Ivy Murrow watched the world through her iPhone lens, the same way she’d learned to watch everything over the past few years—arm’s length, slightly filtered, always recording. The Solstice VI dipped lazily in the ocean slush while the crew moved with a speed that didn’t match the water or the mood. She stood apart, boots planted awkwardly on the wet deck, one hand steadying herself, the other raised like a confession.
“So,” she said, flipping the camera to her face, “ends the civil world and my signal to it. In ice, rain, and a cold too intense to describe.”
She blew a kiss toward the screen, her fingers stiff from the wind, and promised the fifty thousand or so followers she had that she’d record every minute of the coming weeks of boredom. She said it like a joke, but meant it like a threat.
They were dedicated, her followers—strangers mostly, but faithful in that unnerving, username kind of way. Enough to give her the silent chill of acknowledgment she craved. Not nearly the numbers she’d once imagined, back when she’d declared her future wouldn’t involve college or a resume, but YouTube instead—unfiltered, sarcastic, brilliant to a flaw. Just her, the world, and a camera she could turn on whenever she wanted, which, for now, was always.
Helen watched her daughter from the dock—still with that damned phone glued to her face. Even here, even now, with the wind cutting sideways and the research station of Macquarie Island no more than a gray smudge in the distance, Ivy stayed locked into that little screen. The satellite Wi-Fi was weak, but strong enough to keep her obsession alive.
She still felt that ache of motherly pride—complicated now, but real. Helen didn’t understand Ivy’s public declarations or her constant filming, but other people did. Her videos had view counts not far off from the enrollment numbers at Helen’s own college. That stung more than she cared to admit.
She’d hoped this trip would isolate the bridge that had grown between them, strand them long enough to rebuild it, maybe meet halfway. Ivy didn’t want college. She said it flat out, said it with conviction. And yet her GPA—God, her GPA—could have taken her anywhere. Anywhere but here.
Helen wished for a lot of things. She wished the hours at the university didn’t stretch so long into the night. She wished her weekends weren’t spent buried beneath papers, essays, and the steady, slow suffocation of the planet. She wished her ex-husband—divorced, then dead—had stayed in Ivy’s life long enough to anchor her.
This trip was as much about Helen’s motherly conscience as it was about documenting the collapse of one of the world’s most delicate ecosystems. Maybe more. Maybe the data was just the part she knew how to name.
She put the crate down, but her eyes didn’t leave Ivy—still standing on the dock with that damned phone, her hair blowing sideways like she was posing for it.
“We’d better hurry,” came the low growl beside her. “The sea’s changing, and not for the better.”
Elias Ward. Early fifties. Ex-Marine. The kind of man who looked like he’d been carved from old habits and colder mornings. His beard was more salt than pepper, trimmed with a knife or not at all. Sun-worn skin, hands that moved like they’d rather be holding a weapon than a rope. He didn’t waste words, and when he did speak, it felt like the earth responding.
Helen had protested when logistics had assigned him. Said she needed a medic or a technician—not a soldier with a haunted look. But after last year’s windstorm took out two researchers and left their comms frozen for a week, she hadn’t pressed the issue again.
He adjusted the strap of the rifle slung over his shoulder and squinted toward the horizon like the weather had just insulted him.
“Can you talk to her?” Helen asked. “She’s… reluctant.”
Elias looked at her the way a soldier might look at a superior who’d just asked him to pass notes during combat—tight-jawed, unimpressed.
“I don’t babysit,” he said, voice rough as sandpaper. Then he turned toward the dock, boots thudding against the boards. “But I can get her ass on this boat quicker than the sea would drown you.”
Helen smirked. Just on the inside.
These waters wouldn’t drown you, she thought. They’d freeze you solid before you even had time to panic.
Ivy panned the docks and the boat again, framing the shot just right, before noticing Elias—and the way he was walking straight toward her. That alone wouldn’t have meant much, but his eyes were fixed on her like she’d already done something wrong.
Great. Another yelling.
She braced for it. Being eighteen and stranded in the cold because her mother was on some moral crusade to save the world—that part played well online. Getting yelled at? That was trickier. Sure, it spiked engagement. Comments exploded every time an older man raised his voice.
F*** him, her followers would say, almost in unison. Her demographic was mostly girls like her—eighteen to twenty-two, sarcastic, pissed off, always watching.
But there were always the weird ones.
F*** him? I’d think of a few different ways…
Alice628. She always had an angle.
Ivy hesitated. She didn’t mind posting arguments, but she hated sounding stupid. This didn’t feel like content. Not the kind she could spin.
So, she stopped recording.
Elias started yelling even before she could hear him through the wind.
His voice cut across the dock like a whip—raw, unfiltered, and meant to carry. He didn’t care if the gale scattered his words or not. He wanted them airborne, abrasive, soaked into the cold.
Elias knew this, and reserved the words cunt, stupid teenager, and how he’d fuck her sideways for the wind.
He didn’t slow down. Didn’t care who heard what. Maybe that was the point. Maybe the threat wasn’t in what reached her ears, but in what she almost caught.
By the time Ivy could hear him, it was all about her ass not being on the boat. How they’d leave with or without her. How the base itself was shut down—closed for the winter—until the expedition returned in three weeks, or the next ship came through. In September.
So Ivy offered her apologies, soft and practiced. She picked up her bag without another word and followed the man she’d silently started hating like an absent and dead father.
Helen watched her daughter approach, head down, wrapped in balaclava and seal skin now—unrecognizable in layers, her figure narrowed by the cold. She marched behind Elias like it was duty.
Elias was rugged. Sharp around the edges. Needed.
Helen wanted a hug. Wanted her daughter to meet her eyes, to say something—anything—that sounded like it’s going to be okay. But as Ivy passed, all she gave her was cold eyes. And contempt.
Ivy didn’t even recognize her mother at first. Wrapped in all that gear, they all looked the same. Man, woman, yeti?
She could’ve been spending her summer at the beach. Maybe finding a new boyfriend. Maybe even giving up her virginity for the kind of fleeting memory that passes for womanhood when you’re eighteen and angry. The plan had been to climb into Alexander’s van, film their way through all fifty states, and laugh at every stereotype like it owed her something.
