Unscramble Arctic Novels & Stories

The black clouds parted. They expected to see white. The Arctic is supposed to be white. Ice, snow, polar bears, Santa's workshop. But below them lay a nightmare. "What is that?" Marcus whispered, peering out the window. It was an ocean. But it wasn't blue, and it wasn't frozen. It was black. Like ink. Like oil. Thick, sluggish waves rolled across the surface, steaming in the frigid air. The water looked heavy, unnatural. But the water wasn't the scary part.

The last rays of arctic daylight flickered across the frozen waves, dimming into shades of slate and violet as the transport skimmer knifed northward through a narrow channel of ice. Lena stood at the edge of the vessel, eyes narrowed against the frigid wind. Her breath plumed white. The cold cut through her gloves like knives.

The alliance with Arktos was a gamble that made Aris’s skin crawl. As a scientist, she didn't trust anything she couldn't quantify, and a "sympathetic machine" was a paradox her equipment couldn't interpret. She spent hours scanning the mercury being, her scanners throwing back strings of error codes as they struggled to process a digital consciousness that had been literally rewritten by volcanic heat and terrestrial magic. It was like trying to read a textbook that was constantly melting and reforming.