STATION 9: COLD PLAGUE

The diesel engine sounded like an old animal, breathing hard.

Every time it coughed, the coffee cup on the windowsill trembled with it. Erin slid the cup against the wall so it would stop making those tiny clinking sounds in the silence. Outside, the blizzard wrapped the entire observation station as if the building had been stuffed inside a white earmuff. The world had been reduced to two sounds: the engine and the wind.

Kalkor tossed the radio handset back onto the desk. Metal struck wood with a sharp, ugly crack. He did not say, We can’t reach them. He did not say, Magnetic storm. He only spat out one sentence.

“No one’s flying tonight.”

Erin did not look up. She was organizing the med kit, not because she planned to go out, but because work under her hands could drag her mind back into reality. Tourniquet, syringes, splints, thermal blanket. She moved a few painkillers to the easiest pocket to reach, as if keeping what little mercy she had closer at hand.

The floodlight outside could not reach the distance. It only showed the snow flying sideways, layer after layer pressing in. The lamp posts looked like black nails hammered into milk. The road was no longer a road.

“Sarah’s team still hasn’t checked in,” Erin said. “It’s been two hours.”

Kalkor bit into a strip of jerky, chewing hard, as if he were grinding some private fury into pulp. “Rookies,” he said. “Rookies always think they can outrun a blizzard.”

The moment the words left his mouth, something slammed into the outer door.

Not a knock. The blunt, heavy impact of a body hitting it.

Erin looked up and met Kalkor’s eyes. He was already reaching for the shotgun on the wall, moving with the ease of habit. Erin grabbed the med kit and stepped to the side of the door. She did not need a gun. She needed one second, the instant the door opened, to decide whether this was a person or trouble.

The second the bolt came loose, the storm burst inward like someone had tipped a sack of snow straight into the room.

An orange figure came down with it and collapsed onto the concrete floor with the dead, muffled thud of frozen meat. Erin dropped to her knees and pressed two fingers to the side of the person’s neck.

There was still a pulse.

Slow. Weak.

“Thermal blanket!” she shouted over her shoulder.

Kalkor kicked the door shut and slammed the bolt back into place before crouching beside her to turn the body over. Under the orange hood was a face frozen gray, lips split open, breath rasping as if she were chewing glass.

Sarah.

Erin pressed her gloved hand to Sarah’s cheek and frowned at once. This was not the usual ice-cold, wet softness of exposure. Sarah’s skin was unnaturally dry, like wood left too long in the wind, yet faintly feverish.

“That’s wrong,” Erin said under her breath.

Kalkor glanced up. “What is?”

“Too dry,” Erin said. “And warm.”

She yanked down the collar of Sarah’s shell jacket. The fabric had frozen stiff, the zipper nearly snapping, so Erin took scissors and cut it open instead. Frostbite spread across the side of Sarah’s neck in purple-red blotches, and beneath them her veins were the wrong color, as if ink had been poured into them.

Worse, those dark purple lines were not still.

They were moving beneath the skin, slowly shifting, like something tiny crawling through her blood vessels. Erin’s stomach tightened, but she forced herself not to recoil. She brought the flashlight closer, trying to see the edge of the frostbite clearly.

Behind Sarah’s left ear, a small tuft of white fibers pushed out from her pores, like short pale fuzz. In the storm they had not moved. The instant they met warm air, they gave a faint tremor and released a near-silent hiss.

Like something taking its first breath indoors.

“Don’t touch her skin with your bare hands,” Erin said. “Get her into the observation room. Fast.”

Kalkor obeyed, rough by nature but careful to avoid the exposed flesh. When they laid Sarah on the bed, the monitor started shrieking the moment the clip touched her. Not because her heart had stopped, but because the readings were jumping wildly.

Erin pulled the thermal blanket over Sarah, leaving only her mouth and nose exposed. She felt for Sarah’s wrist again. The skin was so dry it seemed ready to split like paper. In her head she ran through the ordinary possibilities. Frostbite. Infection. Hypothermia. Shock. None of them explained the fact that Sarah seemed to be getting warmer.

Kalkor stood at the foot of the bed, shotgun propped against the wall, face dark with unease. “What do you think she brought back with her?”

Erin did not answer. She went to the door, closed the observation room, and locked it. She stripped off her gloves, threw them in the trash, and pulled on a fresh pair. Only then did she say, “I don’t know. But I don’t like the way it seems to be waking up in the heat.”

At that exact moment, the radio crackled to life on its own.

Not static. Not the hiss of magnetic interference. A clear human voice, as if someone had put their mouth right against the microphone.

“...let me in... it’s cold... let me in...”

Erin and Kalkor turned at the same time.

It was Sarah’s voice.

But Sarah was lying right in front of them, lips sealed shut, chest rising only in muddy, ragged breaths.

Kalkor’s hand closed around the shotgun stock, his knuckles going white.

Erin stared at the radio and thought only one thing.

This wasn’t a plea for help.

It was testing the door.