Chapter 3

The wind howled, a mournful symphony for my impending death. The tiny red light of the beacon was a secret promise, but a promise that was fading with every passing second. Time was my enemy. The cold was my executioner.

Kelsi' s words echoed in my mind, a cruel mantra of betrayal. He was glad to do it.

The gash in my suit was a gaping wound. The GORE-TEX shell, the waterproof, windproof barrier that was my last line of defense, was compromised. My base layers were now exposed, rapidly becoming saturated with the fine, wind-driven snow. I could feel the dampness turning to ice against my skin.

My life was being measured in minutes.

The faint sound of crunching snow made me force my heavy eyelids open. It was Bryan and the others, returning from the main tent. For a wild, insane moment, a flicker of hope ignited in my chest. He came back for me.

Then I saw his face.

Kelsi was clinging to his arm, sobbing theatrically. "She attacked me, Bryan! I just went to check on her, and she lunged at me with her ice axe! She' s lost her mind!"

My ice axe. The one she had used to slash my suit. The one she had just tossed beside me. It was lying there in the snow, a piece of damning, silent evidence that was being twisted into a weapon against me.

"What the hell is this?" Bryan roared, his eyes falling on the tear in my jacket. He saw the gash not as a mortal wound, but as proof of my supposed insanity.

"She did it herself!" another climber chimed in. "She's trying to frame Kelsi!"

I tried to speak, to deny it. "She... she cut it..." The words came out as a frozen croak, lost in the wind.

Bryan didn't hear me. Or he didn't want to. He looked from Kelsi's tear-streaked face to my broken form, and his verdict was instantaneous and absolute.

The look in his eyes was the thing that finally broke me. It wasn't anger. It wasn't confusion. It was a cold, hard certainty. He believed her. He looked at me, his fiancée, the woman he was supposed to love and protect, and he saw a monster.

"You've always been jealous of anyone I pay attention to," he snarled, his voice dripping with venom. "But this? This is a new low, even for you."

"She's just not cut out for this level of pressure," someone else said with a dismissive shrug. "Always has to be the star. Can't handle it when a pretty new face gets some attention."

"So unprofessional," another voice added. "Completely unhinged."

The words battered me, each one a physical blow. They were building a narrative around me, a cage of lies that I was too weak to break out of.

Bryan knelt beside Kelsi, wrapping my smart blanket more tightly around her. "It's okay, baby," he murmured, his voice thick with a tenderness he hadn't shown me in years. "I'm here. I won't let her hurt you."

The endearment, so casual, so intimate, was the final twist of the knife.

Kelsi sniffled, burying her face in his chest. But over his shoulder, her eyes met mine. They were gleaming with triumph.

"You're a liability, Alex," Bryan said, his voice flat and devoid of any emotion. He stood up, looking down at me as if I were a piece of faulty equipment to be discarded. "You're a danger to the team and a danger to yourself."

My hope, that tiny, foolish flicker, died completely. There was no misunderstanding to clear up. There was no love left to appeal to. There was only the cold, hard reality of his contempt.

I slumped back into the snow, the last of my fight draining away. The cold was a comfort now, a promise of an end to the pain.

"I am the Project Manager," Bryan announced, his voice taking on an official, authoritative tone for the benefit of the others. "And I am officially revoking Alex Gray's clearance for this expedition. She is to remain here until we can arrange for her evacuation."

He was formalizing my death sentence.

A fresh wave of dizziness washed over me, and the world began to blur. My body was giving up.

I was falling, falling into a deep, white abyss.

Just as my consciousness began to fray, a new sound cut through the blizzard's roar. It was a sound that didn't belong here, a deep, rhythmic thrumming that grew louder and louder.

Womp. Womp. Womp.

A helicopter.

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