AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“To punish you, obviously,” I reply, handing her a heavy coat lined with fur. “I promise you’ll be sweating in this one.”
She takes it and pretends like she’s about to collapse from the weight as she puts it on.
She won’t be complaining once we go out. Antarctica has the unique characteristic of turning your mind to survival mode the moment you step outside, even if you’re well-prepared for the weather.
I pull on my coat, zipping it up and patting the Velcro down. Taylor still has hers open loosely, as though the cold is going to be nothing more than a minor annoyance in a string of annoyances since I brought her here.
Still spoiled, but she’ll learn. She’s already doing much better than when she first arrived in Russia.
I press a button beside the door that opens it up into the first chamber, stepping in and putting my hood on. There are boots by the second door, and several sets of special goggles to help us see in the darkness, as well as block the snow from getting in our eyes.
The first door closes automatically, and the temperature drops by at least thirty degrees.
“What the fuck? how cold is it out there?” Taylor asks, quickly zipping her coat up and holding herself like she’s on the verge of freezing to death already.
“Colder than you think, so put your hood up and take a pair of goggles. They’ll help you see.”
“Not very stylish,” she says, taking a pair and pulling them over her head. She struggles with her hair for a moment, trying to get it to look neat under the elastic band.
I admire her dedication to beauty, but now really isn’t the time.
“There’s a button on the side of the goggles to boot them up,” I say, running my fingers over the side of her head. “Everything will be green, but it’s better than pitch black. The sun won’t be out for another few months, so it’s night twenty-four-seven.”
“Lovely,” she says, fumbling with the button on the side.
Once we’re ready to open the second door and take the trip to the mine, I give Taylor a firm pat on the shoulder to make sure she won’t get blown over in the first strong wind. She’s so small and delicate that I’m a bit worried, but she holds her ground well.
I press a button to open the second door, and looking out into the darkness is like staring into an endless well in the middle of the night. I sense Taylor’s reluctance to step into the darkness, so I take her gloved hand and pull her out with me.
Once outside, the door closes behind us, and my eyes adjust to the new environment. I have a GPS to guide us to the mine, but there’s already a trail there in the snow. It’ll be about thirty minutes until we arrive, but it’s worth the walk.
“Holy shit!” Taylor yells through the wind, her voice swept away almost too quickly to hear it.
“Welcome to hell on earth!” I shout back with a laugh.
She laughs with me, and we start our trek.
There’s beauty to be found out here in the blistering cold. It’s so empty and bleak that it feels like we’re in a sensory deprivation chamber. The mind turns inward, and it’s a bit like meditating as we trudge along the icy path.
Unfortunately, the only thing I can think about is how Taylor is going to react to her father being dead. If I wasn’t so obsessed with her, it wouldn’t matter, but as it stands, it matters very much to me how she feels. Every day together I feel us growing closer, and this is going to cause a rift that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to fix.
But what’s done is done. Bobby already killed that bastard, and I just hope Taylor will understand that if I hadn’t done it, the Secret Service very well may have. He was selling to some pretty unsavory people, after all.
I hold Taylor’s hand tightly, walking at a pace comfortable for her, which causes us to take an extra fifteen minutes to reach the mine.
As it comes into view, I’m in awe at the size of the extraction. It’s an open pit mine, meaning that it’s basically a gigantic hole in the ground, like an ocean that’s been drained of water. Roads twist down the side of it, the occasional excavator parked along the way, waiting to be used to shovel snow out of the path.
It’s a perilous way down, but it’s the most efficient form of mining that we have right now. We considered several different methods, including the barely visible long wall mining technique, but because of how deep in the Antarctica our diamond mine is, it won’t be seen from the sky with naked eyes.
As far as anyone would be concerned, it’s just another crater on the surface of the ice.
“I feel like I’m going to fall in!” Taylor shouts over the wind.
We’re not anywhere close to the edge, but I know the feeling. The chasm is so big that it feels like it could take in an entire city. Just being close to it makes you feel like it has a gravitational pull that could convince you to walk right over the edge without thinking.
“It’ll go even deeper in a few weeks,” I say, squeezing her shoulder. “And you’re a big part of that.”
She looks at me, her expression mostly covered by her goggles, but I can still see the look of awe from her open mouth. “How am I helping?”
