Dark Energy: The Mortal Fracture

CHAPTER ONE: ON TOP OF THE WORLD

Arctic – Winter 2010

The cold, clear water filled all of the visible space that lay in front of the divers. Bubbles from their auger masks collected at the icy ceiling of the Arctic Ocean. As the divers passed close to the frozen mass, their hands playfully stroked it, chasing the bubbles that they introduced into this alien environment.

It was winter and dark, yet the underwater world glowed with the memory of the sun, which had not peaked over the horizon for over a week. The surface lights provided by the research team flowed through the translucent glacial tundra like fiber optic cables, feeding the starving darkness with radiance.

There were four divers under the ice, Dr. Eisla Sade, Dr. Marco Wasi, Carl Kim, and Meeka Datsapolis. While physically they differed from one another significantly, the bulk of their cold water diving gear made it difficult to distinguish who was who. The only real tail tale points of differentiation were their relative sizes, with Wasi’s body being long and thick like a porpoise, Kim and Datsapolis being shaped as seals, and Sade taking on the appearance of a minnow in this hodge-podge school of human marine life.

The mission of this particular dive was to collect data on the transmission of infrared light in the underwater darkness, a task that seemed superfluous in its application possibilities, but one that had a real value for the right customers. As Sade shot infrared laser beams towards the ice shelf from different locations, her research assistants, Kim and Datsapolis, measured and recorded the distance and the intensity of the reflected light.

Sade was an interesting woman. She was not someone that you would typically expect to find in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, and particularly not someone that would willingly take on a military contract that came with strict oversights and restrictions. This was because she was stubborn, intense, and reluctant to take orders from anyone. Despite these personality traits, however, she was here, and a complicated and dangerous web of politics and personal demons ensnared her. However, to understand how she got here, we must go back to where the fracture started.

#

Hamilton, Montana – 1988

It all started during the transition between summer and fall when the air was crisp and the onset of a new year was palpable. It was the last chance to run through the forest and explore the wilds of youth before moving back to the city where life seemed all too planned, too structured, and too expected. Sade preferred the summer months when she stayed at her grandmother’s home in the country. She was free to explore, to be unpredictable, and to be reckless, but setting out this morning there was something horribly seductive drawing her into the darkness that lay just beyond her known playground.

As Sade kissed her grandmother’s cheek and rushed out the door, her grandmother called after her in a protective, but loving voice, “Be careful, darlin,” but, like so many times before, this warning seemed to be whisped away by the draft of the closing kitchen door before reaching her ears.

She ran through the yard with her eyes set on a very tantalizing point in the distance. This spot was dark, dangerous, and unknown, three things that were always very attractive to those transitioning from child to teenager. She had explored every inch of her grandmother’s property over the last 12 years, every part of the property except for one, the old quartz mine. She avoided this area because it smelled of death. Her grandmother said the smell was from stagnant water that collected in the mine after being abandoned.

Decomposing bodies of everything that fell into the mine over the last 50 years polluted the pooling water, making the air foul. However, this explanation didn’t seem right. She knew that there must be another reason, and she wanted to find out what that reason was.

The closer she got to the old mine, the darker the sky seemed to get, the colder and harsher the wind seemed to blow, and the more ominous the outside world became. There was a tantalizing fate that drew her closer to the darkness found within the mine. It was something unusual, unnatural, and irresistible.

As she reached her forbidden destination, she flipped on the small handheld flashlight that she brought with her. The beam cut through the darkness, reflecting off the dripping water that clung to the roughly shaped stone walls. She hollered into the darkness to hear her voice echo deep inside the chasm. As her voice echoed from one point in the mine to another, it dissipated and softened. After the mine reclaimed the silence, she ventured into the darkness chasing the spectral entity taunting her imagination.

Sade’s delicate hands ran along the sides of the mine as her youthful enthusiasm coaxed her deeper into the cavern. She felt the texture of the rock which shifted from smooth quartz to gritty sandstone to slick and greasy veins of Galena. The further down she wandered the more mysterious and wondrous it became. The white and brown tones of rock transitioned to deep emerald green serpentine spiked with veins of metallic streaks that ran like a marbling of fat in the belly of this monstrous cave.

