My hands are still shaking as I cut off the tiny plane’s engine. My shirt’s soaked through with sweat, and I feel like I just got run over by a bulldozer after running two back-to-back marathons.

A small knot of people, all wearing hiking pants, sweaters, fleeces, and hats are collecting at the edge of the airstrip. They look somewhere between upset and confused, but I don’t even care right now. I don’t care about anything.

My nerves are fucking shot. I’m pretty sure that an enemy squadron could come screaming down out of the sky at me right now and I wouldn’t budge, because there’s nothing left in my mental reserve.

Getting on the plane to Edmonton was hell. Getting on the smaller plane to Yellowknife was a worse hell, and even though both times I was tempted to drink myself into oblivion before the flight, I knew I couldn’t.

Because come hell or high water, I was getting to Tekkeit Research Station. Even if I threw up twice before I got on this plane. Even if I couldn’t stop the camera in my brain from replaying the crash, over and over and over, even if every tiny bit of turbulence made me obsessively check my instruments again and again, certain that they were failing.

On the runway in Yellowknife, I almost bailed. There was a moment where I didn’t think I could take off and decided to just taxi around, figure out some other way to get here. A boat, on horseback, by Jeep, I didn’t care.

But then I thought of Imogen asleep next to me in that tiny bed in that ugly cabin, the wood stove fire nearly dead. I thought of the way she looked at me when I woke up after nearly freezing to death.

And I got that plane in the air. I nearly had a panic attack, but I did it, and now I’m here on the ground again, sweaty and shaking and in desperate need of collecting myself, but I’m here.

I just hope this is the right one, because Imogen’s not there. She’s not one of the people standing next to the air strip, looking faintly puzzled and faintly like they might start observing me through a microscope.

I take a deep breath. I open the door, I wipe my sweaty palms on my pants, I jump down and swing the door shut.

The gathered people just keep looking, obviously confused. That’s okay. I can only imagine that I’m confusing.

Finally, a woman steps forward. She’s slightly round, slightly short, and has gray hair and a gaze I’d describe as piercing.

“It’s not Friday and you’re not the usual delivery pilot,” she says.

“I’m not a delivery pilot at all,” I say. “I’m here for Imogen Gustavo.”

The others — two men, two women, all between twenty and sixty — move in. They remind me of a flock of birds, moving as one curious-but-shy knot.

“Here for?” she says, blinking.

I didn’t think this part through. In my imagination, as soon as I landed the plane she’d be there, standing at the end of the air strip, and she’d run — well, hobble — into my arms and I’d twirl her around and birds would sing and the sun would shine and all that shit.

“I need to talk to her,” I say, the only explanation I can really come up with.

“Imogen?”

“Yes,” I confirm.

The woman looks to her left and to her right, into the eyes of two other equally puzzled scientists. At least I assume they’re scientists. They’re sure not welcome ambassadors.

“Is that the girl who was in plane crash?” one of them asks.

“Yeah, musk oxen and busted ankle,” the other says.

“So I’m in the right place.”

The woman just snorts.

“No, you are not in the right place,” she says, adjusting her round glasses by the frames. “She’s in the right place. You are most certainly not supposed to be here. How did you even get here?”

I swallow, shove my hands into the pockets of my jeans, and even though I’m still coming down from the most nerve-wracking hours of my life, I manage to smile at her.

After all, why be charming if you never use it?

“I flew,” I say.

One side of her mouth twitches, and one of the other scientists snort-laughs.

The short, round, gray-haired woman is Wanda, and she lectures me even as she leads me into the big, ugly, squat, semi-industrial building that houses Tekkeit Arctic Research Center.

“Should make you just leave back the way you came,” she says, turning her head so her voice drifts over her shoulder and to me. “Unauthorized visitors are completely unheard of, I don’t even know how you got through border security and all that, I hope you’ve got enough fuel to get you back somewhere because there’s none here, you know…”

I’m barely listening to her. She let me in and didn’t shoot me with a giant grizzly bear gun or something, and that’s all I really care about. The woman goes on and on about how I’m lucky they’ve got a bunk free, but food is rationed, so unless I’m going to be catching some fish and sharing it with the group, they haven’t got too much for me to eat.

My sweat-soaked shirt is cooled against my body, and I start to shiver a little. It’s cold up here, but given how close we are to the Arctic Circle, that’s not a huge surprise.

Wanda leads me into a room that’s got tables and chairs, a projector up front, and a couple of couches in the back. The entire research station is much nicer and less clinical than I thought it would be — from how Imogen described it, I thought it would be nothing but sterile white, microscopes everywhere, with cold concrete-and-metal hallways.

But it’s kind of nice, though it has a very space-efficient, semi-Ikea vibe to it.

“Sit,” she says. “I guess I’ll go see if I can find Gustavo? It’s not like there’s a protocol for unannounced visitors, you know.”

I sit down, trying to behave myself. My shirt sticks to me. This seat has a lime green cushion with light wood all around it, and I lean back, stare at the empty projector.

I’ve changed, I think, still searching for what to tell her.

There has to be something, right?

There’s gotta be something I can do, something I can say, someone I can be that will make all the hurts and the scars and the betrayals fade.

I’d take it back, I think, desperation crawling its way into my heart. I’d take it all back if I could.

There are no windows in this room, no natural light, so I lean my head back against the back of the chair and close my eyes, miserably trying to figure out what to do.