Inside the Walls

The bolt slides home with a sound like a tooth setting. You stand in the vestibule a long moment, breath fogging in the half-light, listening to the generator settle into its low monastic hum. The station feels smaller from the inside than it ever did from the ice.

Then it begins. A tap. Pause. Two taps. Pause. Another. Not the random complaint of cooling metal, not the wind worrying a loose panel—something deliberate, working its way along the outer hull. It pauses at the porthole. It pauses at your bunkroom wall. It pauses, you realize with a cold that has nothing to do with the thermometer, wherever you happen to be standing.

The flare gun is in the supply locker. The journal is on the desk. Both are within reach. Only one of them requires you to look.