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.
Hidden Motives
Luca stripped the audio pickup from its adhesive—no bigger than a thumbtack, a scrap of black plastic and foil. Jules winced as he pressed it beneath the battered galley table, then pretended to wipe the tabletop. Beside them, Gregor lingered, eyes deadened by fatigue and something harder, while Linhart ignored everyone entirely, her spoon clinking in deliberate, furious rhythm against her mug.
Jules forced herself to look normal—just a research assistant, hunched over a splay of ration wrappers, eyes hollowed by sleeplessness. “Shouldn’t we—try the comms again?” she offered in a small voice.
“No use,” Gregor muttered. “Systems are fried. We’ll try tomorrow. Or you can dig out the array in forty below.”
Luca, head bowed, didn’t challenge him. But his eyes met Jules’s, full of unspoken tension.
Thirty minutes later, in the cramped warmth of the electrical closet, Luca turned on the receiver. Static washed through Jules’ earpiece—then, faintly, voices: the galley, caught from above by their newly planted bug.
“It’s good,” Luca whispered, biting his lip. “Range won’t last more than a room.”
Jules clung to the wall for balance. “Check the lab next?”
They crept in silence through Aurora’s bowels, shrouded in the artificial twilight of energy-saving lights. The station felt smaller every hour; now, with wires and secrets strung between walls, it pulsed like a nervous animal.
They planted two more bugs: one behind the lab console, another tucked under a vent grille outside Gregor’s quarters. On the way back, Jules noticed Linhart emerging from the Chief’s locked office, her parka only half-zipped, for once looking flustered.
“Trouble?” Jules asked lightly, approaching, voice deliberately flat.
Linhart failed to mask her jump. “Gregor asked about the injectable glucose. Routine inventory.”
Jules watched the senior scientist’s eyes: darting, raw, almost furtive now. There was something in her left hand, slipped into her pocket before she walked off.
Luca and Jules holed up in the mechanics’ bay to listen. The receiver hissed, cycling channels. They caught snippets: Gregor cursing the power grid under his breath; Linhart muttering, “He never said anything about the file. He can’t know.”
“She’s hiding something,” Luca whispered, nervous energy making his fingers fidget with a busted fuse. “I know she’s scared, but—”
“Watch her tonight,” Jules said. “I’ll try to get into the observatory again. We need to know what’s in that safe.”
That afternoon, the sky outside thickened, clouds cupping the pale sun. Frost bit the windows, drawing ferns across the glass. Aurora Station’s bones creaked; somewhere, a relay snapped open and electricity flickered. Jules found Linhart alone by the storage lockers, staring at a strip of paper in her hands—a carbon of some kind.
“You really think Gregor’s hiding something?” Jules asked, voice low, cautious.
Linhart’s tone was edged with stress. “Gregor’s hiding everything. Including his own name, if I had to guess.”
“Let’s find out what’s in the observatory.”
For a moment, Linhart only stared, her breath visible in the cold corridor air. Then she nodded—muted, brittle.
They waited until Gregor’s rations call—potatoes and stale crackers, Aurora’s idea of luxury—before slipping out the back module. Luca met Jules at the hatch, his face shadowed beneath a woolen cap.
“Power’s low,” he whispered. “I’ll keep the breakers steady. If we get cut again, it’s—well, it’s not weather.”
Together, they hurried to the observatory, boots sinking in old footprints. The concealed hatch yielded after a minute’s struggle. Inside, the chamber’s stale cold hit them like a slap.
With Luca watching, Jules paced to the far wall: the half-hidden safe she’d noticed wedged beneath a dead computer terminal, its lock corroded but still flashing an LED—someone had tried to open it recently. She knelt by the dial, inspecting the symbols. No numbers—just a sequence of colored dots, faded marks. Not a combination, but a code.
Luca leaned close. “Can you crack it?”
“Maybe with time. We’re not alone here.”
A noise outside: footsteps? Luca snapped off his headlamp. In the dark, their breath was thunder. The footsteps faded—a trick of the wind, maybe, or someone circling from above.
Jules wrenched her focus back. The code: three red, two green, one blue dot. The colors matched the data tabs in the logbooks. She thumbed through the battered journals, lining up pages. In the margins: color-coded sequences next to old CryoDyne letterhead.
She entered the sequence, matching tabs to lock. The safe clunked, bolts withdrawing. Inside: wax-sealed envelopes, stamped CRYODYNE INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH; a sheaf of carbon microfilm; and a heavy manila file marked ‘VOSTOK PERSONNEL—RESTRICTED’.
Jules skimmed the file. The first sheet: ‘Dr. Sofia Ruvalcaba—Missing, presumed dead. Final assignment: Aurora Precursor Facility. Sponsorship: CryoDyne/Northlight Ventures.’
She shivered. “CryoDyne planted the observatory. Not research. Something dirtier.”
A second page, clipped with a paperclip labeled ‘DELTA’: ‘Subject monitoring protocols. If exposure exceeds tolerance, terminate all staff and expunge records.’
Luca’s face tightened. “Jesus. They had orders to dispose of everyone.”
Jules flicked to the back: names, signatures—one matching the man in the old photo.
Gregor. Or whoever he’d been, in another life.
Returning to Aurora, Jules saw Linhart at the window, spine rigid. In her room, she scanned the galley feed as Luca rewound the bug: Gregor’s gruff baritone, Linhart’s tremulous interrogatives—the drift of mistrust clear as fresh blood in the snow.
The power blinked out. A sudden, cloying silence. Emergency lights stuttered to life, painting the halls red.
“Station blackout!” Luca called, voice pitched high. “Everyone stay put!”
In the confusion, footsteps thundered nearby. Louder shouts: “Curtis?! Where’s Curtis?!”
Jules joined the others, a sick dread in her belly. The team’s only other medic, Curtis Field, had vanished in the chaos—parka still hanging by the door, boots gone, headlamp missing.
They combed the station. Every closet, air duct, crawlspace. No trace. Only a single, smeared swipe of blood on the east storage hatch, already freezing in a slender line.
Gregor’s face had gone corpse-white. “He can’t survive out there alone,” he growled. “If someone—one of you—knows where he is, now’s the time.”
No one spoke. Linhart’s hands shook visibly. Lucas glanced at Jules, mute with terror.
Jules stared at the frozen hatch. Every secret twisted tighter, every shadow loomed larger. Something out there wanted to keep its ghosts.
And inside Aurora—no doors were locked tight enough to keep them out.