That was before Alexander got tired of waiting, started fucking Tamara—her best friend since seventh grade—and took her on the van instead.
It brought a small bump in viewership. Pity likes. Sympathy subs. But teenage girls crying about lost love? God, it felt so stupid in hindsight.
The comments were the same, though.
F* him.
And Alice628?
F* him? He’s hot. I’d think of a few different ways…
The worst thing ever, for Ivy, was that the boat didn’t offer a shred of privacy. She was crammed into a space too small for thought, let alone distance—sharing a metal-walled cabin with her mother. Separate bunks, sure, but that was it. No curtain. No corner. No escape. Just Helen’s underwear hanging from a makeshift clothesline, the sharp smell of sweat steeped into every fabric, and nothing Ivy could do but breathe it in.
And once the boat hit the sea?
Goodbye world. Goodbye comments. Goodbye even the hope of bumping viewership. She’d still record everything, of course. It was the only control she had left.
She started with the ceiling of her bottom bunk.
“Three weeks,” she narrated into the phone, voice flat, “of this view.”
Helen decided to leave her daughter alone.
She stepped through the door and let it close behind her, the cold traded for a tighter discomfort. Just inside, the stairwell split—up to the bridge, where the captain and navigation officers ruled in silence, or down into the gut of the vessel: the science quarters, the cramped lab space, the stored gear, the flickering hum of generators and motion sensors. The heartbeat of the Solstice VI.
She went down.
It was warmer below, but not by much. Smelled like salt, rust, wet wool, and old coffee. Someone had hung a wool cap on the emergency extinguisher, and someone else had scribbled profanity into the paint by the crew lockers. All of it felt human, messy, real.
The crew was intact.
Dr. Keating, the glaciologist, hunched over a laptop with three drives plugged in. She was brilliant—sharp as ever despite her age—and had been Helen’s mentor since she was eighteen. Old enough now to be Ivy’s grandmother, though she rarely played the role.
Yusuf, Helen’s field tech, moved through the gear locker swearing in Arabic under his breath. He handled equipment like it was always about to fail, and Elias, framed by some mission memory only he could see, flinched every time Yusuf spoke.
Lin, the young geologist, was pale and already seasick. It was her first oceanic expedition. Twenty-three, nervous, impossibly bright—Helen’s own protégé, and in Helen’s secret heart, the one who might someday find what she hadn’t.
And Emilie, the French oceanographer, crouched by the coffee machine, whispering soft threats and stroking its side like a lover. Mid-thirties, unapologetic, fluid in every sense of the word. She insisted that lace was still acceptable expedition wear, and her presence blurred the line between charm and provocation in every room she entered.
She caught Elias watching her once and winked—like she knew something about him he’d spent years forgetting.
It wasn’t much of a crew—just five scientists this time, plus the captain, a cook, Elias, and two engineers—but it would do. Three weeks of cataloging erosion patterns, seabird migrations, and temperature data from the cliffs. Helen was here for the data. The rest—Emilie’s smirks, Elias’s silences, her daughter’s slow-burning contempt—would have to wait.
Helen checked on Lin first—always Lin first, like the daughter she’d once imagined she might deserve.
“All settled in?” she asked, voice gentler than it had any right to be.
Lin startled at the soft touch on her shoulder, a flicker of nerves betraying her effort to seem composed. She swallowed hard—something sharp rising at the back of her throat, something she didn’t want Helen to see.
“I’m good, Professor Murrow,” she said. Lied. “Just… far from home, you know?”
Helen knew. And comforted her the only way she still knew how.
“Helen,” she said. “For the next three weeks, it’s just Helen, okay?”
Dr. Keating smiled from her perch, eyes catching on the moment like a thread being pulled. She remembered her first expedition with Helen. Her exact words—just Anne instead of Helen.
Beneath them, the Solstice VI stopped pretending to be gentle. The thuds of the engine grew into something louder, throatier. Not quite a growl. More like a roar. Almost angry. Almost aggressive.
Elias was still the only man on deck. He spat into the wind as the ship reversed hard into the bay, then shifted, swerved, and threw itself forward—cutting into the headwind like it was punishment.
Snowdrifts whipped his face with stinging force, sharp enough to remind him of what he sometimes missed: the heat. Not comfort. Not warmth. The desert sun. The sandstorms. Iraq. Afghanistan. The kind of wind that stripped you down to the skull, not the bone. It didn’t freeze you—it flayed you.
The violence of Iraq. The barbaric air of Afghanistan. On both sides. Everywhere.
It had almost broken him. Maybe it had.
So he’d fled north, into the white. Into secret missions no one logged, victories no one acknowledged, defeats no one buried.
And now?
Babysitting scientists. Because the pay was good. Because he no longer had a home. Because exile in motion felt quieter than standing still. The cold didn’t bother him anymore.
It just felt like a silent sigh inside his bones.
He stayed just long enough to feel numb, then retreated inside. Took the stairs up—not down to the scientists. He didn’t understand them, didn’t care to. The French woman was his mission’s bonus. Emilie. She grounded him just enough to make it feel real. What mattered was the count: how many there were, how many he’d tally at the end of a day, and what fresh misery the captain was steering them toward.
“Forecast?” he asked, almost before stepping into the bridge.
“No more wind than she can carry,” the captain replied, eyes still on the sea.
“Delays?”
The captain shrugged, studied the charts again, then shrugged a second time.
“Hard to say in these waters. If the weather catches up, probably a day more.”
The destination was a small islet, one most maps ignored. According to Professor—Doctor?—Murrow, it was ideal. Perfect site, perfect subject, something about erosion curves and ecological urgency.
Elias didn’t care much for titles. If it wasn’t military, it wasn’t worth his breath. What mattered was simple: that all souls returned with a pulse.
He sat down and poured himself a cup of the captain’s sour coffee. It steamed in the air between them like breath from a dying animal.
This was no place for people. Not real people. Not ones who hadn’t been trained to endure it.
