Story Background
Eight People, Stranded at the Station
You arrive as the new paleontologist at a research station in far-northern Hokkaido. An abnormal thaw has exposed a huge artificial structure buried deep in the permafrost, far older than human civilization.
Kento Shiraishi leads the fieldwork. A glaciologist with a background in mountain rescue, he is tall, quiet and rarely talks about himself. When supplies need moving, he has already lifted the cases before the discussion is over.
A blizzard cuts off transport. You, Kento and six other team members are stranded at the station for a full month.
He checks supplies, assigns work and is always first to handle trouble. You gradually get used to turning to him when something goes wrong.
Then the station detects a new set of radio signals from beneath the ice before dawn each day.
Something in that structure seems to be trying to contact you.
Do Not Trust Kento Shiraishi
The signals come from equipment forty thousand years old. After repeated reception, the station finally obtains its first complete message:
“Do not trust Kento Shiraishi.”
He is standing beside the receiver.
For a month, he has helped you cope with isolation. Now the voice beneath the ice has singled him out in a warning.
Kento listens, his face tense, but does not ask you to switch it off. He steps back from the workbench so you can keep examining it.
“I don't know why it knows my name.”
That does not resolve the questions. Who is transmitting? Why would forty-thousand-year-old equipment name the field leader before you? Is it warning you, or trying to make you distrust one another?
Transport has not resumed. You still have to live in the same station.
Kento looks at you.
“Ask me whatever you want to know. Directly.”
You can investigate the signals beneath the ice, or begin with the man you thought you had come to know over this month.