After a half hour of carefully descending steps, she was over 100 feet below the entrance. Sade looked around and discovered that there wasn’t a standing body of water on the cavern’s floor as her grandmother predicted. In fact, the mine’s floor was dry, but the air was hot and moist and tainted with the stench of sulfur and rotting flesh, although the source of this smell remained elusive.

In front of Sade, the mine opened up and offered three shafts to explore. She flashed her light into each shaft and contemplated which one to try out first. She was not a skittish girl. In fact, she always seemed to be drawn to the dark and morose things in life. Perhaps this was because the darkness provided more mysteries for her imagination to explore while the daylight revealed the boring realities of normal life. This mine, therefore, offered her the ultimate gift, the chance to explore the secrets of obscurity.

Sade was wildly aroused by the potential of a new adventure. It all seemed so exciting and fun. Unfortunately, like many terrible things in life, the fun and excitement made up an attractive façade that masked the true nature of what was to come. Since she was young, however, she didn’t know this and so she ventured into the mine naively, anticipating a gloriously terrifying experience.

Stepping towards the middle shaft she suddenly froze in place as the sound of a voice dripping from the left chamber grabbed her attention. This voice pulled at her curiosity causing her to change her course. As she moved towards the sound, a faint whisper beckoned her.

#

Arctic – Winter 2010

The infrared light stroked the submerged ice formation tracing its every contour like a lover with Kim breathlessly moving in synchronicity behind it, desperate to document each detail. Floating weightlessly in the abyss, he raised his visor to document the results on his waterproof tablet and then signaled Sade to move to the next distance. Kim was patient and understood Sade’s eccentricities, as he had been her research assistant for nearly ten years. He respected her insights into the sciences, and her creativity. He also felt responsible for her protection as she had an intimate knowledge of the darkness that he desperately wanted to share. However, a dark secret also kept him a regretful but willing captive of hers.

While both Sade and Kim shared an obsession of the dark, his obsession differed in that a childhood trauma did not inspire his fixation. Instead, he consciously chose to dive into the void. His entry began in his youth which he spent reading and studying creation myths of the world, all of which seemed to begin in the darkness. He believed that this commonality was not coincidence, but rather a clue about the origins of life. If everything that we have in the world today was birthed from the darkness, he thought, then it must contain something remarkable, something powerful, but what? This was the intellectual demon that he had chased since he was 16, and the driving force behind his professional career.

Sade fired another beam of light towards the ice shelf. Kim waited motionless unaware that the stream of light particles had passed by him. Datsapolis tapped him on his shoulder and motioned for him to draw down his visor. The visor had built-in infrared sensors that would enable him to see the otherwise invisible beam of light particles. Kim pulled down his visor and signaled to Sade to repeat the last distance. With his visor down, Kim watched the particles swim through the water and dance against the frozen wall that hung down from the surface. Kim took a reading and recorded the results.

Datsapolis was a Greek technology genius that had joined the team at the last minute. His specialty was particle technology, and that made him invaluable to the team’s success. He had been instrumental in the development of most of the tools that the team used, everything from infrared visors to the rebreather units that they used when engaging in extended dives. Datsapolis was average height, dark and rather burly. He was very dramatic and had a tendency to get overly excited when trying out new equipment. While a bit eccentric in his own right, and an expensive addition to the team, Sade knew he was well worth the investment and referred to him affectionately as “Datz.”

While Kim and Datz had warm and energetic personalities, Wasi existed on the other end of the spectrum. He was less interested in the light experiments that the team was involved in today, and more interested in the attention that the light activity would produce. He was the resident predator expert, and he excelled in the knowledge of large predators, such as polar bears and humans. He joined Sade’s research project as a consultant and functioned not only as the team’s predator expert but also as the team’s security officer, as his resume boasted of extended service in military special ops teams, although he wouldn’t specify which ones.