Sure, the science team had seen winter. Some had lived past the Antarctic Circle for more months than memory ought to hold. But the two young girls?
They were a liability.
He laughed—silently, somewhere deep inside where it stayed.
The one with the attitude reminded him of the cadets who came into the desert with bright eyes and loud beliefs, full of doctrine, devotion, whatever cause they’d been taught to carry like a rifle.
Some forgot the cause. Forgot the mission. And ended up serving other needs—fucked under the desert sun, not from want, but from the simple collapse of being human too long under pressure.
The ones who didn’t crumble?
They were the dangerous ones. Fierce. Quiet. Untouchable. But the army rarely let them lead.
The world, Elias thought, was as bitter as the captain’s coffee.
But Emilie—she bent somewhere between those girls. Not dangerous. Not submitting. Just… gravitating. And she’d never pretend it meant anything.
Helen silently blessed having Emilie on board. Who else could make the coffee taste like Paris—the city where the world once agreed to act, then drowned the promise in wine, smoke, and enough sin to forget what they’d signed? So what if she looked at the soldier with those wet eyes? As long as they both did their jobs.
Ivy, meanwhile, had wrung herself out of her clothes, tucked herself into bed, and was dreaming only of coffee.
She should’ve been drinking roadside sludge with Alexander somewhere in Arizona, not lying here wondering if she had time to masturbate before her mother barged in and filled the entire space of her life.
Maybe OnlyFans offered more. She doubted anyone else was selling Antarctic orgasms—there had to be a niche for that. Maybe the money was better.
She didn’t film, though. Just lay there, cold and alone beneath too many layers, and surrendered to sleep.
Helen slipped into their cabin—she’d asked for the bigger one, but here they were—and stood for a moment, watching her daughter.
Asleep, Ivy didn’t snarl or roll her eyes. She just looked gorgeous. Caught somewhere between her father’s jawline and her mother’s mouth.
Helen stripped down to her underwear, hung her clothes over the back of the chair, and braced herself as the next wave slammed into the Solstice. The ship groaned around her. She glanced at Ivy’s clothes, scattered on the floor.
She’d once been tidy to a fault, her daughter. But ever since that slip between middle school and high school, she’d unraveled—fallen out of perfection and become…
Whatever this was.
That lost connection. That loss of insight. No paternal guide, no—
Helen sighed. That kind of lonely, failed sigh that didn’t ask to be heard.
No maternal shoulder to cry on, either. No one to weep into over failed tests, or broken hearts, or doubts about the future. About sex.
In Helen’s mind, Ivy was still a virgin. Untouched. But only because she was her mother. Because no mother wants to know.
And now, she was too cold to ask.
She climbed into the top bunk and buried herself beneath layers of blankets, none of them warm.
“I haven’t had sex in six years,” she sighed. Maybe internally. Maybe just loud enough to betray herself.
But Ivy wasn’t sleeping.
She only pretended to—like she had for the last four years—so she wouldn’t have to whisper good night or love you when neither felt earned.
She kept her eyes just open enough to watch her mother undress. Watched her fold each item carefully over the chair, one by one, until she sensed the glance and closed them just in time.
If I’ve inherited anything from her, Ivy thought, let it be her curves.
She listened as her mother climbed into the bunk above. The shift of weight. The rustle of fabric. Then stillness.
Then the whisper—soft, hesitant, like it had slipped out without permission.
Ivy didn’t want to know what it said. She pressed her face into the pillow and held her breath until the ship rocked her numb.
The galley—slash mess, depending on who you asked—was where everyone gathered. Before the day began, and again when it ended. It wasn’t just where meals happened. It was the real command center. The place where tone was set, where decisions actually got made—over burnt toast, bitter coffee, and rationed butter.
And breakfast was the only time anything could really be decided.
Ivy, late as always, hated how she looked under too many layers—like a padded version of someone else’s kid. Everyone here was older, smarter, and somehow so much more boring than anyone she’d ever met. Boring in a way that scared her—like they’d chosen it.
For once, sitting beside her mother would’ve felt right. Not in a loving way. Just… safer. Grounded. Less exposed.
But Lin sat there. And so did Dr. Keating. So she slumped into the chair beside Elias.
“Sit straight,” he snarled, without looking at her.
She didn’t flinch. Just breathed in.
She wondered if all men smelled like him.
Helen watched her daughter. Her disdain, protest, and discomfort, and smiled into her coffee from Elias’ correction.
She needed to learn. She needed a man to correct her. A father figure.
She almost choked on the next thought.
A father that could fuck her mother right.
Six years. And still counting. She turned her head toward the weather broadcast—flat, metallic.
Still wind. Still ice.
Exactly what they’d expected.
And Emilie sat too close to Elias to be accidental.
Elias, on the other hand, let his gaze drift to the trembling hands of the teenager next to him. He’d seen recruits like her when he was still an instructor, full of anger, rage, and misbehavior. He didn’t blame them. He blamed the parents; he blamed the system for letting them in.
The girls?
Yes, he had—he had sex with them when they’ve proven themselves of no other use or value. Not even predatory—mutual, they didn’t want the world he tried to train them for, and they didn’t want to return to the life they had before. So, they found a middle way. You see them around every army base.
He didn’t blame anyone for that.
Ivy struck him as a girl who’d fail training but looked good for other use, just not on a mission like this. This was different.
Besides, he still felt warm from Emilie.
Emilie didn’t smell like an Antarctic expedition; she didn’t dress like one, either. And the heat? It didn’t feel like frozen air, either.
But now, a storm brewed—brutal, unexpected, and barely an hour off.
Only two men on this ship had any idea what to do: himself and the captain.
“Can we go around?” Yusuf asked.
“Can we turn back?” Lin wondered, half prayer.
Elias watched the captain. Knew his answer before it came.
“Storm like that,” the captain said, not even glancing up from his coffee, “too wide to go around, too fast to outrun.”
Elias sipped his coffee. Still warm.
“Head on.”
Ivy didn’t know what to do. It sounded like a crisis—something she should film, post, go viral over. Queen of the internet, if only for the fifteen minutes she’d been promised.
