CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - "My research team discovered a lake trapped miles beneath Antarctic ice" Creepypasta

Episode Date: May 1, 2022

CREEPYPASTA STORY►by ChristianWallis: https://www.reddit.com/user/Christian...Creepypastas are the campfire tales of the internet. Horror stories spread through Reddit r/nosleep, forums and blogs, rather than word of mouth. Whether you believe these scary stories to be true or not is left to your own discretion and imagination. LISTEN TO CREEPYPASTAS ON THE GO-SPOTIFY► https://open.spotify.com/show/7l0iRPd...iTUNES► https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...CREEPY THUMBNAIL ART BY►Ben Jackson: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8l...SUGGESTED CREEPYPASTA PLAYLISTS-►"Good Places to Start"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7YCb...►"Personal Favourites"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEa2R...►"Written by me"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX6RA...►"Long Stories"- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...FOLLOW ME ON-►Twitter: https://twitter.com/Creeps_McPasta►Instagram: https://instagram.com/creepsmcpasta/►Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/creepsmcpasta►Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CreepsMcPastaCREEPYPASTA MUSIC/ SFX- ►http://bit.ly/Audionic ♪►http://bit.ly/Myuusic ♪►http://bit.ly/incompt ♪►http://bit.ly/EpidemicM ♪-This creepypasta is for entertainment purposes only-

You get clearance, I asked, as Kim approached my workstation. Some questions about a cousin with a big following on Instagram, but that's about it, she replied. Not the most normal background check I've been through. I don't really get the big deal, though. They brought me here. Why do I need further clearance just to enter this funny little place? It's about containment, I said. No one thinks you're going to steal equipment or military secrets,

although God knows my drones are valuable enough to the right people. I reached out and patted the sleek black hole of the car-sized submersible laid out on the large workbench before me. They're concerned about more generalized social media leaks what they have here. Well, it's hard to say the least. As Alex briefed you yet? Yeah, he did, she answered. I'm assuming that's... She nodded towards the enormous pressure chamber that dominated the room.

I didn't really think it was true when Alex told me, she continued. They're talking about a possible inland sea that was sealed off 100,000 years ago, right? They say the pressure keeps its liquid. That's the official story, but no one knows for sure, I replied. Unlike Lake Vostock, no one knew this place was here until they stumbled across it. Alex's team was originally here just doing meteorological work. How did they drill a tunnel down to it if they didn't know it was there? Kim asked as she stepped past me and went to the chamber's bulkhead.

my guess is they were doing something they shouldn't be, I answered while moving beside her to look through the glass. You will probably find the US government is up to all sorts down here, and that's why they're keeping it secret. I mean, it's that, what Alex told me is true, and that's just... Well, not possible. What did he say? He told me the hole appeared on its own, I shrugged.

The chamber came afterwards to allow access and stop the water flooding upwards from pressure. She leaned forward and wiped the condensation of the tiny little window on the steel door. Maybe that's why they don't want us telling anyone about it, Kim replied. Maybe they don't know what's down there yet, and they want to know first before celebrating it as a scientific discovery of the century. Kim stood on the toes to look through the glass and into the water below. Beyond was a small room with a floor covering in churning black water

that never seemed to stay still. The movement reminded me of an ocean in miniature with waves that never stopped. Sometimes, if I stared too long, I felt a kind of vertigo from the warped perspective, like I was looking down on some colossal ancient ocean from hundreds of feet in the air. I couldn't help but wonder what made the water move like that.

I figured that it must be driven by forces and currents that originated miles beneath the ice, which was a sobering reminder that I was staring, at a direct connection to a primordial abyss unlike any other on the planet. Gotta wonder what's down there, Kim muttered. I didn't respond. She might have continued talking, but if she did, it was lost to me. The whole world was reduced to a background hum that barely registered

or the water dominated my view with mesmerizing force. The currents had changed, and I couldn't say for sure, but for the briefest of moments it had looked as if the water had been disturbed by something below I could have sworn I saw something slithering just beneath the waves

I shook my head and dismissed the thought come on I told her we've got work to do what's that Alex reached out to the seemingly featureless video feed on the 100 inch monitor for the last 20 minutes it has shown us nothing but black

fuzzy noise as the drone descended into what had been dubbed Lake Saturn. The room stayed silent with anticipation, despite the dozen or so people crowded around me as I clutched the joystick with white knuckles. I didn't see anything, I answered. Probably just noise. If anything gets close, we'll know for sure. The lights on this thing could cut through brick. Why are we expecting to see in this water exactly?