Physically, Wasi was a unique specimen. He was a large man, especially compared to the rest of the team, standing 6’5” tall and weighing in excess of 280 pounds. When Wasi showed up for his interview in Anchorage he looked exactly like what Sade thought a marauding Viking would look like. He was wild, dark, stoic and walked with lumbering, powerful strides. However, he did have refinements that made him intriguing. He was intelligent and compassionate about his work, and very interested in working with her. He had been recommended by a close friend and colleague, who had been concerned about the team operating without security so far north. While Sade was reluctant to agree with her colleague about needing a security officer, one meeting with Wasi changed her position. There was something about him that drew her in, a familiarity that was unplaceable, but also undeniable.

As Sade, Kim, and Datz continued to take their readings, the stillness of the water suddenly shifted. A sound from deep under the surface began to echo off the ice. Wasi’s attention was arrested by this disruption, which vibrated through his body stimulating his adrenal glands and preparing him for encroaching danger. He searched within the gloom for a glimpse of the perpetrator, a shape of navy and gray that would help him to determine the source of the call.

From the murky abyss, a shadowy form grew as it approached the surface. Gradually the shape became clearer and Wasi could see that it was a narwhal. Its long-horned beak cut through the water gesturing towards the intended destination of the great sea beast. It was heading to the surface for a breath. Wasi searched the surface for a shallow spot in the ice where the whale was likely to breach. There were several near the research team, however, the one that the narwhal was heading towards was a safe distance away from them. This realization allowed him to relax as he studied the movements of the whale as it gracefully swam towards the surface using echolocation to find the most practical spot in the ice to ram.

The whale broke effortlessly through the surface and a rush of air and crystalline was jetted out of its spout. Under the water, the returning spray and debris sounded like hail coming down on a tin roof. After a moment at the surface, the whale took a deep breath and dove under the water once again and moved on to the next weak spot in the ice, breaking through, taking a breath and then moving on down the line.

Wasi’s attention stayed with the narwhal as it slowly vanished into the darkness.

#

On the surface, the wind howled and carved out frost devils that swirled and took hostages of frozen water crystals, adding to its form. The surface was dark, cold, and eerily quiet. There were no bird sounds, nor any animal sounds of any kind. Winter in the Arctic was like this, bleak, desolate, and desperate.

A mound of snow shook loose from the continent and took a deep breath. A black nose and two black eyes appeared and pointed to the sky. Short, loud sniffs broke the silence of the endless night. The wind was cold and hurt the lining of the polar bear’s nostrils, but it was essential that the creature find a scent of something organic to feed its agonizing hunger. There was no scent on this wind, so the bear moved, patrolling the air near the ice looking for the promise of something warm, oily, and bloody.

Memories and instinct drove the bear east. Occasionally the bear would freeze in its tracks and cock its head to the side. It listened for the calls and boons of the whales and seals under its feet. The pitch and frequency of each call told the bear what was swimming in the water and how close it was to surfacing. The bear knew that whale calls were melodic and haunting and that when they vibrated off the ice the sensation was long and fluid. The calls of seals, on the other hand, were more mechanical and staccato. When these calls bounced off the ice they scattered, making it more difficult to gauge where the animal was coming from and how far away it was.

The wind picked up, disrupting the connection the bear had to the vibrations. It returned to its sense of sight as its hunting progressed. Its eyes scanned the translucent tundra, looking for variations in its density to indicate the most likely spots for where whales or seals would break through for a breath. The bear knew that these sea creatures could not stay submerged forever, and if it was patient, its food would surface. However, the bear had not eaten in weeks and it was losing its hunting prowess and its physical endurance. It needed a kill today or it would not survive another night in the Arctic.

The sound of ice breaking caught the bear’s attention. It froze in its tracks and violently drew in air like a jet engine. As it scanned the horizon, its hunger distorted its vision and its perception of the icy world that it dominated became foreign to it. The visual acuity of the bear faded in and out and then it snapped into focus as a wisp of wind brought with it the scent of something living. As if propelled by a rampant passion for survival, the bear took off galloping towards the promise of one more day on the planet.

#

Hamilton, Montana – 1988

The chamber curved and became shallower as Sade followed it into the bowels of the mountain. Soon she had to crawl on her hands and knees so that she would fit through the opening. The walls of the chamber became slicker and smoother the further down she went and soon they were as smooth as polished glass.

