White Crystal Butterflies | Wattys 2021 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Thirty

The split this time isn't vertical. The tunnel I'm in continues downwards, but the branch forks off to the side like a den in an animal burrow. I push myself out from the wall to peek into it. It continues horizontally out of sight. The receiver signal becomes intermittent when I hold it as far down the branch as my arm will reach. I think it's safe to say Krüger went down the shaft I'm currently hanging in.

The existence of a horizontal shaft, though, raises a new possibility. If there are more of these, and Krüger managed to catch himself on one, he might have stopped his fall: an encouraging prospect. He's certainly quick enough to have pulled off a maneuver like that. I speed up a little, searching for more sideways branches. The tunnel I'm in has tipped from vertical to roughly the angle of a high-speed waterslide when I find the first mark in the ice.

It's a perfectly straight, hair-thin scratch, running for about half a meter before vanishing. I turn my light down the tunnel. Not far off is a bigger scar: deeper and longer, like Krüger found something to ram into the ice to try to slow his slide. I scoot down to it. It runs for a good three or four meters before breaking off sharply. There's something embedded in the ice at its bottom end.

I chip out the dark fragment and turn it over in my palm. It's the tip of a black-bladed, ceramic buck knife.

I gaze up the tunnel again, trying to estimate how long it would take to fall this far. Krüger must have gotten over the initial shock and gotten his knife out in seconds, stuck it in the ice, then slipped again when the tip broke. The scar isn't deep enough to have stopped or even seriously slowed his slide, but at least he was alive, mentally present, and trying.

I should probably show Liu this. I can hear her breathing in my headset; we're still connected. "Lingmei?"

She startles. "I'm here."

"How clear's the transmission?"

"You're a bit fuzzy, but the volume is okay."

"Good. Listen, I've got a mark down here that I want to run by you. Are you good to come down?"

"I think so."

The extra training I threw in after their workouts pays off. I stand by to help walk Liu through the rappelling process, but she only needs one prompt before she's gliding more or less smoothly down to meet me. She loses her grip not far above my spot and takes the last few meters in an unintentional butt-slide. I lean back on the rope to stop her, smiling.

"Sorry," she says.

"Happens to everyone on their first time. Use your crampons to flip back."

She digs in her heels to test it, then rights herself awkwardly. "I keep forgetting I have claws on my boots. What did you find?"

I point her to the scar on the ice, then show her the broken knife-tip. She comes to the same conclusions I did.

"I saw a horizontal tunnel back there, too," she says. "He could be camped out in one of those, if he managed to get to one."

"That's what I'm hoping. I'm also hoping he's stayed put if he did."

"He's always told me that the first thing I should do if I get lost out here is find shelter, and that the second thing to do is stay there, so I think he would."

That makes me feel better. And worse again, but mostly better. If this were the Aventureros, Krüger would be in leadership training, and he's certainly ready for it. Or was. If we find him alive and make it out of here, I'm going to ask him how he feels about stepping into a role as my second-in-command in the field.