Kim asked. I'd be shocked if life down there is multicellular. it's been cut off from the outside ward for hundreds of thousands of years. A pale, thin tentacle whipped past, both languid and lightning fast, as if its size and speed was somehow mismatched. All at once, everyone lurched away from the screens, reacting like the monster might reach through the glass and snatch one of us. For a few seconds, we were all dumbfounded until the tension eased and people let out astonished gasps

and nervous chuckles. A few scientists even cried out in celebration before scurrying away to a smaller desk to agonize over the recorded footage. Well, now we know, I said utterly astonished. Multi-cellular life. Another tentacle whipped past and the accelerometers on the drone registered a kinetic shock, not that we saw or heard anything of it. The drone's camera showed only pixelated darkness. It's just scoping us out, I said, looking intently at the profile of the acceleration on the drone's instruments.

The submersible was being nudged a little from side to side, but it was hardly under attack. It might even be described as a light cuddle considering the size of the drone and the monster doing it. The encounter lasted a few seconds at most before the squid retreated back into the deep as quickly as it emerged. Jesus, Kim cried. The ventral camera and lighter instruments measured at 30 feet long. World record for a verified specimen was 22 feet, I said. So that's the first record broken on this mission. Kim and I began to laugh like excited children,

and after a few seconds, the others joined in. I've never been so happy to be so wrong, she grinned. Life, honest the God, multicellular life. There must be an ecosystem down here. Predators, prey, some kind of base to it, bacteria, fungi, maybe even some kind of plant. The subs descent continued. Occasionally the sonar would pick up passing shapes in the void, but nothing else came close enough to register visually. It was unnerving, if I'm honest.

Even though I was perfectly safe, I couldn't help but imagine myself down there in that impossibly black water, while unseen shapes glided silently around me, just a few dozen meters away. It took another hour before we were within 30 feet to the bottom, in which point I slowed the subs descent, and, using downward-facing ventral cameras, looked for some sign of the lake bed. What finally resolved on the smaller screen

was a complicated array of strange and irregular-looking rocks. There were spiraling ammonites and lifeless shells everywhere. strange bones jutting out of what looked like an endless carpet of bone-white death. What? I muttered. Animals must have been trapped in the water when it froze over, Alex said. Animal graveyards are common when excavated dried up lake beds. Is this normal? I asked. No, he shook his head.

Not like this. Not so many. Talk about an understatement, I said, as I began to pilot the drone in an outward spiral. Every camera showed the same thing, an endless plane of jumbled ivory that stretched out in every direction. If there was a floor beneath those bones, we couldn't see it in that location. So, what does the squid eat? Kim asked, if everything in the lake died. As if, in answer, our portside camera picked up the sluggish movement of a pale white starfish. Slowly it crawled out of the nasal bone of an ancient whale and probed its surroundings.

It's 30 feet wide, I said as I squint at the readings on one of the dozen screens. Do starfish come that big normally? Most of the biologists were too busy taking notes to answer, which I took to be and know. But Alex was polite enough to tear his eyes from the screen and answer. Absolutely not, he said. It must grow so big from a lack of... A fish, larger than the drone, swept past the screen, and the starfish was gone. I had the fleeting impression of glassy transparent teeth and an eyeless face worse than anything found in the Challenger deep.

Rinkled and frowning, it was an aquatic nightmare that left me shaking in my seat. What the hell? Kim groaned. Jesus, that was... not that, she said, tapping me on my shoulder and gesturing. to another screen. There's something odd about a hundred yards east. We need to take a look. She reached for the controls and I stopped her. Despite the intense desire to get up and leave,

I felt compelled to see this through. I grabbed the joystick and began to navigate on the heading she gave. My eyes so fixed on numerical readouts that I let my eyes drift from the main screen. Oh my God. I looked up, worried and made a grievous error and damaged the drone. and what I saw made my body go limp.

We were looking. At a building. A temple, in fact. I couldn't say for sure it was a place of worship, of course, but there was no other way to describe the grave-looking structure with this ancient pillars and decorative flourishes reminiscent of ancient Greece. Perplexed, I let go of the controls and sat back,

head tilted like a confused dog. In the end, I settled for what seemed like the only logical explanation. Is this a prank? Some of the other scientists with me actually agreed. Kim and several biologists all nodding while turning to look at Alex, the head of the facility.

