At three-forty-five, Hannah Davis and Larry Dalton left the Helvig aboard a helicopter claiming or quite likely to be the Helvig's service-supplied Super Lynx. By four-thirty, the Helvig had returned to the point of their leaving. It was a clear summer morning near the Arctic Circle, and the sun was rising. The Helvig's captain was already up.

Selena and Jim, reaching the bridge with Skjol, found Piotr and Robbie and Laurel there ahead of them. Laurel looked awful, very pale, very angry. Andersen was in the middle of a civil but bitter tirade against a man they'd never seen, uniformed, average height, a slight roundness to his face.

"Second Officer Hecker," Skjol said quietly. "He was the officer in charge when Miss Davis and Mr. Dalton left us--"

Selena, catching the look on Laurel's face, approached her, touched her elbow. "What happened?"

"Christ almighty, Selena, I'm sorry--" The Scots girl's eyes were even more intent than usual. "He came to th' door around-- it must've been half-three. I was half asleep, an' I was fuckin' selfish-- He came to th' door an' asked for Hannah, an' I just let her step out with 'im-- I shoulda-- I shoulda known--"

"How?" Selena looked at her evenly, squeezed her shoulders. "Laurel, how could you have known--?"

"I dunno; I--"

"Did he say anything to her? Did yeh hear--?" Jim joined them. "Dalton-- was he threatenin' her--?"

"No-- not that I--"

Leo Chaney, even more gloriously homely for being unshaven, came in and over. "Where the hell'd he take her?"

"We're determining that now, sir," said Skjol. "It's not as though they're trying to remain unfound--"

"'They're'--? Who are 'they'?" Piotr demanded. His face held something hard and fearful, something Selena hadn't before seen. Somehow, knowing that he was frightened made the situation that much worse.

"We do not know exactly their number or identity. They've landed the Lynx just inshore. We can track it via transponder. Who they are, though-- At approximately three-thirty this morning, Second Officer Hecker and his radio officer spoke with a man calling himself Isaac Johnson--"

"'Isaac--'" Jim echoed.

"Yes, sir. Purporting to be from Infinity Base, West Yorkshire--"

"Jesus--" Selena breathed. "Jim-- they--"

"They found us." They weren't touching, and still she felt him tense. A line of dark energy twitched through the muscles in his face and jaw. "Isaac Johnson--? Hell-- it's John Isaacs. The fucker. He wanted me-- he wanted us--"

"What, Mr. Sullivan?" Andersen had finished with Mr. Hecker. He approached, haggard but hard-focused. Skjol stepped aside for him.

"He wanted us dead, sir," Jim said.

"Dead, Mr. Sullivan--?"

"I think 'hanged' would imply that," Selena replied. Her voice was bitter and harsh in her ears. "He-- they-- whoever he was working for, they thought we'd killed someone they knew--"

"West," said Jim. "It was West. Major Henry West. He an' his men-- Captain, they took us in, an' we thought-- We thought they'd--"

"We thought they'd protect us. Long story short, Captain--" Selena met Andersen's eyes levelly. He looked back at her openly and let her speak. "They tried to kill Jim. They tried to rape me and Hannah. West was in charge. The bastard had it all thought out. Women for his men: us. He shot Jim, and we killed him, escaping."

"Hannah killed him," Piotr corrected, softly. "She told me."

"So Mr. Isaacs will kill Hannah to avenge Major West." Andersen spoke coldly.

"He will-- or whoever he's workin' for--" Jim was trying to keep his voice even; Selena could hear it. "Captain Andersen, we have to help her--"

"Do we?" Andersen countered. "How well do I know you, Mr. Sullivan? How well indeed?"

"Yeh don't, sir--" He could have exploded: Jim. He was a quiet man. Selena loved that in him: she knew he would have in him more peace in any given hour than she would know in a month. But she'd seen him violent, and suddenly, lethally so. She had no doubt he could kill Andersen. The thought hung in her mind as a perfect frozen moment of terror--

"Yeh don't know us at all," Jim continued. His back was straight, his hands at his sides. His face was calm. "We've nothin' t' tell yeh who we are or what we are. We're nobody an' nothin'. All we have is ourselves. Think what yeh like of me an' Selena. Arrest us if yeh have to. But, please, sir: help Hannah."

A pause. A count of five or seven while Andersen and Jim looked back at one another with their clear nearly matched eyes. Then Andersen relaxed, ever so slightly. "A test, Mr. Sullivan: I apologize." He reached out, rested his hand for a moment on Jim's shoulder. "Forgive me." He drew back, called to the officer at the communications post: "Mr. Barring, any word from our Super Lynx?"

"None, sir. They're ignoring our hails."

"We'll have to speak to them in person, then. Mr. Skjol, arrange a landing party, if you--"

A seaman interrupted, calling back from the forward observation area: "Sir, we have a boat approaching. A Zodiac, from our shoreward side."

X X X X X

Smaller than the Helvig's landing boat it was, the gray Zodiac bouncing through the waves and chop toward them. Two men were aboard it; by its dimensions, it might hold six. When it was near enough that the man driving throttled back the motor, the man not navigating cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted: "Ahoy, the Helvig--!"