Her breath became labored as the oxygen in the chamber waned. She paused and leaned against the wall for a moment to catch her breath. As her lungs relaxed and her breathing steadied, Sade shifted her attention to her surroundings. She slid her hands along the walls, examining them as a sculptor would examine a piece of marble. The surfaces around her were as smooth as ancient glacial ice, except they were not cold. It was as if the rock had been melted and transformed into an emerald glass. Pressing her nose against it, she could see through the chamber’s opaque skin all the way to the bedrock that lay three feet behind the smoky emerald pane. As she ran her hands over the smooth membrane, she couldn’t help but wonder how it had been created, as its slick and translucent features seemed so unnatural amidst the sharp and jagged structures found everywhere else in this labyrinth.

Realizing that she had used up most of her allotted time for exploration she decided to evaluate her options. Flashing her light down the chamber towards the deep end of the shaft she saw no indication that it ended. Then she looked at the distance she had traveled. Again there seemed to be no beginning or ending to the chamber, only blackness and rock. At that moment, her watch alarm went off. The LED light that came on reflected off the glassy walls of the tunnel and created a blinding light show. Startled by the brilliance, she let out a short scream, which echoed down the tunnel as if it were running away from the devil.

#

Arctic – Winter 2010

The research team continued their work, following the contours of the frozen ceiling. Kim positioned himself near one of the breathing holes produced by the narwhal and waited for the next beam of light. The ice moaned and creaked above his head. It darkened and the Arctic chatter of wind on snow-packed ice erupted into thunder.

The eruption ripped Wasi’s attention away from the hypnotic depths of the ocean and he spun towards Kim. Above him on the surface a hulking shadow rushed towards the breathing hole. Wasi tried to get Kim’s attention, but he was too engrossed in his work. As he swam towards Kim to intercept the assault, the menacing shadow faded as the polar bear jumped into the air and crashed through the icy shell that had developed over the breathing hole. The bear’s massive body plunged into the water, creating a vacuum that drew ice particles, equipment, and Kim towards its gaping jaws.

The polar bear swiped its massive paw against Kim’s face, shattering his auger mask and knocking him violently to the side. As his mask floated away from his body, the white beast grabbed him by the thigh and hauled his limp body out of the water with ease. All that was left behind was a phantom shadow of Kim’s body manifested by his blood blooming in the frigid water.

The remaining divers in the water reached the breathing hole as Kim’s body trailed off into the Arctic wilderness. Wasi pulled himself onto the ice shelf and scanned the darkness for a trail. Quickly his eyes locked onto the blossoms of bloodied ice crystals trailing off to the north. Peeling off his mask he gathered visual intelligence of his options. As he scanned the horizon he saw the flickering lights from the surface team floating in the distance like a swarm of lightning bugs against a blanket of black silk. The diving team had covered nearly two miles of ice underwater and the surface team and the snowmobiles were at least 20 minutes away under the best of conditions. Wasi fumbled with frozen hands for a waterproof short-wave radio and called the surface team for backup as he bounded after Kim like a prehistoric wolf reanimated by the promise of a gory feast for the senses.

Covering nearly two miles before coming up to the site of slaughter, Wasi’s body crackled with adrenaline and electricity as he crouched behind a chunk of sea ice heaved up by a whale earlier in the week. Opening his mouth he panted in short bursts as he tried to regain control of his body. This panting drew in the unmistakable scent and taste of fresh blood. Wasi cautiously shifted his weight so he could see beyond the protection of the sea ice. The bear had Kim’s face in its powerful jaws and his bones cracked and moaned like the shelf ice below, echoing a primal duet for the pleasure of the polar bear.

Wasi had spent a lot of time working with predators and knew their behavior; however, this was the closest he had gotten to this particular predator while it fed. He watched ravenously, listening to the sounds of bones liquefying in the saliva and smelling the salty residue of Kim’s blood solidifying on the ice. He knew that there was nothing that he could do as he was unarmed and alone. Wasi scanned the horizon using his peripheral vision hoping on the one hand that the surface team was on its way, and greedily yearning for more time with the bear and its primal abandon on the other.

