Matthew Reilly - Ice Station

Schofield had stopped listening. He was taking in the room around him. It looked like someone's living quarters. He saw a bed, a desk, a computer, and, strangely, a pair of black-and-white TV monitors mounted on top of two video recorders.

He turned to face Renshaw. "Huh?"

"Several fragments of the bullet lodged in your neck, Lieutenant. I'm pretty sure?in fact, I'm absolutely certain?that for at least thirty seconds, you lost your pulse. You were clinically dead."

"What do you mean?" Schofield said. He instinctively tried to raise his hand to feel his neck. But he couldn't move his arm. His arms and legs were still firmly tied down to the bed.

"Oh, don't worry, I fixed it up," Renshaw said. "I took the bullet fragments out and I cleaned the wound. You actually got a couple of Kevlar fragments in there, too, but they weren't a problem. In fact, I was just trying to get them out when you woke up." Renshaw indicated the bloody scalpel on a silver tray next to Schofield's bed. Beside the scalpel lay seven tiny metal fragments, all of them covered in blood.

"Oh, and don't worry about my qualifications," Renshaw said with a smile. "I did two years of medicine before I dropped out and took up geophysics."

"Are you going to untie me?" Schofield said evenly.

"Oh, yeah. Right. Listen. I'm terribly sorry about that," Renshaw said. He seemed nervous now. "At first I just had to keep your head still while I extracted the bullet fragments from your neck. Did you know that you move around a lot in your sleep? Probably not. Well, you do. But anyway, to cut to the chase, I figured what with all I have to tell you and all, it would be better if you were, well, a captive audience. So to speak." Renshaw smiled weakly at the pun he'd just made.

Schofield stared at him, unsure of what to make of this man named James Renshaw. After all, this was the man who only a week before had killed one of his fellow scientists. If nothing else, Schofield was certain of one thing. He did not want to remain tied up at this man's mercy.

"What do you have to tell me?" he said. His eyes swept the room as he spoke. The door on the far side of the room was firmly shut. All of the other walls in the room were ice.

"Lieutenant, what I have to tell you is this: I am not a murderer. I did not kill Bernie Olson."

Schofield didn't say anything.

He tried to remember what Sarah Hensleigh had told him earlier?way back when he had arrived at Wilkes?about the death of the scientist Bernard Olson.

Sarah had said that on the night Olson was killed, Renshaw had been heard arguing loudly with him. It was after that argument that Renshaw had stabbed Olson in the throat with a hypodermic syringe filled with liquid drain cleaner. Then he had injected the contents of the syringe into Olson's bloodstream. The other residents of Wilkes had found Olson dead soon after, with the syringe hanging loosely from his neck.

"Do you believe me?" Renshaw said in a low voice, eyeing Schofield suspiciously.

Schofield still said nothing.

"Lieutenant, you have to believe me . I can only imagine what you've been told, and I know it must look bad, but you have to listen to me. I didn't do it . I swear, I didn't do it. I could never do something like that."

Renshaw took a deep breath, spoke slowly.

"Lieutenant, this station is not what it appears to be. Things have been happening here? strange things?long before you and your men got here. You can't trust anyone at this station, Lieutenant."

"But you expect me to trust you?" Schofield said.

"Yes. Yes, I do," Renshaw said pensively. "And that obviously creates a problem, doesn't it? After all, as far as you're concerned, four days ago I killed a man with a hypodermic needle filled with industrial-strength Drano. Right? Hmmm." Renshaw took a step forward, toward Schofield. "But I intend to rectify this situation, Lieutenant Schofield. Conclusively. Which is why ... I'm going to do this."

Renshaw stood right next to the bed, towering over Schofield, his eyes hard.

Schofield tensed. He was totally defenseless. He had no idea what Renshaw was about to?

Snap ! The leather strap around Schofield's left arm suddenly went limp and fell to the floor. A second later, the strap around his right arm did the same.

His arms were free again. Renshaw had released the leather straps that had bound them to the bed.

Schofield sat up as Renshaw moved farther down the bed and undipped the clasps that fastened the straps around his legs.

For a long moment, Schofield just stared at him. Finally, he said, "Thank you."

"Don't thank me, Lieutenant," Renshaw said. "Believe me. And promise me this: promise me that when this is all over, you'll check out Bernie Olson's body. Look at his tongue and his eyes. They will explain everything. You're my only hope, Lieutenant. You're the only person who can prove my innocence."

Now that he was free to move again, Schofield sat up on the bed. He touched his neck. It throbbed with pain. He looked at his throat in a nearby mirror. Renshaw had sutured the wound well. Nice, close stitches.

Renshaw offered him a rectangular length of adhesive gauze. "Here. Put this on over the stitches. It'll act like a Band-Aid, keep the wound tightly closed."

Schofield took the adhesive gauze and fastened it firmly over the wound on his neck. He looked down at the rest of his body. Renshaw had removed most of his body armor? he was dressed only in his full-body camouflage fatigues, with his gray turtleneck shirt underneath. He was still wearing his boots and his battered ankle/knee guards. His weapons? his pistol, his knife, his MP-5 and his Maghook?and his silver antiflash glasses all sat on a table on the far side of the room.

Schofield saw the room's closed door again, and something twigged in his memory. He remembered being told that the door to Renshaw's room had been sealed shut, riveted to its frame by Renshaw's fellow scientists. But he also remembered something else, something that someone had said only moments before he had been shot Something about Renshaw's door being broken down ....

Suddenly Schofield asked, "How did I get here?"

"Oh, easy. I just stuffed your body inside the dumbwaiter and sent it up to this level," Renshaw said.

"No, I mean, I thought you were locked in this room? How did you get out?"

Renshaw offered him a sly smile. "Just call me Harry Houdini."

Renshaw crossed to the other side of the room and stood in front of the two television monitors. "Don't worry, Lieutenant. I'll show you how I got out of here in a minute. But first, I've got something here that I think you'll want to see."

"What?"

Renshaw smiled again. The same sly smile as before.

"How would you like to see the man who shot you?" he said.

Schofield stared at Renshaw for a long moment.

Then, slowly, he swung his legs off the bed. His neck stung, and he had a monster of a headache from the concussion. He walked gingerly across the room and stood next to Renshaw in front of the two television monitors.

"Aren't you cold?" he asked, looking at Renshaw's rather casual attire.

Renshaw pulled open his shirt, Superman-style, revealing a blue wet suit-like undergarment. "Neoprene bodysuit," he said proudly. "They use 'em on the shuttle, for space walks and the like. It could be a hundred below in here and I wouldn't notice it."

Renshaw flicked on one of the monitors, and a black-and-white image appeared on the screen.

The image was grainy, but after a few seconds Schofield realized what he was looking at.

It was a view of the pool at the base of the ice station.

It was a strange view, however?taken from an overhead camera somewhere?one that looked directly down on a section of the pool and its surrounding deck.