We Dug Too Deep in Antarctica. Something Followed Us Home

This podcast takes you on a journey through the SCP Foundation Archives, where strange anomalies, secret experiments, and unsettling mysteries collide.

“Let's just say it's not for the faint of heart. Be sure to search for the SCP Experience wherever you get your podcasts.”

Dr. Naysley. The constant vibration from the ship's engines makes me doubt whether I've just heard anything at all. Or maybe I don't want to hear it. Maybe I don't know if I can be around any more violence right now. I'm leaning over the tiny sink base and in the community bathroom, looking into a moisture smeared mirror.

The steam from my shower is still dissipating. I'm only wearing my boxers and socks because it's late, and I'm planning to go directly to bed. No reason to get dressed just for the 15 yard walk to my cabin. Another third from nearby distracts me. It's followed by a bout of angry shouting.

Most everyone is asleep, say for a handful who are on duty, which makes the noise doubly strange. What now? I'm modern. As I step to the narrow door and reach for the knob, I notice my hands are shaking. It's an automatic response to violence. When I picked up, after a very bad night, ten years ago, I don't want to leave the bathroom.

I already feel sick to my stomach, but someone out there is shouting my friend's name. And in a tone that doesn't bode well.

“Curiosity and concern get the best of me.”

I open the door and step out into the hallway. The sounds of a struggle are louder now. I hurry toward them, thick socks, swishing on thin carpet.

Memories of what happened before leaving our Antarctic base two days ago have never been far.

But right now, they're foremost in my mind. I turn the corner to find two men and a woman struggling in the hallway outside the stairwell door. I know them all well. We've just spent two and a half months together in very close proximity. Which is why I'm so surprised to see what's happening.

Brennan, my bunkmate, and the man I've known the longest out of everyone on this ship, has pressed up against the wall by the other two. Davila, a tough ex Army woman, has his arm pressed against the wall with one hand. She tries to free a familiar tough-lon-coated canister from his grip with her other hand. Stein, a bearded Canadian outdoorsman, presses Brennan's other arm against the wall.

Using one leg across Brennan's knees to keep my bunkmate from kicking out. This would all seem insane even if I couldn't plainly see the look on Brennan's face. He's struggling so hard, grunting and grimacing that he looks like a different person.

“His clean-shaven face is lobster red, his lips, pulled back to reveal clamped together teeth.”

Vains, throb with his insanely fast heartbeat.

Let go! Davila screams, "Come on, Brennan, let go!" This isn't like him. None of this makes sense. My hands tremble as they try to make fists.

I don't let them. My stomach turns inside out. Flashes of the night ten years ago come to mind. A struggle. A push.

Steak metal stairs. A man shrieking and pain. As I stand there dumbly, taking in the scene. Blood vessels pop and Brennan's left eye. Clouding the light, sclarer with red.

Next to his rich brown iris. What are you doing?! A shout. unsure who I'm talking to. Stein glances over at me, revealing that his nose has been smashed in.

Blood flows into his orange beard, making it look brown. Help! He's not! Given my size and physique, I could easily subdue Brennan. But I don't.

I can't. Brennan, I say dolly. Knock it off, man. His eyes, which have been staring unseen at the wall, shift to me. There's a flicker of recognition.

Brennan suddenly stopped struggling. I live's droop. Every muscle relaxes. Davila rips the canister from his hand, but doesn't let go. Neither disdain.

His eyes fixed on me. Brennan opens his mouth. He's about to say something, but he doesn't. His eyelids, sheep back up, and he goes stiff again, fighting against his co-workers. He opens his mouth wide, and he hint of recognition of sanity as gone from his eyes.

With an amount of force I didn't know was possible. He slams his teeth together with a horrific clacking sound. He does it again and again, turning the clacking to cracking, as he breaks the bones in his mouth, or jars them from their gums. He slams his jaw once more, but force dine lets his arm go, and gets one hand under

his chin, forcing his head back against the wall. This prevents him from slamming his jaw again, but it doesn't keep him from grinding its side to side. I can hear the movement of his broken and uprooted teeth there. It reminds me of a rock tumbler I had as a child.

Jesus, stop! I cry, stepping forward, but still unable to get physically involved.