They were waiting at the top of the landing stairs near the helipad. Andersen and Skjol. Jim and Selena, Robbie and grim Laurel. Chaney. Piotr, glowering. Four seamen, armed. A fifth caught a line tossed from the Zodiac. While he bound the boat to the Helvig, its passengers came up the gridded steps.

"Morning, folks." A drawl, a hangdog face, a strong build in a blue jacket, Western Star stitched in white above a white star at the left side of the chest. With Burns standing slightly behind him, John Isaacs looked at Jim and Selena and smiled. "Man, we've been chasing you kids for days."

"You son of a--" Selena stepped forward. Burns, possibly still haunted by the ghosts of nose-shots past, shrank slightly back. Isaacs held his ground and drew an automatic from his jacket pocket. He pointed it at Selena's forehead.

"Down, girl," he said.

"Miss Miller--" Andersen, calmly. The sailors around him leveled their rifles at Isaacs and Burns. He motioned them down; he waited for Selena to move back. Then he asked: "What can we do for you, Mr.--"

"Isaacs. John Isaacs. Glad to meet you, Captain--"

Jim snapped: "Where th' fuck is Hannah, you prick bastard?"

"Am I talking to you, Jim? I think not." Isaacs' smile became patronizing. "The captain and I have business to discuss. So shut up for just a sec, okay--?"

Jim went quiet, shaking, his eyes murderous. Isaacs said to Andersen: "Okay, Captain--"

"Andersen."

"--Andersen. That's with an 'e' at the end, isn't it? Cool. Anyway, I know you're a busy guy-- patrols to complete, all that stuff, so here it is. Short form: You let me an' Burnsy here take Jim and Selena off your hands, and you're free to go on your way."

Andersen's voice was a very quiet growl: "And if I refuse?"

"Hannah dies." Isaacs snapped out his wrist, looked at a sportswatch likely priced in direct proportion to its black-and-chrome bulk. "In forty-five minutes. We're not back by then, Larry puts a bullet in her head."

"Oh, no," Selena breathed out. "No, no, no--"

Burns grinned at her. "After he's done with her, that is. Had his eyes on her, from what I could--"

He'd been very still. Piotr. He moved now, and it was like all the power and motion of a three-day-gone runaway locomotive compressed into three seconds. He barreled into Burns; his right hand went to Burns' face, his left to the base of the man's skull, and from Burns' neck came a cracking like a handful of pencils snapping in the clear air. Burns dropped. In second four, Piotr turned on Isaacs--

"Piotr--!" Andersen shouted.

Isaacs had brought the automatic around, and he was pointing it at Piotr's left eye. The young Russian became a figure carved from granite, his blue eyes mica-fleck-hard. He froze, staring at Isaacs past the barrel of the gun.

"God damn, that was fast--" Isaacs was incredulous. But not incredulous enough to render his gun hand less than flagstone-steady. He smiled slightly at Piotr. "Whoa, boy. Easy now. All y'all--" He glanced down at Burns-- just a second; he looked around him at all the angry, shocked faces, focused on Andersen. "So, Captain, time's tickin' away here. Do we have a deal?"

Jim looked from Andersen to Selena. He stepped forward. "We do."

Selena joined him. "Yeah--"

Andersen stayed quiet, watching them. Isaacs grinned. "Groovy. Only thing--" He glanced again at dead, neck-twisted Burns, and his expression got a little sheepish. "--looks like I'm out a driver. Me, I'm a city boy; I'm shit with boats. Anyone here handy with a Zodiac?"

"I am." Robbie came forward. "My mum's a marine biologist; I practically grew up in one of those great bobbers--"

"That a fact?" Isaacs looked him over, nodded down the landing stairs. "You're hired. Get us ready to go."

Robbie tapped his forelock. "Aye, sir--"

He moved toward the stairs; Laurel caught his arm. "Robert, don't you go messin' about--"

He looked at her, smiled gently. "Laurelei, I would never dream of messing about in a boat."

Down to the Zodiac he went; a moment later, its motor gurgled and rumbled to life.

"One more thing," Isaacs said. "Need something to hobble Slugger here." He smiled at Selena. Then he hit Jim in the head, hard, with the gun. That fast. Jim dropped to his knees, stunned. "Better help him into the boat, honey. Time's a-wasting."

Selena knelt beside Jim. He was clutching his forehead over his left eye; blood was squeezing out beneath the heel of his hand. She could see: he was having trouble focusing. "Oh, Jesus--" She put her arm around him, pulled him to a stagger. "Jim, sweetheart, we have to go. Come on--"

Isaacs held the gun on Andersen while Selena stumbled with Jim to the Zodiac. Andersen remained still, watching him. Piotr, Laurel, Chaney, all the others: they remained still, too.

"Always a pleasure doing business with a reasonable man," Isaacs said to the Helvig's captain. "Much obliged, Captain Andersen."

A final, smug smile. Then he went down the steel steps, and a moment later John Isaacs and his prisoners and the Zodiac were gone.

