Echoes of the Lost Observatory
When research assistant Jules Everhart uncovers a hidden, ice-bound observatory beneath the isolated Aurora Station, she sets off a chain of chilling events. As a brutal polar storm cuts the team off from the world, equipment fails, crewmates vanish, and sinister secrets surface. Surrounded by constant twilight and an endless blanket of snow, Jules must unravel the outpost’s mysteries before they are all consumed by the echoes within the ice.
Confronting the Frozen Past
The silence after Curtis’s disappearance stretched through Aurora Station, a pall as much as a practical threat. The red gloom of battery-powered emergency lights turned every face to a mask, every corridor to a blood-streaked tunnel. Jules sat in her bunk with her knees hugged to her chest, mind racing. Who had sabotaged the power—Gregor, Linhart, even Luca, or someone else? Had Curtis been taken or was he hiding from something—or someone?
She pressed her palm to the cold wall, gathering herself. Now, or never. The hidden CryoDyne microfilm, the photograph, and the coded journals might be all she’d ever have to force the truth into daylight. She pulled on her overshirt, jammed her hands into glove liners, and set out to find Linhart.
The old scientist was in the med bay, lit only by the green blink of a battery monitor. Linhart was hunched over the sink, sleeves rolled, scrubbing at something stubborn—blood? Her head jerked up at the sound of footsteps. Jules saw fear in the planes of Linhart’s lined face—fear, not guilt. For just a moment, Linhart looked exhausted, crumpled rather than sinister.
“Close the door,” Linhart rasped.
Jules obeyed, leaning against it. The wind howled past a cracked window, threatening even here. She remembered the bruised photograph heavy in her pocket, the inked roster marked ‘DELTA’ and the notes from the safe. All of it dangerous, if Linhart truly wasn't on her side.
“I know about the experiments,” Jules said, before her courage failed. “The ones in the logbooks. The photo—the man next to Dr. Ruvalcaba. He looks like Gregor, but it’s dated before he was ever assigned here. And I found this.”
She slid the folder onto the bed. Linhart hesitated only a second before opening it, jaw clenched as she skimmed the documents. Leaden silence lingered while she adjusted her glasses.
“There are things I was never supposed to know,” Linhart said quietly, almost mournfully. “CryoDyne funded the build, but the observatory’s real purpose was… something else. Human trials for an experimental cold-resistance agent. They never admitted it outright. I joined the station a year after it ‘went dark’. They said the last team left due to… irreconcilable data and isolation stress. I found one of the old logbooks, but—"
Jules didn’t blink. “So you kept it hidden.”
“I had nothing to do with the sabotage,” Linhart snapped, then softened. “Maybe I should have told you more. But I’m not the one leaving threats or hurting people. I needed time to decide what to do. Was I supposed to run to the authorities with a few frost-eaten pages and a ghost story?”
Jules wanted to scream or weep—she wasn’t sure which. “Curtis is missing. We’re out of time. I need to know everything. Now.”
Linhart deflated, gesturing to a cramped chair. "Whatever Gregor’s hiding goes deeper than just keeping the observatory secret. He’s been jumpy ever since that first comms blackout. I caught him rummaging through my quarters last night."
The thump of boots in the corridor sent both women scrambling—Jules crossed the floor in an instant, peeking around the door while Linhart stilled herself to a medic’s calm.
Into the light staggered Luca, skin ashen, jacket crusted with rime. “Found him," he hissed. “Curtis. Down in crawlspace access C, under kitchen module.”
Curtis’s eyes were wild and hollow as they led him, with shaking hands, into the warmth of the galley. Under the flicker of weak ceiling bulbs, he looked half-frozen in body, thoroughly shattered in mind.
“He’s been hiding this whole time?" Linhart asked softly.
Curtis swallowed, shuddering. "I saw someone—the blackout, it was planned. I was fixing the heating relay when the lights cut. Heard heavy boots, a man’s—Gregor’s, I think, or someone shaped like him. He was in the hatch corridor. I heard him talking, to himself, angry. He said, ‘No more loose ends.’ Then something crashed. I—I heard someone else, but when I peeked out, Gregor was gone. I saw the blood, freaked out, went for the crawlspace."
