Ashley looked from the cave wall back to her sketch and smoothed her thumb over a figure’s shadow, blending her pencil lines. Henri’s camera flashed, blinding her. When her eyes adjusted, pupils wavering into equilibrium, her LED lantern seemed dimmer than before, the figures drawn on the cave walls harder to make out.

“Can you wait a minute, please?” She didn’t temper the edge in her voice. She’d asked him this a hundred times already—at the office as she checked her daypack, along the Alpine trail as he led the way at a pace she could not possibly match. You must get used to the altitude if you want to study here, he’d said as she caught up, panting, the thin air heavy in her lungs. You’re not ready to study here, is what she heard. What he probably wanted her to hear.

“I am studying here,” she’d puffed between shallow gasps. “And you can’t outrun altitude sickness. Don’t they teach that to guides here?” She’d planted herself on a rock and made him wait.

His camera flashed again. “We don’t have time.” Another photo. “We’ve waited half the day away. Your drawings are too slow. We don’t do it that way anymore.”

Ashley shifted; the cold of the cave floor had crept through the sweater she’d folded into a cushion. She counted to ten, her eyes squeezed shut against the flashes. “I’m not just sketching to record them, Henri. I’m learning them—studying them.”

“You can do that in the lab, unless you want to hike back in the dark. You’re wasting time. We don’t even know if you’ll be allowed to study these.”

She stood then, clutching her pencils in her fist. “What do you mean?”

“You came to study bears? These aren’t bears. There are bears in the other chamber you can study—we have enough of those to share. But this is special. This is weird. They will want a Swiss archaeologist for this.”

Ashley hadn’t considered that. When she’d proposed the expedition to explore the new chambers exposed by the receding glacier, she’d counted on finding either cave bears or nothing. Instead, she’d found a national treasure. The specters from the camera flash danced in her eyes as she added notes to her handwritten report. He hadn’t convinced her to hurry. Now her notebook was more important than ever—it might be the only proof she’d have of the discovery, if the site was seized.