But instead, she grabbed Elias’ hand. She looked frightened.
Emilie buttoned her shirt, slow and deliberate. She glanced at Elias like she was waiting for orders, then saw Ivy’s hand on his. French jealousy just looks different.
Anne—Dr. Keating—sighed. She’d lived through storms before. Yusuf whispered a prayer under his breath, something that made Elias’s jaw twitch.
Lin got sick on her plate.
“I suggest the captain return to the bridge,” Elias said, letting go of Ivy’s hand. “The rest of you—tie down whatever can be tied down. When the moment comes, I want you all under your bunks.”
“What about life vests?” Lin asked, staring into her own sickness.
Helen took her arm and shook her head.
“It won’t come to that,” she said, knowing full well they’d freeze long before they drowned.
She felt guilty for reaching toward Lin and not the girl who shared her blood, the one now staring back at her across the table with salt in her eyes and windburn on her cheeks.
“Come, Ivy,” she said gently. “Let’s get ready.”
Ivy didn’t move right away. She still felt the heat of Elias’s hand in hers, coarse and calloused, like it had imprinted itself into her bones. She rubbed her palms together, trying to shake the sensation, and stared at her mother.
Her mother didn’t treat Lin like some magical protégé or a secret lover—somehow that would’ve felt better. No, she treated her like a daughter. Like the version of Ivy who did go to college, asked better questions, made life easier to manage.
Somewhere along the way, Helen had filled her loneliness with work and built a family out of it: Anne Keating, the ever-watching matriarch; Lin, the bright, anxious child; and herself, slotted in between them like some cold-climate housewife, smoothing over the edges, tying the pieces together.
And Ivy? Ivy was just baggage. From a different life. From a dead husband and an even deader marriage.
The constant reminder? Ivy, with his cheekbones. That—and his goddamned stubbornness.
You remind me of your father was never endearment. Never a compliment. It was failure, rephrased. A kind of cold sigh that said, I knew better than to expect more from you.
Like the time they blew a tire on the highway, and Ivy refused to call roadside assistance. She got out, jacked the car, and put on the spare herself.
She’d been stubborn. Just like her father.
That word stuck to her ribs every time it was used. Not brave. Not resourceful. Not independent. Stubborn—the family code for ungrateful, inconvenient, too much.
And still, Ivy had never called for help. Not then, not now.
“Go ahead, Mom,” she said. “Go tie your underwear down and lie under the bed. I’m going to go see if I can make myself useful.”
Helen felt like she deserved it. So, while Ivy left the table, hurried upstairs, and pretended to have agency, she made sure Lin found her cabin safe, before—
Ivy was right. What was there to tie down in the cabin? The gear was already packed or worn. Tie down your underwear—why so precise? Why in front of everyone?
Ivy always knew how to sting the right places.
Up on the bridge, Elias stared into the horizon.
“Anything needs securing on deck?” he asked the captain.
“Nothing out there that isn’t frozen solid already,” he answered. “Nothing but ice to crush your skull or send you overboard.”
“And down below?” Elias wondered.
“The boys have it covered, but I doubt they’d say no to a hand.”
“How much further?”
The captain shook his head.
“No real way of telling out here,” he said. “Thirty minutes? An hour. I doubt we’ll see it before it hits.”
Elias turned around to step below and collided with Ivy on her way up.
She wore a long-sleeved merino wool top and matching leggings, boots a size too big, the kind handed out in bulk and rarely fitting right. She looked prepared for worse weather, her balaclava slouched around her neck like an afterthought.
But that wasn’t what caught him. It was how she smelled—sharp with cold, youth, and whatever soap she still used. She brushed against him too close, and for a second he was aware of the warmth in her skin, the lightness of her frame, the lazy shape of a sports bra that did little for support or insulation. Too civilian, too soft.
And that scent—
Ivy crashed into too much man, too sudden and too unprepared. She grabbed the railing with one hand, Elias with the other. It seemed improper, not right—but it was either that or fall down the stairs and crack her skull on something metal.
Everything about this ship was metal. Even the man before her. And improper has a way of feeling—
“Why aren’t you down below?” Elias growled.
“I—I want to make sure… is there anything I can do?” she stammered.
“Yes,” he growled. “You can go down below and do as you’re told!”
He slurred something more, inside his mouth.
No one had ever yelled at Ivy the way Elias always did. Her mother would sigh, plead, and beg, but she’d never yelled.
She hardly remembered her father, just from pictures, just from night time stories. She had no memory of being yelled at.
“Sorry,” she said, “Sorry, sir. I just feel—”
“I’ll tell you when to feel,” he said, then softened just slightly. “Go make sure your mother is okay.”
Then turned metal again.
“Now, get out of my way before I push you down.”
Ivy did as she was told. She suspected she’d always do what Elias told her. There was something steady about people who knew what they wanted from her. Something almost respectful.
He brushed past her at the bottom of the stairwell and disappeared into the ship’s gut. Ivy found her way back to the cabin.
Helen was sitting on the bunk.
“I’m sorry,” she began.
Ivy had lost count of how many conversations had started like that. Same words. Same weight. They always ended the same way.
“Sorry for what, Mom?” she asked, sharper than she meant. “Sorry for dragging me out of the California sun? For cutting me off from my friends? For ruining my career?”
“Career?” Helen blinked. “You make YouTube videos.”
She gestured vaguely, like that explained everything. “This is about understanding the world.”
“Wow, Mom,” she said, all teenage venom. “You’ve spent half your life at a university and still don’t get anything.”
“Ivy,” Helen whispered, eyes filling up. “I don’t want another fight. I’m scared.”
Ivy froze.
Scared? Should she be scared?
They’d traded every emotion over the years. Laughter, sure. Anger, more often—though only one of them ever yelled. And lately? Mostly resentment.
But fear? That wasn’t part of their script.
“Scared?” Ivy echoed. “Should I be scared?”
Her mother didn’t reply; she just broke down and cried like a ruined faucet.
“Hey, Mom,” Ivy whispered, “let’s just get under the bunk like he told us. Until it passes.”
