I had no words. The ice axe slipped from my fingers without my noticing.
Kevin turned to look at me. "Chloe, the cure you're carrying — it was extracted from the bone marrow of that white unknown organism."
"The creature is strange."
"It is both poison and antidote."
"Pour the cure into the Conversion Pool, and the Matriarch will die completely."
His eyes blazed with desperate intensity. He grabbed my hand and pleaded:
"Kill her! Follow the path behind me straight ahead, and you'll reach the Matriarch's chamber!"
"The White Ones have caught your scent! You won't be able to escape!"
"The previous generation of White Ones are dead. The current ones are my former teammates. They've been trapped in this lightless underground for twenty years. Set them free!"
Deep suffering carved itself across his face.
"Chloe, this mistake has existed for nearly a century."
"We failed to end it. I'm begging you — end it. Otherwise, when the Matriarch matures and gets out, the entire world will become a living hell!"
Finally, Kevin's voice dropped to almost nothing.
"Zhang Gui — 'Zhang returns.' But I can never go back."
"I'm sorry, Chloe."
As he finished speaking, his entire body melted like ice cream under a blazing sun, rapidly dissolving into a pool of liquid that couldn't even freeze.
---
Kevin was dead.
I sat slumped on the ground.
My ice axe clattered to the floor with a dull thud.
Of the five of us who came to Antarctica, only three remained.
I crouched down and covered my face with my hands.
Marcus's body had gone completely cold, like the ice surrounding us.
His face was tinged blue. He lay there, silent and still.
I fantasized that he might suddenly open his eyes and say, "I'm not dead. Just messing with you. Look at you, such a coward."
But I knew that was just wishful thinking.
I knelt beside Marcus's body and gently touched his cheek, adjusting his hair.
"I'm sorry I can't give you a proper burial."
I forced a smile that looked worse than crying.
"I have to go save the world now. Your spirit better watch over me."
"If I succeed, I'll petition for a hero's plot for you. If I fail, we'll be companions on the road to the afterlife."
"I'll come back and hold you while we die. When they dig us out in ten thousand years, they'll make a movie about us."
Marcus didn't respond. He just lay there quietly.
One of his hands was tucked inside his jacket, as though reaching for something.
I took a deep breath and reached into his clothing.
Following his cold fingers, I found a small metal square — it felt like a phone.
The screen still held a faint trace of warmth, probably from being kept against his body to prevent the battery from dying.
I picked it up and the white light of the screen flickered on.
The lock screen wallpaper was someone I knew well.
It was me, grinning ear to ear at a baby seal in the snow, looking happier than anyone had a right to be.
Marcus had taken it secretly when we were watching the seals.
No wonder he'd refused to show me what he was photographing that day.
In that moment, my heart went through a meat grinder, shredding what was left of my frozen heart into bloody chunks, with ice crystals wedged between every piece — cold and agonizing.
I doubled over, the pain nearly suffocating me.
For one instant, I wanted to lie down beside him, hold him, and freeze to death right here.
To hell with Professor Marshall, Kevin, the monsters, and saving the world!
I was done.
---
But in the end, I wiped my face, stood up, picked up my and Marcus's packs, and walked toward the path behind me.
Behind me lay a dark ice tunnel, concealing god knows what horrors.
This time, no one was left to protect me.
But I had nothing left to fear.
---
I felt like I'd become a machine.
I couldn't feel the cold or the exhaustion. I just walked mechanically in the direction Kevin had indicated.
After a long time, I reached another ice chamber.
This one had been cut from the side, much smaller than the one Marcus and I had found.
I ducked low and stepped in carefully.
Unlike the first lab, which was meticulously carved, this one seemed to have been hastily dug out.
The walls were rough, still bearing the marks of shovels.
The space was tiny — only a few square meters — and the ceiling so low I had to crouch to move.
But the floor was covered in scattered documents, papers, and photographs.
I still couldn't read the documents — just numbers I recognized. I stuffed them into my pack to study later.
That dog Marcus, claiming he'd studied German in college. He couldn't even qualify as a half-assed translator.
Waiting for him to translate would be worse than guessing myself.
I tried to smile, but my lips wouldn't cooperate. Instead, my heart seized with a sharp, twisting pain.
I crouched and gathered the photographs from the floor.
They were old and yellowed. Someone had clearly left in a hurry, scattering photos everywhere in their panic.
Brushing the frost from the top photo, I saw a pretty blonde girl smiling at the camera.
The black-and-white photo was smudged with dark stains, some parts blurry, but her golden hair still seemed to gleam like silk in the sunlight.
I flipped through a few more. The same blonde girl appeared in each.
In one, she wore a dress, her cinched waist as supple and slender as a willow branch.
As I kept going, the smile gradually faded from her face.
She was sitting inside a cage, her body massive and bloated, her skin pale.
Her figure had swollen grotesquely — her once-slender waist had ballooned as if inflated with air.
Her eyes had lost their luster, dried up like raisins in the sun.
Her silk-gold hair had fallen out, revealing a strange and ghastly bald head.
My hands trembled slightly.
This was the last photo where the girl still looked human.
One more photo, and she was gone entirely.
In her place was a pale, immense mountain of flesh.
Several White Ones clustered around her like worker ants surrounding their queen — grotesque, nauseating.
A number was marked at the bottom: 002.
My heart kept shrinking.
Did 002 mean this was the second experimental Matriarch?
Then where was 001?
Were there 003, 004, 005?
I didn't know.
All I knew was that in a handful of photos, a young woman whose smile outshone the spring sun had been transformed into a monster.
Experimentation. War.
The truth was, there were no monsters.
Humans were the most terrible monsters of all.
I put the photos in my pack and squeezed out of the chamber, continuing forward.
A beam of light suddenly appeared in the distance — it looked like a flashlight.
My heart sank. I ducked behind a corner in the ice wall.
Of the five of us who'd entered, Marcus and Kevin were both dead.
The only ones who could be using a flashlight now were Professor Marshall and Serena.
My feelings toward Professor Marshall were complicated.
He'd been a respected and beloved teacher. Now he was the devil who'd pushed us into hell.
I wanted to believe Kevin was lying — that he'd made it all up to trick me.
But Professor Marshall's obstinacy, the yellowed photo of Sylvia, and the monstrous creatures in the ice chamber all corroborated each other.
Marcus's death was directly tied to Professor Marshall.
If I confronted him now, either Serena or I would be converted into the Matriarch, and the other would probably be silenced.
My heart pounded. I didn't dare show myself.
I had to save myself — and save Serena!
The instant Professor Marshall's head appeared around the corner, I raised my ice axe and smashed it down!
I used the blunt end — I wanted to knock him out and tie him up first.
But in a flash, another ice axe appeared, deflecting my blow against the back of Professor Marshall's neck!
Metal struck metal with a deafening clang!
I stumbled back and stared — the ice axe belonged to Serena!
She gripped it tight, eyes wide. "Chloe?!"
I was frantic. "Are you crazy? Why'd you block me?"
She stammered, "I thought it was one of those White things! Wait—" She caught herself. "Why are you attacking the professor?!"
Professor Marshall had recovered by now. His heavy-lidded eyes fixed on me with undisguised malice.
I had no doubt — he genuinely wanted me dead.