The Frozen Archive

Spring breaks the long dark. The relief team cuts through the door you welded shut from the inside and finds the station immaculate — every log dated, every instrument calibrated, every can accounted for.

You sit at your desk, pen still resting in your fingers, journals stacked in perfect order. The cold preserved you exactly as you chose to be found: composed, unyielding, alone. You outlasted your rations by a single day.

Whatever waited beneath the ice is still waiting. But it did not get you.