Jules sat next to him. “Did anyone threaten you?”
Curtis nodded frantically. “A voice over the intercom—told me to keep quiet or I’d end up like…" He shook so hard he nearly fell. “Said the ice would keep my secret.”
Linhart and Jules exchanged a look. Jules’s heart hammered. They’d confirmed it: Curtis was targeted, not vanished by the cold or fate, and Gregor—if not Gregor alone—was resolved to destroy every piece of the past.
Jules stormed to Gregor’s office, ice in her veins. Gregor was waiting, on edge in the low-lit mess of schematic printouts and ration tins. His hand rested on a heavy flashlight. He gave her a feral smile.
"Found your little friend?"
Jules stared, unblinking. “I know. About the observatory. About Ruvalcaba. About the missing records.”
Gregor’s smirk faltered, replaced by something darker. “I did what I was told,” he snarled. “Corporate said we were done. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone left to find in the ice.”
“Curtis is alive.” Jules made her voice steel. “The files are out. Linhart knows. Even if you silence me, CryoDyne’s secret won’t die with you.”
A flicker of something passed across Gregor’s features—fear, guilt, maybe just the old habit of calculating odds. He straightened, chin jutting. “Then I’d better finish what was started. Not one of you is leaving here with anything.”
They found Luca and Linhart waiting by the tool lockers, each armed with a pipe wrench. Jules relayed Gregor’s admission. “He’ll try to destroy what’s in the observatory. We have maybe five minutes.”
“Main chamber’s never opened—not fully,” Linhart muttered, voice tight. “Each time, I thought the lock was fused.”
Jules remembered the journals—buried on a page was a six-digit sequence, disguised as a weather report. She dug out her notebook, counting the code aloud as her gloved finger hovered over the keypad bolted to the observatory’s inner hatch.
6-8-3-3-2-7. The old steel bolt groaned, then snapped open. The door shuddered ajar, and unfrozen air gusted past their ankles, stale and syrupy.
Gregor’s boots pounded behind, thudding down the spiral stairs. “Get away!” he howled, brute force over caution now. “You think you understand? None of you has seen—what it does!”
Jules, Linhart, and Luca slipped into the round, central chamber. The old telescope loomed, frost-rimed. Around it, computers ancient and pocked with corrosion, but humming faintly now on backup circuits. Cabinets lined the wall, covered in frostbitten warning stickers.
Jules darted to the central control panel, tugging cords, opening covers. Files spilled out—lab notebooks in three hands, microfilm disks labeled “Phase Delta,” and a row of audio reels. An old video player, screen fogged with condensation, flickered to life under Luca’s urgent work. Grainy footage appeared: men and women in padded suits, faces frozen with suffering, being injected, observed beneath glaring halide lamps. A clipboard flashed to the foreground—Ruvalcaba’s name written large, followed by itemized symptoms, doses, and—at the tape's end—a short, damning statement in Gregor’s own, unmistakable voice: "Terminate subject protocol by dawn. All logs to be incinerated."
Gregor burst into the chamber, arm raised. In a wild moment, he swung the flashlight at the monitor. Linhart and Luca seized his arms; the monitor went spinning but survived, video still whirring.
“You left people to die!” Jules screamed above Gregor’s roared denials. "You lied to us all!"
Gregor slumped, the fight knocked out of him. He wept, words spilling in guttural fragments: "I tried to warn them. CryoDyne would rather erase history than pay for it. You think they'll let you—"
Linhart knelt, gently cuffing him with a scarf, voice impossibly weary. “We’ll make them answer. All of them.”
It was hours before the adrenaline ebbed enough for Jules to notice the station’s unnatural warmth—Luca had risked a full breaker reset. Outside, the wind had slackened, the sky a faint bruise of purple. Together, battered and shivering, the survivors watched old secrets flicker to digital life, the station’s icy heart now broken open for the world to see.
Yet as Jules gazed at her own faint reflection in the ancient observatory glass, she wondered if it would ever be possible to truly leave the ghosts of the glacier behind.