X X X X X

Not messing about in boats. Isaacs told Robbie where to go, and Robbie pointed the Zodiac exactly there: toward a cove just north of the Helvig's position. A patch of grayish sand lay where they were heading, but rocky beach led south to the next cove over. Northward, a river flowed down through rock-slab shoring to the sea. The water near the gray-black slabs had to be deeper and colder than the Arctic summer sea beyond: ice bobbed in white tables and floes where the inlet met the ocean. Beyond the patch of sand at which Robbie was pointing the Zodiac stood an abandoned ancient hunting village, a cluster of stone huts huddled against a rocky coarse-grass hill.

Selena sat on the bottom of the Zodiac with Jim pulled against her; his muscles were lax, his breathing shallow. The gash in his forehead was bleeding freely. With the sleeve of her sweatshirt, she gently wiped blood away from his eyes. She looked past Isaacs to the shore, saw no one and no Lynx. "Where are they?" she asked. "Where's Hannah?"

"Parked up on the hill. Wanted t' keep out of sight, in case one of those damn Swedes got smart and took a shot with the deck cannon."

"Danes. They're Danish."

"Whatever."

Something in his tone-- something just that bit past insulting, past Hannah kidnapped, past Jim stunned and bleeding. "You have no idea how dead you are," Selena said.

Isaacs smiled at her, his face calm, his heavy-lidded eyes languid. "Whereas you, on the other hand, know exactly how dead you are. You think you have nothing to lose. Makes you strong, doesn't it--?" He pointed his automatic at Jim's stomach. "Maybe we need to take you down a notch--"

"Don't--!" Selena pulled Jim back, got herself between him and the gun.

"Then stop lookin' at me like you're thinking 'Fuck you.'" Isaacs' smile went a little crooked. "Or like you're thinking it in a bad way. Maybe we could-- I dunno-- negotiate. Work something out. What do you think--?"

"No," Selena said, more quietly, her eyes on the automatic. "Not ever. Not for anything."

Isaacs glanced at Jim. "Not even to stop him getting dead--?"

"No."

"Wouldn't be unfaithful to your man even to save his life. Wow. That is so cool. Stupid as hell-- but cool." He looked out past her and Jim, at the water and the shore, nearing but still a ways off. "Will say, you folks have been nothing if not tenacious. Skittery as three damn cockroaches. I hired an assassin, I bought a whole boatload of pirates-- hell, I had an oil rig blown up right underneath ya, and you kids just would not die--"

"You did that-- the Puffin--"

"That-- and that Irish boat, yeah. Well, not me exactly-- give credit where it's due-- but I signed the checks. Rig was under-producing anyway. All those dead Brits not buyin' gas for their Jags. Adds up."

"You're insane--"

"Naw, just power-mad. Boss-man don't like t' flaunt it, so he lets me flaunt it for him." Isaacs grinned at her. "Hell, woman, it's not like I had 'em blow up the damn Chunnel on ya. Frenchies did that, 'bout five weeks back. No crazy-plague for ze Frogs, nosirree."

X X X X X

On the bridge of the Helvig, Andersen's ice-blue eyes watched through binoculars the Zodiac nearing the patch of distant sandy shore. "Mr. Skjol--"

Skjol replied from the communications station: "Sir."

"You have a definite fix on the Lynx?"

"We do, sir." He joined Andersen at the side window, pointed left of the captain's binoculars. "Above that cove to the south. In those hills."

"Thank you, Mr. Skjol." Andersen lowered the binoculars, turned from the window to face those waiting. Piotr. Laurel. Chaney. The armed sailors who'd been on the helipad when Isaacs and Burns arrived. "Landing party. They would hear a motor; we will have to do without--"

"'We,' sir?" Skjol frowned.

"I am leading this mission, Mr. Skjol. The Helvig I leave in your capable hands."

"Thank you, sir."

Andersen nodded, continued: "As I was saying, we will forgo a motor--"

"Paddle in--?" said Piotr. "Time will permit--?"

"The current here is not so strong. Stealth, Mr. Kalinovich. Gray clothing or marine-arctic camouflage, and we will go quietly."

"Who?"

"Myself. You--"

"Me," said Chaney. "I'm goin'."

"Me, too," said Laurel.

Andersen shook his head. "Out of the question, Miss Urquhart. You are not--"

"You give me a fuckin' rifle, an' I'll show yeh what I am."

A thin smile. "Alright, then, Miss Urquhart. You are with us."

X X X X X

In the distance, a landing. Across the pebbled beach to the rocky hills: Isaacs with his pistol, Robbie, Selena, Jim's arm pulled across her shoulder, Jim stumbling beside her. He'd nearly passed out in the Zodiac; now his head hurt like hell and the cut over his eye was stinging and dribbling, but his focus was returning bit by bit. He looked about discreetly, keeping his head low. The variegated rough shore quickly cracked sightlines: they hadn't climbed high or far when the Zodiac was no longer visible on its patch of sand, when the stone-slab riverbank to the north and the southward rocky beach had passed from view. Isaacs stopped them at the crest of a hill decked in lichen and coarse short grass. Wind flicked from the west, ghosted with ice-shelf cold.

"We're back, Tom," Isaacs called.

