It Came From The Ice

IT CAME FROM THE ICE BORIS BACIC © 2023 by Boris Bacic All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced mechanically, electronically, or by any other means, including photocopying, without permission of the publisher or author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission from the publisher or author. Contents Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Epilogue Final Notes More from the Author Cabin fever is the distressing claustrophobic irritability or restlessness when a person is stuck at an isolated location or in confined quarters for an extended time. Prologue Ryan stood up from the bench and turned to look at the weights on the bar. Two hundred twenty pounds, no doubt about it. He thought he might have accidentally added heavier plates, but the truth of the matter was that he was simply losing strength. Kind of expected, though. He’d been at McMurdo Station for three months now, and the conditions that he lived in were a far cry from the ideal Californian weather and the bevy of protein-rich foods that he’d gotten used to consuming five times a day. Coupled with the fact that his sleep routine was irregular due to the constant daylight and the fact that the freezing temperatures of Antarctica seemed to sap all his energy, it was no wonder he was making no progress in the gym. He’d told himself multiple times that strength increase shouldn’t be his goal while he was on the ice. Instead, focusing on retaining the gains he’d already accumulated should have been his objective. Still, ego was a powerful thing, and it easily took control of one’s rational thinking. “Okay, you win.” Ryan raised his water bottle to the ceiling, referring to the entire station. With that knowledge, an invisible weight that he hadn’t even been aware of until then dropped off his shoulders. Since he was unable to improve his physical prowess, he no longer needed to work out so hard while stationed at McMurdo. He shouldn’t have felt relieved because he loved training, but he did. He chalked up the sense of repose to Antarctica’s bone-freezing cold and conditions-unnatural-for-humans habitat. Half-determined not to even re-rack the weights before calling it a day, Ryan stared at the daunting bench press. It beckoned him, taunted him in an attempt to convince him that he was too weak to lift the weight. The longer Ryan stared, the more alluring the call became. But he wasn’t going to give in to its call. The days when he allowed priority to his desire over reason were long gone. He dropped the bottle on the floor. It hit the concrete with a loud thud and remained in an upright standing position. Ryan took off plate after plate and re-racked the weights until it was just the bare bar, light and naked, insufficient even for a set of warmups. He was about to head on to do some dips when a commotion upstairs caught his attention. A voice shouted something, carrying with it a sense of importance. Normally, Ryan would have ignored something like that. This was McMurdo Station, and people always shouted at each other about either work-related things or small talk. But this was neither. The octave of panicked rush that the voice upstairs conveyed was uncommon, even for McMurdo Station. Since he’d been here for three months, Ryan had learned to recognize every kind of inflection, titter, command, and mumble. There was never any rush there. The team had all the time in the world, and with no one to breathe down their necks, the atmosphere at the station was relaxed. That was why it had caught Ryan’s attention. He couldn’t tell what was different about the voice, but he knew that it had captured his focus for a reason. It was like listening to a song you knew very well through a different headset and hearing the instruments differently. Like walking inside your home apartment and realizing that something was different about the position of the furniture. The heavy pattering of footsteps that crashed upstairs only confirmed Ryan’s suspicions. Something was up. His eyes fell on the dip rack. Screw it. He would have hundreds more workouts, but whatever was happening upstairs was a once-in-a-lifetime event. Ryan picked up the water bottle, wiped the sweat off his brow, and bounded for the stairs. When he climbed into the corridor, the banging of the footsteps only became louder. It was coming from his right; from the security room. With it came the muffled voice behind the door, words too jumbled and suppressed for Ryan to discern them. Ryan uncapped the bottle and took a sip as he broke into a gait toward the security room. His eyes briefly fell on the silent, snowy landscape under the afternoon sun. Not that it looked any different any other time during the day, though. The temperature inside the station was pleasant, but just one glance outside was enough to send an imaginary shiver to Ryan’s skin. The thought of having to leave the comfortable warm interior later that day in favor of the icy exterior made him cringe. The muffled voices became louder as he approached. His fingers closed around the knob, and he pushed the door open, revealing a small room crammed with two people. The previously muffled voices immediately became magnified—urgent, overlapping sentences that were clearly in the middle of a brainstorming session. The station’s leader, Miles, stood next to a seated bulky figure. The chair