A cold wind whipped at my bandages as I studied the remaining twelve to fifteen hundred feet of vertical gray slab. I was attempting to map out a route that would funnel me along a series of deep crevasses—all leading to whatever awaited me at the top. Selecting my first rest stop—a slanted lip of slate twenty stories straight up—my heart started racing as I mentally committed to the climb.

Exhaling slowly, I began—but the first two steps sent me in full retreat back to the boulder, the pain of my sore bare feet pressing against the stone too much to overcome. Peeling the blood-soaked rags from my shoulders, I wrapped my toes and instep with the cloth, hoping the padding would provide at least a minimum of protection.

Once more I reached for a crack in the slab, pulling myself off the boulder onto a ledge so narrow I could barely wedge the blade of my right foot upon it. Determining the pain to be tolerable, I reached higher, my right hand groping for a surface I could grip.

Forty feet up and my muscles were already trembling. I panted for breath, each inhalation feeling colder than the last in the dying light. The horizon at my back bled red, yet I dared not take my eyes off the rock crystals glittering inches from my face. Moving from one handhold to the next, I felt constantly off balance, a violent sneeze or an itch away from losing my grip on the wall.

It was nearly dusk by the time I reached that first rest spot, a slight overhang that afforded me a three-inch-wide ledge and a gap between slabs to jam my right arm into. Momentarily secure, I turned to steal a glimpse at the horizon.

The sky was tinged crimson violet. The beach was gone, submerged between an onslaught of sea, powered by fifty-story waves now breaking less than a mile away.

“Vanilla … ah, fuck it.” Whether I was asleep or not, it no longer mattered. To my brain, my nerve centers, and muscles—everything in this bizarre world, including the pain, was real.

If I fell, it was going to hurt.

The night announced its presence with a muscle-stiffening chill. With my reserves all but gone, I seriously contemplated remaining on the ledge until dawn. Violating my former fiancée’s cardinal rule, I looked down and saw the tidal surge already breaching the upper layer of boulders.

Stay here, and you’ll be underwater within the hour.

Shaking from the cold, I recalled the sight of Dharma lying outstretched on the ice. If a small Chinese-Indian woman could handle the Antarctic cold, I could certainly handle this.

Refocusing on my breathing, I imagined each inhalation fueling an internal furnace.

Reaching up, I located an unseen ledge and continued my assault on the summit, still some eight hundred feet above my head.