Helen took her daughter’s outstretched hand and squeezed it tight.
“You’re brave,” she said, “just like your father.”
Ivy felt something swell inside her, not enough for tears, not in front of her mother. But it was the first time Ivy could remember her saying anything about her father that didn’t sound like a curse.
Underneath the bunk sounds only half as claustrophobic as it is, and the two women felt it worse than anyone else on the ship. But the rest of them were alone. They had each other, and right then, it seemed to matter.
The Solstice had rolled since they left the harbor at Macquarie. It crashed through waves, threw them sideways without care. But when that first wave hit? The first real wave? Ivy and Helen both blessed the company.
Ivy never knew steel would creak. Nor did she understand how water could sound like a wrecking-ball assaulting the ship. She’d never thought loss of gravity could be felt at sea.
But it was Helen who broke silence first.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. At first.
Then louder. More rapid.
“OhmyGod! OhmyGod!”
Ivy squeezed her mother’s hand. Tried to grasp something, anything, until she blurted: “Did you have sex before my Dad?”
“What?!” Helen gasped, disbelieving the words from her daughter’s mouth.
“Did you have sex? Before Dad? I’m eighteen. Eighteen, Mom! You were twenty-three when you had me.”
Helen understood the words but couldn’t grasp the question. But she had stopped screaming.
“I was sixteen,” she answered before her mind caught on. “And no, it wasn’t your Dad.”
She still couldn’t understand why it mattered, but Ivy wasn’t yelling at her or filming her with her phone.
It had snowed then, too, and she let Ivy know.
Also, about her college boyfriend before Ivy’s father.
The Solstice sounded like she’d break in half.
Then the lights went out.
Then the engine died.
“I’m still a virgin,” Ivy whispered.
Helen finally understood. It wasn’t about her promiscuity or how faithful she had been to Ivy’s father. It was about fear. And she could remember that dread.
Dying a virgin.
And it stung like a broken bone. Right where her ribs felt too tight to swell anymore.
“I’d hug you,” Helen whispered, “if there was room enough to get my hands free under here.”
Ivy twitched, stretched something—an arm that still held youthful flexibility—and fished out her phone from underneath her layers.
“Siri,” she said. “Flashlight.”
The light flared between them, white, cold, and blinding.
“Siri,” Ivy whispered, “softer light.”
Siri answered as if she couldn’t care less about the perils of sitting dead in the sea in the middle of the storm. She just faded the light and let the women get on with their dread.
“What about after Dad?” Ivy asked.
Helen didn’t want to answer. There had been men, fleeting moments, none steady. None Ivy needed to know about. But that wasn’t the heart of the sting.
At least she hadn’t asked what she’d done while still married to him.
“A few,” she finally admitted.
Ivy pressed against her mother. It was the closest thing to a hug they had shared in four years.
“Good,” she whispered.
They rocked against each other. Rocked.
Not thrown and battered, rocked.
“I think it’s stilled,” Helen whispered and rolled out from underneath the bunk.
Ivy followed.
They hugged.
“This doesn’t change a thing,” Ivy whispered. “I still hate you.”
Helen didn’t care.
“As long as we’re both alive, it’s something to work on, honey.”
Elias entered the bridge just as the first wave was about to hit.
“Will she hold?” he yelled.
“She’ll hold,” the captain answered. “But you’d better brace yourself.”
He nodded to the co-pilot’s seat. Elias barely had time to buckle up before the sea slammed into them, like it meant to drown them.
“Usually doesn’t rain this time of year,” he continued, still yelling, “but the temperature spiked out of nowhere.”
Elias hadn’t prepared for this. He’d braced for horny, territorial elephant seals, a broken leg, maybe a faulty antenna. He knew the sea could be dangerous, but not like this. Not angry. Not with a will.
And not with the scientist woman being right—her—the weather turning on them like a betrayed dog. It wasn’t supposed to rain. And still, it did.
Last night, Emilie had moaned hot and French against his neck, then offered a cigarette after.
Now, he braced against the next wave. Then the next. And all he could do was watch the sea gnaw at the ship that kept them afloat.
“She’ll hold?” he yelled again.
“She’ll hold,” the captain answered, more prayer this time.
They sat like that for what seemed like hours. The ship’s headlight casting beams into nothingness. The kind of nothingness only a dark sea offers. But it felt a little less violent. A little softer in how merciless it was.
“She’ll hold,” the captain said. More breath than prayer.
But the sea didn’t agree. Didn’t align.
A wave, taller than the ship’s antenna, crashed down with a vengeance—ripping the deck latch open and letting the ocean inside.
“You told me nothing needed securing!” Elias roared. “And now we’re fucking taking on water!”
All they could do was watch the sea rush in, flooding the engine bay, until the lights flickered.
Until the lights died—along with the ship’s engine.
But at last, the sea stilled around them.
“She held,” the captain sighed.
Elias nodded once, then pointed to the gaping dark where the deck had torn open.
“How many men down there?”
“Two.”
A pause.
Everything was silent now, though the echoes still flared in Elias’ head—helicopters, grenades, the constant bursts he’d learned to live with.
“My son’s one of them,” he said.
Helen fished a flashlight out of her bag, then another, which she handed to her daughter. When they opened the cabin door, it felt damp—like the sea had somehow seeped into the narrow hallway itself. They knocked on the next door over. Lin’s, if Helen remembered right.
She didn’t bother cursing Ivy for filming. Maybe, somehow, it mattered to document this.
No answer. But the door opened gently under Helen’s hand.
“Lin?” she called.
“Here,” came the reply. “I’m stuck.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m…something’s pressing against my ribs,” Lin said. “And—”
Resignment. Self-loathing? Despair?
“I threw up again.”
The bunk had collapsed on top of her. Either the duffel bag had come loose from its ties, or she’d never tied it down at all. Ivy watched as her mother struggled to lift the frame off her student.
“Here,” she said, grabbing the metal bar that had come loose. “Weight and counterweight. Wedge that chair underneath.”
And while Ivy pried, Helen pulled Lin out. They hugged. Ivy let the bed crash down and headed back into the hallway.
