Before my horrified eyes, the tentacle seized Professor Marshall.
"Sylvia...?" Marshall murmured, both hands groping along the bulge-covered tentacle in confusion.
Before he could finish, the tentacle wrenched tight—
Marshall's pupils dilated violently as he stared blankly at the mountain of flesh before him.
The blood in his body was squeezed upward in a frenzy, his face swelling crimson, veins bulging from his forehead.
Blood trickled from his eyes and nostrils.
"Sylvia... Sylvia..." he strained to say.
Two seconds later, the tentacle wrenched with brutal force, and Marshall was snapped in half like a sausage.
Intestines spilled from his upper body. He wore an expression of sheer disbelief, blood bubbles gurgling from his mouth.
His lower half tumbled aside. His upper body dug its fingers desperately into the ice.
He thrashed wildly, writhing like a bug whose body had been stepped on, dragging himself inch by inch toward the mountain of flesh.
As though, in his final moments, he still wanted to be just a little closer to Sylvia.
Blood gushed from the severed wound. Marshall's face visibly withered before my eyes.
I saw his lips tremble slightly, as though he wanted to say something.
But in the end, he said nothing at all.
After one last twitch, he went still.
Marshall's corpse lay with eyes wide open, staring toward the mountain of flesh.
As if looking through it to see that girl with the birthmark on her face, laughing wild and free.
From beginning to end, apart from the name "Sylvia," he never managed to say another word.
---
The tentacles swiftly burrowed into Marshall's torn body, drawing out the blood within.
Crimson liquid flowed upward along the pale tentacles, which took on a sickly romantic pinkish hue.
I stared at the spectacle, stunned.
Blood and fragments of organs kept streaming upward. The Matriarch's umbilical cord stirred again.
This time the movement was more violent. I snapped out of my daze, grabbed the antidote, and sprinted toward the Conversion Pool.
I couldn't let this thing break free!
Even though Sylvia wasn't fully mature, she possessed conversion abilities. Unleashing such a monster upon the world would be beyond catastrophic!
A heartbeat before the umbilical cord lifted completely, I lunged forward with everything I had, smashing the vial against the edge of the Conversion Pool. Shards of glass bit deep into my hand as blood mixed with green liquid and streamed down into the pool.
The mountain of flesh froze. A deathly silence fell over everything.
But less than three seconds later, it convulsed violently. Ice chunks rained down from all sides as the Matriarch hurled itself against the ice walls, shrieking in agony.
The sound was like nails scraping a blackboard, like metal grinding against metal with a screeching "skreee." I clamped my hands over my ears, and a hot rush bled from my nostrils.
It felt like someone was stirring my brain with a stick. The pain was so fierce I could barely breathe, my mind going completely blank.
Massive chunks of ice crashed down all around, thundering against the floor, punching crater after crater into the frozen ground.
For an instant, I was certain the entire ice chamber would collapse!
I don't know how long it took before the wails finally weakened.
The mountain of flesh sagged there like rotten cotton wadding, motionless.
My brain throbbed with agony, my back screamed with pain, and I collapsed to the ground, completely drained.
I twisted my head with effort to look at the deflated mass of flesh. Not a trace of movement remained.
It was dead.
Sylvia was dead.
---
It was over. Finally over.
Ninety years of error—this chaotic, evil species that should never have existed—the innocent expedition members sealed here, reduced to things neither human nor ghost.
All of it, released at last.
I lay on the ground, gasping for breath, staring straight up at the vault of the ice cave.
Beside me, the mountain of flesh melted like a candle, pooling slowly into a layer of transparent liquid tinged with a faint trace of red.
That was Marshall's blood.
The ice cave was utterly silent, so still you could hear a pin drop.
I couldn't help but let out a bitter smile.
Marcus's spirit must have been watching over me.
He really had blessed me.
Blessed me into killing this monster!
After resting for a while, I forced myself to my feet despite the screaming pain in my back, my whole body trembling.
Not far away, Marshall's body was gradually soaked by the transparent fluid melting from the mountain of flesh.
I looked at his unblinking eyes and felt something complicated twist inside me.
To save the wife who had become a monster, Professor Marshall had schemed relentlessly and callously sacrificed all our lives.
To us, he was an irredeemable bastard.
But to Sylvia, what a devoted husband he had been.
He had guarded her for half a lifetime, waited for her for half a lifetime, given his entire heart and life to Sylvia alone.
And in the end, he died by her hand too.
If Marshall had known he would die here, would he still have come to save Sylvia?
Perhaps he still would have.
Now the two of them had died together. If Marshall could know, maybe he'd think it was a fitting end.
I bent down and picked up the bag from the ground.
As I grabbed it, I suddenly remembered Serena still lay off to one side.
I walked over. She lay by the Conversion Pool, hair fanned out, her back to me, utterly still.
I knelt and gently nudged her, a wave of helplessness washing over me.
Serena must have been successfully converted—otherwise Sylvia couldn't have detached.
