Silas tried to pull the plug from his wrist, but his hand wouldn't move. A heavy, rhythmic pulsing sensation began to throb behind his eyes.

Silas tried to scream, but his jaw just locked into a wide, frozen smile. The low hum began in the back of his throat, and the world went white.

On the screen, the man at the terminal suddenly stopped. He didn't turn around. He just stood there, his back to the camera, perfectly still.

"Elias?" Thorne asked on the recording. She turned the camera toward him.

The video feed began to tear. The audio dissolved into a harsh, digital screech that made Silas winch and grab his temples. Lines of code began to bleed down over the video image, green text overriding the visual of the dying research station.

The video quality was poor, full of horizontal tracking lines and digital artifacting. It was a handheld shot, looking out through the reinforced plexiglass of a research dome. Outside, a blizzard was raging, a white wall of screaming wind.