Chapter 3

The snow was already past my knees, and the blizzard churned over the entire Blackwater Lake Camp like a massive meat grinder.

In a span of just a few hundred meters, I fell three times.

The extreme cold made my lungs sting as if I had swallowed broken glass, but I didn't dare stop.

My mind was consumed by the horrifying image of Evelyn plastered to the ceiling, limbs bent backward, devouring raw meat.

Cabin 4 was at the far northern end of the camp.

I stumbled up the steps and frantically pounded on the door with my frozen fists.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

"Carter! Carter, are you in there?!"

In less than three seconds, with a click, the door opened.

Inside, Carter was still wearing that dark gray windbreaker, the zipper pulled to the exact same height as last night.

Looking at me—covered in snow and looking utterly pathetic—his face registered absolutely no surprise. He merely pushed up his reflective, rimless glasses.

"It seems you survived the night. Come in, Professor."

The interior of the cabin was exceedingly sparse, looking nothing like a vacation rental.

On a desk against the wall sat several high-precision instruments I couldn't name, their screens blinking with complex frequency waves.

"What the hell is she?!" I grabbed Carter by the collar the second the door shut, my voice entirely hoarse from sheer terror and rage. "Last night... I saw her spine writhing like a giant worm! She was crawling backward on the ceiling like a spider, reeking of dead fish! That's not Evelyn!"

Carter didn't resist, letting me bunch up his collar.

His gaze was cold and calm, as if observing a perfectly standard clinical case.

"Let go, Arthur," he said lightly. "If you want to save your wife, control your useless emotions first."

Hearing the word "save," my hands instantly released him.

"You mean... she can be saved?" I panted heavily, clinging to the word like a drowning man to a lifeline. "She's just sick, right? She's not a monster, she just contracted some unknown virus?"

"Worse than a virus."

Carter walked over to the desk and popped open a black metal briefcase.

"In the field of anomalous biology, we call it a 'Deep One Parasite'." He had his back back to me, his voice devoid of any inflection.

"It is a Cthulhu-esque parasitic organism originating from the deepest trenches of the ocean. It slithers under human skin, gradually seizing control of the host's central nervous system."

"The loss of pain and temperature perception is merely Stage One. By Stage Two, the host develops an extreme, depraved form of pica, and their skeletal structure undergoes cartilage mutation to adapt to high deep-sea pressure—which is the 'spider distortion' you witnessed last night."

Carter turned around. He was holding a sealed glass vial filled with an eerie, luminescent blue liquid.

"That stench is a defensive bodily fluid secreted by the parasite to mask a much deeper, older scent." He stared directly into my eyes. "During the day, the parasite enters a temporary state of dormancy to avoid direct sunlight, which is why the Evelyn you saw this morning looked perfectly normal."

"But by tonight," Carter's tone dropped to a freezing chill, "the parasite will completely devour her brain. She will devolve into a pure, hybridized killing machine, and she will eat everyone in this snowbound resort alive."

My stomach churned violently. My legs gave out, and I slumped back against the wooden door.

"You said you had an armed squad!" I jerked my head up. "Send them to capture her! Take her to a hospital, a lab, anywhere, as long as they can extract that thing out of her!"

"My men departed last night." Carter pointed at the howling tempest outside the window. "But this damn extreme weather triggered an avalanche, blocking off all the mountain passages. Heavy transport choppers are grounded, and it'll take our tracked snow-crawlers at least eight hours to clear the last two kilometers into the lake zone."

"Eight hours..." I muttered in despair.

"Correct. So until then, we must stall it."

Carter walked up to me and handed me the glowing blue vial, along with four black, metal chips no larger than a coin, fitted with micro-suction cups.

"What is this?" I didn't take them.

"A highly concentrated neuro-inhibitor, and micro sonar generators." Carter's voice carried an undeniable, oppressive weight.

"These sonar generators must be attached to the four corners of your bedroom. Once activated, they emit infrasonic waves that only the parasite can hear, completely scrambling its echolocation and navigation. But this vial—this is the key."