She still looked unchanged for now, but soon she would become the same kind of monster.
Just like in the photograph.
From a bright, beautiful girl into a disgusting mountain of flesh.
Serena cared so much about her looks. How could she bear knowing she'd become something so hideous?
I clutched the last vial, an icy dread settling in my chest.
I couldn't let Serena live on.
I had already killed the transformed Kevin and Sylvia, but by then they had lost all human form and consciousness.
Yet Serena still looked beautiful and pale, a thread of viscous fluid at the corner of her lips, frost crystallized in her hair.
My grip on the vial loosened, then tightened again. I couldn't bring myself to do it.
After nudging her several times, Serena finally stirred awake.
She saw me, and a flicker of joy crossed her face—then she spotted the vial in my hand, and the color drained from her face instantly.
I understood at once. Marshall must have told her everything.
I hung my head, unable to meet her expression.
Serena said nothing. She slowly sat upright.
Neither of us spoke.
For the first time, silence felt suffocating.
---
After a long while, she gave a low laugh.
"I really had it coming. You tried to save me back then, and I actually believed Marshall—thought you were hogging all the credit for yourself."
She shook her head. "Then again, you could barely graduate. Where would you find the brains to murder anyone?"
I said nothing.
Normally, whoever spoke first between Serena and me would end up trading barbs for hours. But now my throat felt clogged, and I couldn't form a single word.
"Where's Marshall?" Serena looked around.
I pointed at his bisected corpse. "Killed by Sylvia."
Serena fell silent. After a beat, she spat. "Old bastard. Serves him right!"
"Worked himself to death scheming for god knows what, and he's the one who got me killed. Damn it!"
She turned away, opened her bag, and pulled out a phone wrapped in an absurd fluffy pink rabbit case, holding it out to me.
"Passcode's 956822. First address on my Taobao is my home—the second one's my boyfriend's."
"Do me a favor. When you get back, let them know."
"There are my photos on the phone. Give them to my mom. Tell her not to think about me too much—she's still young enough to have another kid."
"When you go back, check on my parents for me, tell them—"
Her voice cracked. "Tell them I didn't suffer when I died. Don't tell them I'm missing. Antarctica is freezing—if they come looking for me, their old bones won't survive it."
I took the phone in silence. My eyes burned, but perhaps I had cried too much today. My eyes were dry, and no tears would come.
"Hey," Serena nudged me. Her lipstick was long gone, leaving her face pale and washed out.
It was the first time I'd ever seen her without makeup.
She was pretty. Way more fresh-faced than when she was caked in cosmetics.
She actually looked like a girl in her twenties now.
"What are you standing there for? I might start converting any minute, and you won't be able to take me then."
She squeezed her eyes shut. A tear rolled down her cheek. "Go on."
My hands trembled as I uncapped the vial, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.
"Serena..."
Serena wiped her tears and gave me a smile that looked worse than crying. "Come off it. You must be thrilled—no one's going to sabotage you ever again."
Her tears no longer froze. They fell with soft pats against the ground, splashing into tiny droplets.
"Chloe, just do it. You're not going to make me kill myself, are you? That would be too cruel!"
The green liquid in the vial sloshed violently. I squeezed my eyes shut, and a single tear froze into ice on my lashes.
I reached out and gently poured the antidote over Serena's body.
She flinched as if scalded, her voice carrying a thread of restrained agony: "...It kind of hurts."
"Hey," she said, looking at me earnestly.
My eyes were red, and I couldn't speak a word—I could only stare at her.
Serena was beautiful. Her skin was pale, her eyes bright as stars, thick lashes casting fine shadows across her face.
When she smiled, it was as though stars fell into her eyes, and the entire ice chamber seemed to brighten.
"Chloe," her voice fell softly into the air.
"I'll bless you. You have to live."
With that, she dissolved before my eyes—rapidly melting into a puddle of water.
---
How I made it out of the ice cave, I don't remember anymore.
I only remember that dark passageway feeling impossibly long, as though I walked through it for an entire lifetime.
And yet it also seemed to pass in an instant, and suddenly I saw the light of day ahead.
Stepping outside, a blinding whiteness engulfed me.
In Antarctica, even the sunlight feels cold. It struck my skin, and I couldn't suppress a violent shiver.
Standing in the daylight, I felt as though a lifetime had passed.
It had only been one day, but it felt like I had lived an entire existence inside that cave.
When we went in, the five of us had been chatting and laughing.
When I came out, I was the only one left.
Marcus, Serena, Kevin, Professor Marshall—their faces flickered through my mind like a spinning lantern. I reached out to grasp them, but my fingers closed on nothing.
They would remain forever in that dark, frozen underground.
After so long in the shadows, my eyes couldn't handle the light. A sharp pain lanced through them.
Through my blurred vision, a dark shape in the distance came running toward me, shouting: "There's someone here! Someone's here!"
I recognized that voice.
It was Derek.
Tears spilled from my eyes.
(THE END)