Boulders, glacier-dropped, possibly thirty feet ahead. A man stepped out from behind them; Larry Dalton followed. Hannah was with him; he had her left arm gripped tight in one hand, a gun in the other.

"And there she is!" Isaacs said cheerfully. "Our guest of honor."

Hannah walked before Dalton. He jabbed at her back with the gun. She was shaking; she was pale; Jim could see she'd been trying not to cry. He eased his arm off Selena's shoulder, stood on his own. His footing was weak but steady. He hoped no one would notice. He looked out noncommittally at Dalton, at the man who had to be Isaacs' Tom. Young fiftyish, balding, tall, well dressed for the Greenland chill. Strong build on him. Pale face, intent emotionless eyes. A man of power, he looked. Accustomed to observing, analyzing. He was analyzing them from his own distance even now.

Selena seemed not even to see him. Unburdened, she tried to go to Hannah; Isaacs tapped her with his gun. She flinched, steadied herself. "Hannah-- sweetheart, are you okay?"

"Yeah." Her voice caught. "Selena, I'm so sorry. I thought you an' Jim were here. He said you were; he-- they brought me here--"

"Shh, Hannah--" Jim spoke. "It's gonna be fine, darlin'. Don't worry, now."

"Ah: no." Isaacs chuckled, shook his head. "Much as I hate to disappoint anyone-- Hannah, honey, it's not gonna be fine--"

"Where's Mr. Burns, John?" asked the man standing apart from Dalton and Hannah.

"Big kid on the Helvig killed him."

"That's too bad." His voice was reasonable, quiet. He paused for a moment. His emotionless eyes seemed to be watching something in addition to the cold windy present, a remembered report, possibly, in his skull. He frowned at it slightly, gestured open-palmed toward Isaacs. "Please, John: continue."

"Thanks, Tom." Isaacs smiled. "See, I had this idea on the way over, flying out from Reykjavik, and Tom-- Tom, he just loves it."

Said Tom in his calm voice: "From what we garnered from your statements at Infinity, Hannah was the one who killed Major West."

"So all of this--" Selena, incredulous: "All of this is about that--?"

"Yes."

"Who are you--?"

"Thomas West. Owner, Western Star Oil and Gas. Major West-- the Major West whom Hannah murdered outside that house in Manchester-- he was my dead brother's only son. My only nephew."

Unsteadiness was revisiting Jim, chill and unreality compounding the ache in his head. He spoke as evenly as he could: "Mr. West-- we're sorry he died. We're sorry any of 'em died. Please--" The gash over his eye throbbed in the wind. He looked at West. "You can't possibly excuse what they were tryin' t' do--"

"The lies you told? About the attempted rapes? About them trying to kill you?"

"Yes--"

"Like I said: lies. Henry was an honorable man. He took you in, gave you shelter--"

"And we murdered the lot of 'em why?" Selena's voice rose in anger. "For fun?"

"If you weren't killers, you could not have survived. Not when so many others died--"

"Y'know," said Isaacs, "I hate to interrupt-- this is all very deep and psychological-- but it is freaking cold out here. I suggest we move along. Tom--? Tom, you wanna outline the plan?"

West caught his nod, tipped his head in reply. "Certainly, John."

"It's so poetic. You'll love it." Isaacs winked at Jim.

West, speaking, looked at them in turn. His captive audience. Selena, Jim, Hannah. Robbie, still before Isaacs' gun. "Mr. Isaacs and I are each carrying a phial of blood. Human blood. One phial is infected with the virus-- the rage virus; the other is not. Jim and Selena: you each get a phial. The three of you-- you and Hannah-- will go out there-- down on the beach, there-- and you, Jim and Selena, will ingest the contents of your phials. The one infected will attack Hannah and-- presumably-- the other one, the one not infected. Do you follow me--?"

"What if we don't--?" Jim asked quietly.

"If you don't drink the blood, we'll simply shoot the three of you."

Selena looked from Hannah to Jim. "Shoot us, then."

Isaacs raised his automatic and put the muzzle to Jim's temple. Selena flinched, hard-- and he smiled, lowered the barrel. "Love's a bitch, ain't it?"

"Hannah left Henry to be torn apart," West said. "We thought it only right that she suffer the same fate. Only she'll have a chance--"

"What chance?" Jim rasped.

"You've fought the infected and survived. You could do it again now." West tipped his head toward Selena. "Let's say hers is the infected blood. She attacks Hannah; she attacks you. And you manage to kill her, without becoming infected yourselves. You and Hannah are free."

"You'd kill us."

"No."

"We'd tell people what you'd done. Captain Andersen, the Danish government. The American government--"

"Jim, I'm an oil man. Do you know what that means? Pharmaceuticals, petroleum, and the legal industry are the pillars of American society. As far as you're concerned, I'm untouchable. When I leave here, for all intents and purposes, this incident will cease to exist. As will you."

"I think it's a fair offer, buddy," Isaacs said. "Think you'd better take it."

"What about me?" Robbie asked.

"You we shoot." Just that quickly, Isaacs took aim at Robbie's head and pulled the--

Jim hit Isaacs' arm. The shot went wide.

