Edgar took his time returning, and when he got back, he went straight for his workstation. He had to run the numbers. If his hunch turned out to be right, he needed to know as soon as possible. He began inputting the ice core data, tapping furiously at the keyboard. After a few minutes, it occurred to him that nobody had greeted him when he returned. That was normal for the Naval Antarctic Research Station, especially as of late, but it still felt... wrong. After the fight from the afternoon, he had expected to see someone's grumpy face lounging around the kitchen or hear the sound of the shower with the door open. Neither was apparent, which meant -- what? Jean hadn't returned? Or the two of them had made up and were quietly in their quarters?
 
"Hello?" he called out tentatively to the back quarters of the station. "Anybody home?"
 
Angie's voice echoed back, after a typical moody delay, "... yeah."
 
"Is Jean with you?"
 
Another pause. "Yeah." If he'd been paying attention, Edgar might have thought Angela's voice sounded slightly amused; but he was already back to focusing on his work. So far, the numbers weren't proving him wrong. The simulations they'd been using were getting... alarming. Edgar went to sleep early so that he could leave at the break of dawn the next day. He needed to collect more samples.
 
* * *
 
Angie's stomach pulsed and rumbled, pushing against its enormous contents. Angie laid back and rested her hands on her satisfied belly, reveling in the sensation of tackling her meal. The process of catching her prey played back in her mind as well; she finally realized how much fun it was when she stopped worrying about consequences. The big curved scar on Angie's stomach throbbed faintly, reminding her of Chris, how she'd been so confused and worried at first, how frantic she felt when she'd realized he wasn't moving. She remembered calling 911, trying to get them to believe her, taking the ambulance to the hospital. She remembered the agonizing, hours-long wait as they debated and delayed and ran tests and scans before bringing her into the operation room. By the time they applied the anesthetic, she already knew what was coming. She'd felt Chris pass away inside her; he'd made every attempt to keep moving until the very end. At the time, she'd been horrified by her body, and confused. She'd confessed, gushing tears, had pushed her parents away, and hoped that the court would save her from continuing this life of dispair.
 
But they hadn't. Instead, the judge had stepped in, prevented the case from going to a jury. He'd told her that she was to live on, to continue her schooling, to become a responsible adult despite her unique situation. She hadn't bought into it at first, but she held out, letting the flow take her until she arrived in the NARS base. She listened to Dr. Zylweiger rave about how her body might be something special for science or for womankind. She'd put up with it as Zylweiger became more insistent about not just feeling her out, but provoking her, trying to seduce her, trying to activate her instincts again. But Angie resisted. She hadn't wanted to acknowledge the part of her that had killed her only friend. But Zylweiger would have none of it. Her treatment became rougher, physically and verbally. Angie slowly built a will to live out of her anger.
 
At the same time there was Edgar. Gentle, intellectual, a bit clumsy sometimes, but accepting. He was everything she'd needed. He listened to her moping, and didn't question her. And something about the way he looked at her... it told her he wanted them to be together, no matter what she was.
 
She'd been lucky. If anyone else had remained on the base, she'd be worried that a moment of concern would be all it took to call in the authorities, and her situation would've gone straight worst-case scenario. But the only person left was Edgar, and she knew he would let her get away with it. He hadn't liked the bitch gynecologist either. All her past troubles seemed like nothing now, as if she'd finally taken off a blindfold and could see again.
 
By the time she woke on the second day, her belly had already gone down significantly. It might be just a couple days until she could pass for normal again, especially in her bulky winter clothing. Angie was looking forward to it.
 
* * *
 
Edgar avoided contact with either of the females on base for a while, preferring not to let their feud get in the way of his work. But as the results became clearer and clearer, it became harder and harder to put off telling them. Finally, he called to Angie when he returned to base one day. "Have you seen Dr. Zylweiger? I have something important to discuss with you two." He stepped down the hall and grabbed the door to Angie's room, swinging it open. A wave of warm air poured out. Yet Edgar froze.
 
The former highschooler lay unclothed on the bed, her abdomen only slightly rounder than he'd seen it. Meanwhile, the older woman was nowhere to be seen, but her clothes remained strewn at the foot of the bed.
 
Angie patted her belly smugly. "Don't worry about her. I just finally showed her my abilities... firsthand."
 
"You couldn't have..." But she obviously had. Everything fell into place. Edgar saw his own actions in a new light, realizing just how much he had facilitated this without thinking. "I should... I should call for help, a medical team or something. Or maybe I should just turn you in and see what the court does with you now."
 
