My heart skipped. I reached out with trembling fingers to check for breath.
For a long time, I felt nothing.
I held my hand there until my arm went numb and I could hold it up no longer.
He was gone. No breath at all.
---
I collapsed, my legs giving out beneath me.
It turns out that in extreme grief, you can't even cry.
I just felt a crushing tightness in my chest, an exhaustion that penetrated to my bones.
I was numb. I didn't know what to do or where to go.
A weak cough came from beside me. I startled, then was disappointed to see Kevin pulling himself up.
He dragged himself inch by inch until he leaned against the ice wall.
I picked up my ice axe and walked toward him.
I was going to kill him.
"Chloe." Kevin sensed my approach. He looked up at me, and a single tear rolled from his eye, hitting the ground and freezing into a tiny bead of ice.
His face was expressionless, but a deep, secret anguish lived in his eyes.
"Drop the act," I said, looking down at him. "Any last words?"
Kevin pressed a hand to his stomach and caught his breath. He turned with effort to look at Marcus's body.
He wiped the tear track from his face.
"Chloe, I know you want to kill me to avenge Marcus. I won't stop you."
"You couldn't." I raised my ice axe.
"Chloe, do you want to know the truth about this place?"
Kevin gave a bitter laugh. "I'm going to die anyway. No need to rush. Just hear me out."
I paused, then lowered my axe. "Talk."
"My real name isn't Kevin Zhang. It's Zhang Lun. I'm the Zhang Lun from the photograph."
My chest tightened. Of course. That whole "uncle" story had been fabricated to fool us.
Whose uncle would look almost identical to his nephew?
But none of us had wanted to suspect him. We'd deluded ourselves into believing that ridiculous explanation.
"Before we left, someone called you and told you not to come, right?"
I nodded. "How do you know?"
Kevin's lips twisted.
"That call was from me. It was the last time I regained my sanity."
He stopped covering his stomach. His hands dropped to his sides as he stared at the light reflecting off the ice, or perhaps through the ice, at something far, far away.
"Do you remember when I told you that in 1997, a joint British-American expedition detected a sound wave at an extremely high frequency in these waters?"
"The frequency didn't match any known biological signature."
"Based on wavelength and duration, they estimated the creature was enormous — over a hundred meters."
"I wasn't trying to scare you. That was real."
"Twenty years ago, a few of us came to investigate what was producing that signal. We had the same idea as you — research, fame, glory."
"Expedition Ship 1740 — that was the vessel I took to Antarctica on my first trip."
Kevin turned his head with effort to look at me:
"You saw the notebook, right? At first we found nothing."
"Then, a few days later, we detected the signal again inside an ice cave."
"After that, we followed that signal down here, just like you did."
"Unfortunately, not long after descending, we encountered the White Ones."
"We stumbled upon a vial of the cure and managed to kill the previous Matriarch."
"But by then, Sylvia had already been captured and transformed."
"Only three of us made it out alive. We were going to sail back and get help."
"But the White Ones tracked our scent to the ship. My two companions were dragged off. I was the only one who survived — I hid in the cargo hold and soaked my clothes in alcohol so they couldn't find me."
Now I understood. The black stains in the notebook — they were blood. Blood that had darkened over decades.
"Then what is that creature?"
Kevin forced a smile.
"They're not subterranean humans or prehistoric creatures. They're real, living people."
"They were forcibly turned into this."
That was the first time I'd heard Kevin swear.
His voice was thick with hatred:
"In 1930, the Germans dredged up an unknown white organism from the deep waters near Antarctica."
"Strangely, this organism could divide its cells infinitely and rapidly. Whether you burned, froze, chopped, or put it in a vacuum, it couldn't be killed."
"Something like a tardigrade. You know what those are, right?"
"Even in the vacuum of space, tardigrades survive."
I nodded. "And then?"
Kevin's voice dropped.
"But unlike tardigrades, this organism could bond with human female genes."
"No surgery required. A woman just had to drink its blood, and she would transform into what you just saw."
"A transformed woman acts like a queen ant, converting every man within a certain radius into a White One — like me."