Three things. Four. Robbie jumped aside, bumped Hannah and Dalton. Hannah twisted away from Dalton; Robbie shoved her ahead of himself. "Hannah, run--!" He and she shot off down the rough hill, ran southward down the rocky beach. Selena broke from West and ran in the opposite direction, north, toward the river mouth and the table ice bobbing there. West went after her.

Jim tried-- he tried to bolt, too. But he was still weak from the blow he'd received on the Helvig, not as fast as he might have been. Isaacs swept his feet, rapped his skull again with the pistol, and Jim's knees buckled and hit the rocky ground.

"You fucker," Isaacs said. "You little fucker--" He grabbed Jim by the forehead and dug his fingers into the gash there, and Jim shouted in pain. Isaacs looked at Dalton, nodded after Hannah and Robbie. "Get her. Shoot him."

They had yet to pass from view, Robbie and Hannah, running, growing already smaller in their flight. Jim, his eyes blurred with pain and blood, watched numbly from the ground as Dalton went to the crest of the hill, aimed carefully, fired.

Just-distant Robbie stumbled and fell, hard, on the rocky beach. Hannah kept running, after the slightest hitching, the barest registering of shock in her stride. She rounded the outcropping separating the rough beach from the cove to the south and disappeared.

"I'll go get her," Dalton said, starting off down the hill, gun in hand.

Isaacs looked from where she'd vanished to where Robbie lay unmoving. "Make sure he's dead first. She won't get far."

"Will do, Johnny."

Dalton picked his way to the beach. "This way, Jimbo," said Isaacs. He pulled Jim to his feet, shoved him in the direction Selena and West had gone, toward the table-rock riverbank and the bobbing slabs of white ice.

Behind and below them, from the beach, a gunshot cracked the cold air. Jim flinched, his heart lurching in his chest.

"Guess the little fruit wasn't dead," Isaacs said.

X X X X X

On the beach, Robbie lay very still, the side of his head and his neck splattered with blood.

But it wasn't his.

"Robert--?" Laurel said tentatively, She prodded him gently with a booted toe; she was standing over him with a borrowed rifle, wearing a borrowed jacket in patches of dark gray, blue, dirty white. Dalton lay dead, a hole in his skull, a few feet away. "Robbie, please--"

"I think I broke my spleen," Robbie mumbled to the beach. He rolled over, looked over at Dalton, sprawling and quite deceased, and tossed aside a rock the size of a grapefruit. "Won't be needing that, then."

"Oh, get up, yeh wee skulkin' hen."

Robbie beamed at her, rising. "I'm delighted to see you, too, Laurelei."

X X X X X

Just after the second shot, just after Isaacs announced Robbie's death to Jim, Hannah, gasping, her eyes filling with tears, rounded the outcropping parting the stony beach from the cove to the south and ran right into a bear.

Nearly. It was nearly a bear. Nearly bear-sized, bear-built, bear-tall. It caught her in its nearly bear-strong arms. She shrieked; she kicked at it; she thrashed at it with her fists until it said: "Hannah, stop. Stop--"

"Piotr--?"

"Shh--"

She threw her arms around him, clung to him. Piotr hugged her close.

"They've got-- they've got Jim an' Selena--" Hannah, less panicked, still breathless. "I don't know if-- if-- I heard someone shootin'. I think they mighta shot Robbie--"

"Mr. Oldsen is quite well." Captain Andersen was beside them, looking past the outcropping to the beach. "Not so Mr. Dalton. Miss Urquhart is an amazing shot."

Quiet movement from above, to the left. Leo Chaney came stealthily down from the westward hills. "Two guys at the chopper," he said to Andersen. "Knocked 'em cold. Gregersen's keeping an eye on 'em. But I'm thinkin' there might be more."

Piotr nodded, looking to the captain. "What now?"

"We get in behind them," Andersen said. "The ones holding Mr. Sullivan and Miss Miller."

"Hey, kid." Chaney smiled at Hannah, reached over, touched her cheek with rough fingertips. "You okay?"

"Yeah."

"Glad t' hear it." He looked from her to Andersen. "Captain, can I make a suggestion--?"

"Certainly, Mr. Chaney."

"Me an' Mighty Joe Young here--" -- a nod toward Piotr-- "we'll get 'em. You watch out for Hannah."

"Very well. Mr. Kalinovich-- you and Mr. Chaney move in from the beach. I will provide cover from here. And Piotr: mind those huts. Miss Urquhart--" -- to Laurel, trotting up with her rifle and with Robbie, who found himself smiling and wrapped in a hug with Hannah a moment later-- "-- you're our sniper."

"Bloody right I am."

"From above, if you please. Go with her, Mr. Oldsen," he added, to Robbie. He nodded toward the hills north- and westward; he glanced at Chaney and Piotr. "Good luck, all of you. Go."

"An' bloody well keep quiet," Laurel growled at Robbie, not unaffectionately. "Yeh make more noise'n a fuckin' avalanche, Robert." She turned and trotted off toward the north hills with her rifle. Robbie grinned briefly at her back and followed. Before they left the tumbled beach, he paused and picked up another grapefruit-sized stone and carried it along with him.

