He seemed certain that something lay within this ice cave, pressing forward with unwavering determination.
Still shaken, I glanced back at the space behind Kevin.
It was pitch black — seeming to hold nothing, and yet seeming to hold everything.
I reassured myself: How could there be anything? I was just seeing things. We'd made it this far without encountering anything.
"Let's go!"
"Coming!" I shouldered my pack and caught up with Professor Marshall.
I didn't see the small, dark opening in the ice wall not far behind Kevin, exhaling a faint, ghostly chill.
---
Another half hour of descent, and Professor Marshall suddenly stopped.
I walked straight into Marcus's back.
He was carrying both his pack and Professor Marshall's, and something inside them jammed painfully into my chest.
"What's wrong?" I rubbed my forehead and peered around Marcus. "Why'd we stop?"
Professor Marshall stood rooted, his face ashen. Before him were two ice caves, roughly the same size.
Deep and dark, like twin maws of some beast.
The flashlight beams bent and twisted inside, illuminating barely ten meters before being swallowed by blackness.
"This..." Marcus scratched his head. "Professor, which way do we go?"
Professor Marshall didn't answer. He stared at the twin openings, each breath clouding into white vapor.
"That's not right..." I heard him mutter to himself.
What wasn't right? Nature's hand could carve anything — let alone two holes in the ice.
Professor Marshall's hands opened and closed at his sides, the frost on his gloves crackling with each squeeze.
Serena tugged timidly at my sleeve. "Professor, maybe we should go back. Let the expedition team handle this."
She was right. Our theses were important, but our lives mattered more.
Further down, who knew how many branching tunnels there were? Would we ever find our way out again?
We might freeze to death in here.
Professor Marshall turned to look at Serena, and something feral flashed through his eyes.
He snorted. "Don't you want to graduate? We've made it this far. Keep moving!"
I was taken aback.
In all the time I'd known him, I'd never seen Professor Marshall like this. He'd always been a quiet, solitary chain-smoker.
He cursed plenty and never put out his cigarettes, but he was decent to us students — found us work, never skimmed our pay, even dipped into his own pocket to help out sometimes.
But now he stood there like a different person — obstinate, fierce.
Serena seemed cowed, shrinking behind me without another word.
I frowned and stepped forward. "Professor, I don't want to go on either."
Professor Marshall's mental state was clearly off. Whether from the pressure of his research or the cold addling his brain, something was wrong.
Any rational person could see we should turn back immediately.
Marcus agreed. "Yeah, Professor, we're not going right this second. Let's go back to the research station, get proper equipment, and come back."
Professor Marshall's eyelids flickered, and a cold, venomous light seeped through.
"Fine. So none of you want to graduate, is that it?
If you don't go forward today, none of you are graduating when we get back.
Try me."
He was threatening us outright. The mask had come off completely.
I was dumbfounded. I couldn't fathom why Professor Marshall was so obsessed.
Was being the first to discover an unknown organism really that important?
We weren't aiming for a Nobel Prize. A share of the credit would have been plenty.
Marcus scowled. "Professor, what's wrong with you?"
Professor Marshall didn't answer. He just glared at us like an aging lone wolf, his gaze lingering on me and Serena with unnerving intensity.
An oppressive silence settled over the group. None of us spoke.
In that suffocating quiet, I suddenly realized Kevin hadn't said a word this entire time.
I turned to look at him. He stood at the back of the group, his face utterly expressionless as he stared at the tunnels ahead.
And then I saw the most horrifying thing I would ever witness in my life.
---
Behind Kevin, a creature entirely pale and corpselike was extending a hand — if you could call it that — with three long claws, reaching over his shoulder.
The thing had four limbs, humanoid in proportions, but its lower legs were bent backward like a kangaroo's. Its face held two dark, empty holes, and below them stretched a long horizontal slit that split its head nearly in two.
Pure terror blanked my mind. I lunged forward. "Kevin! Watch out—!!!"
Before I could finish, the creature hooked Kevin and yanked him backward with lightning speed.
In the blink of an eye, it had dragged him into the darkness and vanished.
Marcus had seen it too. He lunged forward to give chase.
Then something made our blood run even colder. From an ice wall mere feet away, another pale-white creature emerged from a dark opening.
Its mouth gaped wide — its head looked as if it had been split down the middle. Its sickly white skin resembled a corpse floating in formaldehyde, or some creature that had been flayed of all its fur.
A long, pale tongue dangled from its jaw. It let out a shriek and charged straight at us!
"Holy shit!" Marcus roared.
I was so terrified I nearly left my body. A humanoid creature I'd never seen before, crawling on all fours and racing toward me through the dark ice cave — not even my worst nightmares had conjured anything like this!
I spun to run, tripped on a chunk of ice, and stumbled.
The creature was almost on me. I could feel its cold breath. Marcus grabbed my arm and hauled me into the right tunnel, running as if his life depended on it.