"White Ones are impervious to blades and fire. Perfect biological weapons."
"I don't know the exact method of conversion, but like Medusa's gaze, simply being near the Matriarch gradually turns you into a White One."
"The only relief is that until they mature, they can't move — they just slowly wait."
"How long until it matures?" I asked.
Kevin shook his head. "Unknown. The Germans discovered that White Ones only obeyed the Matriarch and totally ignored human commands."
"And the Matriarch's conversion of White Ones was uncontrollable — many experimenters became White Ones themselves."
"They got scared and halted the project, so most of the data is incomplete."
"So far, there's never been a fully mature Matriarch."
"The Germans stopped the experiments but couldn't bring themselves to destroy such valuable specimens. So they sealed the Matriarch and her converted White Ones beneath the ice, planning to resume later."
"Germany was in chaos after losing the war, and this was a classified project."
"Eventually, the people who knew about it probably all died. This place was forgotten, left alone for decades."
"But the Matriarch was somehow able to melt through the ice and release the White Ones."
"According to the experimental records, the ideal host for a Matriarch is a woman between twenty and thirty with type B blood. But the original test subject wasn't type B, so that Matriarch was imperfect — she's dying before full maturity."
My heart lurched.
I was type B. If I remembered correctly, so was Serena.
Was that a coincidence, or—
He turned to face me, his eyes holding unspeakable pain. "So she emitted a signal, trying to attract a new Matriarch before she died."
A flash of clarity cut through my mind. I remembered the massive brown area atop the flesh mountain.
A terrible suspicion formed.
"So the new Matriarch..."
"Exactly." Kevin nodded, lowering his voice. "The new Matriarch is Sylvia — our teammate."
"Professor Marshall's wife."
Goosebumps rippled across my skin.
The once-respectable Professor Marshall twisted before my eyes.
"Then why did he bring us here? And what about the Lake Trib samples?"
Kevin shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe the White Ones had burrowed a tunnel to the lake and left samples there."
"But even without those samples, Professor Marshall would have found an excuse to bring you here."
He seemed tired. He closed his eyes to rest, gathering strength before continuing. "Professor Marshall must have come looking for Sylvia later. He actually found this place — lucky bastard."
"He probably found the documents in another lab."
"Before it matures, the Matriarch can't move. Only when a Conversion Pool is linked to a new Matriarch can the old one detach."
"Marshall brought you here to replace Sylvia."
"Only when you become the new Matriarch can Sylvia be freed."
In that instant, it felt like a hole had been punched through my chest, and freezing wind whistled through from every direction, turning my blood to ice.
So we were nothing but replacement tools in Professor Marshall's eyes.
No wonder he'd been so anxious.
He was rushing us to our deaths!
No — becoming one of those things was worse than death! My nails dug into my palms, but I felt no pain.
"Can she still be turned back?"
Kevin gave a bitter, mocking smile. "Skin can stretch, but it can't shrink back."
"Marshall is delusional. Sylvia has become a full Matriarch. Her humanity is long gone."
"Transformation is irreversible. Once it starts, there's no going back."
I was quiet for a moment before asking, "And... the rest of your team?"
Kevin's voice was barely above a whisper. "After Sylvia became the Matriarch, everyone who was there was converted into White Ones."
"The three of us who escaped didn't know it yet, because the changes hadn't appeared."
"But when I barely made it back with the documents, I realized my body was undergoing the same transformations as a White One."
"My skin started whitening. I shrank. And—" He grimaced. "And I kept hearing the summons. The Matriarch's voice was always inside my head, calling me back, commanding me to be her child again."
"Sylvia had just become the Matriarch, so her conversion power was probably still weak. I lived in terror for years, only to discover that aside from these changes, I could maintain a basically human form."
"At first, I could still hold on to my human consciousness. It was always stronger than the rest."
"But over time, I slowly lost myself. I became a White One wearing human skin."
"I started to feel like this was my home. These monsters were my family."
He turned to look at me, his eyes holding a pain that would never dissolve.
"I was never fully converted, but I'm no longer human."
"I became something in between — a monster that belongs nowhere."