Shadows in the Whiteout

A metallic clatter jolted Jules awake. She sat bolt upright, tangled in her sleeping bag, the tips of her fingers cold and prickly. For a moment she listened—nothing but wind, a constant low drone pulsing through the walls.

She dragged on her jacket and boots, slipped out into the corridor. Aurora’s halls were bone-white, fluorescent-lit, so sterile they almost glowed. As she hurried toward the lab, the echoes of the noise faded, replaced by another sound: voices in the comms room, low and tense.

She paused at the door. Luca and Gregor hunched over the backup radio. Gregor’s thick arms crossed, his breath flaring in the chill.

“—not a glitch. It was working yesterday,” Luca insisted.

Gregor scowled. “Batteries fresh. Cables checked. This switch—” He jabbed at a panel. “Somebody’s tampered with it. And the emergency beacon?”

Jules slipped inside, feigning sleepiness. “What’s going on?”

Luca shot her a grim look. “Beacon’s dead. So is the weather uplink. All after midnight.”

Gregor grunted. “That’s not all. Generator battery packs: four are missing. Somebody’s gone through the stores. Rations—”

Jules’s mouth went dry. “You think someone here—?”

A muscle ticked in Gregor’s jaw. “Nothing here happens by itself. We keep to main modules until this is sorted. Nobody leaves the compound. Understood?”

Luca protested, "We need to check the heating oil drums—if they messed with those—"

"That’s enough," Gregor barked. He shot a look at Jules. “You either?”

She shook her head. “I—no. Only slept.”

“From now,” Gregor said, “everyone logs their location. Triple-check seals. Until further notice—all movement is reported. We’ll get through the next few days, then track down whoever’s screwing with us.”

Luca opened his mouth to object but Gregor silenced him with a stare. "Sundown in two hours. After that, no one steps outside."

---

Jules retreated to the lab. Half the day passed beneath the harsh strip lights, her eyes scanning spreadsheets that blurred into nothing. Every now and then, she glanced at the door. Linhart arrived late, lips pressed thin.

Jules risked a whisper. “Is it about the observatory?”

Linhart didn’t answer at first. “No one could’ve followed us last night...” Yet the way she said it, Jules heard the doubt.

A klaxon wailed. Emergency signal. Gregor’s voice sounded over the PA: “Blizzard warning! Secure hatches. Repeat—secure hatches.”

Within minutes, the wind ramped up to a banshee howl, hail pecking the windows like angry teeth. Luca and Jules heaved crates against the interior doors; Linhart did inventory of medicines and foodstuffs, lips moving soundlessly.

The last time Jules checked the station comm array, the screen showed only static. No weather, no news, nothing but a wall of white noise. Gregor stalked the corridors like a caged bear, shoulders hunched, issuing orders in a guttural monotone. No one challenged him.

By evening, they were five people sealed in a tin can surrounded by shrieking ice.

---

They ate dinner in the galley: noodles slick with oil, silence stretched taut. Occasional thunks or groans from outside made everyone flinch.

Jules excused herself early. In the corridor, she heard faint scraping—like footsteps—outside the south exit. She checked the window slit. Only darkness and wind. It could have been snow shifting, she told herself. Or something else.

In bed, her mind unraveled every shadow in the room. Sometime after midnight, a metallic crash echoed from the storage bay. She listened, waited for a cry—nothing. Minutes passed. She drifted between nightmares and waking: figures lurking in the snow, old radio voices muttering her name.

Come morning, the blizzard had passed. A bruise-grey sky, snowdrifts piling against doors, radio still dead. Gregor gave out new orders: check oil tanks, catalogue missing supplies, clear vents. Everyone moved in pairs.

Jules and Luca trudged out to the maintenance hatch. The air was so sharp it cut, but the wind had mercifully died. As they clambered over a knee-high drift toward the deck, Jules paused.

Near the sealed hatch to the observatory, she saw it: a footprint, almost perfect, crisp-edged and fresh. The imprint of a boot. Not hers—too large, a different tread.

She crouched, pulse bounding. Luca called from ahead, "You coming?"

“Yeah," she croaked. "Just—snow in my boot."

She lingered, staring. There was nothing else nearby, no other marks. The print pointed straight at the observatory’s hatch, then away into the white.

A surge of dread swept through her. The station had been locked since the blizzard began. No one was supposed to be outside.

Above, the sky brooded, clouds pressed down like a lid. Inside Aurora, her friends joked and grumbled, Gregor stalked with lists, Linhart kept to her quarters. But now, beneath all that, Jules knew: someone else had come to the lost observatory in the night. Someone wanted in.

And she was certain now—they were not, as Gregor claimed, alone out here at all.