X X X X X

Selena had run out of earth.

She was at the water's edge, standing on a low rock ledge above the lightless blue of the river, the shifting thick tables of floating ice. Jim saw her look out at the river, at the sea beyond. West was right behind her, a gun in his right hand.

"Tell her to come back," Isaacs growled.

Jim spoke around the dizzy sick pain in his knocked skull: "Fuck yeh--"

Isaacs punched him, hard, in the small of the back. Not quite a kidney shot, but shocking and heavy enough to knock Jim off balance. He stumbled; his legs folded--

From the river bank, West called back: "I've got her."

Jim looked after the voice, found Selena looking back at him from across the cold distance. She met his eyes, as she always had, with fearless clarity. Then, as West approached her, she turned again to the sea and stepped down onto a bobbing white slab of ice.

"No--" Jim tried to stand; Isaacs shoved him down.

On the bank, West hesitated. Then he stepped out onto the ice with Selena. "Where do you plan to go--?"

She said nothing; she crossed the first slab of ice and stepped onto the next one farther out. Farther from shore.

X X X X X

Piotr and Chaney, approaching the stone huts of the hunting village, moving quickly but cautiously over the rough ground, against the line of rocky hills: from within the dark jagged maze of walls they saw motion. For just a moment, just a hint. A shred of hide on a drying rack, twitching in the wind, or dry grass rustling--

Or not. Chaney motioned to Piotr: Keep going. I'll check it out.

Piotr nodded, kept moving. Chaney broke silently and quickly to the left, disappeared amongst the huts.

Bastard with a rifle. Sure enough. He was drawing a bead on Piotr when Chaney came up on him. Keeping an eye on his bosses, not on the beach. Might have been over just like that, with the butt of Chaney's pistol cracking the back of the goon's head, only Chaney's boots, until now so perfectly soundless, skittered on a loose patch of gravel. The rifleman turned at the clattering, Chaney lunged at him, and he and the goon commenced grappling.

X X X X X

Seconds later: farther out still. Slab three, unstable, the dark water lapping over its edges. Selena led; West followed--

"This is getting ridiculous," Isaacs said. "Here!" he shouted at the water. "Got something special for Jimbo here."

Selena paused. She was meters from shore now, six or better, and West was just stepping onto the current slab with her. She looked back at Jim. Above him, Isaacs reached inside his jacket with his left hand, the hand not holding the automatic. He brought out a glass phial filled with a deep red liquid. He held it away from his body, so that she could see it even at her distance.

"You get your ass off that ice, Selena," Isaacs called, "or Killer here gets his cocktail now. I know, I know--" --he grinned, shook his head-- "--kinda ruins the surprise. But I got the bad one saved up for our boy Jim--"

"Oh, fuck--" Jim tried to stand; he shouted: "Selena, stay there--!"

He was nearly on his feet when Isaacs slammed his right elbow into his shoulder: a hollow breathless explosion of pain followed, black stars shattering behind his eyes. Isaacs grabbed Jim's hair, twisted his head back. "It goes in your eye, in your mouth, up your fucking nose, it doesn't matter." He tipped the tube so that a drop hung at the crystal lip. "Ready to live a little, Jim--?"

X X X X X

Piotr, watching from just beyond the last of the stone huts, half-crouched. Sixty meters ahead of him, between him and the estuary, Jim was on his knees, Isaacs standing over him, shouting down to the water, to a Selena Piotr could not see. Isaacs' back was to him, but there was no more shelter between Piotr and the shore--

Where was Laurel--? Hers was the longer path, up and through the rocky hills, but she and Robbie should have been there by now. If their path had been clear, that was. He glanced back, up into the boulders, saw nothing. From behind him, no gunshots, but no sign of Chaney, either--

He leveled his automatic. Andrej's automatic. With his free hand, he held his gun hand steady. He took aim at the base of Isaacs' neck--

X X X X X

Thirty feet from shore, a hundred and fifty feet from stunned and broken Jim, Selena saw the glitter of crystal over his head--

"Wait--! No!" she shouted. The ice beneath her feet and West's was rotating slowly in the blue-black water; they turned with it. West was beside her now, his gun trained at her back.

"You ready to play nice, honey?" Isaacs called to her.

"Yeah, I am. Jim--"

He couldn't see her. Blood-- his own-- was blearing his eyes, and Isaacs' twisting grip on his scalp was pointing his face to the light of the morning sky. He could only hear her becoming quiet. More than anything else, that quiet terrified him. "Selena, don't--"

"It has to end here. It has to, sweetheart. We both know that."

"Just fuckin' stay back. Please, Selena--"

"Goodbye, Jim--"

X X X X X

His eyes on Isaacs' back, Piotr pulled the trigger.

From Andrej's automatic, a click. Nothing more.

Misfire--

X X X X X

She twisted sideways. Selena did. She threw herself against West, shouldered into him. The floe tipped beneath them; he shouted in surprise. The gun went off, flew from his hand. Both he and Selena went into the water. Went in, splashing, flailing.

And went under, there amongst the drifting white slabs.