But the look on his face made it clear that if this was a hoax, he wasn't in on it. He was pale, eyes wide, every bit as shocked as we were. Why would we do that? He asked us. How would we even manage it? Those steps are 30 feet tall, someone cried before I could push the point any further.

I looked away from the screen to see a geologist stood by one of the dozens of smaller screens filled with complex readings. Can you get closer? he asked me. I took a look at the drone camera and approached the first of 20 steps ascending from the lake bed towards the temple. Pretty quickly, I was able to confirm that each step was a gargantuan slab of stone that towered above the drone. This is real? I asked Alex as he stepped closer to me, my voice, an urgent whisper. He nodded. I looked back at the screen and saw that I was still piloting the drone up and over the steps.

At the top, it was apparent just how outer proportion the rest of the temple was. The doorway, a great big yawning black portal, must have been several hundred feet tall, and it loomed over the submersible like a man over an ant. Our lights barely penetrated the dark from where we hovered at the threshold, but they did show a stony floor retreating into the void. Its surface covered in snowy detritus. In the distance, another tentacle slipped briefly into the light before slithering away. Something about its pallid white features in the sunken dark made my skin crawl,

and when I looked up at the crowd, I saw I wasn't the only one whose nerves were afraid. Sweaty pale faces stared at the screen, unable to look away, but utterly distraught at the implications of what they were seeing. Here was a building at the bottom of the world, standing impossibly tall and impossibly large, it's the way beckoning us to explore further. Should I keep going? I asked, hoping someone would find a good reason to stop.

It didn't matter that it wasn't me down there. I didn't want to push this journey deeper into madness. I was afraid and no matter how much I reminded myself of the vast differences between me and the source of the images on screen, I could not escape the terrifying fact that the things I was seeing were real. Somewhere beneath my feet lay that abyss, and within it lay a temple beyond all human proportions, and the thought made me feel like my mind was on fire. Keep going, Kim said, and I knew she was right to.

It was the only choice. We need to know. Nervously, I pushed the drone onwards, watching with anxiety as the side camera showed the edge of the portal sliding by our sides. as impossible as it was I felt as though I was personally stepping into the temple and could feel a cold draft wash over my skin

I shivered and did my best to push the ridiculous idea aside the room beyond was massive too large for our meager little lights to see much after a few seconds of nerve-wracking silence I finally found my courage to ask

do the instruments pick anything out I feel like I need directions here. We're getting something a little south of your position. It's stationary, so it should be. The entire room cried out as the drone's camera was violently shaken. The view reeling as if the whole drone was being thrown around. Alarms blared from a dozen monitors as every system registered a dozen violations of expected norms. My hands froze up. I was unsure how to proceed. There was a momentary spike of adrenaline as my body reacted as though I'd personally been a And then training took over as I let go of the controls and waited for a few seconds as a flare of bubbles and strange shapes flitted past the lens.

The drone can't be damaged easily, I told everyone, not by an animal, we just need to be patient. Eventually, the alarms quieted down as different team members worked to shut them off. I watched the accelerometer intensely. I could tell that whatever was attacking the drone was slowing down, probably because it realized its prey wasn't edible. Looks like another squid, someone called, pointing to a dorsal camera that showed a slimy feeler clamped around the hole. Just wait, I said.

It's out of our hands now, but if we're patient, he should just leave us alone. For a few more minutes, the drone continued to move of its own accord, being pulled to and fro by some unseen shape. Occasionally, we would catch a glimpse of an overhead ceiling, covered in detail mosaic, of a fleshy-looking mountain, or of a beautiful stone pillar, cradling and ancient brassiere. But there was no opportunity to study these things in detail. They appeared as fleeting blurs of colour and shape. Whatever was down there was wrestling with a submersible like it expected a meal out of it.

But I knew eventually it would have to give up. Look! Whoever cried out didn't need to bother. Whatever had attacked the drone slid around its slid. sleek hull until it faced the forward camera, allowing itself to be seen in full light for the first time. It towered over us from the main display, like it was somehow aware that we were on the other side of the camera. But whether it was angry, hostile, or just plain curious, I couldn't say. It merely stared at us with an eyeless cone for her head. Slowly, the strange creature retreated from the light.