The sound of a snowmobile filtered through the howling wind. The smell of gasoline and engine emissions broke the bear’s attention away from its prey. The bear was hungry and not willing to give up its dinner. It tried to drag Kim’s body away, but the sound of a rifle shot caused it to drop the body and to look nervously around. The bear spotted the approaching snowmobiles and a gleam of hatred filled its eyes. The polar bear was intelligent and aware of whom its enemies were, and humans were at the top of its list. The bear grunted and snorted as it contemplated its next move.

A second shot rang out.

#

Hamilton, Montana – 1988

“Shit, that scared me.” Sade giggled in an attempt to calm her nerves. As she tried to shield her eyes from the brilliant light, she fumbled with her wristwatch, attempting to turn off the alarm.

Realizing her adventure was over as the result of a time technicality, Sade sighed with disappointment and turned back towards the entrance of the chamber. Blinking away the blue and yellow dots that were burned into her retinas by the LED light display, she shifted her body weight to turn around and head back towards the entrance. It was then that a deep and primal utterance echoed through the chamber, freezing her in her tracks. This was not the sound of an animal. It was something far more terrifying. It was a sound she had heard before when a neighboring mine was demolished. It was the sound of a tunnel collapse.

Sade scrambled as fast as she could to escape the cracking and moaning of the mountain. Her jeans tore from her escape effort and she began to leave a trail of bloody mud in her wake. Seeing the chamber’s opening a few yards in front of her drew a smile across her face, but her joy was short lived. In one great gulp, the stone giant swallowed her into a deeper and darker cavern.

As she fell, she screamed but there was no echo. This scared her as she didn’t know what the absence of an echo meant. She didn’t know if she was falling into a cavern so large that an echo was swallowed by the distance, or if she was falling into a narrow blasting tube left by former miners. Before her mind came to an answer she came to a violent stop.

Her flashlight flickered as it collided with the ground a few feet from her body. Sade grabbed it and examined where she was. She was in a large cavern that seemed to have several caves leading off of its perimeter. Where she sat, she determined, she was safe from another fall, but the darkness that filled the cave triggered her deepest fears, shooting down her ability to pay attention to logic. The darkness felt heavy and thick, and it seemed to be approaching her like a grizzly stalking an injured deer in the woods.

To get her mind off of the wickedness of the darkness that lay mere yards from her position, she leaned against the cave wall and focused on what she knew. She knew that her grandmother would come looking for her if she wasn’t back by the time her parents arrived at three that afternoon. That meant that she just had to stay still and calm for another two hours. She could handle that. She had a flashlight, there seemed to be oxygen in the cave, and she really hadn’t gone that far into the mine, or so she rationalized. Unfortunately, this rationalization was quickly erased when the small flashlight that she carried with her dimmed, flickered, and finally submitted to the extinguishing of its light.

#

Arctic – Winter 2010

The sound of the rifle shot shocked Kim’s heart back into motion. His body arched and contorted as his lungs forced his terror out of his body. Kim’s shrill screams scraped across the cold air like fingernails on a blackboard. This sound caused the team members to clench all of their muscles in discomfort, but it whetted the bear’s appetite.

No longer able to resist what it knew was to be its last meal, the bear dropped his head and clamped down on Kim’s neck. The sound of Kim’s scream rose an octave and began to boil with terror. A third shot rang out silencing both Kim and the bear. The only sound that remained was the thud of the bear’s dead body dropping heavily to the ice.

Wasi moved to the bear and studied its silence, its size, and its haunting presence. His heart sank, bleeding for the bear killed, commiserating with it as he contemplated his own inevitable violent ending. After all, he was just as much a primal predator as the bear had been, maybe more lethal. Yet would his predatory tendencies be his end as they were the bear’s end? The chatter from the rescue team cut Wasi’s wallow in his mortality short as they took control of the scene.

Jumping off the snowmobiles the team’s medic and land support unit rushed to Kim’s side and began to assess his vitals. Kim was torn up. He had multiple lacerations, a crushed trachea and deep gauges in his scalp. He was unconscious, not breathing, and his pulse was weak.

