At that moment, I heard her yelling but it was muffled, distant. Shit! She must be on the other side of the hill! I ran, my boots sinking deep into the snow. She yelled again and again but I couldn’t answer: I was too out of breath and I needed to home in on her voice before she stopped. I came around a corner and—

The instant I saw her, something huge and warm just lifted in my chest. She looked so tiny in the huge landscape, so vulnerable. I ran towards her and she jerked back, scared. She’s not wearing her glasses! She was squinting, mole-like and absurdly cute. “It’s okay!” I told her. “It’s me, it’s Danny!”

She gave a strangled groan of relief and threw her arms around me. I hugged her back and all those feelings I’d been pushing back for days flooded through me. They broke against my resolve like a wave and it weakened and cracked.

“What are we going to do?” asked Erin in a tiny voice.

It was the first time I’d had a chance to think about it. I tried my radio but got nothing but static. Either JD and the others were out of range or….

“You think they crashed?” asked Erin. “Are they…?”

I shook my head firmly. “No. Not with Gina flying. Maybe it was a rough landing but she’ll have got them down safe.”

“So what do we do?”

I took a deep breath. “We go to the emergency rendezvous point,” I told her with a confidence I didn’t feel.

Erin looked around, utterly lost. I tried to imagine how frightening it was for her, not being able to see. “Wait there,” I told her, and started slowly climbing the hill, following the trail of broken snow where she’d rolled down. I was nearly at the top when I saw something reflecting the light.

Back at the bottom, I shook the snow from her glasses and pressed them into her hands. She moaned in relief as she slid them onto her face. “Thank you!”

We both looked around and, as I gazed out at the featureless, frozen terrain, my stomach knotted. I’d done survival training but that just meant I knew how hard it would be to last more than a few hours out here. It was brutally cold during the day and at night we’d die if we hadn’t found shelter. There were virtually no plants we could eat or animals we could hunt, no food of any kind. I looked towards the prison. The soldiers knew we were here and they’d be coming after us. It was just about the worst situation possible, far worse than anything in my training. And in training, I wasn’t doing it with a civilian in tow. A civilian I was crazy about.

“Are we going to be okay?” asked Erin.