Chapter 29
twenty-nine
The plane’s engines screamed against the Antarctic wind as Dom pressed his face to the window, searching for any sign of life in the endless white below.
“There,” Griffin called from the cockpit, banking hard to the left. “GPS coordinates match Elliot’s last transmission.”
Dom’s stomach lurched—not from the sudden turn, but from what he could see taking shape through the swirling snow. A building squatted like a metal tumor against the ice, its prefab walls battered by decades of polar storms. Dark windows stared back at them like dead eyes.
“Looks abandoned,” Sabin muttered, checking his rifle for the millionth time since they’d lifted off from Chile.
The Cajun didn’t get anxious often—normally, he had nerves of solid titanium honed from his former career as a thief—but Dom saw his knuckles whiten as he gripped the seat in front of him.
There was a tightness in his accented voice that hadn’t been there during the mad scramble to get to Chile or the briefing with Griffin.
But now that they were on the white continent…
Yeah, Sabin was rattled.
Dom couldn’t blame him. His own stomach clenched with each bump of turbulence, though he couldn’t tell if it was the rough air or the sick dread that had been eating at him since Elliot’s comms went dark.
The plane touched down with a bone-jarring thud, skis scraping across the packed snow. Before the engines had fully spooled down, Dom was already unbuckling, his hands shaking with adrenaline and something that felt dangerously close to panic.
Please be alive. Please be alive.
He’d been chanting it like a prayer since Davey had tasked him with bringing their middle brother home.
“Easy, Dom,” Sabin called out, but Dom was already pushing toward the exit. He couldn’t sit still another second, not when Elliot might be?—
No. He wasn’t going there. Elliot was fine. He had to be.
The Antarctic air knocked the breath from his lungs as he dropped from the plane and hit the snow. Griffin was right behind him, barking orders that were instantly swallowed by the howling wind.
“Gear up! Form a perimeter! I want eyes on all approaches!”
The WSW team—handpicked specialists who’d dropped everything at Davey’s call—fanned out across the landing zone. Dom pulled his goggles down against the bright sun and trudged toward the station, each step sinking ankle-deep into powder.
“Takahe Station,” Griffin called over the comms in Dom’s ear. “Decommissioned decades ago.”
“Then why would Elliot be here?” Dom muttered, scanning the building for any sign of life. No lights. No movement. Nothing but the wind screaming between the metal panels.
Sabin materialized at his side, rifle held ready. “Look there.” He pointed to a disturbed area in the ice near the side of the building. “Something was recently dug out of the ice.”
Dom’s heart stuttered. “They were here.”
The team approached the station in tactical formation, weapons up, Dom taking point as they lined up on either side of the door. He itched with the need to kick down the door, to tear through every room until he found his brother, but Griffin tapped his shoulder and held up a closed fist.
Hold.
He swallowed the protest rising in his throat. Griffin was right to be cautious—they had no idea what they were walking into—but it didn’t make waiting any easier.
“On my signal,” Griffin said over the comms. “Three... two... one.”
The door broke surprisingly easily under Dom’s boot. He rushed in, rifle up, heart hammering against his ribs. The smell hit him first, stale air mingled with something like… coffee?
“Clear!” Sabin called from his left.
“Clear right!” another team member echoed.
Dom lowered his weapon slightly, eyes adjusting to the dim interior.
The room before them was a snapshot frozen in time—coffee mugs on tables, chairs pushed back as if their occupants had just stepped away.
But while some things looked like they hadn’t been disturbed in a long time, others appeared to have been freshly moved.
There was a nest of blankets on the couch, and two mugs on the table that still had unfrozen coffee in them.
Sabin moved into the kitchenette and pulled off his glove, hovering his hand over the stove there. “Stove’s still warm. Somebody been playin’ house here not too long ago.”
So was the air, Dom realized. If this place were truly abandoned, it would be nearly as cold inside as outside. “They’re here. El!” he called. “Elliot! Rue!”
Only silence answered.
“Clear every room,” Griff ordered. “Dom, Sabin, with me.”
Dom nodded, following Griffin down the hallway. They checked room after room—bunkrooms with beds still unmade, a lab with equipment neatly arranged, an industrial kitchen with supplies stacked in cabinets.
No signs of struggle.
No blood.
But also no Elliot.
No Rue.
“There’s a door at the end of the corridor,” Griffin said. “Padlocked. Think you can get in, Sabin? I’d rather not use a door charge if we don’t need to.”
Dom’s pulse quickened as he jogged down the hallway, boots thudding against the metal floor.
When he rounded the corner, he saw Griffin standing before a heavy steel door with a massive padlock securing it.
Unlike the rest of the station, which felt like someone might return at any moment, this door had been deliberately sealed.
“Someone didn’t want whatever’s in there getting out,” Sabin muttered, his Cajun accent thickening as he studied the lock. “I know this movie, mon ami . Don’t much care for the ending, either.”
“Can you get in or not?” Griffin snapped. He didn’t have a whole lot of patience for Sabin on a good day.
“Pfft. You wound me. Padlock like that? Might as well leave the key under the mat.” He stripped off his gloves and crouched in front of the door, pulling a battered leather kit from his pocket.
“Merde.” He blew on his hands before unrolling the picks. “Cold as a witch’s tit in January.”
“Less complaining,” Griff said dryly, “more breaking and entering.”
Moments later, the lock fell to the floor with a heavy clunk, and Sabin backed away from the door. “Voilà. Dibs on the flamethrower if there’s a shapeshifting alien in there.”
“Weapons ready,” Griffin ordered. “Stack up.”
Dom’s palms were slick with sweat inside his gloves as he raised his rifle. The door swung open with a groan of protest, releasing a blast of frigid air that smelled wrong—antiseptic and something else, something that made his stomach churn.