The implications of that don't register it first.

That until he starts convulsing. His face growing even redder. He's choking on his teeth! I shout.

“Stine pulls his jaw open and shoves fingers into his mouth, jamming one finger into the back”

of his throat, he tries to make Brennan throw up. It doesn't work. "I can't get them out!" Stine cries. Finally, I break my paralysis, moving to my friend.

"Let him go! I need to do the Heimlich!" Dobbila moves aside, but Stine is still trying to get the massive teeth out with the finger. As I pulled Brennan away from him, I shouted Dobbila to go get Galindo, our medical officer.

She runs off with the canister still in hand.

I get in position and perform the maneuver, but it's too late. He's gone. Still, I try a few more times, until Stine put the handle my shoulder. As I'm lowering my friend's body to the floor, I glanced down the back of his sweater. I swear something moves in there, something slithering down his back away from the light,

something gray green and faintly glistening. But then Dobbila is back with Galindo, and the man is pushing me away from Brennan. As I watch and hope, some frightened part of my mind goes to work, convincing myself I didn't see anything under his sweater. What if I did though?

“And what if it has something to do with what happened at the drill site two days ago?”

4,000 meters! Each year went up at the announcement, which had come from inside the core tower, shouted loudly over the sound of machinery. For safety reasons, most of us weren't supposed to be inside the core tower during active drilling.

I wasn't sure why they called it a tower. It was just a large tent with two walls and two open ends. We had gathered around the tent, dressed in our puffy, brightly colored snow suits. To witness the moment we broke the record. No one had ever drilled 4,000 meters into Antarctica.

I had to convert it in my American mind, finding that it was roughly 13,100 feet, a mind boggling depth in the ice. Raina, a grain, scrunch-faced Dutchman, who was overseeing the project, had been the one to make the announcement. Now he stepped out through one open side of the drill tower with his arms raised and triumph.

4,000 meters! He called again a smile lighting up what I could see of his face between his wool cap and the scarf around his neck. We've just made history, and it's because of your hard work. A joyous energy continued to sweep through the crew as the frigid wind battered us, and

the bright sun reflected off the snow in every direction. Brennan slapped me on the back with one glove-dhand. "Drinks on me tonight!" "I shook my head, smiling." "We all chipped in for the bottles.

Does that mean you're going to pay for my portion?" "Absolutely not. I mean, the drinks will be on me tonight. I'm bound to spill a few down my chest, as drunk as will be!" I laughed at Brennan as Stein came over, printing.

We talked excitedly about the fame we'd enjoy in our professional circle when we got back home.

10 minutes later, I helped bring out the first core sample the drill team had taken from

that depth. It was inside a long-mediled drill tube, which Brennan and I carried to a nearby tent for the scientists to inspect and sample. Davila and a woman named Elfaro pushed the core sample out of the tube and onto a table. It wasn't a nice core, which surprised me.

It looked like mud and rock. Davila saw me looking and said, "We hit a subglacial lake. This damn pede is from the lake bed." "Damn!" Brennan said, "Did we know there was a lake down there?"

"No!" Davila replied with a smile, "I guess we'll get to name it." "Although I was a little more than a glorified assistant, I knew that subglacial lakes often remained liquid because of pressure and geothermal heat." Brennan and I took the drill tube back toward the tower.

As we approached, the quiet suddenly became very apparent. Normally, the equipment would constantly run until the day's work was done, but it had been turned off. I had a moment of hope that we would get off early, but angry shots soon eclipsed that thought.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw my concern mirrored on Brennan's face. We hurried forward, still carrying the heavy drill tube between us. Upon reaching the drill tower and stepping inside, we were met with an odd scene. The drill operator, a man named Frey, crouched next to the large complex drill rig. He held a wrench, which I had seen him used to reattach the drill tube to its apparatus.

But now he held it oddly, jutting up between his middle and ring fingers like a baby might

“hold something before learning the best way.”

His expression made it even stranger. His eyebrows were together as if in deep thought, but his mouth was slack. Drool dripped into his short-black beard. "It's okay!" Raina said palms out.

"We're not going to hurt you!" Aside from Raina, three other people surrounded Frey, but at a safe distance.

