My memories of my hypothermia are intermittent and saturated, like the flashbacks from a drunken night out.

I remember a strange voice—not Suzie's or Ruben's—echoing around me in my snowy bed. I remember the dragging sensation of being half-carried, half pulled.

I remember yellow electric light, and being in some sort of grotty office—like at a builders merchants, somewhere where decor and cleanliness don't matter, and the real work is done outside.

I remember being wrapped in a blanket, an electric heater next to me.

And slowly, I began to thaw.

As I blinked myself back into reality, I realised I was in the portacabins.

They'd looked dark and abandoned from the outside, but that was down to the thick blinds that covered the windows, rather than lack of use.

The insides were rough and ready—institutional furniture, clothes and skis clustered in the corners, magazine cut-outs blue-tacked on the wall—but it was warm.

What was this place? And where had Suzie and Ruben gone?

I tried to rise from the grubby, low sofa I was sitting in, but I felt so groggy and tired I could barely lift the blankets that were tangled around me.

Panic started to simmer in my veins, but then there was a rustle of activity from a doorway off on my left, and the unmistakable ping of a microwave.

Shortly afterwards, a man appeared in the same doorway. He was oldish—possibly late forties—and looked like he lived outdoors: leathery tanned and wiry limbed, with deep-set eyes and big grey-flecked sideburns. He was wearing a stretched-out, faded orange sweater and dirty cargo pants, and carrying a steaming Sports Direct mug.

"So she's awake," the man said in a lilting Irish brogue. "Just needed heating up, eh?"

Suzie and Ruben followed him through the door.

"Oh my God, Jennie, you scared me," Suzie said accusingly, hand to her chest.

The Irish man handed me the mug, and said, "Drink it."

It had hot, sweet cocoa inside, and I sipped it gratefully.

I was absolutely exhausted, like I'd just run a marathon. My whole body was leaden. I was too beat to even be embarrassed about my gibbering and fainting display.

The Irish guy sat in a chair in front of me, and Ruben and Suzie squeezed onto the sofa by my side.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"Staff quarters," Ruben said, a note of triumph barely hidden in his voice. "The portacabins, under the mast. They apparently have to keep the blinds pulled to keep 'em dark, so they don't spoil the guests' view."

"Oh." I let my heavy head drop to the back of the sofa. "So you're...staff?" I said to the Irish guy.

"Not me. But everyone else, aye. They're down there working now. I'm just waiting till you lot go home so I can jump a lift back on the ottercopters, like."

"Sam was here for the search," Ruben said knowingly, raising his eyebrows in my direction. "You know, after the incident." He looked immensely pleased with himself.

"What incident?" I said, lolling back into the sofa, letting my eyes slip closed.

"You can tell it this time," the Irish man, Sam, said to Ruben. "I'm not going through that again, like." He stood up, thin hands stuffed in his cargo pants pockets. "Do either of you'n want some of that hot chocolate?"

"Cool, yeah, thanks man," Ruben said.

Suzie shook her head doubtfully.

"You sure?" Sam asked, confused.

"She's vegan," Ruben translated Suzie's refusal.

"No bones to me. I got soy milk."

Suzie still looked doubtful.

"For Christ's sake, woman," Ruben said. He looked at Sam. "She'll have the drink."

Suzie glowered as Sam left.

"What?" Ruben shot back at her. "I'm sick of watching you fuckin' starve yourself. Animal products is fair enough, but it's not going to kill you to drink a bit of sugar."

"It's not that," Suzie said, wrapping her arms around herself. "I do have sugar occasionally. Like, a PSL or whatever, as a treat. It's the,"—she lowered her voice—"microwave. Do you know what those things do to you?"

"Yeah, heat your fuckin' food," Ruben snarled, scowling as he turned away.

"They kill you," Suzie said, her voice rising. "I'm sick of this attitude. You think you're so smart, don't you? You know nothing, Ruben Felix."

"You know nothing, Jon Snow," Ruben mocked, not even looking at Suzie.

His English accent was nearly as bad as his Scottish one.

"Fuck off," Suzie muttered under her breath.

"So what's this incident?" I said, before Ruben could reply.