He forcefully pressed the vial into the palm of my hand. "Within these eight hours, you must return to Cabin 14 and find a way to slip this inhibitor into her food or water."

"The moment she swallows it, the parasite will plunge into deep paralysis. When my squad arrives, we can safely restrain her with an electromagnetic net and perform the surgical extraction."

"You want me to go back? To drug that monster?!"

My voice instantly spiked an octave higher, looking at him like he was a madman. "I'm just a psychology professor! I haven't even killed a chicken before! You want me to drug a monster that crawls backward on ceilings?! If she notices even a fraction of a misstep, that ice-cold finger of hers will punch straight through my throat!"

"She's not a monster, she is Evelyn!" Carter suddenly snapped, cutting me off.

Those words hit me like a sledgehammer dead in the chest.

"Arthur, you are the closest person in the world to her."

"Only during this dormancy period, and only you, can approach her unguarded and get her to drink this." Carter leaned in, his eyes behind the lenses seemingly piercing straight through my soul.

"Or, you can choose to cower here with me. And then, once midnight passes and the parasite fully assimilates your wife, my men will arrive and be forced to reduce her to a pile of meat with high-explosive armor-piercing rounds. Which one do you choose?"

I froze in place.

In my mind, the terrifying image of Evelyn last night—covered in blood with unfocused, dead eyes—began to violently overlap with the gentle, smiling face of the woman walking toward me in a wedding dress ten years ago.

Ten years.

From the time I had nothing, to becoming a tenured professor, it was Evelyn who had stayed by my side through every agonizing, sleepless night.

Just yesterday, she had seamlessly tucked my scarf around my neck to keep me warm.

She was being parasitized.

She was enduring the mind-shattering agony of having her bones crushed and her body hijacked by a monster.

The cold glass vial in my palm suddenly seemed to radiate heat.

I looked down at my own hands, shuddering uncontrollably out of fear. Then, I locked my jaw, biting down on my gums until a metallic taste flooded my mouth, forcefully using sheer logic and love to suppress the deep, genetic dread of the unknown.

"How do I contact you?" I looked up, my eyes totally bloodshot.

A faint, cold, hidden smirk ghosted across Carter's lips.

"Set up the sonar, ensure she drinks the dose, and then press the communicator I gave you last night. No matter how vicious the blizzard gets, my men will breach your door within five minutes."

"Okay."

I didn't waste another word. Snatching the blue inhibitor (or rather, what Carter claimed was an inhibitor) and the sonar chips, I shoved them deep into the inner pocket of my coat, pushed the door open, and plunged headfirst back into the lethal polar vortex.

...

Standing before the door of Cabin 14 once again, a thick layer of ice armor had already formed over my heavy coat.

A brief thirty-minute absence felt as though centuries had passed.

Behind this heavy, solid wood door was no longer my cozy vacation nest, but a hunting cage that could snap shut at any second.

My trembling hand rested on the freezing brass doorknob.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

My heartbeat thundered against my eardrums like a war drum.

Did she notice I left? Could I, while trembling under extreme psychological terror, flawlessly slip this drug into her water?

What if she was standing directly behind this door right now, waiting for me with those dead, glassy eyes?

The biting wind howled mournfully in my ears.

For Evelyn.

Taking a deep breath, I called upon every psychological masking technique I possessed from lecturing in auditoriums of hundreds, adjusting my facial muscles into the most natural, serene expression possible.

Then, I pressed down on the handle.

Click.

I pushed the door open.

What hit me was simply the familiar wave of warm heating.

Nothing was out of the ordinary.

"Arthur?"

Evelyn's gentle voice drifted from the kitchen.

She was sitting at the dining table, holding a steaming mug of coffee. She tilted her head, looking at me with clear, confused eyes.

"Where did you go? You were gone so long, your face is purple from the cold," she said, standing up and walking over to me just like she always did.

No inverted limbs. No sticky, bloody flesh. No suffocating stench of rot.

But in the pocket of my coat, pressed right against my chest, lay the deadly chip meant to paralyze the monster living inside her.

Within this sealed, snowbound cabin, the psychological battle of life and death had officially begun.