Page 21 of Researching the Pole

Chapter 10

I blinked my eyes open. Somehow, I had fallen asleep, but as soon as consciousness came, the crushing realization instantly returned. Something had woken me. I lay there, listening for any new pinging sounds. But the cabin was silent. Just the faint sounds of ice breaking in the distance and the low sounds of wind blowing.

I turned my head, and only then realized that not only was I not in Grant’s arms—which was a first since the day we had started sleeping in this bed together—but that he was not there. My outstretched hands met cold sheets.

Instantly, I was fully awake and alert. I sat up and flung the covers off. “Grant?” There was no response. Feeling a strange panic reaction, I rushed to the bathroom and checked. He wasn’t there. Out into the small living room and kitchen area—there was no Grant. It was such a tiny cabin. There was nowhere else to go. I glanced at the monitor screen. It was 3:25 AM, not yet morning. Where did he go?

The feeling of dread only deepened. My instinct was screaming that something was wrong. Surely if there was some kind of danger, he would’ve woken me up? He wouldn’t just leave for no reason. There were strict protocols in place. Everywhere we went, we were supposed to take somebody with us. Nobody left the station without at least one partner. That was the whole reason Grant had Sam and Viktor with him when he went diving. And Grant was a stickler for protocol. I knew that by now.

On some strange instinct, I went to the front door and flung it open. Cold wind blasted inside. My eyes scanned the dimly lit Antarctic horizon. There was no one around. The personnel on the station followed the human awake-sleep cycle even if it was still lit outside. I almost missed it as I prepared to close the door, but the movement caught my eye. A tall, dark figure was pulling one of the Zodiac boats out of the dark toward the edge of the ocean. I would know that body from anywhere. From any distance.

It was Grant. I had no doubt. Where was he going in the middle of the night? Alone? It would be suicidal.

And then it hit me. Yesterday—was it just a few hours ago?—when I was in the middle of my despair, I remembered him mumbling something about the backup hydrophones, but I had dismissed it because no way could we do another deep dive like the one Viktor and Grant went through the other day. Was he going alone, out on his own, to replace those lost hydrophones? No, it couldn’t be. Nobody would be that foolish, right?

I glanced back, shivering from head to toe in the cold wind coming from outside. I was dressed in just my thermals. My eyes went to the backup kit on the floor of the cabin. It was open and missing the backup hydrophone packages.

That confirmation cleared my mind. The Antarctic cold couldn’t match the dread that seeped into my blood at the thought of what Grant was planning to do.

“Grant!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

His head whipped around and he looked straight back at me.

“Come back this very second!”

I saw him hesitating, and my anger mounted. My voice was steel when it came out, nothing like I had ever sounded.

“I am not going to repeat it. Put the Zodiac back and come right back this very minute.”

I saw him slowly put the Zodiac back and then approach me step-by-step. The closer he got to me, and the colder I was standing in the howling wind, the angrier I became. By the time he was standing at the bottom of the cabin steps, I was trembling with anger.

“Where the hell do you think you were going?”

He was dressed in the all-black diving suit. He had all of the diving gear attached. This man truly was going to go out there, plunge into the ice-cold waters, try to place the new hydrophones all by himself, alone in the dark water surrounded by predators like leopard seals and a million things that could go wrong in these conditions. I couldn’t believe it. I grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him inside and banged the cabin door shut.

Little chunks of ice stuck to his hair and his eyebrows, his eyelids. I hadn’t realized, but it had been snowing a bit.

“Answer me,” I gritted out.

He looked away from me, unable to meet my glare. He mumbled, “I was going to deploy the backup hydrophones.”

“All by yourself?”

He simply nodded.

“And what if something had happened to you? Where is your backup diver? Who knew that you were going to go out? Where has it been logged?” I fired question after question.

He kept silent. Still refusing to meet my gaze.

“Nobody knew, right?” I answered for him.

“Yeah, my plan was to be back before you woke.”

I lost my cool and punched him in the shoulder with all my strength. He looked at me, surprised.

Fresh tears blinded me. “Are you absolutely INSANE? Do you not understand what you were going to do? Do you not care at all about me? What if something had happened to you out there? Huh?”

His face creased in confusion. “But Adrien, your study…”