The morning in the winter camp was a brutal, crystalline blue. The sunlight reflecting off the virgin snow was so bright it felt like a physical weight against Andrea's eyes. Inside the stone-walled medical yurt—a structure that felt more like a bunker than a clinic—the air was thick with the smell of ozone and the faint, copper tang of Lev's blood.
Andrea sat hunched over a steel workbench, her long dark brown hair pulled back into a severe, utilitarian knot. She was peering through the eyepiece of the portable digital microscope Viktor had provided in her medical kit.
The silver fragment sat on a glass slide, illuminated by a harsh white LED.
"You haven't slept," a low, vibrating voice rasped from the doorway.
Andrea didn't flinch. She didn't even look up. She knew the cadence of his step, the heavy, possessive heat that preceded him like a thermal front. "Sleep is a luxury for people who don't have a piece of high-tech murder-metal sitting on their desk, Viktor."
