“6,230”

Headquarters was preparing a new team to head down to Antarctica to continue the drilling. Jacque’s crew had all been extracted the day of the explosion. Jacques was determined to go with the new team. Jacques was the best man to lead an oil extraction crew and headquarters knew it. Once they found out he could still hear, there was no way to deem him physically unfit. Regardless of whether or not command approved of him as lead, he would be on that jet. 

As soon as the men got off the jet they all started looking a little uneasy, all now more aware of the fact that a man similar to them had just lost his life out here on the ice. Noticing the crew’s demeanor he told them that they should head into camp noting that they would get a jump on the morning. 

“I’m going to place these geophones and get a new seismic read, so we are ready to start right away in the morning. Men, at ease, head into base for the evening” Jacques yelled out to the weary faces before him.

The men started nodding and mumbling and formed a version of a line as they all trekked into the dome to try to get some sleep, even as the bright sun illuminated the ice.

Jacques started placing the geophones and as soon as he had finished he started to mildly panic. He had no idea where they were. They could be miles and miles away from their last drill site or only meters, but he had to find that book. It was the key to understanding why the government had hidden Antarctica all this time. It was going to explain why his life was like this. He was sure of it. Of course, all of this lied on the pretense that command didn’t already have the book.

He needed to lose the watch so command could stop spying on him but without it he had no indication of the time. The sun sat still in one place and over here a minute sometimes felt like an hour. He recalled that a single individual walked around 3 miles in an hour and calculated that someone of his stature would probably take 2,250 steps per hour. He hung his watch on the geophone and he began counting. 

In what he assumed to be 6 miles of walking and around 2 hours he had seen nothing except exactly what he had seen 6 miles and 2 hours ago. He had also decided he had around 5 hours with which he could continue walking before he would have to turn directly around. 

“6,221…6,222…6,223…6,224…6,225…6,226…6,227…6,228…6,229…6,230…” Jacques mumbled the numbers as he watched his breath in front of him condensate with every number.

Just as he was beginning to lose complete sense of anything and as his eyes were about to be frozen shut he saw something he could have never imagined.