The Icarus Project (17 page)

“Fine,” Kyle said, though I could tell by the tone of his voice he was disappointed that West had stopped the light show.

“It was so … real,” I said. I pulled up my sleeve. All the hair on my arm was standing straight up. “I could feel it.”

“Is that what magic feels like?” Kyle asked, wiggling his fingers.

“No! That was nothing strange,” said West. “Nothing magical or supernatural. It was just good old Tom Edison and Ben Franklin. Lightbulbs and electricity.” With that,
he turned and stomped out of the room and headed down the hallway.

Ivan hurried out behind him, pale as a ghost.

“Keep telling yourself that, West,” Kyle said after the man had gone.

Something strange was going on, and Ivan was right—we could all
feel
it.

Kyle went to his room and I went to mine. Karen wasn’t in bed yet. Unable to sleep, I lay in bed and stared at the underside of the top bunk. Finally, I pulled back the covers, slipped out, and went to the lab to look for Dad. At this hour of the night, I became aware of the emptiness of the hallway, which was the color of lumpy oatmeal—unofficially, the color of blandness. But the situation at the station could hardly have been described as bland. Not anymore.

I found Dad sitting on a stool, staring at the computer screen. He had dark circles under his eyes.

He jerked up, surprised to see me. “Maya, what are you doing awake?”

“I couldn’t sleep. The Arctic is giving me insomnia,” I said. “Why are
you
still up?” I asked, turning the conversation back on him. “You look tired.”

“I couldn’t sleep, either.” He ran his hand through his hair.

“Why not?” I climbed up onto the stool next to him.

“I had a really weird dream last night.”

“Maybe you should talk about it,” I said, wondering if strange dreams were contagious. “Sometimes if you tell someone your dream, it makes it less scary.”

“How did you get so smart?” Dad asked, a faint smile on his face.

“Osmosis.”

“It’s kind of cool, really, when I think about it.” He shrugged.

“Tell me.”

“I had this dream that I was awake—but I had to be dreaming.” Dad shook his head. “It just felt so real. I went to see Randal, and we were standing in his library. All of a sudden, the wall with the fireplace on it flipped open, revealing a hidden room.”

Dad had discovered Randal’s secret room in a dream! How could he have known that it was there? Kyle and I hadn’t told him about the room or the miniature park. “What happened next?” I asked.

“Well, Randal and I walked into the room. He had a table covered with a big display, but we got distracted, because it started snowing—right there inside of the room. Wild dream, huh?”

“Yeah—really wild.” Snow was better than water, I thought.

“And then Randal and I were standing in a frozen landscape, and there were mammoths.” Dad’s face lit up.
“Whole
herds
of mammoths lumbering along a snowy plain. There were mothers and calves. And I saw caribou and polar bears.”

“Sounds like you walked into a dream come true.”

“Exactly. It was the most amazing dream I’ve ever had.” He twisted up his face. “Except it was cold, really cold. And that was strange. I have never had a dream that was so lifelike.”

Listening to Dad talk about his dream, I was hit with a flash of inspiration. “It’s like a
dreamscape.
A place that feels real but is so fantastic that it has to be a dream.”

“That’s right. Then it got a little scary. The animals were getting close to us. Too close for my taste. I didn’t mind watching them, but the last thing I wanted was to get trampled by a woolly mammoth, dream or no dream. Except that when I tried to run, to escape, and get back to the station, there was a fence all around us, and Randal and I couldn’t get out.”

A fence. The image of the model mammoth park filled my head. There were fences penning in all of the mammoths. It was as if Dad had shrunk down and gone into Randal’s model.

“I was cold—and awestruck at being in another world with the mammoths. I could feel their thick woolly hair and hear their calls and snorts. I love mammoths, but they’re wild creatures and very protective of their young.”

“Sounds intense.” I didn’t know what else to say. I
wanted to tell him about the light show that had happened to Kyle in the genny room and about seeing the light inside of Charlie, but I was too nervous.

“I guess people have dreams that feel real. I was literally caged like an animal in a zoo, but the snow was alive, swirling with energy that came from all around us. The feeling was overwhelming. It was magical.”

“How did you get out? I mean, how did the dream end?”

“That was strange, too. Randal kept yelling, ‘The dream is over. I know you’re out there. I’m here to help you.’ And then the mammoths lumbered off and the snow stopped falling. And we were back in Randal’s library. The fake fire was blazing and the dream was over.”

“Wow—that was some dream.” I felt like a traitor. I should have said something. One thing stood out in my mind and that was the
feeling.
Both Dad and I had felt an overwhelming sense of magical energy. It seemed like everyone was having strange dreams. The visions were spreading through the station like a virus.

“Speaking of dreams, you should head off to bed. How about I tuck you in?”

Dad got down off his stool and walked me back to my room. I crawled under the covers. My bedsprings creaked. I punched my pillow over and over and tried to clear my head. I told myself that sleep would make things better.

But I was wrong.

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound
of someone calling my name. Sitting up in bed, I listened hard. I heard it again, but I couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from. Was it Kyle, or was I just imagining it? Didn’t Karen hear anything? I crawled out of my sleeping bag and crept over to her bed. She was sound asleep, so I jostled her.

“Karen,” I whispered, but she rolled over and faced the wall.