She was met by Emilie and Dr. Keating, both bruised, both breathing.
“The Arab?” Ivy asked.
“Yusuf,” Dr. Keating answered. “Two doors down, door jarred.”
Elias didn’t have time to ponder the who’s who of everything. He answered to Professor Murrow, and only because the university that had employed him was unreachable without a radio. For the radio, they needed power restored.
“No backup battery?” he asked the captain.
“In the hull,” he answered.
Elias sighed, then unbuckled.
“Idiots,” he hissed as he entered the stairs.
Clients first, he thought, crew later. He ducked a wood beam that had fallen loose, ignored the wires that had stopped going anywhere, and headed down to the cabins. The young girl stood knocking on a door. Behind her, Emilie with the soft bosom and the French words, and then the older woman. She was of importance.
“Your mother?” he asked Ivy.
“Back there,” she said, nodding beyond Dr. Keating. “This door’s stuck. Yusuf.”
It was hard for Elias to do the right thing. He was trained never to trust an Arab. Then, he’d been taught not to be a racist. Finally, he had chosen the isolation of ice and snow.
“Everyone else okay?” he asked.
Ivy just nodded.
Still, she was happy Elias was there. A grown man who didn’t smell of fear. Who didn’t throw up and didn’t forget the simplest rules of emergency. A man who leaned into her in a way that—
Elias pushed the girl aside, then threw his body against the jarred door. It gave, maybe an inch, but it gave.
Ivy watched. Impressed by Elias’ persistence. Emilie also watched, but no one noticed how her lips parted.
Finally, the door gave way. Enough for Ivy to squeeze through. She found Yusuf under the bunk, bleeding from a cut over his eye, but breathing.
“He’s okay,” she yelled.
But Elias was already gone.
He’d watch the girl slip by him and figured the clients were all accounted for. He ran into the chef on his way. Battered, bruised, and beaten. But standing and breathing.
He couldn’t access the engine bay from inside, not knowing how much water they’d taken in. So he geared up, found a headlight and a helmet. Cursed, then opened the door to the deck.
It felt warmer than he’d expected. It still stung, it just didn’t instantly freeze his face. The deck was covered in wet ice.
Lifeline around his waist. Protocol. But he couldn’t step onto the deck without sliding sideways. Backwards. Forward.
He cursed again.
Helen squeezed through the door and hurried to her daughter.
“Are you okay?” she asked, as if it were the only phrase she remembered.
To Ivy, the words felt redundant. Unnecessary.
“I am,” she said. “But he needs help.”
“There’s a medical kit at the top of the stairwell,” Helen told her.
Ivy was already moving before the sentence was done. She glanced at Emilie. At Anne. Neither moved. Neither helped. So she went herself.
She didn’t hate her mother. Not really. But she refused to let this moment become some bridge. Not the kind that tied off neglect, erased years, or softened every argument they’d ever had into something tidy.
At the stairwell, water lapped cold beneath her boots. A draught cut down the spine of the ship.
She understood why when she saw Elias at the top of the stairs, staring into the dark.
“I need the med kit!” she shouted through the wind.
He pointed over his shoulder without turning. She climbed up, squeezed past him. Her body brushed his, and for a moment, his stillness felt like shelter. Warmth.
Then he moved, and the warmth went with him.
She reached for the kit. It was strapped down, stiff with cold and inertia, but she wrenched it loose with both hands, one foot braced against the wall for leverage. When it gave, it gave hard—nearly yanking her forward. She staggered, caught herself, but still fell into him.
He caught her without effort.
Her body pressed against his chest, breath short, balance gone. He smelled like salt and grease and something older—something that didn’t belong in this century. Their eyes met.
Just long enough to register the mistake.
She flushed, muttered something like “Sorry,” and peeled herself off him. Turned toward the stairwell like she hadn’t just landed against the hardest man on the ship.
Then she saw the stairs.
And froze.
Not from fear. From doubt. That cold, sour kind that starts in your gut and climbs the spine with both hands.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her voice smaller than she wanted. Too much like her mother’s.
Elias didn’t look up. “Not unless you want to watch me fall and crack my skull on the ice.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said, louder now. Sharper. She didn’t want to be the stupid teenager.
Not to him.
Not to the camera still capturing her breath—shallow, shaky—inside the wool-lined pocket she’d stitched to her chest like a second skin.
She hurried down, boots thudding against metal, and checked her phone on instinct—sixty-three percent battery. Enough. She turned the corner and found Emilie and Anne still where she’d left them, hunched together in the dim corridor like an exhausted painting.
“Get in there,” Ivy barked, thrusting the med kit into Emilie’s hands as they passed. “He’s bleeding.”
Emilie blinked, like she hadn’t been spoken to like that in years. She took the kit and slipped inside without a word.
Ivy caught a breath of her scent as she moved past—floral, thick, something too expensive and European to belong here. Not salt. Not sea. Not sweat.
Why the fuck doesn’t she smell like the rest of us? Ivy thought. Why is she wearing perfume at the end of the world?
But there wasn’t time for novelty, or lace, or the implied delicacies of French underwear. Ivy turned and sprinted back to the cabin.
She untied her mother’s duffel, dragged it open, and began tearing through layers of practical womanhood. Spare wool, tampons, blister wraps, waterproof gloves, a bottle of rum. Creams. Pills.
“What women pack,” she muttered, “and what teenagers pack—Jesus.”
A yeast infection kit. Medicated wipes. No vibrators. No lingerie. No secrets worth stealing.
Just survival.
She kept going, deeper into the soft underbelly of Helen Murrow’s preparedness, and finally struck gold—a pair of thick pullover stitches, double-stitched and hopefully large enough to stretch over Elias’s boot size.
She held them up. Not sexy. Not dramatic. But they’d do.
She didn’t wait to ask permission. She was already heading back into the corridor, pulling her hood up tight, bracing herself for whatever the cold would taste like now.
“Here!” she yelled, voice sharp in the cold, even before her foot hit the first stair.
Elias reached down and caught her by the arm, hauled her up like she weighed nothing.
They met too fast. Too hard. Too deliberate.
