"Talk to me," he says. His hands move fast over my shoulders, my ribs, my hips, checking. "Did your head go under?"
"No." The shaking chops the word in half. "Waist. Airway's clear. I went horizontal."
"You went horizontal." He looks at the shovel still lying across the lip of the hole, then back at me. "You braced the hole. You ran your own rescue while I was still crossing the ice."
"Physics," I manage between spasms of my jaw. "Give me a lever long enough."
He lets out a sound that's half-laugh, half-sob, and pulls me into a hug so tight it cracks my back. It's a combat hug, the hug you give someone when you've both just cheated death, and he allows it exactly two seconds before he's all business.
"You crazy, brilliant scientist," he mutters into my hair. "You saved the machine and the samples. Now stay alive long enough to gloat about it."
I cling to him, shaking harder as the adrenaline drains out. "We lost the sled. The generator …"
"We have the machine, and we have the primary sled with the food and the sleeping bags," he says, already steering me toward the snowmobile. "Inventory later. You have wet layers freezing to your skin and a core temperature dropping by the minute. Tree line. Fire. Now."
"The wolves," I remind him.
"Screw the wolves," Nash says, swinging onto the machine and pulling me up behind him. "Hypothermia will kill you faster than any wolf. We're camping. Now."
We drive another mile down the river, finding a high bank with a dense stand of spruce that offers protection. We don't talk. We just move.
Setting up camp is harder with one sled. We've lost the luxury of the backup tent and the cots. We have the small emergency bivouac tent, barely big enough for two people, and our sleeping bags.
Nash builds a fire, huge, roaring, defiant. He sets it up between the river and the tent, a wall of light against the darkness.
"Everything wet comes off," he orders, standing by the fire. "Coat, fleece, pants, socks. All of it. I'll keep my back turned, but I'm not going to be polite about the timeline."
My pants have frozen into a stiff shell on the ride, and my fingers can't manage the zipper pull. Nash steps in without being asked and works it loose, and his hands are shaking too, which tells me more about the last ten minutes than anything he's said. I strip down beside the fire, trading dignity for survival. My legs are numb from the waist down, the skin pale and waxy.
"Sit," he says, positioning me close to the flames. He digs dry thermals, wool socks, and a spare wool shirt out of his pack and pushes the pile into my arms. "Put these on."
The shirt smells like him, woodsmoke and pine. It swallows me whole, the sleeves hanging past my hands.
Nash wraps my feet in his hands and rubs them, brisk, efficient movements to bring the blood back, then works on my fingers the same way. His hands are rough, warm, gentle.
"You did good, Aris," he says quietly, not looking up. "I couldn't get the pin. It was torqued too tight. I didn't think of the shovel."
"You were busy holding up a snowmobile," I say, wincing as the feeling starts to return to my fingers in painful prickles. "Division of labor."
"No," he says. He stops rubbing and looks at me. "Grace under pressure. That's what that was. Most people would have panicked. You calculated."
"That call was mine," Nash says. He doesn't look up from my hands. "The river. I picked that route. If we'd stayed in the trees, the pack would've caught us but you wouldn't be soaking wet."
"If we'd stayed in the trees, the pack would've caught us and torn us apart," I say. "You made the right call."
"Doesn't feel right."
"Right calls sometimes don't."
He picks up my hand, pressing it between both of his to warm it.
"I underestimated you," he admits. "When you first got here … I thought you were just another academic who'd fold the first time things got real."
"And now?"
"Now I think you're the toughest person I know."
The praise warms me more than the fire. I look at him, at the soot smudge on his cheek, the intensity in his eyes.