That didn't mean it was finished with us, though. One of its longest tendrils remained stuck to the drone, which it used the toas carefully back towards the entrance of the temple. Well, this is exciting, I said, after a few minutes past, it's throwing us out of its house. You're not seriously proposing it built that thing, Kim asked. No, I said, why build steps if you don't have feet? I think it's just moved in. Probably makes for great shelter. The creature stopped just as it reached the doorway.

all of a sudden it changed colour, flashing from spectral white to a blood orange, pulsating over and over while we all stared at the baffling changing behaviour. A threat display, perhaps, Kim asked. As quickly as it appeared, the squid shrank away, letting go of the drone right by the temple's doorway. A quick glance at the rear camera showed it fleeing back into the darkness. I was about to ask what had happened, when a strange thing. Cerulean light flooded the doorway. An eye blocked the doorway. A pupil thus pale blue sphere that glowed with malice in the dark. Slowly it turned her retreated until a monstrous shape glowered down at us. A faint bioluminescence hung around it like an aura, a silhouette faintly

visible in the abyss. Its shape was utterly alien. If it hadn't moved, I might have thought I was looking at a plant or a strange rock formation. It reminded me of tumours and wasp nests. I couldn't tell all of its eyes apart from the complicated pattern of dots and frills that covered a bubbling asymmetrical head the size of an apartment block. It was with ever-rising horror that I realized I had glimpsed simple portrayals of this very creature in the temple mosaics, the implications of which burned at my mind like a hot coal.

This thing dwarfed all reason, all sense. It floated menacingly in the darkness, just at the limits of the light. Of the rest of its body, there was no sign. But I hated it. I hated it instinctively and without reason, even as I told myself, it was a scientific find of the century. It made my skin crawl and my stomach drop, and all I wanted to do was lash out and get the hell of away from it. Slowly it raised a branching, writhing appendage towards the drone. That was when we lost the feed. The wind outside was fierce. The facility we were staying in was situated on

a continental plain, not far from a cluster of inland mountains where the wind swept down the slopes and sped up, unimpeded to hundreds of miles per hour. It never snowed in Antarctica, but that didn't stop hurricane winds from snatching up tiny particles of ice and whipping them at you with terrifying speed. The effect was a whiteout, a grey, somber void on the other side of every window that left nothing visible. No sky, no sun, not even the icy floor beneath the main building's elevated foundations. It's almost too much, Kim said after a while. If we just found a jellyfish, it wouldn't be a lot, but people would believe us. But This? It's like something out of a bad movie. How am I supposed to get up at a conference and show people this footage?

Kim, Alex and I was sat in the canteen. All the other scientists had wondered off to their own rooms to begin the lifetime's task of going through every reading we had. Every pulse of sonar, every bit of infrared, every minute fluctuation in temperature and pressure. It had to be understood. Cataloged, made sense of. In a way, it was probably a comfort to them, to hide from the madness by fixating on the minutie. You know what I think, Kim said? Forget any results. I want to leave. Let someone else get the glory.

Even if we wanted to, Alex said, the storm prohibits flying for at least another week. Just so long as I can be the first one out, she replied. Maybe when the storm's clear, we can discuss people leaving, I said. But for now, we've got enough data to last us life. time and enough equipment to analyze, sir, a young man burst into the room. I immediately recognised him as belonging to the security attachment that had flown in with me. So far, the five or six armed men had kept separate from the scientists. I could have easily forgotten that there was anyone staying in the facility who wasn't a researcher. It must have been an incredibly boring

job, at least under normal circumstances. The man who stood before me didn't look bored though. He looked worried out of his depth. Alex was clearly the sir he'd been referring to, and the older man immediately stood up and addressed him. What's going on? he asked. There's been a breach, sir, he said. Something has entered the chamber. How do you possibly know that? Alex cried. We can hear it, sir. We entered the ground building to find that we had two immediate problems. The first was that the pressurized chamber was under intense stress. Internal reading showed that water had flooded the room, I was applying an incredible force against reinforced walls. So far they were holding, but the pressure was steadily increasing and we knew that, sooner or later,

something would give. The second problem was the sound that emanated from within. Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk. I flinchedged each time it was. out, physically recoiling from the bulkhead with fear. I tried to hide it from the others, but looking around, I realised it wasn't necessary. Alex, Kim, and the security guard were all equally terrified. Something was inside that room, something that had come up from the lake below, and was patiently beating a tattoo against the wall with unsettling regularity. I am here, the sound seemed to say.