Raina stepped closer, still trying to calm the man down, and Frey whipped the wrench

toward him.

“The end of the tool barely missed Raina as he ducked away.”

"Well, I started to shake, the threat of violence making me feel ill. I tried not to think about the way why he said looked, as he lay in a twisted heap at the bottom of the stairs, but the memories came regardless." "You want to give them a hand?" Raina asked me.

"I was by far the biggest guy on the team. Brennan knew about my previous job as a balancer, but not about the incident that changed my life. No one here did. I didn't answer, but Brennan's voice made Frey look in our direction.

And Tang, positioned behind the man, saw her chance. She darted forward, although I had no idea what such a small woman hoped to do against a man that had to wait at least to 25. Frey, since her coming and whipped around with the wrench, missing, as she ducked under his telegraphed swing.

The wrench slipped from his grip and bounced off a plastic equipment crate. Tang hid him in the stomach and a poor attempt at a tackle, but he shoved her to the snow and spun around as the others moved into subdue him. The scaffolding that supported the drill was about 15 feet tall, reaching up toward the middle of the large tent.

Frey started to climb it, moving as if he were drunk. Raina tried to grab his foot, getting kicked in the chest for his trouble. As someone who'd helped set up the drill, I could picture what would come next.

“The scaffolding squatted over a four foot wide hole dug to the snow, which was essential”

for proper operation. It didn't have a very wide footprint, but it didn't need one. The downward pressure of the heavy drill while in operation provided plenty of stability as long as the surface was flat. While extremely stable under normal circumstances, putting so much weight on one side of the

scaffolding could cause the whole thing to topple, especially with the drill mechanism up like it was, and the heavy drill too buff. Get him down! I called, dropping my end of the drill too and rushing forward. My idea was to climb onto the other side, providing a counterweight, but before I could reach

the scaffolding, it started to fall. A chorus of frantic shouts one up has those and its paths darted out of the way, and others looked unhelplessly. Frey had reached the top of the tower, but barely. His head and shoulders were above the top crossbar, but nothing else.

His back hit the hard-packed snow first, followed immediately by the weight of the tower.

The sound of his bones breaking as they were smashed against the hard snow made me think of a strike at a bowling alley, only muffled and tingeed with wetness. Someone froze staring at the man. On landing, he spat blood from his mouth and it hung open, wide along with his eyes. "What the hell happened to him?"

I shouted, too loud, no one could tell me. He just started acting strange, talking gibberish, they said. When Tang had moved over to see what was wrong, he grabbed the wrench and swung at her. I saw the rest. The project was shut down immediately.

It took more than a day to pack everything up at the drill site and then everything else at the research station. We drove back to Port Lockroy where our ship was docked. Once everyone was aboard, we sat sail. Now, Brennan is dead, too.

It's no coincidence, it can't be. I stare at my friend's body still lying on the hallway floor. The ship's captain is here, having been pulled from his slumber by the chief officer. A couple of other people from this deck who heard the commotion have also gathered around. The captain is still telling us how he'd like to keep the incident under wraps until

morning when I blurred out. We need to check his back! Everyone looks at me like I'm crazy, but I say it again. Check his back. I saw something on it when I was doing the heimlich.

What did you see? The captain asks, "Just check it now, please." I'll have to check him over anyway. Gellendo says, "With Davi Liv's help, he turns Brennan onto his face. Then, he pulls Brennan sweater up."

Strange, Rosie. Gellendo says as he studies the mark on Brennan's upper back. We've moved the man into the cooler where the core samples are stored. After finding nothing but bruises on his back, I finished getting dressed before helping to move his body.

Now, along with me and Gellendo, Davila is in the walk-in cooler with us, having put the sample back in its right place. "Did you find out what he was doing with the sample?" Gellendo asks her, "No, he didn't say anything I could understand. Not it like gibberish."

Like fry? I ask. Looking over at the cadaver back, containing fries body at the back of the cooler. I guess.

“I wasn't there to hear it, but that's what they're saying.”

Gellendo leans over the gurney to take a closer look. Hmm. What? There are some stippling. Very small holes in the middle of the bruise, but it doesn't have them.

Fry was the first one to handle the core sample when it came out, right?

