Proprioception fails. Gravity takes over. I pitch forward, going down hard. The impact knocks the air from my lungs in a sharp grunt. Snow rushes into my collar, shocking and brutal, melting instantly against the warmth of my neck, sending rivulets of ice water down my spine.
“Iris.”
Boyd’s there in an instant.
He doesn’t offer sympathy. He doesn’t ask if I’m okay. He grabs my arm, grip iron-hard even through layers of wool and down, hauling me upright with a force that nearly dislocates my shoulder.
“Up. If you stop, you freeze.”
“I can’t feel my feet.” I sway, my center of gravity lost in the vertigo of the storm.
“Move.”
He pushes me forward.
Pure calculation. He knows exactly how much time we have before the metabolic processes shut down, before the heart enters a fatal arrhythmia from the cold. He spends every second like currency, and we’re overdrawn. He’s the triage doctor now, deciding that pain is acceptable as long as the patient remains ambulatory.
We move for another ten minutes. Or maybe an hour. Time has lost its shape. The terrain gets steeper, the trees denser. My lungs burn with a chemical intensity, as if I’m inhaling acid. The initial crash-shock, the screech of metal, shattering glass, the roll down the embankment, faded long ago, leaving behind a hollow, aching exhaustion heavy as lead.
My body wants to lie down. It wants to curl up in the soft white drift and sleep. The snow looks comfortable. It looks like a bed. It promises an end to the pain.
Boyd grabs my shoulder, steering me toward a small overhang, a shelf of granite jutting out from the mountainside like a jagged tooth.
“Rest. Two minutes.”
I collapse against the stone. Freezing. I pull my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them, trying to conserve the meager warmth left in my core.
Boyd doesn’t rest.
He moves to the edge of the shelf, peering back the way we came. He pulls the Glock from his waistband.
Click-clack.
He checks the action. The metal sounds impossibly loud in the silence, a mechanical intrusion in the natural world. He presses the magazine release, drops the mag into his palm, checks the load, and slams it home.
He inspects his tools, preparing for a surgical strike.
“Are they following?” The words slur slightly. My lips feel like rubber, unresponsive and thick.
“They’re sweeping,” he answers without turning, gaze scanning the tree line below us, searching for movement in the static of the storm. “Grid pattern. Efficient. They have thermals.”
“Can we lose them?”
He turns to look at me. In the darkness, his gaze holds no comfort. Flat, black mirrors reflecting the snow.
“Not in this. We leave a trail a blind man could follow. They aren’t tracking us. They’re herding us.”
“Herding us where?”
“To the ravine. Box us in. Flush us out. It’s a kill box.”
The reality of it settles on me, heavier than the snow. We aren’t escaping. We’re just dying slower than they want us to.
“So what do we do?”
“We change the game.”
He abandons his post at the edge of the shelf. Moves toward me. Crouches beside me, knees sinking into the snow drift.
