Helheim Research Station, Arctic Circle – March 1925
The first thing Dr. Elias Verner noticed when he stepped onto the ice was the smell.
Not the crisp, sterile scent of frozen wilderness—no, this was something sharper. Like ozone and burnt almonds. Cyanide, his brain supplied unhelpfully.
"Smells like my ex-wife’s cooking," muttered Captain Rourke, stomping his boots on the packed snow. The man was built like a brick wall and had roughly the same sense of humor.
Elias adjusted his goggles. "If your ex-wife cooked with nitro-glycerin, maybe."
Rourke grinned. "Nah. Just arsenic. For flavor."
Inside the research tent, Professor Eleanor Shaw was already hunched over their prize: a core sample of ice that glowed faintly blue.
"You’re late," she said without looking up. Her fingers, gloved in rabbit fur, traced the ice’s surface. "And you’ve let the captain make bad jokes again."
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"I object," Rourke said. "That one was solid."*
Elias ignored him. "What’s the verdict, Shaw? Alien diamonds? Frozen pixie dust?"
"Worse." She held up a sliver under the lantern light. "It’s growing."
The ice pulsed.
Five minutes later, they were arguing over coffee that tasted like diesel fuel.
"It’s a crystalline anomaly," Elias insisted, scribbling equations. "Self-replicating molecular structure—"
"Or," Rourke interrupted, "it’s evil snow. Call a priest."
Eleanor rolled her eyes. "Yes, because holy water works so well on hydrogen bonds."*
"Depends on the polarity," Elias muttered.
The radio crackled.
"Base to team," came the static-laced voice of their intern, Jenkins. "Uh. The ice sample just ate a spoon."
Silence.
"Define ‘ate’," Elias said carefully.
"Like… dissolved it. Into more blue stuff."*
Rourke raised his hands. "I vote we name it Spoonthulhu and leave."
By midnight, they’d locked the sample in a lead-lined box.
Elias stared at the containment unit. "This is either a Nobel Prize or the start of a horror novel."
Eleanor sipped her terrible coffee. "Why not both?"
Outside, the wind howled like something hungry.