I say. Something came out with it, and infected him, and then we accidentally brought it on

Gellendo and Davila look at me with varying levels of disbelief. Like a virus? Davila asks.

“"I remember what I saw on Brennan's back."”

"No, an organism.

Subglacial lakes are full of creatures we've never encountered before, right?"

"Sure, but nothing in science would allow for something that would. What? Hi Jack, a human being? Evolution doesn't work like that. Maybe they've never hijacked humans before."

I say. Maybe they latch onto other creatures, but now that they've encountered us. Besides, how else do you explain the bruising? There could be it doesn't reasons. Maybe it happened when he was carrying equipment on board, or when we had pressed him against

the wall. Maybe he got too drunk last night and fell into something. "Okay, so what about Fry?" I say. How do you explain his behavior?

Maybe we should check his upper back for bruising? What's still intact is a mess of bruises." Galindo says. "We wouldn't be able to tell." Besides, Damila is right.

“There's got to be some of their explanation for this.”

"I shake my head, looking at my dear friend." It reminds me of why. How he looked, and those few moments of relative silence at the bottom of the stairs, before he started screaming. My hands started shaking, I jammed them in my pockets.

The therapist I saw while trying to get anxiety medication said it's common for people to have physical responses like mine after a traumatic event.

When she first told me that I scoff, "Nothing happened to me.

I wasn't injured. I came out of the fine." Dr. Moro said. Just because you didn't suffer a physical injury during the altercation doesn't mean it wasn't traumatic for you, even if you didn't mean to, and even if you were acting

in self-defense, your actions did cause serious injuries to another human being. You're clearly a very empathetic person, and the fact that you caused this man pain bothers you. It may not seem like it now, but that's a good thing, Marcus. I wish there were more people like you in the world.

If he stick with me, we'll work together through this while keeping that empathy intact, of course.

“I remember thinking, if you only knew the truth.”

"What's that?" The fear in Davila's voice brings me back to the present. He's looking at the rear of Brennan's soiled sweatpants. Following her gaze, I see that something's moving underneath the fabric. Something headed toward the waistband.

"No fucking way!" Galinda Breath's stepping back from the gurney, but there's not much room. His back touches shelves before he's gone more than two feet. Davila, closest to the door, moves toward it without taking her eyes off Brennan's sweatpants. The thing that pokes out from under his sweatpants and his boxers looks like a large

slug. It's a sickly shade of dark gray green, and it moves like a slug, slowly, and with a series of wave-like undulations. As its entire body slithers out under Brennan's lover back, I see that it has no features to speak of, no head, or feelers, or tail, about the same size and shape as the bruising.

"We need to capture it!" Galinda says, "I'll kill it!" Davila adds with unscientific disgust.

I stare at the thing, realizing I was right, but I've never wanted to be wrong so bad

in my life. Galinda holds a hand out toward Davila. "Drab me a cylinder!" A rack of shelves next to the door has empty cylinders. Davila nods and steps over.

The slug springs up from Brennan's back impossibly fast, landing on Galinda's face. He gasps and grabs at it with his glove hands, and the creature scories up his cheek on tiny legs hidden beforehand, like it meant to hide them, like it wanted to trick us. This slug covers Galinda's eyes, draped over his nose like some luxury spa mask from hell.

As he grabs hold of the thing to pry it off, something happens. Galinda starts screaming. Blood boars down from under the slug as it unjulates, its previously smooth skin now rippling and waves. Galinda's hands fall away as he spasms, crashing onto Brennan and shoving the gurney into

me with his weight. Panic hits in tandem with the gurney, breaking my paralysis. As Galinda collapses, I shoved the gurney away and dart to the door, shouldering Davila out of the way. She follows me a moment later.

Together, we slam the cooler door and lean against it. The dull sounds of Galinda's spasms come from inside. Hell! A shout, somebody help us! It's the middle of the night, but someone should hear us over the ship's constant

home. Soon enough, Raina comes running into the room. The captain woke him earlier to explain the situation, since he's in charge of the next petition. Moments later, Stein comes in behind him, a bloodstained bandage over his busted nose and

one hand held behind his back. Raina is pale with concern, which only deepens when he sees our faces. What's happening? Davila's stammer's out of answer as the two men come closer. Stein swings a nice hatchet blade first and terrain a skull with a crunching thud.