Sade and Datz finally arrived at the site, frozen and out of breath. Sade fell to the ground near Kim’s body and watched as the medics worked on her friend and colleague. While distraught, she was not one to cry in public. She repressed her tears for later when things were under her control, and she was not subject to the judgments of her team.

“I need an airway,” the medic stated.

His assistant handed him a plastic tube and a retractor. He inserted the breathing tube and bagged it. As the medic pumped air into Kim’s chest, the assistant continued with compressions. Kim’s eyes rolled into his head as he began to struggle against the revival attempts.

“Hold him down,” the medic demanded.

Sade pulled off her diving gloves and tried to control Kim’s thrashing, but her small stature robbed her of weight and leverage, and she was unable to control Kim by herself. She turned to Wasi who was still examining the polar bear.

“Wasi, I need your help!” she yelled.

Wasi turned his attention to Sade and abandoned the bear.

“Hold him down,” she demanded as she struggled to control her own anguish and fear for her friend’s condition.

The medic’s assistant who was pumping air into Kim’s lungs struggled with the bag. It wasn’t working. The air was not passing his throat.

“I think the airway is blocked,” he said.

“He’s been intubated, it can’t be blocked.”

Sade watched the way that Kim was struggling and at how the blood vessels in his eyes were bursting.

She placed her hand on the medic’s arm and said, “Stop. He’s drowning.”

“What? How is that possible?” the medic asked.

“The bear knocked off his mask while he was underwater. He was drowning when he lost consciousness. Now his body still thinks that he is drowning,” she explained.

“What does that mean?”

“The brachial branches have constricted to prevent water from entering his lungs. If you try to force air in now, you are going to blow out his airway and he will die.”

“So what do we do?”

Sade thought desperately for a solution and then pushed away from the others and wiped the blood and saliva from around his nose and mouth. She then cradled his head in her hands, being careful not to shift his head out of position as a C-collar was put on him, and looked straight into his half-opened eyes.

“Carl, this is Eisla. Listen to me… You are safe and on the surface… You are not in the water… You are not drowning…Do you hear me? It’s all in your head. You are not drowning...”

Kim’s gaze locked onto Sade’s icy blue eyes and his struggling slowed until he finally relaxed. Kim tried to take a breath on his own. He gasped and struggled, but his lungs were still locked up. Sade tried to calm him by smiling sweetly and stroking his hair.

“It’s going to be okay, I just need you to relax. You are safe and on the surface. Do you understand me? Can you give me a sign that you understand?”

Kim looked directly into her eyes and he blinked.

She smiled with relief. “Okay, now,” she said nodding to the medic to continue ventilating Kim.

Sade stroked Kim’s hair, trying not to focus too much on the gashes and gore on his face. The first attempt to ventilate Kim failed, and anxiety tainted Sade’s empathetic glance. The second attempt, however, was successful, and Kim’s chest rose and fell with each subsequent squeeze of the bag. The gurgle of bloody air cackled behind the protection of the C-collar, reminding her that things were still dire.

“Thank God. Let’s get him out of here and back to base camp,” the medic sighed.

The team loaded him onto a backboard as Wasi dumped the cargo from the sled, rocking the snowmobile to which it clung. Everyone pitched in to load Kim onto it with Datz climbing aboard at the last minute to make sure Kim remained secure during the ride back to base camp.

#

University of Montana, Missoula – 2001

The University Center Complex bustled with activity. Students were buying books, supplies, and much-needed caffeine. The semester had just begun and the panic of the new school year had set in. Sitting near a potted palm, Sade sat jotting down notes from her quantum physics text. Her intense stillness drew the attention of Kim who was a freshman and new to the area. His nervousness was compounded by the energy of the complex and the movement of the students and faculty that took refuge in this building.

Kim moved towards Sade as if her atypical presence was pulling him. He stood in front of her, staring. She looked up at him and smiled, and then returned her attention to her notes. Kim didn’t know what to say or do, so he just stood there. He was surprised that she hadn’t done anything to change his behavior. She hadn’t asked him to leave or to move or to talk. He found her lack of reaction confusing, not that he understood why women acted the way that they did in other situations either. As the minutes ticked by, his confusion evolved. It ran from uncertainty to frustration to anxiety. Unfortunately, his agonizing predicament was not left unnoticed by another male student who walked by and knocked the books from his hands. They landed heavily on the ground with a thud that echoed through the complex, drawing the attention of hundreds of people.