I am here, and I want to meet. you. We need to release the pressure, Alec said. His voice was shaky, his skin pale. We need to. I'm not opening that door, Kim snapped. I looked at the pressure readings and grimaced. It's not giving us a choice, I said. If that structure fails, it'll be worse than a bomb going off. Or the more reason not to open it, Kim cried. Think about what you just said. It's not giving us a choice. Do you want to play that game? We don't know what it wants. Alex replied. We don't know what it is.

Maybe. Maybe what? She said. Maybe it's here to play chess, to be our friend. Is that seriously what we're proposing? If that chamber blows, I said, we get answers to those questions whether we like it or not. We can retreat to safety, sure, but it doesn't make any of our problems go away. Besides, it doesn't have to be the door we open.

There are specialised valves to release pressure that we can use to keep it from blowing. Thunk. Thunk. Thonk. If Kim had any counter-arguments, they were forgotten. The walls of the chamber had shaken, and something, some screw or bolt, had flung out and struck the ceiling and punched a hole right through. Alex, I said, help me get the pressure valves open.

This is insane, Kim cried as I walked over to the nearest valve. Thunk. The knocking stopped just as my hand gripped the wheel. A look at Alex showed he was sweating, dispensed. the cold. He hesitated to come any closer, lurking a few feet away from me and the chamber. I need help, I told him. Okay, he said, nodding so absentmindedly, I wondered if he was in some kind of shock. Come on, I cried while pointing to the opposite side of the wheel. Alex was startled by my shouting, but he finally started to walk across the vent and towards me. Alex, we don't need to do,

Kim started to say before she was suddenly cut off. Thunk. A final hammer blow was louder than any other we'd heard. It was like a peal of thunder went off right next to my ear.

An explosive punch delivered with perfect timing and I soon realized in a very precise location. The valve broke open just as Alex had passed the opening. Water gushed out with tremendous force

enough to knock him back. Internal mechanism were designed to control the flow and they stopped the blow from being lethal. But it was still a brutal strike and he was sent skittering across the floor while the water spewed out in a furious torrent. I could see him under the black brine struggling desperately and I thanked God he was alive. I immediately ran over to drag Alex away from bubbling water even as my mind raced with a terrifying realization that whatever had attacked the chamber had done so with impossible insight. On some level, I knew it must be scrutinizing us, and it took every ounce of courage just to stay in the room. Alex struggled as I took hold of one of his legs and tried to pull him

out from under the water. I paid it little attention and dragged him clear of the flow, intent on helping him. But the insight of a glistening black tentacle wrapped around his head made me recoil and cry out. But the sight of a glistening black tentacle wrapped around his head, made me recoil and cry out. I fell on my ass and heard a chorus of disgusted and horrified cries as Kim and some new arrivals took register of the strange growth that enveloped the man's head. It was a repulsive cluster of alien musculature attached to a glistening black tangle trailing back through the open valve. Get it off, I shouted at the room in general, hoping to God that someone would have an idea what to do.

Alex's struggles were already growing faint Thunk Thunk Thunk Before any of us could take another breath There was the briefest sound of tightening fibres Before the tangle whipped back into the chamber It passed effortlessly through the six inch wide opening

And did not slow or even show any sign of a struggle Not even when with the sound of silk tearing It took most of Alex with it. I had made the decision to withdraw from the study and the site at large. Kim was clearly relieved, and so was I. Whatever excitement we felt over the fine was diminished by the memory of having to clean up Alex's remains.

I knew I would never forget having to lift the body bag and only to realize it barely weighed more than 20 kilos. We had found something nightmarish down in that lake and the small encounter we'd already survived were more than enough to keep me sleepless for years to come. Unfortunately, the storm was still raging outside and we had no hope of evacuation by air for at least another three days.

Kim and I were kept busy packing up our equipment, but Kim's speciality was data analysis and not engineering, so there were times where the work fell entirely on me. It was on the second night that I told her to head to bed early, while I finished up the last 30 minutes or so of work. But only a few minutes after she left, I found myself staring at the chamber that dominated the room like a strange obelisk.

