The Antarctic chill had always been a brutal, biting thing, but this was different. This cold seeped into the bones, refusing to be warmed by layers of thermal gear or the roaring fires in the research outpost's generator room. Joseph, a wiry man of thirty-eight with skin the color of rich earth, felt it most acutely.
He was a long way from his home in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a place where warmth was abundant and the sun beat down with a fierce, life-giving power. Now, he was surrounded by a white emptiness, an endless expanse that mirrored the unsettling dread growing inside him.
He pulled his parka tighter around himself, watching as Dr. Meyer, the head researcher, barked orders at the small team of scientists.
They were huddled around a newly discovered crevasse, its jagged edges glowing with an unnatural blue luminescence. It wasn't the Northern Lights or any aurora he knew of, but a hard, crystalline glow that seemed to radiate cold instead of light.
"What do you think it is, Doctor?" Joseph asked, his Swahili-accented English barely audible above the howling wind.
Meyer, a woman whose face seemed permanently etched with concern, shook her head. "I don't know, Joseph. But it's unlike anything I've ever seen. The energy readings are off the charts."
That was two weeks ago. Two weeks of escalating strangeness, of the cold intensifying, of the blue glow spreading from the crevasse like a malignant infection. Equipment malfunctioned, communication lines went dead, and the small outpost became a prison of ice and fear.
The 'cold fire,' as some of the men had started calling it, didn't burn in the traditional sense. It froze. It froze living tissue instantly, turning flesh to brittle, crystalline sculptures. Those who touched it were gone in seconds, their screams choked off as their lungs solidified.
Joseph watched Sergeant Major Davies and Dr. Ramirez, their breath plumes frosty, arguing near the comms station.
"I'm telling you, the signal just flickered then dropped again. It's getting worse every minute." Davies's voice was gravel.
Ramirez adjusted her spectacles, concern furrowing her brow. "Could just be a system problem brought on by the climate?"
"This is something more serious, I tell you."
That was one theory making its rounds throughout the outpost - interference in the equipment - it brought little to no ease as each hour felt longer than the last.
The silence descended, broken only by the mournful keen of the wind and the constant, low hum emanating from the crevasse.
Then people started going missing. It began slowly, someone not showing up for mess, a door left open and their bunk empty but with belongings and no trace of any leaving behind. Then it snowballed quickly into more people, and finally screams coming from all ends of the outpost that could only describe one truth, someone was suffering horribly. Joseph knew they were next if the rate continued. He wasn't religious or prayed much but it was about time to start, maybe there was salvation if his end was truly near.
Joseph closed his eyes and imagined the sun. He thought of the Congo River and the smells of his mother's cooking, of the vibrant green of the rainforest canopy, of the feeling of warm soil between his toes. It felt like a lifetime ago. Now, there was only the ice, the blue glow, and the chilling certainty of imminent doom.
Davies' voice cracked over the comms. "We're sealed, Joseph. She's gone from our own hands and from this hell."
"We have to find the problem!" Joseph screamed into his radio from his living quarters that once felt safe, which seemed almost funny now, but it did then.
"There isn't enough time. Do you not feel the cold taking us already?!"
The blue spread to Europe and America, and that was what finally got his full attention to a true existential doom.
Joseph started getting updates as best as one could over radio since news services worldwide stopped transmitting just before the entire station went silent completely, as of now Joseph had to find someone in the area before that day came to him.
"That god damn cold just stole my brother and took his life just like that." Joseph had a long hard conversation of grief when his younger brother was gone while getting resources for the family business of farming he took over.
The reality of their distance finally dawned on him as his brother passed away while he was far away in his Antarctic doom, alone.
He remembered why he was there to begin with. The money. His village needed a new school, a new clinic, a better source of clean water. The research station had offered a small fortune to anyone willing to work as support staff.
He'd been so eager, so hopeful. Now, all he had was ice and fear. He gripped the ancient crucifix his mother had given him, his knuckles white, trying to summon some measure of strength, some semblance of hope.
He remembered her last words of warmth, that seemed ages ago, and cried out for salvation with every single one of his tears.
