Chapter 2. Footprints That Don’t Melt

No one slept.

This was not unusual in hostile environments, but it was notable in its honesty. No one pretended to rest. No one lay back against the walls or closed their eyes “just for a moment.” Polaris-7 remained upright, clustered together in the central operations corridor like an installation piece titled Professionals Who Know Better.

Sleep implied trust—trust in walls, systems, and the idea that the night would pass without incident. The facility had already demonstrated that it did not believe in such things.

Captain Hayes broke the silence first, because someone always had to.

“Status,” he said.

Nova didn’t look up from her tablet. Her fingers moved in tight, precise motions, as if she were afraid that larger gestures might draw attention. “Internal power grid holding. Heating systems nominal. External sensors are still offline.”

“Still?” Mason asked.

Nova nodded. “They went dark the moment the meteor hit. Or landed. Or arrived. Pick your verb.”

Lin leaned against a workstation, arms folded tight against her chest. “The ice is spreading again.”

Everyone looked.

Along the far wall, a thin crystalline vein crept outward, slow and deliberate, climbing vertically despite gravity, branching into delicate geometric patterns like frost trying to remember how windows used to look.

Mason frowned. “That’s not how ice behaves.”

Lin met his gaze. “No. It’s how something behaves when it wants to look like ice.”

Reed shuddered. “I don’t like that sentence.”

No one disagreed.

They moved as a unit.

This was not a strategic choice so much as an instinctive one. After the encounter—after watching the Amarok pass Reed without so much as a glance—no one was eager to test what happened when distance entered the equation.

The frozen trail reappeared deeper inside the facility.

Sometimes it was narrow, a single gleaming line etched into the floor like a signature. Other times it widened abruptly, spreading across entire corridors, sealing doors, crawling up walls, erasing pathways with quiet finality.

“It doesn’t hesitate,” Lin murmured.

Mason adjusted his grip on his rifle. “Everything bad hesitates. This doesn’t.”

Nova stopped abruptly.

“Wait.”

She crouched beside a footprint—massive, sharply defined, pressed deep into reinforced flooring that should not have yielded. Her scanner chirped, then chirped again, confused but determined.

“This should be melting,” she said.

Mason sighed. “I feel like we’ve established that it doesn’t care about ‘should.’”

“No,” Nova insisted. “The floor temperature is above freezing. Actively heated. The ice isn’t just persisting—it’s stable.”

Lin knelt beside her, studying the shimmering surface. Light bent strangely within it, refracting into angles that made her eyes ache.

“It’s not frozen,” Lin said slowly.

Reed blinked. “That’s… not better.”

“It’s choosing to remain solid,” Lin finished. “Like a maintained state.”

Mason straightened. “So, it’s not cold. It’s committed.”

No one laughed.

The first body was in the security office.

The door was open. It always was.

The man sat slumped in his chair, hands folded loosely in his lap, head tilted slightly to one side. His expression was calm—almost thoughtful—like someone who had simply decided to stop being warm.

“No visible trauma,” Nova said automatically.

Lin checked the ambient temperature. “Room’s normal.”

Mason frowned. “Then why is he—”

“Frozen?” Lin finished. “Because whatever did this didn’t lower the temperature of the room.”

She gestured gently toward the body.

“It lowered the temperature of him.”

Reed gagged and turned away. “That feels personal.”

Hayes said nothing. His eyes were fixed on the man’s hands.

They were clenched around a radio.

The playback crackled with static before a voice broke through—tight, panicked, trying very hard to sound professional.

“—it’s following the ones who wander. It doesn’t rush. It waits. We tried staying together, but people kept—”

The recording cut off abruptly.

No scream.

No impact.

Just silence.

Nova swallowed. “Selective predation.”

Mason nodded slowly. “So, it’s not hunting. It’s correcting.”

Lin closed her eyes. “It’s enforcing a rule.”

Reed laughed weakly. “That’s insane.”

The lights flickered.

The frozen trail thickened beneath their boots.

No one laughed again.

They found more bodies.

Always alone.

Always untouched except for the cold.

Always frozen mid-task—hands on doors, eyes on screens, feet turned toward exits they never reached.

“It’s not random,” Lin said.

Nova nodded. “And it’s not malicious.”

Mason glanced back down the corridor. “That’s worse.”

Hayes stopped walking.

“Everyone,” he said quietly, “do not separate.”

Reed raised a hand. “Hypothetically—”

“No,” Hayes cut in.

Reed lowered his hand.

The absurdity arrived softly.

Nova’s motion tracker pinged.

She frowned. “Movement.”

Mason raised his rifle. “Where?”

Nova stared at the screen. “Everywhere.”

The display bloomed with overlapping signals—dozens of them—flickering, intersecting, vanishing before they could be resolved.

“That’s impossible,” Lin whispered.

Mason exhaled. “I hate that word.”

The tracker went dark.

Nova stared at the blank screen. “It worked until it didn’t.”

Reed nodded. “That’s been the theme.”

They heard the howl again.

Not loud.

Vast.

It rolled through the corridors like pressure, vibrating faintly in their bones, resonating somewhere deep in the chest where fear turned into awe whether you wanted it to or not.

Frost surged along the walls, racing ahead of the sound.

Lin whispered, “It’s close.”

Mason whispered back, “It never left.”

The Amarok emerged briefly at the far end of the corridor.

It did not charge or threaten.

It simply stood there—immense, silent, watching.

Nova’s scanner screamed once and shut itself off entirely.

The Amarok tilted its head.

Then, without urgency, it turned and walked away.

Reed exhaled shakily. “Why didn’t it attack?”

Lin answered without looking at him. “Because we’re together.”

The ice crept closer, then stopped—precisely at their feet.

Hayes clenched his jaw. “Then we stay together.”

A distant crash echoed from below.

Metal on metal.

Something loud and impatient.

Mason frowned. “That didn’t sound… restrained.”

Lin swallowed. “No.”

She glanced toward the stairwell, where the sound had come from.

“That sounded like something that doesn’t care about rules.”

They stood there—five figures huddled beneath flickering lights, surrounded by ice that refused to melt, hunted by a creature that obeyed logic more faithfully than any system they had ever trusted.

Somewhere below, something else moved.

Something faster.

Something hotter.

Something that did not wait.

The frozen trail continued its slow, deliberate advance.

And for the first time since setting foot in Facility K-7, Captain Hayes felt the cold certainty that the Amarok might not be the worst thing in the building.