The image of that thing claring at us through the screen returned to me, and with a shiver, I decided I would finish packing the rest in the morning. Staying alone in that place for even a moment or two was a stupid thing to do. Stephen? The sound was in a letter,

whisper that made my limbs weak and my hands falter. Equipment hit the ground with a clatter I barely heard. All my attention was on one of the speakers by a station at the back wall. It belonged to one of the geologists who had loaded microphones down in the original dive and was using them to record an audio profile of the lake below. With everything going on, it had escaped all of our notice. But as I stared at the glowing green monitor, It dawned on me that the microphone was probably the last remaining piece of equipment still in the water.

So why had I just heard Alex speak my name into it? I told myself I'd been mistaken, even as it decided I would sprint the whole way back to my room. Stephen, the voice said, before I could take a single step. Stephen, it's cold down here. This isn't real, I muttered. I know what the temple was built for. Alex's voice was the wet gurgle of a pneumonia patient in their last days. It made me think of someone drowning a mucus, of a desperate soul consumed by pain and despair.

Stephen, he wailed. It won't let me die. His words hit me like a sledgehammer. For a second, I thought there was nothing in the entire world that could frighten me more. It was then that the door to the pressure chamber swung open I found myself rooted to the spot with mounting terror as my mind processed the impossible

an enormous titanium bulkhead otherwise inoperable to anything except powerful hydraulics had glided open like a creaking mansion door black water immediately bubbled forth and filled the air with rolling steam and a clawing stench unlike anything else I had ever smelled. It was awful. A foul mixture of rotting flesh, ammonia and a musty scent that really was unrivaled.

Some kind of flotsam came with, pale stripes of strange-looking plants and unrecognizable biological matter. The room I was in was large, but by the time I managed to look down and realized that my shoes were already wet and time was running out. I turned and ran, desperate to outrace the water that was already searching past my feet and flowing towards the door threatening to trip me. All around me, equipment started to topple, desks dragged along the floor with an ear-cringing squeal while computers short-circuited and fell over. Under other circumstances, I would have been in tears from the loss of data an expensive one-of-a-kind technology.

But I was ready to sacrifice anything if it meant to. getting out of there sooner. I pushed ahead, increasingly aware that the water was fast on its way to flooding the entire place and showed no signs of slowing. Pretty soon I'd be waiting through the stuff at knee height. The thought had me picking up my pace, but I managed to only get halfway to the door before the lights cut out. Immediately my foot hid something unseen, something that moved.

I was sent sprawling forward, completely. completely blind and fumbling in the dark. Despite the water, I hit the concrete hard, and my wrist rolled, plunging me face first in the ever-rising torrent. The fear of it, and closing my head made my heart pound with hysterical panic, and for a brief second, I wondered if I might already be dead and trapped in my worst nightmare. Eventually, the panic passed, and, using my good hand, I got some purchase on the floor and bused myself up with a deep.

desperate gasp. With perfect timing, the emergency lights finally kicked in and the room was suffused in the dim pale glow of rarely used fluorescence. I'd been thrown halfway across the room and was further from the door than ever, but the water had stopped rising and was eerily still. All the different workstations have been shifted to new locations by the current but were now at rest, bits of equipment strewn haplessly across the surfaces or missing somewhere in water below, Once I was standing, the only sound was the occasional slosh of water and the all-pervading drip, drip, drip. Quietly, terrified that the movement would attract the tension, I lifted one leg and took a step backwards. Nothing changed above the surface, but for all I knew, a dozen unseen shapes were converging on my position and I had no way to stop them or even know how long I had to live.

The only thing I could do was stick to the plan and keep moving one foot at a time. I managed another three steps when one of the desks slid a few inches across the floor. It was a gut-wrenching reminder that something was active beneath the water. It didn't help that all manner of things floated around, ranging from office furniture to unrecognizable clumps of rotting albino plants. Sometimes something would slither past my leg, touching my bare ankles, and I had no way of knowing if it was a living thing, or just some dead piece of floatsome,

drifting aimlessly beneath the surface. When the door opened behind me, it was a sudden reminder that a world existed beyond that room. It had been barely ten minutes since I heard Alex speak, but I'd spent that time so terrified that my perception had narrowed until I could only think of things that mattered to my direct survival. I'd completely forgotten that the power outage

would have alerted others. I was so fixed on whatever shared that water with me that I didn't even turn to greet my rescuers or respond to their cries. Nothing but survival could find purchase in my adrenaline-addled mind. It wasn't until I heard feet splashing past me and saw several men stomping past, guns raised,

that I looked up and saw Kim reaching out to touch my shoulder. What happened? she asked. Did you open the bulkhead? I must have been pale as a ghost, because when I looked at her, she froze up a little, like my fear was contagious. Shut it down, I hissed between clenched teeth, even as I lifted one leg to continue my painstaking backwards walk. Explosives, grenades, anything, shut it down.

