Declan said.

Maya's face went very still. "My brother's expedition wasn't an expedition. It was a search-and-rescue mission. Yours."

"Both," Declan said. "He was on my team last winter. I know."

The words hung in the cold air. Maya didn't move. Her breath came out in short, sharp puffs.

"You knew," she said. "You knew the whole time."

"I didn't know he was your brother until you said his name at the base camp. And I didn't know what he was really doing out there until Jules just told me."

"Doing what?" Her voice was hard. "What was he doing?"

Jules stirred. "The fragment," he rasped. "The meteorite. Your brother was sent to find it. Same as us. Same as Lindqvist."

Maya turned to him, and something cold moved behind her eyes. "Lindqvist. You told Declan you never met him."

"I lied." Jules's voice cracked. "I'm sorry. Elias talked about him constantly. Lindqvist was the first one to find the Nest. The first one to understand what the fragment does."

"And what does it do?" Maya asked.

Jules looked at Declan. Declan gave a slow nod. No more secrets. Too late for that.

"It changes people," Jules said. "Not everyone. Only some. It rewrites something inside them, turns the body into a vessel for something older. Something that was here before the ice."

Maya stared at him. For a long moment she didn't speak. Then she pulled her pack off her shoulder, dropped it in the snow, and sat down hard on a rock near the dying fire.

"My brother sent me letters," she said. "Three of them. He wrote that he'd found something in the mountains that didn't belong. He didn't say what. Just that it was heavy, and it hummed, and that it made the animals act strange." She looked up at Declan. "I thought he was losing his mind. I told him to come home."

"He was investigating the same phenomenon," Declan said. "The same thing that turned Elias. That turned Ansel."

Maya flinched at her brother's name. Declan felt the weight of it press down on him again—the name he'd carried all winter like a stone in his chest.

"Ansel was out here for the same reason," Jules said quietly. "Not to rescue anyone. To retrieve. The corporation sent him to bring back the fragment. They knew where it was. They've known for years."

"And they sent a rescue team in blind?" Maya's voice rose. "They sent my brother into the mountains without telling him what he was really walking into?"

"They told him enough," Jules said. "They told him there was hostile wildlife. That the terrain was unpredictable. They didn't tell him what the fragment does because they don't fully understand it themselves. They just want it."

Declan said, "They still want it."

Jules nodded weakly. "My pack. The sample. I told you—I need you to destroy it."

Declan looked at the pack lying by the alcove entrance. "I haven't opened it yet."

"Open it," Jules said. "Before I can't tell you any differently."

Declan crossed the alcove, knelt, and unbuckled the pack's flap. Inside: a few energy bars, a coiled rope, a compact first-aid kit, and a small metal cylinder wrapped in foam. He pulled it out. It was cold even through the foam, a cold that bit into his fingers like dry ice.

"What is it?" Maya asked.

"A tissue sample," Jules said. "Elias's." He swallowed hard. "Taken an hour after he changed."

Declan stared at the cylinder. "You were supposed to bring this back to them."

"Yes." Jules's voice was barely a whisper. "And I was supposed to leave you out here to die. They wanted clean tracks. No survivors."

Maya stood. Her hand went to the knife on her belt. "You were going to kill us."

"No." Jules shook his head, then winced as the motion pulled at his leg. "I couldn't. I watched Elias change. I saw what he became. I knew if I brought the sample back, they'd try to replicate it. To weaponize it." He looked up at her, and his eyes were wet. "I'm not a good man. But I'm not that."

Declan turned the cylinder over in his hands. There was a small latch on the side. He flipped it open. Inside, suspended in a clear gel, was a dark sliver of tissue. It pulsed. Subtle, but unmistakable—a slow rhythm, like a heartbeat.

Maya stepped closer. "Is that—"

"It's alive." Declan closed the cylinder and re-engaged the latch. "Even separated from him, it's still alive."

"And if we destroy it?" Maya asked.

Declan thought about the howls closing in back at the ridge. About Ansel's face on a creature that was no longer human, turning toward the Nest. About Lindqvist, waiting there for them—a man Declan had failed to save, who had become something worse than dead.

"I don't know," he said. "Elias was fully changed before Jules took the sample. Killing the tissue won't kill whatever's out there. But it might slow them. Confuse them."

"Or it might make it worse," Jules said. "I don't know. I was just supposed to carry it."

Declan looked at the cylinder, then at Maya. "You said your brother wrote about something heavy. That hummed."

Maya nodded slowly. "He said it was warm. Even in the ice."

"Warm," Declan repeated. He thought of the pendant against his chest. Cold when the creature was near. Warm otherwise. He pulled it out from under his jacket. This time, held in his open palm, the metal was warm against his skin.

"The fragment's still out there," he said. "And something's still connected to it. The pendant warms when the creature is far. It's been warm since we left the ridge."

"So it's not following us," Maya said.

"Not anymore." Declan looked north, beyond the rock walls, toward the buried valley in his mentor's map. "It's going home."

Jules shifted, his face pale and beaded with sweat. "Then we're going the right way."

Declan looked at him. "No. You're not going anywhere."

Jules opened his mouth to argue, but Declan shook his head. "Your leg's already infected. You'll be dead by morning if we drag you through this terrain."

"The ranger station," Jules said. "There's medicine. If we can reach it—"

"We can't. Not with you."

Maya stepped forward. "What are you saying?"

Declan looked at her. For a long moment they just held each other's gaze. Her brother. His last failed rescue. The same mountains, the same fragment, the same lie they'd both been told. There was a fragile understanding forming between them, fragile as the ice under the snow.

"I'm saying we find the fragment ourselves," Declan said. "And we end this."

Jules's head lolled against the rock. "You'll need to go fast. The storm's lifting, but not for long. Another front's coming in behind it."

Declan nodded. He looked at the map inside his jacket, then at the coordinates scrawled in the journal's back pages. The hidden valley. The Nest. Lindqvist.

"Then we leave at first light."