"You should. But it won't save Dr. Zylweiger, so you won't bother. You know I don't want to go through that hell again. And besides... some part of you, deep down, wanted this."
 
Edgar took a deep breath. He didn't like how Angie was reading him. But neither could he say she was wrong. "Your karma will come in time," he told her. "And when it does, I'll have to face it too."
 
She stared him in the eyes; he stared back. They evaluated one another for a long time. Finally, Edgar took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but she spoke first.
 
"Wanna see how it works?"
 
"You mean... let your pussy eat me? No thanks. I'm not ready for that yet."
 
"'Yet,' huh? That's OK. I'll let you out. I promise."
 
Edgar felt something stirring within him. He wasn't sure what: lust, curiosity, wild adventure... but he felt himself wanting to take her up on that offer. His better judgement be damned. "Halfway. I'll go in halfway. No more."
 
"OK. I'll gladly accept that. Get over here."
 
Heart pounding, Edgar walked over to where Angie's lithe and silky body lay on the bed. He undressed, and climbed onto the bed, then leaned over her, and pressed his face to hers. Angie closed her eyes as they kissed, lightly, then passionately. One hand cupped her breast, massaged it gently. Angie squirmed in pleasure, tiny moans escaping beyond her control. Edgar lowered his rock-hard member towards her waiting slit and tentatively prodded at it. Her ravenous insides took hold and tugged it inward, burying his shaft almost instantly. The pressure and the suction was unbelievable; Edgar found himself releasing right away. He exhaled in pleasure and sunk downwards, enjoying the massage on his dick. Angie smiled at him, knowingly.
 
For a while, the two of them stayed that way. Edgar started hardening up again; the sensations were too much to resist. He braced himself, one hand on either side of Angie's gentle shoulders, and lifted his hips to pull out a little... but Angie's opening didn't let him. It held fast, tugging at the hilt of his sword even as he lifted off the bed. He gasped. Angie reached a hand up, pulled his head to hers, and kissed him again.
 
No amount of tugging and pulling was getting him any leverage. Finally, he sat up, and managed to stretch one leg up to lift and brace his foot against Angie's inner thigh. He placed his other foot on the other side, so he was almost in a position with her engorged pussy holding him crouched against her. He tensed his muscles, pushing and straining to lift himself out of the unrelenting grip that was her pussy, but Angie's secret place held strong. He pulsed again, and Angie smiled. She lifted her legs inward, causing Edgar's feet to slip. They slid on the moist, sweaty skin of her thighs until his toes brushed against her vulva. Finally the pressure on Edgar's dick relented... as her nether lips spread to accommodate Edgar's toes on either side of it. Edgar's straining ended up pushing his legs even quicker into her slit, and Angie yelped pleasurably as her spread opening made it up calf and knee and over his thighs, so that he straighted his legs right into her.
 
"Wow," Edgar grunted. "You are intense." The statement was underwhelming, as her juicy inner flesh folded and rippled over his legs and dick, pushing him to ecstasy. Angie smiled even wider as her labia slid up over his butt, pluging his whole body deeper into her tenderness with every inch.
 
"I guess this is about halfway," she told him tenderly. "Are you sure you don't want to finish the trip?"
 
"Maybe a little more!" he squeezed out between gasps. "Up to the belly-button!"
 
"As you wish," and she squelched just a little higher until Edgar's ribcage was just above the borderline to her enormous pussy. "Higher?"
 
"Wait... something... important." Edgar tried desperately to catch his breath. "Must... tell you."
 
Angie dutifully relaxed a moment, willing her overwhelming pleasureful squeezes to die down a bit. Edgar sat, just over halfway buried in her twat, and slowly gained the composure to speak.
 
"If my recent research is correct, the ice sheet is melting faster than anticipated. Water is running through cracks underneath it, accelerating the flow. In weeks or even days, the very sheet this base stands on could collapse into the ocean."
 
Angie was taken aback. This was not a response she'd prepared for. "The base? Why would it be built on such unstable ground?!"
 
"Fifty years ago when this station was built... nobody had even conceived of global warming." Edgar struggled to get the words out. "The ice was here for all of human history, and nobody thought that would change. Even a few... years ago, it was thought that the sheet would stand... for decades longer."
 
"So we're in danger?"
 
