Her leg suddenly gives and she’s back down again on one knee.

She looks up to see him already bearing down. Maeve braces her good leg. She’s holding the claw tight between her fingers, like a set of keys. A weapon.

Above them, the mechanical hum grows in strength, and for just a second she tilts her head to the sky, squinting through the cloud cover to see what’s there.

“You hear that?” Her voice surprises her, low and used up.

But the distraction is enough: his eyes flick away from her, and Maeve rises, quiet, her sock foot gingerly on the snow. As though she is standing on it. She doesn’t want him to know the ankle is broken, the leg ruined. Maeve can stay silent through just about anything. She needs him to think she can still fight.

There’s another crash from the woods below.

Sim jerks his head: it’s the second time she’s seen him look scared. She takes her chance and starts to move away toward the polished steel girders of the SkyLift terminal, the cables extending out dull in the gray light—but he catches her by the shoulder and she stumbles back. The bad ankle like a tether, holding her in place.

She pushes him off and he catches her again.

“Maeve, there’s nowhere to go. Come on with me.”

She pushes him off again, but he won’t let go and the effort knocks her back. She lands down on one knee. Beneath them, the ice shelf groans. The combined weight of two people, too much.

“Careful, now.” He steps in closer, like he wants to help. But when he reaches out a hand for her, his coat swings open: there’s a flash of black, a leather strap. The gun, there in its holster.

Her leg is gone at the hip, she can’t feel anything anymore. She looks down at her slashed hand, almost surprised to see it still bleeding.

Her voice is low and calm. “Go back to the center, Sim.”

He steps in again. Another creak in the ice shelf; they’re on a weak spot of some kind. Maeve tries to shift her body slowly away to where the shelf feels more stable. He’s standing over her now, so close that his belt buckle could almost brush her hairline. Wind comes howling up the ridge, bringing a shower of frozen snow with it, and for a moment she can’t see or hear anything else.

“Listen to it down there, Maeve—you won’t survive. Come with me instead.”

Down in the woods, the bear heaves against the wall another time, and the ice covering it cracks, breaks away, and falls to the ground below. Eventually the bear will hit rock. And climb.