I flinch his blood splatters my face. Raina's pain filled eyes roll up, as blood pours down through his thin gray hair.

After a moment of shock, she looks at me expectantly, clearly waiting for me to do something.

I'm bigger than Stein, stronger too.

“Stein pulls the blade out, shoving Raina, who topples to the floor.”

I do nothing. Only Trumble and Stair is Stein steps toward us, raising the hatchet. Davila grows as she lurches toward him. The blade comes down on her left shoulder, a glancing blow that opens her up, but doesn't stop her from charging.

Hands aiming for Stein's neck, but she doesn't choke him. She wraps him in a strange hug, shoving her hands under the back collar of his sweatshirt, going for the slug. She's figured out what I've been too shocked to realize. There's more than one of those things.

While I'm considering this, Stein whips the hatchet down, sinking the blade into the back of her thigh. Her screams triggers another memory of twice, shrieking at the bottom of the stairs, his legs mangled from the fall, a fall-like cost. To be lamentated and troubling, I stare his Stein yanks the hatchet out and slams it into

her lower back, she rides, her hands coming out from under his sweater, empty. She tries to push him away, but Stein hugs her to him with one arm as he slices into her again.

“Some part of me notices that Stein's movements are more fluid than the others have been.”

He's holding the hatchet correctly, unlike Fry and the wrench. Like the slugs are learning how to control their hosts, but he's not fast. Every blow takes time to develop. Something slams against the cooler door, launching me forward. I land on the floor just past Stein and Davila.

The woman stops screaming as she goes limp. Half turned. I look at the cooler to see Gullindo emerge, a familiar canister in one hand, where his eyes used to be. There were only bloody sockets.

Gord dangles in these twin caves as the man walks stiffly out. Stein drops Davila to the floor next to Rayma, before turning to look at me. Despite not having any eyes, Gullindo also turns directly toward me. They both make noises with their mouths. High pitched, incessant gibberish, Stein steps toward me, raising the hatchet.

The feelings from that night ten years ago come rushing back on a wave, feelings I've successfully suppressed until now. I didn't know the man's name was Weiss, not then.

“I only knew he'd grouped a couple of women in the bar and was a sloppy drunk.”

As another bouncer and I were escorting him to the alley stairs from the second story bar and a renovated warehouse, he threw an elbow at the other bouncer, hitting him in the head hard enough to knock him out. When he swung it my face, missing as I dodged back, rage swelled within me.

I'd been angry at drunk patrons before, but never like this.

Violent fantasies rushed through my head, things from a torture porn movie, things that I, in that moment, would have gladly done to the man, I dodged another sloppy punch, resisting all the dark urges, I shoved him out the door and onto the landing near the stairs. He swung on me again.

The darkness won, a grappling by the neck and slammed him back first against the railing. Suddenly, I knew I was going to flip him over that railing and send him 30 feet down to the alley below. I knew it might kill him, I didn't care, I wanted to kill him. But he sensed what I was going to do, even in his drunken state.

Before I could grab his thighs, he pushed me out of the way just enough to lurch for the stairs. I lunged after him and shoved him in the back, hard. His screams don't haunt me because I felt guilty. The visions of his mangled legs didn't surface like a vengeful ghost.

Those things haunted me because I didn't feel guilty about them, because I liked them. I wanted to do more of them, to anyone who cut me off in traffic, or acted like an asshole to a retail worker, or argued with a flight attendant, or started the fight, I wanted to punish them. But I didn't want to meet that person.

The fact that Wise was blackout drunk saved me from any consequences. That, and the testimony of my co-worker and others at the bar, who'd seen his belligerent behavior. Yet, I figured it was only a matter of time before I ended up in prison, where I thought I should be in my heart of hearts.

Now, Stein steps close. Hatch it raised.

I finally given, I let the darkness take me into its loving arms.

I lift my foot and kick out, slamming it into Stein's knee. It folds backward with a crunch. He makes no noise, and swings the blade down, but I've changed the trajectory. It slices down the outside of my left arm, cutting through my shirt, and into my triceps. He falls next to me thanks to his ruined leg, a yank to hatch it from him, and send it

toward his face. He gets a hand up, and a blade slices deep into his palm between his middle and ring fingers. But no streak of pain. He just jibbers at me.

