The world dissolved into a maelstrom of white. The helicopter’s rotors beat against the air with a percussive violence that vibrated through Genevieve’s bones, a frantic pulse in a land that had none.
Below, the Alaskan tundra was not the pristine wonderland of postcards but a savage, monochromatic expanse, a canvas wiped clean by a merciless god.
There was no color, no movement, nothing but the endless, soul-crushing geometry of ice and snow.
When the skids finally touched down with a jarring crunch, the pilot, a man whose face was a roadmap of frostbite scars, gave her a thumbs-up without turning around.
The side door slid open, and the cabin was instantly violated by a shriek of wind and a cold so profound it felt like a physical blow.
It wasn’t just cold; it was an active, predatory thing that stole the breath from her lungs and turned the moisture in her eyes to needles.
“Go! Go! Can’t stay on the ground long!” the pilot yelled over the engine’s roar.
Genevieve “Vivi” Dubois pulled the fur-lined hood of her Chloé parka tighter, a ridiculous bastion of Parisian chic against the elemental fury of the Arctic.
She swung her legs out, and the heel of her Isabel Marant boot, a stylish wedge of suede and shearling, sank a good two inches into the powder before finding purchase on the unforgiving ice beneath.
She stumbled, catching herself on the frame of the helicopter, her heart hammering against her ribs.
A fish out of water. No, she was a hothouse flower thrown into a cryo-chamber.
She wrestled her two Pelican cases from the cabin, the hard plastic shells seeming to shrink in the vastness.
They contained the entirety of her experiment, the last, desperate hope she had: the Atmospheric Olfaction Recalibration Unit.
The name was a clinical mouthful for what was, essentially, a prayer made of wires and filters.
The pilot didn’t wait. The moment her feet were clear, the helicopter lifted, its roar crescendoing before it banked sharply, becoming a dark speck against the bruised pewter sky.
And then, silence.
A silence so absolute it was a presence. It pressed in on her eardrums, a physical weight.
The wind died as if a switch had been thrown, leaving a stillness that was more unnerving than the storm.
Here, sound came to die. And for Vivi, so had scent.
She instinctively drew a deep breath, a habit forged over thirty-two years of cataloging the world through her nose.
She had once been able to distinguish the mineral tang of Chablis from Sancerre at ten paces, to identify the precise moment jasmine petals were ready for harvest by the sweetness of their decay.
Now, she got nothing.