But there was no salvation, not for them. It continued to descend, to spread, to spread wider to the far corners of this very own earth. He could feel it, a bitter taste of defeat consuming him entirely.
They had no power, no signal to broadcast, and no contact with a base or outside station. They didn't have access to any news other than whatever Sergeant Major Davies had access to, meaning they could believe very little of anything to be true, though there really wasn't a choice to make otherwise.
He had not even a chance for him or anybody on this station to say their final farewells or prayers before hell came over. What more could they have wanted out of any of this, knowing how short of a time this was for them to endure with the new.
The days grew darker, the nights colder. The world outside was obscured by a perpetual blizzard, a swirling white shroud that mirrored the emptiness within. The hum from the crevasse grew louder, more insistent, filling every corner of the outpost with its bone-chilling resonance.
Those who remained huddled together, seeking some warmth in shared terror. They spoke in whispers, sharing stories of loved ones, of better days, clinging to the fading embers of humanity in the face of unimaginable horror.
Ramirez, her face gaunt and pale, approached Joseph. She held a vial of cloudy liquid. "I'm going to get out before this gets me"
She gripped the vial hard like any minute could just be the death, if that much she spoke the truth. The others had their choice to feel like their demise came close but there was very little that could bring them back into life.
Davies didn't say nothing to this as his eyes seemed soulless from any light, as if he were simply going through the motions without real comprehension.
"Did you not hear about how my little brother was lost during some silly family venture?" Joseph asked.
She continued "We all lose at times to time, if this is a time for us it means time for it to happen".
She drank her cup slowly and waited. Nothing came for five, then ten minutes. "Oh god! Please!"
Joseph heard screaming from her station and he did nothing, absolutely nothing, except think back to when there was sunlight, trees, wildlife and the voices of his childhood that now came back at a fever pace to consume his very mind from what there was left to comprehend.
This went on for what felt like an eternity, even though it was hardly a few minutes.
She convulsed her arm violently on the desk nearby that almost spilled. "I never, and this would have killed us a long, long, long time ago!" Her last final remarks before disappearing into a pile of glass ice fragments right on her own work desk.
Joseph's expression on the side couldn't even be seen, with nothing left of his mind to comprehend to the simple common senses that anyone would perceive or realize during times like these. Nothingness from now on, and forever more.
"Another one lost." Davies expressed with no fear. "If that meant her, who comes next"
The end came slowly, inevitably. The cold fire seeped into the outpost, crystallizing the walls, the equipment, everything. Joseph watched as it crept towards him, the blue glow intensifying, the hum growing louder, more deafening.
He thought of his mother, his village, his brother and their families, to who and which they looked up to in all matters in their lives and always needed someone to push past whatever life that had planned for them and to keep on with their own goals.
He remembered their faces, their smiles, their voices and realized that it was now gone from life now. Their own legacy now came down to cold hard ash, nothing that even the heavens up high could help solve.
He felt his skin begin to prickle, his breath crystallizing in his lungs, and then all of a sudden he felt as cold as everything and then absolutely nothing and there was no sense in warmth ever again. Joseph closed his eyes one last time, surrendering to the cold embrace, remembering everything he had done to make a proper impact into the earth and thought to see how easy it can be wiped off its very plane.
As the outpost stood abandoned, completely isolated by any news media from outside, a small pocket television rested quietly displaying the state of emergency and loss, its light now forever crystallized and unable to communicate.
From that single event came the change in their worlds forever. The once burning yellow of the sun's rays became a solid frigid cold with no escape for their time to come.
Days later the signal returned and reports detailed a state of nothing, ice from pole to pole to what even lay past that, with no signal of anybody from mankind ever again. The new reign was now, cold.
No one remembered, no one ever even got any good chance to reminisce or at least put up one final memory to commemorate themselves to remember themselves with, for the ones after the calamity struck that made mankind what it became now.
Joseph was just the catalyst to it all in a sense, but was truly alone now from the place he looked up to from.
Forever the catalyst, forever alone in the earth.