Sade jumped as if she had forgotten that he was still standing there. She looked at his confused and anxious expression. Time seemed to be suspended in this instance, as if it was waiting for this mysterious woman to acknowledge the peculiarity of the moment before returning the natural motion to the universe. Her body shifted to the floor where the books had fallen returning time and space to its natural order. She was intrigued by the books that were in his possession, The Book of the Dead, The Creation Myths of the Incas and Mayas, and the Big Bang Theory. She flipped through the pages of each one quickly before returning it to its owner.

“Interesting collection,” is all she said as she repositioned herself on her wooden perch and returned to her studies.

#

Arctic – Winter 2010

As the team was about to leave, Sade pulled the lead medic aside and gave him instructions, “Don’t call Fish and Game until after the Medivac team has been called…They’ll need to know about the bear, but they don’t need to know until arrangements to get Kim on his way to Anchorage have been made, okay?”

“Okay, Doc.”

The medical team left with Kim and Datz in tow. Sade and Wasi remained behind with the bear, the dumped gear and one snowmobile. They both stood over the colossus trying to recover from the attack and quickly becoming standing ice sculptures.

They did not take the death of this animal for granted. Both knew the value that this one body had for their research. They also knew that it was illegal to harvest a polar bear in this area of the Arctic and that Fish and Game would be collecting the carcass within hours.

The information contained in this 1200-1500 pound collection of biochemicals, muscle, and fur, however, could provide the insight needed to answer many questions that both researchers had about the special physical abilities that polar predators had. With the clock ticking on their access to the body and its secrets, the two were forced to decide how to get the bear back to camp.

#

Hamilton, Montana – 1988

On the surface, the dark is not really devoid of light. After all, there is starlight and moonlight, there are electrical bulbs, and there are electronic devices in homes that provide some illumination to see what is in front of you. Under the surface of the earth, on the other hand, the dark is truly devoid of visible light. When you are in the dark here, there is no seeing what is in front of you, what is behind you, what is above you, or what is below you. There is nothing to guide your senses or to provide you with an orientation or purpose.

This terrifying realization struck Sade as a new sound entered the darkness. The moaning hum of a slowly moving stream of liquid. She could feel the coolness of the fluid as it crept around the craggy corners of the chamber. Soon its thick fluid tongue lapped against her fingertips and leg as if tasting her. Sade edged away from the dark liquid that was pursuing her until she was cornered by it. The liquid spread out to all corners of the darkness giving her nowhere to turn to for a dry refuge.

She screamed and clawed at the side of the cave, trying to get a footing to climb the wall and escape the liquid predator. Her scream shattered the air, piercing through it like a bullet as her terror and the pool of dark liquid deepened. Then all sound came to a stop as her vocal cords tore and filled her throat with an agonizing silence. Sade groped at her throat as the pain numbed her senses.

Entering the chamber from one of the side caverns and swimming towards her, an anamorphous entity drenched in gloom quickly overshadowed the trauma. She held her arm out of the water and pushed the button on the side of her watch to illuminate the LED light. The bright light filled the chamber and gave her one glimpse of her alien environment.

Something rushed past her body, creating a wake. She tried to see into the pool of dark liquid, but the light was reflecting off the surface, making it impossible to see what lay beneath it. She gulped in a gasp of air and plunged under the surface. Searching in the water for the creature that shared her liquid tomb, her heart raced, but she could see nothing. She resurfaced and explored above the water line for life. Then, as she scanned the chamber, the beam of her flashlight refracted off a pair of human-sized eyes that stared back at her. Sade’s mouth fell open in a horrifying gape, yet nothing but crimson foam escaped. As the pink foam surrounded her, the sinister water consumer her consciousness.

#

Arctic – Winter 2010

As the wind howled and swirled around Sade and Wasi, only one phrase came to mind, “How the hell are we going to get that back to camp?”

#

To be continued...