"Yes. I'm still not sure, but the observations I've been making these last few days... worry me... a lot." He paused. The tension between them was viscous, seeming to ooze slowly from the point where they were joined. "Will you let me out?" he asked, finally, in a weak voice.
 
"...yeah." Angie sighed. She took a long, slow breath in, and let her inner muscles relax. Finally, the iron grip holding Edgar in loosened, and her gentle squeezes pushed him back out, inch by inch. Edgar tried not to relish the sensations of her sopping, moist vaginal walls washing over him again. He really tried.
 
When finally she ejected his feet onto the soiled bed, Edgar breathed in relief. "You didn't have to let me out, you know," he said. "I don't think I could have stopped you."
 
"I made a promise, Edgar. And besides... I like you." She made a strong face, but they both knew better.
 
"Well... thank you. It means a lot to me. Erm, obviously." He managed a light chuckle, but his mind was caught up in thinking about the next time...
 
* * *
 
Edgar lay on his back, looking up at the station's dented metal ceiling. His conscience was torn to pieces, each telling him to do something different. He should call in backup, or evacuation. He should keep events a secret, to protect a wounded and bright girl -- nay, young woman -- who'd been unlucky. He should kill her before she did him. Nothing made sense. At the very least, any support would take days to arrive, if not longer. In the worst case scenario, the whole base might've collapsed before that happened.
 
Ultimately, he decided, he had no choice but to follow his heart. And he knew what his heart ached for.
 
The next morning made the decisions easier. One look at the sensors on PC told him all he needed to know. The flow rate had accelerated. The collapse would now be measured on the order of days, or hours. "Pack everything of value," he told Angie. "We're out of here."
 
They threw together a couple backpacks and bundles of research items, whatever food they could carry, and all the survival gear they could find in the station. The NARS had three snowmobiles, but they could only drive two, so they used the last one as a sled and strapped whatever supplies they couldn't carry onto it. Edgar consulted his research to pick the safest route, and they departed. The bright Antarctic sunlight shone down from sky and up through the packed ice beneath.
 
By late afternoon, it became clear that they weren't making good speed. They chucked whatever seemed least useful, and started in again. But soon Edgar noticed that the collapse had already begun. He pointed out, anxiously, the fractures in the ice sheet. They gunned their snowmobiles' engines, but they were running preciously low on fuel. They would need all the gas they had to reach an area safely underpinned by solid ground, and far enough from the residual settling that would inevitably occur. Edgar's snowmobile was already too low from towing the third snowmobile with the luggage, so they swapped the tow-line to Angie's.
 
"I should have radioed in our destination coordinates before we left the station," Edgar bemoaned as they picked up speed again, side-by-side. "I think we'll need to chuck the antenna now." Angie looked back, where the bulky antenna used to broadcast long-range radio signals protruded from their towed luggage. That proved to be a mistake.
 
Edgar barely had time to point out ahead the huge fissure that had formed, setting one section of ice several feet higher than the one next to it. Angie swerved, trying to steer clear of it, but her snowmobile's rail caught in the snow and toppled. The sled she had been towing whizzed past, crashing into the fissure. It slid down to icy oblivion, and began tugging Angie's with it. Edgar turned his vehicle aside to check on the girl, who'd been thrown off entirely, and by the time he realized it, the second snowmobile was far out of his reach, and drifting towards the crack in the ice.
 
"Angie! Angie, are you OK?"
 
"I.. think I'm OK..." she mumbled. "Kinda bruised up my nose some... Shit, I'm sorry."
 
"As long as you're OK, that's what matters," he told her, brushing snow out of her face, which sure enough was pink with scrapes and developing bruises. "I want you to get out of here alive, no matter what."
 
Faintly, tears crystallized into icicles on the corners of Angie's eyes. "Promise?"
 
"Yeah. Promise." He leaned in and kissed her, passionately.
 
But with only one snowmobile left, and the one with the least fuel at that, the outlook was bleak. They had lost most of their gear, too, so they chucked all the barest of essentials and set off riding tandem. The long polar sun was finally dipping low in the sky when they heard a raging crack and rumble behind them. Edgar brought the snowmobile to a puttering stop on a ridge to look. The two watched as ice, from a little ways back all the way until the horizon, slipped lower and broke up into hunks of glacier littering the ocean. It was armageddon before their eyes: everything cracked and collapsed and sunk away to nothing. But they had made it. The icy land they stood on held firm.
 