Ruben gave Suzie one last venomous eye roll and turned to me.

"This incident is very interesting indeed, Little Scotch. It turns out that a few weeks back, just before the hotel opened, a group of construction workers went missing. Our new friend Sam here happened to be on their team," he jerked his thumb to the door, "but also happened to have gone on a solo hike to the South Pole the night it happened. And when he got back, the rest of the group were nowhere to be seen. Just... vanished. Pouf."

Ruben made a little vanishing sign with his hands, like a stage magician.

"So the ottercopter comes to pick 'em up a while later, and only Sam is here. The rest have gone."

"Did they find them?" I asked, straining to lift my head from the sofa.

"Yeah," Suzie interjected. "It's creepy."

"Oh, they found them alright," Ruben went on gleefully. "Face down, fuckin' frozen into the ice, scattered off in all directions, like they'd been running real hard. And you wanna know the weird thing?"

Ruben smiled evilly, clearly relishing relaying this gristly story.

I didn't want to know the weird thing, but he was going to tell me anyway.

"They were naked," Suzie butted in.

"Half naked," Ruben corrected. "Just bits of clothes here and there, like they'd tried to take their clothes off...or something tore 'em off."

I turned my head away from Ruben, feeling sick.

But Ruben wasn't done with me yet.

"Hey Sam," he called to the kitchen. "Can I show her your pictures?"

Sam appeared, and handed Ruben his phone after clicking a few commands into it.

Before I could protest, Ruben had shoved it gleefully into my face.

I shrunk into the sofa, disgusted, as he insisted on scrolling through the gristly images.

"Okay, Ruben," I said, batting him away. "That's enough, I get the picture."

"Eight grown men, dead, and no-one knows why." Ruben slapped his thighs. "Now that's a fuckin' story."

The microwave pinged in the other room, and Sam reappeared in the doorway with three mis-matched mugs.

"When did all this happen?" I asked, letting my eyes close.

"Not long before you'n arrived," Sam said as he sat down. "Couple'a weeks or so."

That made no sense to me. Why would they go ahead with the hotel and everything, when there's been some mystery mass death event, right here, barely days before?

"How could they open the hotel then?" I asked skeptically. "If that happened? Wouldn't the... authorities stop it?"

"There are no authorities in Antarctica, love," Sam said, slurping out of his mug.

Ruben smirked. "This is your real actual no-man's land."

"Aye." Sam nodded. "This land don't belong to anyone like, so there ain't no-one to police it."

"But still," I said. "People can't just die, without an investigation. Who took the bodies?"

"The Russian police came. Couple'o military guys. They took the bodies. Said it were hypothermia. Case closed."

"Maybe it was hypothermia." I thought of how I'd tried to take my coat off earlier. "That would make sense."

Sam shook his head. "Look, love. No disrespect to you, but I worked with them boys for six weeks on this job. I knew 'em like, and hypothermia don't make no sense, Tell you that for nuttin'. The heaters was on in here just like they is now, nice and toasty, an' all their coats was hung up by the door."

Sam's leathery lips tightened to a thin line. "Sandwiches half eaten, a game o' cards underway... Them bodies they found wasn't even wearing their boots. Why would they go out there in that without their coats and boots? It don't make no sense, it don't." He shook his head. "There's more to this, I swear on it. That's why I stayed out here, try to find out."

He shook his head. "But I ain't found nuttin' like, and I'm set to go out on that ottercopter in a week. Looks like whatever happened in Antarctica that night is staying in Antarctica, whether I likes it or not. But it's not right, I'm telling you. Something rotten went on, even if I can't for the life of me work out what it was."

Sam shuddered.

"Russian police? So InTrepid is a Russian company?" Ruben cut in, squinting at Sam.

"It would seem so." Sam shrugged. "I got the job through an agency like. Contract work. Crane driving, bolting up this mast. I—"

He stopped abruptly as a loud alert reverberated through the room. Everyone's hands went to their pockets.

Four mobile phones appeared.

"Shit," I cursed. It was mine.

Sure enough, there was a knock on the portacabin door.

I'd totally forgotten.

It was Paulo.