#fictional archive

RU:

1. Давным-давно люди и монстры жили вместе на поверхности.

Между двумя расами царил мир. Монстры делились своей магией. Люди — знаниями и ремёслами. Хотя наши души были разными, мы жили под одним небом. Но мир не вечен.

2. Оказавшись за Барьером и опасаясь новых нападений людей, мы отступили.

Многие верили, что однажды мы сможем вернуться на поверхность. Другие боялись даже говорить об этом вслух. Далеко-далеко в глубинах пещер мы достигли конца нашего пути. Это место стало нашим новым домом. И мы назвали его... Дом. А свет поверхности превратился лишь в воспоминание.

3. Больше не страшась людей наверху, мы покинули старый город — Дом.

TRANSCRIPT: DEBRIEF SESSION 03

SUBJECT: Dr. Clara Lavalle (Biochemistry Lead, Project Aleph)

INTERVIEWER: Director Lenore Song, OEDS Oversight Division

DATE: March 19, 19■■

LOCATION: Site 7, Quarantine Room 4B

CLEARANCE LEVEL: ZAYIN-5

[BEGIN RECORDING]

SONG: This is Director Song, conducting the third post-incident interview with Dr. Clara Lavalle. Dr. Lavalle, please confirm that you understand this session is being recorded.

LAVALLE: I understand.

SONG: Please describe your role with Project Aleph.

LAVALLE: I was assigned to the project for biochemical analysis. Environmental samples. Microbiota. Wildlife. My job was to search for any traces of… foreign contaminants at the site.

SONG: Such as?

LAVALLE: The Department believed that the meteor had deposited biological matter onto the ice shelf. They were looking for extremophiles, possibly amino structures with off-world chirality. Something that could–how did they put it?–”justify the budget”.

SONG: And what did you find?

[Lavalle does not respond.]

SONG: Doctor?

LAVALLE: Look, you already asked me about this. I'm not going to give you a different answer. Please, let me leave. I have a family to get back to–

[Lavalle goes silent. After about ten seconds, she sighs and continues.]

LAVALLE: At first? Nothing out of the ordinary. Just sterile ice cores, the usual sediment layers. Nothing to warrant a red flag. For the first week, we were poking at a giant, gravel-filled ice cube. Then, one day, Greaves got excited. He said that one of the sediment samples had a high concentration of cobalt and iridium. He was certain we were getting close to the impact site.

SONG: Did you find fragments of the meteor?

LAVALLE: Eventually, yes. A few metallic shards embedded deep in the borehole wall, fused with the surrounding ice. Unusual, certainly, but nothing unheard of. Everything we saw tracked with previous research into meteoric impact sites.

SONG: What was the composition of these shards?

LAVALLE: Cobalt, iridium, trace vanadium, and teeth.

SONG: Teeth?

LAVALLE: Molars, mostly. An incisor here and there. They were warped. Unfinished. Like they had started growing before the idea of a mouth was fully formed.

SONG: What sort of–

LAVALLE: Can I see my husband? Please. He must be worried sick about me. I want him to know I'm okay.

SONG: [beat] Clara… you've never been married.

[END RECORDING]

Sighted near the southern hedgerows at dusk. No court markings observed.

Traded berries for a story. Refused a name.

When asked where it came from, it laughed. When asked where it was going, it left.

[During recovery operations, a number of personal items and belongings were found. The journal pictured above was found waterlogged and barely legible. The entry has been transcribed to plain text for readability.]

EVELYN MARROW

PERSONAL JOURNAL

January 3rd, 19■■

Finally got everything unpacked. It was, in a word, chaos. You'd think that a team of highly educated and professional individuals would have thought to label their luggage, but here we are. Twenty-four hours and three arguments later, almost everything is accounted for. All the important equipment, that is. Greaves somehow forgot his damn toothbrush. Fortunately, Lavalle thought to bring a spare. The angel of mercy descends from the heavens to spare the dental hygiene of a man whose wife probably still packs his lunches.

Since that narrowly-avoided catastrophe, the others have been chatting away. They're excited about the project. I probably should be, too, but something about being stuck in an isolated facility hundreds of miles from human contact seems to numb my sense of adventure. I'm here to do my job, and that's it.

Speaking of my job, it's strange being called “doctor” again. Sure, everyone has their PhDs and research specialties and prestigious fellowships, but I'm the only one here allowed to slap a bandage on someone if they give themselves a papercut. A practical application of education instead of a purely academic one.

Perez hasn't said much since we arrived. Ironic for a communications specialist. Greaves and Bell more than compensate for it, though. I'm thankful that we're merely in the Antarctic and not in a submerged or orbital station somewhere, because if we had limited oxygen, they'd go through it in an hour. It's nothing short of a miracle that anyone can get a word in edgewise

Lavalle's quiet, too. Not like Perez, though. With Lavalle, it's deliberate. She listens when no one thinks she is. Watches people like she's collecting data, even when there's nothing to write down. I caught her staring at the ice through the observation window this morning. Didn’t say anything. Just stood there, still as death. She didn’t blink until I called her name.

When I asked her what she was looking at, she said, “I thought I saw something shift.” She laughed after, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

The thing is, I’d been looking out that same window not ten minutes before.