They set up a temporary camp, shaping snow into walls to block the chill wind. Edgar evaluated what little they had: food enough to last a couple days; a snow shovel; a two-way radio, capable of transmitting a few miles at least; a map and digital compass; and a bag with two dozen flares, half of them expired, that might be used to signal for help. The snowmobile was so low on gas it might not even start.
 
They tried diligently to contact help through the radio, but to no avail. Angie declined her share of the food, claiming she wasn't feeling hungry, and let Edgar save it for another day. They set off a couple of the expired flares, which luckily still lit. Their snow walls became a snow hut, a primitive igloo. Inside was warm, at least by comparison to outside. Edgar traced a path they could take which would bring them closer to shore, in case of a seaside rescue.
 
But nobody came. After some days, Angie started nibbling on the food as well. Their stores ran thinner all the time. And the pervasive cold began to truly sink in. Edgar had thought himself used to the cold of the South Pole, but by now he realized that the cozy station he'd lived in for the last year and a half was a mockery of the pole's true cold. More and more, his subconscious reminded him of a place that was warm and comfortable all around. He couldn't help but wonder if Angie was looking at him strangely sometimes, too.
 
They tried setting off a dozen flares at once, to attract attention. Nothing came. Then the food ran out entirely. The two of them huddled together for warmth. And he found himself speaking.
 
"Angie. I want you to start over. Know that, somewhere, there'll always be someone who loves you for what you are. Be true to yourself, no matter what."
 
"What are you saying, all of a sudden?"
 
"Remember the promise I made on the way here? 'No matter what'?" She nodded silently.
 
"That means, I've got to do whatever it takes to get you out of here, even if I don't make it..." He pulled her coat down over her shoulders to show what he meant.
 
"No... you can't..." she said, but at the same time, she was already undoing his jacket. Her body knew this was exactly what she wanted. Not a word was said thereafter.
 
Soon both were nude, laying on what warm blankets and clothes they had in their makeshift igloo, and Edgar was kissing her like he'd never kissed a woman before, squeezing and holding and stroking her all over with the vigor of a man consigned to one final act. Angie responded in kind, cherishing the unconditional love she had found in the most unlikely of places. Her body readied itself like it had never before, and as Edgar leaned in to kiss her most secret place, it parted open for him, her legs separating almost on their own, leaving a humid void that was soon filled with his head.
 
Her pussy worked quickly, enveloping his head in one motion and stretching towards his shoulders. Edgar wriggled sublimely, and her labia doubled over his shoulderblades, racing down his arms and spine. She felt his essence penetrating her, and welcomed him, opened for him, absorbed him. Involuntarily, her hips thrust off the ground and down again, her vagina swallowing Edgar's body more and more with each push. Soon only his lower half remained, but still she spread herself open for him, and still he pushed to enter her. His member rubbed against her rippling insides, which gorged themselves on his length. Soon, Angie could reach his feet with her hands, so she did, and squeezed them, squeezed him all over as hard as she could, to let him know how much she loved him for this and for everything. He responded, as best he could, pushing against her inner walls with all he had, surging downward into her infinity. Her vaginal lips covered his thighs in warm, thick, gooey loveliness, and lapped up his feet with glee. Finally, a slick sound echoed throughout the snow enclosure as Edgar departed the outside world and took up final residence inside of the gloriously warm interior of the girl's body. Angie's cleft sealed shut, consigning her resident to his fate. Edgar welcomed it gladly.
 
* * *
 
"SOUTH POLE BASE LOST," read the headline. "An ice-sheet collapse has environmental scientists and navy engineers shocked over the amount of surface lost into the south Atlantic this past month, including a section of the Great Antarctic Ice Sheet that once held a naval research base. The base has vanished into the ocean, along with all three of its residents at the time: Navy Ensign Edgar Williams, gynecologist Jean Zylweiger, and the infamous 'maneater' Angela Robbins, who was sent to the base for her own safety just months before the collapse. The three are presumed dead, although rescue missions have been undertaken. Colonel Alfred Knight, who was transferred out of the base for medical reasons just before the collapse, was shocked to hear of the ice sheet's destruction..."
 
The girl with the auburn hair tossed aside the paper. She didn't need to read any more of it. Instead, she preferred to listen to the sounds of the port, the gulls conversing with the thickly-accented Portuguese of the sailors. She took in the sea breeze, and contemplated how much longer she might stay here. She patted her belly, which bulged with life. She supposed it would depend on him, too. No matter. She could wait.
 
END.