Marcus had been a sprinter on the university track team, and when he exploded into motion, it was like riding a rocket. I was practically flying beside him, practically being carried — I swear he was leaving afterimages!
At that moment, Marcus was possessed. He was faster than I could believe.
With speed like that, why was this guy getting a PhD? He should have been at the Olympics, winning gold for his country!
We ran for our lives, legs churning, lungs burning, until I couldn't run another step and Marcus finally slowed down.
"Holy... holy shit... I'm... I'm gonna die..." he panted.
He set me down and anxiously checked behind us, gasping for breath. "We... lost it, right?"
I nodded, wheezing so hard I thought my lungs would come out my mouth. "Lost it. With your speed, you could've outrun a missile!"
Marcus was still shaking. "What the hell was that thing?! I wasn't seeing things, right?"
I didn't answer. I didn't know what it was.
It looked human, but it had nothing to do with humanity.
Marcus's breathing slowed. In a low voice, he said, "Kevin—"
He didn't finish, and I couldn't continue.
We both knew that whatever had taken Kevin wasn't looking for a welcome party.
Kevin was most likely dead.
We fell silent, the weight of it pressing down on us.
Then my chaotic brain cleared for just a moment.
I looked up.
"Where are Professor Marshall and Serena?"
---
It hit us both at once.
In the chaos, Professor Marshall and Serena had vanished.
Marcus tried to recall. "I think I saw the Professor pulling Serena into the left tunnel. We went the wrong way."
Professor Marshall. Serena.
A nearly sixty-year-old man and a girl who still wore lipstick in Antarctica.
My heart sank.
With their physical stamina, they were practically serving themselves on a platter.
Their fate was probably no better than Kevin's.
Marcus and I looked at each other. We could both read the dread and grief in the other's eyes.
Behind us, an unknown number of creatures.
Ahead, maybe none. Maybe more.
We were boxed in — wolves behind, tigers ahead, trapped in this narrow passage with no way forward and no way back.
The atmosphere turned brutal. Marcus mumbled, "What do we do?"
What could we do?
Going back was unthinkable — that was just delivering ourselves as appetizers.
But would going forward lead to any way out?
Based on what we'd seen, that hundred-meter creature wasn't going to be a cute whale. God only knew what kind of horror it was.
These one-meter creatures had already backed us into a corner. If something a hundred meters long came along, we might as well just kill ourselves.
For all we knew, it was lurking under the ice right now, waiting for us to become its midday snack.
We were trapped. My mind raced but found no answer.
After a long pause, I gritted my teeth. "Let's keep going. Going back is certain death — we'd have to fight those things hand-to-hand.
We don't have a choice anyway. Might as well go forward. Maybe there's a way out ahead."
Marcus was big but not exactly decisive. He was usually the one cracking jokes and following everyone else's lead in the lab — whatever we said, he did.
Sometimes I wondered how someone with absolute brawn and absolute simplicity had gotten into a PhD program.
In his own words: sheer dumb luck.
Seeing my decision to press on, Marcus nodded. "Makes sense. Maybe we'll walk our way out of here."
I said nothing.
We both knew that possibility was near zero. It was just self-comfort.
The further down we went, the narrower the passage became.
Marcus had to duck his head to keep moving. He grumbled under his breath, "My neck hurts. I already had bad cervical vertebrae."
I told him to deal with it. A sore neck was better than becoming something's snack.
"Fair enough."
I was silently grateful.
Thank God I wasn't alone down here. In this nightmare place, I'd have scared myself to death.
Having Marcus beside me, someone to talk to — that was a lifeline.
We walked for a while. Suddenly, I felt a cold breath on the back of my neck.
Like someone was blowing on my nape.
Then — drip. A drop of liquid hit my jacket and fell to the ground, echoing faintly in the dark, deep ice cave.
Where would water come from in a cave this cold?
A terrible premonition crawled up my spine. I turned my head, one excruciating degree at a time.
A huge, corpselike face was inches from mine. I could even see the dense wrinkles on its skin, the gaping white mouth with remnants of crimson flesh inside.
We stared at each other for three seconds.
My mind went blank. Terror had overridden every function — I couldn't even scream.
Then the scream trapped in my throat finally broke free, shattering off the cave walls and echoing through the chamber.
"AHHHHH—!"
The creature flinched at the sound, staggering back two steps. I seized the moment and shoved Marcus. "FUCKING RUN!!!"
Marcus snapped out of it. He looked back, cursed, and took off like a rocket again, dragging me behind him.
The tunnel was so narrow he had to run with his neck craned sideways, stumbling like a goose with a broken neck, bumping against the walls several times.
Human potential is limitless. I used to think those stories about mothers lifting cars off their trapped children were just feel-good propaganda. Now I understood my own ignorance!
My feet were practically sparking.
Put me on the African savanna right now and I could outrun a cheetah!
"Ahhh—!"
Marcus let out a sudden scream of pain.