X X X X X

A second click. One too many. Piotr silently cursed the gun, cursed himself for having taken it--

X X X X X

"Fuck--!" Isaacs shouted. "Tom!" He snarled down at Jim, tipped the phial toward the bleeding gash on his head. "Try this, you little--"

X X X X X

A desperate looking. A weapon, anything. Rocks--? Ridiculous--

Piotr saw: against the north wall of the nearest hut, the last one between the hunting village and the river, something leaning. Several somethings. Stick-slender, long, rusted or rust-colored above, wrapped tightly in graying cracked hide below--

He dashed for the hut, grabbed and hefted, turned back toward Isaacs and Jim, and threw--

X X X X X

A red drop, shuddering at the lip of the phial. Jim knew it was there more than he could see it. She was gone. Selena was gone, and he and the drop were alone in time, and beyond the pain in his head and shoulder and the red blurring in his eyes, said time was moving very slowly indeed--

Then: a fleshy thud. Something sharp whisked past Jim's temple. Time and his mind refocused. He twisted away; the falling drop of infected blood just missed his cut forehead, his left eye. He sprawled on his back on the rocky ground, free of Isaacs' grip, and looked--

Isaacs stood above him, wavering on his feet, looking down at himself. A rusty barbed steel head on a rust-brown steel shaft was protruding from his midriff.

Wonderingly, he said: "That's a harpoon. That's a fucking harpoon."

He reached to touch the shaft. Then he noticed his hand.

The phial had shattered. The bloody glass was embedded in his palm.

"Well, shit," he said. Jim was on his feet now, backing away from him, toward the water. Isaacs grinned at him. "If this just don't beat all--"

Jim saw Piotr running up behind Isaacs; Jim turned and ran full-out for the stone-slab shore, the bobbing floes, desperation negating the pain in his head, the dizziness. Behind him, Isaacs' eyes went hemorrhage-red; he leaped after Jim's back. He leaped, was jerked back--

There was a worn seal-gut line strung from the butt of the harpoon. Piotr had it wrapped about his hands. He rushed Isaacs before he could turn; he shoved him face-down and snarling onto the rocky ground, and he impaled him there.

"For Andrej," he said-- for this man, this thrashing monster, was the man from Infinity, the man who'd stared into the shadows at Piotr after Andrej died. "For Hannah. For Selena--" He leaned on the harpoon; Isaacs screamed, clawed at him. Chaney, his business among the stone huts at a satisfactory and deadly end, came running up. "Finish him," Piotr said.

X X X X X

On that first helicopter ride, she'd held his hand--

Behind him, a single gunshot. Jim ran without pausing onto the shifting ice.

Tell you about my fears someday.

He paused, looking, desperately scanning the water--

A week later, aboard a ship of the Danish navy, as he held her in the safe warm darkness, she'd said, "It's odd--"

Just three hours ago, just a murmur. Caught his ears between dreams, it had.

"Mm, love--?" he murmured back.

(No sign of them. How long had it been? Forty-five seconds--? A minute?)

She sighed, shifting against him. "We're living on the sea-- and I can't swim."

Jim nuzzled her neck. Her skin was warm and perfect. "Have t' teach yeh, then."

"Somewhere nice."

"Sure."

Not here. Not off the coast of Greenland. Forty degrees, Leo had said. Give or take. Forty bloody degrees Fahrenheit--

He had no idea what it would feel like, going in. He didn't care. He ran farther onto the ice, his body weight negligible, his boots nimble on and between the floes. His eyes swept the water sharply, frantically--

There

Ten meters ahead, possibly four meters down, falling and tumbling away through water like blue glass, two figures. And-- his heart choked as he saw-- a twisting purplish smoke-trail of blood--

He didn't hesitate. He sprinted for them as far as the ice would take him-- he heard a shout behind him, Leo's voice: "No, Jim--!"-- and he dove in.

Shock. Pure, crystal shock.

Any pain he'd felt that day, any pain he'd felt ever, even the gunshot to his midriff: it didn't compare to this terrible immersion. Jim struggled to hold his breath, to force himself away from the surface. To swim. The water-- the icy water: it was as though his muscles were constricting fast and hard enough to shatter his bones, which in turn threatened to extrude in shards through his tightening skin--

He opened his eyes, diving; it was like having nails driven into his sockets. He teared up against the salt of the water and pulled and kicked downward. Ahead, toward the blood trail, the bodies beyond--

Reaching out and forward. The cold was crushing the air from his lungs. His fingers found a slender wrist. He saw only that Selena's eyes were closed; she didn't respond when he touched her. West--

Jim didn't care. His lungs wouldn't let him care. Fuck the oil man, the murdering demon, wherever he was in this cold airless hell. Jim got an arm around Selena and hauled her toward the surface. She wasn't moving; she was limp against him.