It'll freeze on its own anyway, she replied. The heating rods have turned off. That's probably why it hasn't flooded this whole room. up to the ceiling. Why did you open the door? she repeated. I didn't open anything, I whispered. Kim, we aren't alone in here. What? He said, you aren't alone up there. Kim's eyes went wide as dinner plates at the sound of Alex's voice coming from the speaker. Screw this, I cried while grabbing a hand and turning to run the last few meters back to the door. As I turned away, one of the men inside the room cried out and went down, but I didn't turn to look back, not even when gunfire

rang out and ricochets ping the wall nearest my head. Instead, I forced lead and feet through the grimy water, Kim in tow, and did my best to ignore the screams. When we reached the door, I threw us both out onto the metal walkway beyond and went to slam the door shut but was left struggling against the water that continuously poured out. Help! I cried, reaching out to help Kim from where she had fallen. What about the men inside? She looked inside at the same time she asked the question. By now the gunfire had stopped,

but there was still the sound of struggling feet and crying men, along with crashing furniture. With a whip-crack sound, one of the men that had a terrible scream, and Kim jerked back from the doorway, her face covered in blood. Shut the damn door! She screamed suddenly. Whatever she had seen had clearly changed the mind, and I was glad I'd missed it. I was only grateful that she'd joined me in pushing it in.

Are you sure it's all done in there? I asked. The water's all frozen. Kim nodded as we stood by the tour to the ground facility. It had been two days, and we'd stayed in the base a few hundred meters away, refusing to answer any of the other scientist's questions and threatening hell on anyone. who dared to go look for themselves. They certainly hadn't earned us any friends, but we didn't care. Our evac was just an hour out

and we were all too ready to leave that god-forsaken continent. But there was still one last job to do. Using a crowbar, I wrenched the door out of its frame. Kim made a passing comment that whatever lived down there could have easily gotten out if it wanted to,

but I just ignored it. I had nowhere of knowing what the thing could or couldn't do, and for once ignorance was enough for me. Whatever its motivations or choices, it had been content with taking the men we'd left behind and no one else. To my shame, I only felt relief about this. Stephen, I'm so cold. My mind is falling apart, where I can feel bits of myself sloughing away. "'What are you? I can't see you. Where am I? What was that? Something's coming. Jesus Christ, why won't I die?' Kim faltered at the sound of their voices. She looked at me with terror, and I knew she'd seen the same

thing written on my face. "'You were right,' she said. "'They're still,' I nodded. "'I could hear them when I came out to check the door on the first night. "'I don't—how are they? They down there? she cried. I don't know, I shook my head. But there'll be a team here soon. They'll find the tunnel frozen over. The facility destroyed, our data centres ruined.

But this. I gestured to the room with the voices within. This will demand further investigation, she said. How can we get them to stop? Do you have a plan to help them? To get inside the room, I had to step up under a solid foot of ice that had frozen. Emergency lighting had failed entirely by now, but there was enough daylight to make the gloomy place beyond visible. The heads, Kim stuttered, as she looked at the array of corpses.

They're all gone. How are they? I don't... I don't understand either, I said, as I carefully shuffled over to the farthest workstation. It was there that the voices cried out from an overturned speaker. But we can't help. help them. I hesitated for a moment as I took out the wirecutters and found the cord leading to the ruined pressure chamber. Even now, the men hadn't stopped being like a discordant mob

of hellbound souls. They were pleased for help and desperate insults born of desperation. I wondered for a split second if there really was something we could do. But that would involve drilling down to the lake and beginning this nightmare anew. This wasn't some errant animal we were dealing with. It was intelligent and cruel and older than we could possibly imagine. Even worse, it could toy with dead men and keep them alive to prolong their suffering. There was a forgotten god down there. It needed to stay forgotten.

I cut the wire and the voices stopped immediately. But they're still down there, Kim said. her voice an injured whisper. With deliberate slowness, the wire was poured from my hand and back into the chamber, before disappearing through a pin-brick hole in the ice. And so is something else, I said. Let's keep it that way.