And his hand—
Yes. It did. It groped her ass.
Not a brush. Not an accident. A grip.
Then it was gone. He released her as quickly as he’d claimed her, turning back to the door like nothing had happened.
She shoved the stitches into his hands.
He nodded once, pulled them over his boots without ceremony, and stepped out into the storm.
No thank you. No soldier’s nod. No heroine’s kiss.
Just the scrape of calloused fingers still warming the place they’d grabbed. Low, too low. It tingled. It itched. It burned.
She didn’t rub it away.
Helen grabbed the kit from Emilie’s hands.
“Merci,” she said.
Emilie wept.
Yusuf was alive. Banged up, like the rest of them. Breathing. Hopefully still useful.
Helen crouched, opened the kit, and started working. “How is everyone else?” she asked without looking up.
Emilie didn’t answer right away. She looked dazed—like she’d been dressed for a dinner party and ended up in a war zone. That perfume. That blouse. Like the sea was something she’d only studied, not suffered.
Helen glanced up. “We need to pull him out,” she said, flatter now, realizing Emilie wasn’t built for trauma. She was built for perfect coffee, sensual turns of phrase, and the physicality of the sea through some twisted, French-erotic lens.
Still. Emilie could pull a man out from under a bed.
Between them, they freed Yusuf. He groaned but didn’t resist. They wrapped him in blankets and dressed the gash on his head with practiced hands. Not gentle. Not cruel. Just enough to keep him together until someone better took over.
Someone better would have been the medic she’d requested. Not the cold soldier with the thousand-yard stare and the pecs that made her moan inside if she looked too long.
And where the fuck was Elias, anyway?
Elias, meanwhile, was wedged somewhere between wind, ice, and the feel of an ass that hit like a lost memory. The kid had spark—he’d give her that. Raw nerve, no polish. But he didn’t have time for the twitch in his pants or the heat crawling up behind his zipper.
Focus. Don’t fall. Don’t die.
His job was to stay upright, to figure out what the hell had torn into the Solstice’s hull.
The stitches she’d brought helped. Not perfect—they pinched, and the seal was off—but they kept him from sliding sideways every other step. The lifeline clipped to his belt? It didn’t mean survival. It meant recovery. If anyone saw him fall. If they could reach him before the ocean claimed what was left.
He hoped the captain was watching. But hope had never been part of the job.
He reached the broken latch. Crouched. Lay flat against the frozen deck. Yelled into the dark cavity of the engine bay.
For a moment—nothing.
Then, barely above the howl of the wind:
“Help.”
Not panic. Not a scream.
Just the sound of a man trying not to die.
He angled the light just right and caught the reflection: a young man’s face, blue-pale and glass-eyed, floating slack in the water.
Elias didn’t know his name. Had never bothered to learn it.
Didn’t matter now.
“Please help me,” the voice came again. Softer. Farther. Off to the side—tucked as far from the corpse as the narrow space allowed.
Elias shifted the beam.
There. Wedged between two bulkheads. Shivering. Half-submerged. Still breathing.
He’d seen hypothermia before. The late-stage kind. He knew how this ended.
For a second, he thought about his sidearm. Clean shot. End it quick.
But the captain might be watching. He’d see the flash. He’d ask questions. Eventually someone would find the hole in the kid’s skull. There’d be paperwork. Consequences.
So, no.
No bullet.
Just the cold, slow way.
He reached in. Gripped fabric. Flesh. Anything he could hold.
He’d pull him out. Lay him on the deck.
Let the storm kill him the long way.
“Sir…” the young man whispered, breath leaking out in fog.
Then he gave his eyes to emptiness.
They were all gathered in the galley. No warmth, no comfort. Just metal walls, bruised faces, and the long echo of what they’d lost.
Elias didn’t clear his throat. Didn’t ask to speak.
“There’s no point sugarcoating it,” he said, eyes on the captain. “Our mechanics are dead. The engine’s flooded. We’re adrift.”
He let the words settle. No panic. Just silence thick enough to chew.
“So let her drift,” he continued. “There’s no fixing this tonight. No storm coming. No rescue on the horizon.”
A beat.
“Go to sleep. If we’re going to die, let’s at least die rested.”
“Let’s at least eat first,” Helen said, not pleading—protesting. Holding the line with something human.
Elias didn’t blink.
“Eat. Fuck, if you must,” he said. “Really—it’s all the same to me.”
They ate.
No one spoke much.
Just the sound of utensils scraping metal, boots shifting on floor panels, and the blue flare from a propane stove.
They watched Elias and Emilie go below, neither of them saying a word. Ivy didn’t like how her gut twisted. Didn’t like how her mother stared too long at the empty doorway behind them.
Peter—the chef—arranged a feast. Eggs. Bacon. Bread. Canned fruit. Things he shouldn’t have touched.
“It’ll all rot without refrigeration,” he said, almost to himself.
Ivy scratched at her scalp, blinked at her plate. “It’s cold enough outside,” she muttered.
But the decision had already been made.
As if survival wasn’t even on the menu.
Elias wasn’t concerned with survival.
He just grabbed the brunette by the hips and dragged her into his cabin.
She giggled—like the cold hadn’t soaked into her Mediterranean bones, like they weren’t lost at sea, like this was some twisted French roulette where everyone walked away a winner.
He stripped her fast, wrung her out of her clothes like they were in his way, then shoved her against the cold metal wall. Her skin arched on contact.
She gasped when he drove into her—no question, no kindness. Just fucking. Just the way her eyes had asked him to.
They ended up on the bed, her stretched beneath his weight, spread and panting, their breath fogging the space between them—warmth made audible against the cold.
“Will we die?” she panted into his mouth.
“Eventually,” he grunted. “Us probably sooner than later.”
It was enough to make her cum.
Loud. Sharp. Echoing.
Loud enough for Ivy to hear in the hallway.
She stopped mid-step. Listened.
Caught between a rage that wasn’t hers to own—and something else.
She hadn’t touched herself in two weeks.
Not since the cold took her hands, and the ice took her want.
Now, she was all want.