Goendo slings toward me, but not very fast. I'd bat Stein's arms out of the way and send the blade into his face with a satisfying crunch. I no longer see him as the man I've come to know. He's a fucking slug, and he needs to die.

Getting to my knees, I flip Stein over so I can kill the slug. Before I can do it, Goendo reaches me. I whip the blade up and out, cutting a huge goug in his throat. He stumbles back, blood spewing. I turn back to Stein, now face down, twitching, trying to get up despite the facial wound.

The blade slices through his sweatshirt and into what's underneath. He stops twitching immediately, but I continue hacking at the slug, which I can now see. It bleeds maroon sludge. Its complex insides a range of muted colors that spill out as I cut. I can even see the strange translucent filaments retracting from Stein's body.

“That explains the tiny holes, I think, slamming the hatchet down again.”

Suddenly, I stop, straightening. Cold clarity slides into my mind, along with the rush of endorphins. I finally feel free.

For the first time in a long time, I'm not suppressing some essential part of myself.

A glance over at Goendo, who has gone still, his bloody, eyeless sockets staring at the ceiling. He still clutches the cylinder in his hand. My eyes fix on it, footsteps sound, people are coming. At first, I think I hear them speaking English, but as they get closer, I realize it's that same strange jibbering I heard from the slugs, but they don't know how to make their

hosts talk, but they try anyway. Tang and Alfaro rush into the room, but I'm ready for them. I know they've come for the cylinder, and they'll kill me if they can. I sink the hatchet into Alfaro's chest, and then shove her into Tang, pinning both slugs against the wall.

“One blow from the hatchet splits Tang's skull open, letting them fall to the floor.”

I turn around and grab the cylinder.

I shove it into my back pocket and rush out of the room, coming face to face with more slugs. To captain in his chief officer rush toward me, shattering nonsensically, I use my bulk, my muscle, my experience, and the hatchet, to dispatch them. I do what I was made to do. The slugs won't stop me, with only a few bruises for my trouble.

I lead their twitching torn bodies behind as I head for the deck. The night air is frigid, a blanket of stars competes with a quarter moon for splendor in the sky. The ship rocks gently on dark waves. I stop at the side, looking over the railing at the water below.

After dropping the hatchet to the deck, I pull out the canister and twist it open, breaking the seal put there by Davila or Alfaro. I hold it out over the water and upended.

“The mud and rock core sample from the subglacial lakes slides out and splashes under the”

water. The regs. I'm not sure how I know, but I do. That's what we accidentally scooped up. The regs.

A moment later, the cold clarity I've been feeling, the freedom and sense of purpose, fades. It was once an intense high, now feels like I come down. Something moves on my shoulder and then plops down into the waves, but I catch a glimpse of it in the pale celestial light before it disappears. The world seems to collapse in on me.

I stumble away from the railing, glimpsing the bloody hatchet on the deck. "No, I murmur. No, no, no, no!" A rushed back inside the superstructure, retracing my steps, coming across the captain and the chief officer.

They no longer twitch, their death rattles have gone quiet. I pulled down the back of the captain's shirt, looking for a slug or at least some bruising and stippling, asking myself why I didn't kill the slugs, I killed the one on Stein's back. Why didn't I kill the other ones?

But I already know the answer. Neither man has bruising, they were no slugs, but I run back to the lab anyway.

I check out Faro and Tang, no evidence of slugs, they were never hijacked.

I was, right after killing Stein, which means I rush over to Gellendo's body and pulled the back of his shirt down, bruising. No slug. Looking over the massacred bodies, I feel nothing like I did when Weiss started screaming at the bottom of those steep metal stairs.

There's no dark joy, nothing but regret, nothing but crushing guilt. More people run into the room, I barely register their presence as they find me sobbing on the floor. I don't even realize I'm speaking until I hear two of them talking about me. "What's he saying?"

One of the masks. "I did it!" "He's saying, I did it!" Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this story, be sure to follow or subscribe and share the show with a fellow

horror fan. I'll see you in the next one.