I pulled on my pants and boots and tried not to trip over the remnants of Karen’s yarn matrix. With my sweatshirt hood pulled up, I peered out of the room. The hall was dimly lit and totally deserted. I inched down to the guys’ room. Dad’s familiar snores drifted out from beneath the door. He was sleeping, and since there was no light on, I was sure that Kyle was sleeping, too.

The howling wind seemed to carry my name to me over and over. A chill climbed up my back. I shook it off. It was nothing, I told myself.
Just go back to bed.
But I had come this far.

I went to the nearest window and peered out through the snow-crusted glass. A figure was hunched on the icy ground. The relentless wind battered the crumpled form. Whoever it was appeared to be wearing a big puffy coat … just like the one that Randal always wore! My heart raced in my chest. Had he stumbled outside and fallen? He could be hurt. A person wouldn’t last long outside in the cold and the wind.

I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing. I had to help him. I
should
get Dad, but I didn’t know how long the person had been out in the snow. Dad would take forever to wake up. Plus, he always needed a reason to take action. He would want to know why I was awake this late, why I was wandering the halls, why there was someone outside at this hour, and so on. I didn’t have time to explain or to persuade him to hurry up. More important, Randal—or whoever—didn’t have time. I needed to move.

A line of coats hung on hooks by the door. I grabbed one and pulled it on. It was a man’s coat that engulfed me and practically dragged on the ground. The sleeves hung below my hands. I didn’t have gloves, but I had put on my boots. I grabbed a pair of goggles and pulled the hood up over my hoodie. It would have to be enough.

I passed from the warmth of the hallway into the mudroom. The cold grabbed at me, tried to warn me off. If I thought too hard, I would chicken out and run back to the bunks and it might be too late.
Just go,
I told myself. I
shoved the door open and plunged into the freezing darkness. I stepped into the windswept snow, and my boot sank about four inches, but I kept walking. A crust had formed, and with each step the ground crunched under my feet.

The wind attacked, yanking me off balance. I scrambled for the guideline and grabbed the blue rope through my coat sleeve. The line was a thick vein keeping me from being blown across the compound. I followed it as far as I could, keeping my eyes on the figure in the big brown coat. My face burned, so I pulled my sweatshirt up to cover my nose. I should have turned around and gone back, but then I thought I heard a groaning. He was alive! He needed me.

I had gone as far as I could with the line, but to reach the person I would have to let go and hope that I could make it to him on my own. On our first day at the station, West had told us all to always hold on to the line and never leave the path. The wind gnawed at my limbs with its needle teeth. If I let go of the line, I would be at the mercy of Mother Nature, and she had no heart. Her howling wind would eat me alive.

A groan echoed from the bundle on the ground, and I could have sworn someone said, “Help me.” Randal! It had to be him. I let go of the line.

I steadied myself and crouched low to the ground. Then
I took off running, and the wind seemed to lift me, carrying me faster and farther. I tried to drop to my knees, and I grabbed at the ground with my coat-covered hands, but there was nothing to hold on to. Because of its slickness, the fabric slipped on the icy ground. I pulled my sleeve up, but the snow dissolved in my bare hands, like burning salt or sharp sand. Panic choked my throat, and I bit back a scream. I covered my hands and scrambled as fast as I could. I sucked in the cold air, and my lungs felt as if they were swimming in ice. But I had gone too far to turn back.

I crawled on all fours, so the wind wouldn’t lift me up like a kite and blow me across the flats. Randal was much farther away than I had originally thought. Distances were deceiving in the Arctic. With my head down, it was hard to see clearly, but each step brought me closer to him.

The mass shifted, growing in size the closer I got. I sensed that he was about to roll over, so I hurried forward and finally reached him. I slammed hard into him. His body was solid.

It wasn’t Randal.

When I touched the form through my coat, I realized it wasn’t a person at all but a giant tarp strapped to the ground. No hunched body … no Randal. How stupid. I had crawled all the way out there for nothing. My face hurt. My throat burned. I felt like such an idiot. But I
had
heard him. The voice had been so clear in my mind. Had I
been sleepwalking out in the cold, and had I finally woken up, stranded on a tarp island, yards away from the safety of the station?

I felt exhausted, like I had just run five miles. My legs were weak. I pulled up the thin lip of the tarp and crawled underneath, wedging myself inside the tentlike space. I slumped to the ground and leaned against something hard.

The tarp was covering a stack of crates, which mercifully blocked the wind. I wanted to rest, but I knew I needed to get back inside the station, where it was warm and safe. I couldn’t stay out there in the cold and freeze. But I was so tired.

Inside the makeshift fortress, my breathing was loud. Then I heard a grinding, beeping sound. It was something I had heard before—an annoying sound. I pushed myself up onto my knees and looked in one of the crates. Inside was one of the cameras that Jake was always carrying around or placing at the station to capture the action.

The camera was running. The lens stared out of a small hole in the tarp. Why would Jake put a camera out here in the middle of the night? The place was deserted. Was this a trap? Had Jake lured me out here? That was a crazy idea. He had no reason to trick me, and he had no way of knowing that I would wake up and stumble out there. The camera was pointed away from the station and out into the emptiness, the vast snowy wilderness.

What was out there? What was he trying to film?

I stared into the distance. The minutes dragged on. The darkness seemed to grow around me. The floodlights of the station flickered.