Just beyond the overhang, the snow continued to fall, big white flakes drifting down silently, accumulating quickly. The last of the cloud-filtered sunlight faded away, and darkness closed in around them. She shivered, then huddled in next to Gordon’s unconscious form and draped the blanket over both of them. Her ribs and cheek ached, and she couldn’t get comfortable. Just as well, she thought. If she fell asleep tonight, there was a good chance she’d never wake up. She had to be vigilant.
She clicked on Raven’s next entry. His happy face beamed as the camera turned on. Text scrolled along the bottom of the display: Video Log—Carbon Sink Project 1.2.
“We’re here! I can’t believe it,” he said, staring around. Behind him she could see a vast landscape of green. “I never imagined how beautiful a forest could be.” He held up the camera and revolved it, revealing a densely treed forest. It reminded her of the one she’d seen with Gordon, but these trees were much taller. She could hear the wind sighing in the pines and the caroling of a bird. “This is the forest outside of New Atlantic. I had no idea how amazing it would feel to be here. It’s like part of me was missing my whole life, a dull ache inside of me that I couldn’t explain. And as soon as I stepped into these trees, everything healed. It’s like I belong here, like I’ve always belonged here, but didn’t even know a place like this could exist.” His white teeth were brilliant against his darker skin.
“My parents and I have been monitoring the animal population and checking on the health of the trees. My mom invented these remote monitoring stations that we can place high up. They record temperature, humidity, and take photos of any animals that walk by. They also record sound, so we can get an idea of what the bioacoustics of the forest are like, how the animals interact with each other, and the sounds they make. It’s a living, breathing, honest-to-goodness ecosystem here, something I never dreamed I’d see.”
Once again he panned the camera around. H124 felt a little warmer as she watched images of a sun-warmed forest floor, golden beams filtering down through the branches. She could almost smell it. Raven reached out and ended the recording.
Thirst stirred her to action. She’d read in the survival manual that eating snow would only dehydrate her more, so instead she packed her water bottle with snow and then tucked it under her jacket to melt.
It worried her that Gordon hadn’t woken up yet. She had to do something about his leg, knew she had to set the bone, then pack his leg in snow. Now would be a good time while he was still out.
She looked over at him, this brave man who had taken her, a complete stranger, on an outrageous quest of mammoth proportion. Without a med pod handy, she knew it was up to her to keep him alive. Using the survival guide, she assessed his wounded leg. The protruding bone told her it was an open fracture. The book said that in most cases, you should leave the bone sticking out, so the patient can later get help to correct it. But if no help was coming, and you didn’t have clean bandages or antibiotics to keep infection away, it was better to put the bone back in. That way the body acted as the bandage, and Gordon’s immune system would work as the antibiotics. She studied a diagram in the book, then moved into position to adjust his leg.
Taking a series of shallow breaths, she placed her hands on the wound and strained, pressing the bone back inside his leg and aligning it as best she could. Luckily he remained unconscious. Then she gathered the sticks she’d found and tore up one of his spare shirts to tie the broken leg to his good one, as the book instructed. She wiped his blood off in the snow and wrapped the rest of his spare shirt around the wound. Then she checked for a pulse above and below the leg, making sure the splint or the shirt hadn’t cut off his circulation. She felt a beat in both places. Now she packed snow around the wound, hoping to bring down some of the swelling.
She settled in next to him and replaced the blanket around them, pressing close so they could share body heat. The fire attempt had been hopeless, and the cold sank steadily into her body. She got up, jumped around, and slapped her arms, but was reluctant to leave Gordon for too long without her body heat to help keep him warm. She sat back down, leaning against him, rubbing his arms and chest. He murmured, stirring gently, but remained asleep. The bitter cold invaded her, but she didn’t shiver this time. She read in the survival guide that once you stopped shivering, hypothermia was setting in. She jumped again, jogged around the plane as much as her cracked rib would allow, and sat back down with Gordon.
She couldn’t believe how cold it was. Her fingers, face, legs, feet—everything was either going numb or burned like fire. She tucked her hands under her arms again, which helped a little, then clomped her feet on the rock, trying to keep the circulation going. She rubbed Gordon’s arms and chest yet again, doing so periodically throughout the night. She felt frozen to her core. But she was still breathing, as was Gordon, and for that she was