“Jesus, Mary, and all the saints,” Sabin whispered.
Dom’s breath caught in his throat as he stepped into what had once been a laboratory.
Equipment lay scattered across workstations like someone had swept it all aside in a panic.
Broken glass crunched under his boots, and he caught sight of sample containers lined up on one shelf, each one containing something black and viscous that made his skin crawl.
But that wasn’t what made his blood turn to ice water.
“Found them,” Griffin called from deeper in the room, his voice tight with controlled disgust.
No.
Elliot and Rue weren’t in here. They couldn’t be. They would’ve answered when he called for them?—
Dom rounded a toppled shelf and saw what Griffin was staring at. A circular hatch stood open in the far wall, and beyond it lay a room that looked like something out of a horror movie. Not Elliot or Rue, thank God, but bodies. At least ten, by his count.
“Fuck me,” he breathed. His rifle trembled as his brain tried to reconcile the sight.
He’d seen plenty of dead in his line of work, but nothing like this.
Their skin was paper-pale, threaded with black veins that pulsed in his imagination even though he knew they couldn’t.
It was as if whatever killed them hadn’t just stopped their hearts—it had written itself into their flesh.
Sabin appeared at his shoulder. “Three more dead over behind the door. Looks like they were trying to claw out of the room after they were locked in.” He scanned the bodies, and his tanned face went gray. “Mon Dieu. What happened here?”
Dom forced himself into the freezer, scanning each face for any sign of Elliot or Rue.
His heart hammered against his ribs as he checked each body, praying he wouldn’t find either of them among the dead.
Most wore lab coats or expedition gear, their faces peaceful in death except for a few whose mouths were frozen in silent screams.
“Look at this,” Griffin called from back out in the lab. He was crouched beside another body—a woman with pale blond hair. Her name tag was still visible: “Dr. Helena Moretti.”
Dom’s blood chilled. Moretti. As in Dr. Emerson Moretti, the man Elliot had asked for a dossier on.
The man who had been lying about who he was and why he was in Antarctica.
Dom had read all of those dossiers repeatedly on the flight to Chile and remembered seeing the name Helena, listed as Moretti’s wife.
“She’s been here a while,” Griffin continued, studying the body with cold detachment. “Look at the ice formation. These people have been dead for months, maybe longer.”
Relief flooded through Dom so fast it made him dizzy. If these bodies had been here for months, then Elliot and Rue hadn’t suffered the same fate.
“Keep looking,” he ordered, backing out of the freezer. He couldn’t stand to be in there another second with all those dead eyes staring at nothing. “Check every room. They were here—we know they were here.”
The team spread out through the rest of the station, calling out clear reports as they swept each space. Dom found himself in what looked like a residential wing, pushing open door after door. Most of the rooms were undisturbed, personal effects still arranged on desks and nightstands.
When he checked the shower room, a pile of clothes on the floor had him stopping cold. He recognized that red jacket. Elliot had grabbed it from HQ before boarding his flight to come here.
Dom crouched and picked it up. It was sopping wet and only just starting to freeze.
There was a nasty tear down the shoulder, but no blood that he could see.
A quick look through the rest of the clothes confirmed what he’d already suspected: Elliot and Rue had stripped out of their ruined clothes and showered here.
“Dom,” Griffin called.
He carried the jacket back to the hallway and showed it to his cousin. “It’s Elliot’s and it’s still wet. We must’ve just missed them.”
Griffin nodded and motioned for him to follow as he jogged back toward the front door. “One of our guys just found snowcat tracks headed away from the building.”
Dom dropped the jacket and broke into a run, adrenaline spiking through his system.
Outside, the wind had died to a whisper, and he could see the tracks clearly now, deep grooves in the snow leading away from the station in a straight line toward the horizon.
One of the WSW specialists was crouched beside them, studying the patterns.
“Fresh,” the man reported as Dom skidded to a stop beside him. “Maybe six, eight hours old at most. Maybe less. It’s hard to pinpoint with all the ice and blowing snow.”
Dom pulled out his satellite phone and dialed Davey’s direct line. It rang once before his oldest brother’s voice crackled through the static.
“Tell me you found them.”
“Found signs they’d showered and eaten, possibly spent the night here.
Looks like they got a snowcat working and are on their way back to Thwaites.
” Dom’s words came out in a rush, his breath forming clouds in the frigid air.
“But, Davey, there’s something else. There are bodies here.
Lots of them. Including Helena Moretti.”
Silence stretched across the line.
Dom turned away from the tracks, scanning the horizon for any sign of movement.
Nothing but endless white in every direction.
“Whatever happened here, it wasn’t an accident.
These people were locked in, and some of them.
..” He swallowed hard. The image of those clawing hands would haunt him for years to come.
“Some of them tried to fight their way out. And if Emerson Moretti lied about his purpose here, what else has he been lying about?”
“Jesus Christ.” Davey’s voice carried the weight of command even across thousands of miles. “Get to them, Dom. Intercept them before they get back to Thwaites.”
“On our way.” Dom ended the call and looked at the snowcat tracks again, following their path with his eyes until they disappeared into the swirling snow.
Somewhere out there, Elliot was fighting his way across the ice with a woman who threw herself into danger like it was a sport.
The thought should have been comforting—if anyone could keep Rue alive, it was his methodical, overprotective middle brother.
But the bodies in that freezer kept flashing behind Dom’s eyes, and those spidery black veins.
What if whatever killed them was still out there? What if Elliot and Rue were walking straight into the same trap?
“Dom.” Griffin’s voice came over his comms, cutting through his spiraling thoughts. “Plane’s ready. Let’s go.”
“We’re coming, Elliot,” he murmured into the wind. “Just hang on.”
Then he ran for the plane.