The entity stopped rocking. “The end game, Zachary Wallace, is the survival of your species.”

19

“Well that was the silliest tea party I ever went to.
I am never going back there again!”

—Lewis Carroll, author - Alice in Wonderland

My heart pounded with adrenaline as I moved through the ice tunnel, my eyes darting from the pulsating blue light ahead to the Geiger counter in my hand.

Just a quick look. One quick look and I’ll have enough information to theorize cause and effect. Then I’m up the rope and climbing out of the chasm, and we’re back in the sub and en route to the north basin. Up the ice sheet and I’m done. Done with Vostok, done with Antarctica and its insane cold. Then it’s home to Brandy and William.

Wary of the time, I started to jog, counting each ice-crunching stride to gauge the distance back to the rope.

Twenty-one… twenty-two… twenty-three…

It was a surreal feeling, the deepening blue light fading to indigo, reminding me of my descent into the Sargasso Sea three years ago, a dive that had ended badly.

Eighty-six… eighty-seven… eighty-eight…

The tunnel dead-ended ten paces ahead, the indigo glow originating from sapphire formations embedded in the volcanic rock. Using my climbing axe, I chipped loose some of the zinc-laden ore and examined it in my gloved palm.

Sphalerite. Just as I thought.

Angry at having wasted so much time and energy, I jogged the quarter of a mile back down the tunnel. By the time I reached the rope, I was light-headed and dizzy, the stench of the dead bear-dog by my feet nauseating me.

Don’t stop now. You can rest in the sub.

I don’t know why I moved just then. Perhaps it was my proximity to the animal’s mouth, perhaps divine intervention, but when the creature snapped at my right ankle it missed. By the time it had pulled itself up on its forelegs to pursue me, dragging its broken hip, I had the climbing axe in my hand.

Swinging the handle like a baseball bat, I sliced open the bear-dog’s throat, splattering blood across the far curved wall.

Wasting no time, I reached for the highest knot on the rope I could grab onto and fought my way up arm length by arm length, clenching my spiked boots around the nylon cord for some kind of leverage. My limbs were shaking by the time my head poked above the fractured ceiling into the crevasse’s frigid darkness.

Crawling out onto my belly, I rolled onto my back, panting as I adjusted the night-vision goggles over my tear-filled eyes. Snot froze on my upper lip as I gazed up at the steep chasm walls and the climb that awaited me.

How easy to just close my eyes and disappear.

Goodnight, moon. Goodnight, William…

No!