He broke the surface with her, gasping. He held her head above the water, kicked on his back for the nearest ice. A slab possibly four meters across, sharp-edged, thick: he shoved her up onto it as best he could. The water pulled at her; it pulled at him. He nearly went under, lifting her up--

From the shore, running out toward them: Chaney, Piotr. "You crazy bastard!" Chaney shouted. Jim's face twitched. A rictus smile: he was shuddering from top to toe. Selena was up on the ice, and very still, and he tried to pull himself up beside her. But he found himself suddenly exhausted, hanging there in the water; he reached with twitching fingers for a crack in the floe--

Something grabbed his left ankle. A jerking hand. Hands. At his knee, his waist, up his back, clawing to his shoulders. West surfaced behind him, gasping. He pulled at Jim savagely; Jim's fingers missed the crack in the ice, and the part of his torso that had made it onto the floe went back into the terrible water. He thrashed at the renewed shock of it; he thrashed, then, at something else--

Like a line of acid drawn through the cold: the first slash. West had a knife. The blade slit a long diagonal through Jim's sweatshirt, stung its way across his back. He arched, shouting in shock and pain; the blade slipped, nearly tangled in the fabric of his shirt. West almost lost his numb grip--

But he held on. He stabbed Jim again. The blade-tip bit Jim's right shoulder and stuck. Jim flailed, grabbed, caught a wrist. Pain burst in red flashes behind his eyes. Red. Red as blood--

Christ Jesus. They spread infection--

Adrenaline. Shock. Building in him, spastic. He lost his grip on the floe, lost it completely--

On a razor. On a knife blade--

He twisted in the water, turned on West. West lost his grip on the knife. It stayed in Jim's shoulder.

Isaacs. Chaplin. This bastard here--

The water wouldn't support their struggling selves. West clawed at Jim, his face a mixture of fury and panic. Fear.

He's infected me.

His last lucid thought. Then it took him. Jim heard himself shout or howl-- something-- and then all was pain and rage and a blood-redness in his mind that forced out everything that was him and left nothing but the shaking unshakable grip of his fingers on West's throat as he pushed the man under. West's flailing left hand stumbled across the knife in Jim's shoulder and caught the handle and twisted it, and Jim screamed a gurgling furious scream and ground his fingers toward each other until they drew from West's neck a series of pops as hard as icicles cracking. The man went limp. He sank. Jim's grip failed a moment later.

He followed the drawing weight of West's death. His eyes were as open as West's as his head went under. The water shoved up under his lids like steel shutters. West's body fell away into the dark clear water, and Jim fell after him. The cold stilled the rage in his mind.

Better like this--

But then, into the shirt fabric on his unwounded shoulder, a twisting, a gripping of strong fingers. A pulling upward. His head broke the surface; his body forced itself to breathe. He looked backward and up and saw Piotr, his face set with the effort of parting Jim from the water.

"Don't--" The word choked behind spasms in Jim's throat. Don't touch me--

He was already out of the water, over the floe's rough edge. Piotr dragged him to the center of the ice, lifted him carefully, and carried him to the shore. He stepped up and clear of the water and laid Jim, shaking, on a black stone slab. Beside Selena, a double arm's length away.

He turned his head toward her. Salt and cold fouled his vision. Tears. He could see: she wasn't moving, not at all--

"Is she clear--?" Laurel, kneeling beside her. "Robbie-- Jesus, she's shot."

"Clear, Laurel." Robbie, kneeling too, leaning in over Selena's face. He tipped her head just so and opened his mouth over hers, blew air into her lungs--

Another pulling. Jim numbly turned his head as Laurel started in at Selena's sternum, pumping in short controlled pushings with the heels of her hands. He found himself looking up at Captain Andersen.

You have to kill me-- He tried to speak; he heard himself groan. The pulling was Andersen easing Jim onto his greatcoat, spread out on the shore.

"It's alright, Jim," he said gently.

"No--" The word, this time, audible. Just the one, though, through the shaking and the pain. Look at my eyes--

But Andersen was looking. No horror in his face, no fear, no grim resolution. His expression was kind and tragic. He folded his heavy coat around Jim's shuddering torso.

"No--" Laurel now, frustrated. Her voice carried the hint of a sob. "Robbie, it's no good--"

Hannah was there, between Chaney and Piotr. Jim only just realized it. He lay watching them watch Selena, the two working over her.

"Piotr," Andersen said, sharply, "the helicopter. Fetch it, please."

Hannah's eyes were filled with tears. "Go with 'im, Hannah," Jim said. His jaw was heavy and shuddering, but the words came out clearly. "Go on now, darlin'."

She looked at him, her face working. Then Piotr caught her hand in his, and they ran for the beach, the Lynx in the hills beyond.

X X X X X

He was drifting. Robbie and Laurel were still trying, but they were becoming indistinct, slightly and increasingly distant. Andersen took a handset from his pocket and spoke to the Helvig, but Jim heard none of the words. He felt warm in Andersen's coat, though he could feel no part of his body distinctly. Not even his slashed back, his punctured shoulder. He could barely feel himself breathing. He blinked slowly, more slowly still, at Robbie and Laurel. At Selena.

Her right arm was angled toward him on the ground, her hand out but not reaching. Too far away to touch. But her stillness crept across to him, across the smooth gray stone of the shore. It filled him; it quieted the remainder of his shaking. It stilled his heart in his chest. He took a last look at her beautiful face-- she was dead, wasn't she?-- and closed his eyes.

Wait for me, love, he thought. I'll be right there.