She hurried back to her cabin, looking over her shoulder, fingers clumsy at the handle. She slipped inside, kicked the door shut, and dropped to her knees by the duffle.
Unzipped. Rummaged.
Six power banks. Useless lingerie. Comic books she’d forgotten she packed. Batteries. Her vibrator.
It stared up at her. Daring her.
She threw it onto the bunk. Glanced at the door again. No footsteps. No shadows. Just cold silence.
She stripped fast, wrung herself out of her clothes like a towel. Her panties clung to her—wet with sweat, salt, arousal. They smelled like survival.
She didn’t pause. Didn’t romanticize.
Just shoved the toy inside herself—too fast, nearly painful, completely necessary.
She pressed the button. Once. Twice. Three times.
Full throttle.
Her hips bucked under the blankets. Her breath caught. Still one eye on the door.
Always one.
Was she still a virgin if she’d been fucking herself with rubber for a year?
Did real sex feel different?
Would she still need to rub her clit just to cum, even with a man inside her?
Did a cock hurt?
How big was Elias?
God, Mom—don’t find me like this.
Helen had no thought or intention of disturbing her daughter’s orgasm. She was busy arguing.
Why Ivy had been right about the food. Why the captain should go to bed like the rest of them. Why they had to surrender—to fatigue, to silence, to whatever fate had already decided.
Ann agreed, her voice low and certain.
Lin puked quietly into a corner.
The captain drank rum and vodka in turn, as if mixing them changed anything.
Peter apologized—softly, to no one in particular—as he sorted the food.
Cans from dried. Fresh from vacuum-sealed. Cereal from powdered milk.
Whatever needed refrigeration, he strung in bags and hung outside, swaying like silent offerings in the cold.
And that’s how the next day replaced the other.
Emilie choking on cock, cumming like a little slut—reduced to desire, to friction, to nothing else.
Ivy fucking herself to sleep between recordings of the dead sea outside, the lens still a barrier she believed in. She was halfway through her first power bank by now.
Helen, silent, biting her lip every time Elias spoke. Or moved. Or was mentioned.
Until the night the captain shot himself on the bridge.
“Coward,” Elias hissed, still damp with sweat.
By then, he smelled more of cunt than sea.
Ivy stood behind the dirty glass of the bridge.
It looked wrong—Elias out there alone, wrapping and tying down the bodies like it was just another job.
She geared up, stepped outside, nearly slipped and cracked her skull on the frozen steel. But she pressed through. Found her footing. Grabbed the tail end of a rope that had slipped from his hand.
“What are you doing out here?” he shouted. Not angry—just louder than the wind.
“Helping your sorry ass,” she called back.
He didn’t thank her. Just kept working.
Three bodies.
“Can I see?” she asked.
He stopped. Turned. Stared.
Then cursed.
“Why the fuck would you want to?”
To Ivy, it seemed simple.
If she was going to die, she should at least know what death looked like.
Elias muttered something inaudible—something she was meant to feel, not hear.
Then he chose the bag.
Not the captain, not with half his skull gone.
Not the kid who’d foamed at the mouth, whispering “sir” to no one.
The other one. The one already frozen when he died.
Just his face.
Just long enough for the girl to gag.
But she didn’t.
She nodded. Swallowed. Said, “Thank you.”
It should have changed her. Marked her somehow. Made her reflect. Instead, the sea rose over them—rushed over the repaired hatch and slammed them against the rail.
They came up gasping. Spitting seawater. His weight on top of hers.
Instinct.
She kissed him.
He didn’t kiss back.
He ate her mouth.
There was no captain on the bridge to watch. No Helen prying. Not even an Emilie to sharpen her Laguiole and call it affection.
Ivy gasped, let her legs fall wide around him—still sucking at his mouth, still tugging at his beard.
This is it, she thought. This is where every girl stops pretending and starts wanting.
Impossible.
Too cold. Too wet. Too dangerous.
He pulled himself off her.
“You forgot the lifeline,” he said, spitting her taste overboard.
But when he pulled them inside—after they’d hung up their gear, just before she swallowed something that tasted like shame—he caught her wrist.
“Some other time. Some other place,” he whispered.
But his voice didn’t match his body.
Too strong. Too close. Too much pull for air between them.
She didn’t kiss him then.
She pulled back.
Retreated down below.
Helen reached across the desk and pulled her laptop toward her. Still half-charged. Useless without a satellite signal.
Emilie hugged her coffee maker like a love long lost.
Yusuf scratched his forehead, restless, and rummaged through a sprawl of paper with no intention of order.
Lin sat curled in the corner, holding her knees.
Anne stayed in her chair, motionless. Resigned.
“Mom?” Ivy said from the doorway.
“Yes, honey?” Helen answered, already tired.
“Can we talk?”
There was no silent escape on the ship. Not anymore.
But the empty hallway served as privacy enough.
“When did you know?” Ivy asked, as if her mother had been living in her head long enough to understand the question.
“What, honey?”
“When did you know you were ready? For a man to… you know.”
Helen was theory. Books. Answers backed by formulas, citations, and footnotes.
This?
This was just awkward.
“To—Ivy, what are you asking me?”
“Sex, Mom! God! Why do you have to be so awkward?”
Helen swallowed.
This was the conversation they never had—the one she’d never prepared for.
“Ivy,” she said slowly. “I was sixteen. You don’t know. I didn’t know. It just happened, okay?”
She sounded like someone accused.
“Did it feel right?” Ivy asked.
Helen was swallowed by theory—the kind built on hormones, instincts, evolutionary impulse. The biology of the question. And she had no clean way out.
“It’s not about being ready,” she said, voice distant. “It never is. Readiness is a retroactive label. There’s no signal. No green light. Just biology and timing and what you’re willing to live with after. The body wakens, sooner for some, later for others. Never for the poor souls that—”
She paused. Let the silence do the work she couldn’t.
“I don’t know if it felt right. I only know I kept going.”
Helen stared at her daughter, who only blinked.
“Why now, Ivy?” she asked.
But before Ivy could lie—or be truthful—the ship tore open against ice and stone.
