Below Zero (The STEMinist Novellas #3) by Ali Hazelwood

            “We still can,” I say, maybe a bit too fast. “I’m not leaving till Thursday. Want to go out and—”

            “Not get dinner, surely?” His smile is teasing. “I remember you don’t . . . eat with other people.”

            “Right.” The truth is that things have changed. Not that now I go out for dates—I very much still don’t. And not that I’ve magically become an emotionally available person—I’m still very much not. But somewhere in the last couple of years, the whole Tinder game got . . . first a bit old; then a bit tiresome; then, eventually, a bit lonely. These days, I either focus on work or on Mara and Sadie. “I do drink coffee, though,” I say on impulse. Even though I find coffee disgusting.

            “Iced tea,” Ian says, somehow remembering my four-year-old order. “I can’t, though.”

            My heart sinks. “You can’t?” Is he seeing someone? Not interested? “It doesn’t have to—” be a date, I hasten to say, but we’re interrupted.

            “Ian, you’re here.” The HR rep who’s been showing the new hires around appears at his side. “Thank you for making time— I know you need to be at JPL by tonight. Everyone.” She claps her hands. “Please, take a seat. Ian Floyd, the current chief of engineering on the Mars Exploration Program, is going to tell you about some of NASA’s ongoing projects.”

            Oh. Oh.

            Ian and I exchange one long glance. For just a moment, he looks like he wants to tell me one last thing. But the HR rep leads him to the head of the conference table, and there’s either not enough time or it’s not something that’s important enough to be said.

            Half a minute later, I sit and listen to his clear, calm voice as he talks about the many projects he’s overseeing, heart tight and heavy in my chest for reasons I cannot figure out.

            Twenty minutes later, I lock eyes with him for the last time just as someone knocks to remind him that his plane will board in less than two hours.

            And a little over six months later, when I finally meet him again, I hate him.

            I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, and I don’t hesitate to let him know.





Chapter 5


            Svalbard Islands, Norway

            Present

            The next time my satphone vibrates, the winds have picked up even more. It’s snowing, too. I’ve somehow managed to nestle myself in a small nook in the wall of my crevasse, but large flurries are starting to happily stick to the mini-rover I brought with me.

            Which is, I must admit, ironic in a cosmic kind of way. The very reason I ventured out here was to test how the mini-rover I designed would work in highly stressful, low-sunlight, low-command-input situations. Of course, it was not supposed to storm. I was going to drop off the gear and then immediately return to the headquarters, which . . . well. It didn’t quite work out like that, obviously.

            But the gear is being covered by a layer of snow. And the sun is going to set soon. The mini-rover is in a highly stressful, low-sunlight, low-command-input situation, and from a scientific standpoint, this mission wasn’t a total clusterfuck. At some point in the next few days, someone at AMASE (likely Dr. Merel, that asshole) will try to activate it, and then we’ll know whether my work was actually solid. Well, they will know. By then, I’ll probably just be a Popsicle with a very pissed-off expression, like Jack Torrance at the end of The Shining.

            “Are you still doing okay?”

            Ian’s voice jostles me from my preapocalyptic whining. My heart flutters like a hummingbird—a sickly, freezing one who forgot to migrate south with her buddies. I don’t bother answering, instead instantly ask: “Why are you here?” I know I sound like an ungrateful bitch, and while I’ve never concerned myself with coming across as the latter, I do not mean to be the former. The problem is his presence makes no damn sense. I’ve had twenty minutes to think about it, and it just doesn’t. And if this is the place and time where I finally croak . . . well, I don’t want to die confused.

            “Just out on a promenade.” He sounds a little out of breath, which means that the climb must have been a tough one. Ian is lots of things, but out of shape is not one of them. “Taking in the scenery. What about you? What brings you here?”

            “I’m serious. Why are you in Norway?”