S E C T A S A U R™ -  USS ARKTOS, FOSSILIZED JAW

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A startling discovery in the Antarctic ice, a large insect like prehistoric dinosaur, never seen before

CHAPTER 1: THE ICE GAVE UP ITS DEAD

The Antarctic ice had always been the last fortress of time, a frozen vault sealing away secrets older than human memory. For millennia, it resisted the inevitability of change. But now—now it was breaking.

In the age of climate upheaval, both poles had begun to surrender. The North had been vanishing for decades, its once-pristine ice groaning under the assault of rising temperatures. The South, defiant in its resistance, had even grown for a time—its bulk fortified by the treacherous dance of thermodynamics. But then the seas warmed beyond reason. Glaciers cracked, great chunks of icebergs calved and drifted, and the once-eternal Antarctic shield began to disappear.

And with it, something long buried—something forgotten—began to rise.

The US Arktos, a ghost ship, locked in ice since 1838. A relic of an age when empires raced for glory, when explorers gambled their lives on whispers of buried wonders.

No one expected to find her.

Yet there she was—half-encased in ice, her wooden hull bleached and groaning under the weight of centuries. A warship turned expedition vessel, once proud, now eerily intact despite the impossible passage of time.

The world barely had time to process the discovery when the thaw accelerated—driven not by the slow creep of nature, but by something far more deliberate. Promises of oil. Economic growth. Political ambition.

The ice gave up its dead.

And the Arktos was freed.


SECRETS BENEATH THE ICE

To history, the Arktos had vanished in 1838, swallowed by the white abyss. A frigate once known as USS Essex, she had been hastily repurposed by a shadowy group of explorers—men who had gambled everything after coming into possession of something unnatural.

The fossil had seemed impossible even then—a jawbone embedded in a matrix of ancient rock, unearthed in the depths of Antarctica, brought back as nothing more than a curiosity by Russian explorer Fabian Gottlieb von Bellinghausen in 1820. It sat forgotten for eleven years, its significance unnoticed—until someone saw something buried within its patterns.

Something not meant to be found.

By the time those clues had come to light, the race had begun. Clues in Double Investigation of the Southern Polar Ocean had led the most obsessed seekers back to the frozen south—scientists, mercenaries, visionaries, and madmen alike. Some believed the artifact was proof of ancient life far beyond modern classification. Others whispered of deeper horrors—things buried beneath, waiting.

A handful of desperate men bought the USS Essex, rechristened her Arktos, and set sail into the unknown.

And then—silence. No return. No wreckage. The ship simply disappeared.

Now, more than a century and a half later, she had returned. Or rather, the ice had spat her out.

The world stared in shock. But some—some already knew what might lie beneath.


THEORIES THAT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN TESTED

For centuries, scholars and explorers had entertained wild theories about the nature of Antarctica. Some believed it harbored underground caverns, vast networks of tunnels leading to something hidden far beneath the surface. A hollow Earth. Symmes' theories. The whispers of habitable spaces, of forgotten ecosystems preserved in the absolute cold.

Most dismissed such speculation as fantasy.

But what if—just for a moment—they weren’t entirely wrong?

What if something had survived beneath the ice?

What if the Arktos expedition had found it?

And what if something had found them first?


BLOOD IN THE SNOW

The first men to enter the Arktos weren’t scientists, historians, or archaeologists.

They were soldiers.

Special forces. Black operations teams. Men who had been ordered to investigate—not to ask questions.

The moment they boarded, the first signs of something terribly wrong became clear.

Blood. Old, dried blood, embedded in the wood. Not enough for slaughter—but enough for struggle.

Signs of movement.

A hatch, sealed from the inside.

Beneath it—scratches.

No one had any reasonable explanation for why men trapped in an 1838 expedition had been clawing at their own ship’s walls.

Nor why some of the markings didn’t match human fingers.

Then came the real horror.

Because beneath the ice, below the ship, the sensors picked up something else.

Something moving.

Something alive.

EDMUND HALLEY & JAMES MCBRIDE

Edmund Halley remains known for the comet of the same name, but in 1692 he suggested that there were three concentric spheres below the surface of the Earth. Some 130 years later, on April 10th 1818, John Cleves Symmes from the Army, Captain of Infantry, a citizen of Ohio, United States, joined with James McBride to promote the theory that the South Pole, Antarctica, may have underground caverns, to be entered by a hole or holes. This was later published in 1826, in McBride's book on Symmes’ theories.

To all the World:

"I declare that the earth is hollow and habitable within; containing a number of solid concentric spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles twelve or sixteen degrees [i. e., 4000 to 6000 miles wide]. I pledge my life in support of this trust, and am ready to explore the hollow, if the world will support and aid me in my undertaking."

No amount of lobbying would prevail, leaving those keen to risk all in their attempts to prove an interesting theory, out on a ledge and ruined to all intents. Though, full marks for the intensity of their conviction.

>>> TUNNEL COMPLEX

  USS ARKTOS 1838 EXPEDITION TO THE ANTARCTIC, DISCOVERY OF FOSSILIZED JAW OF GIANT PREHISTORIC DINOSAUR INSECTS FROZEN IN THE ICE AT THE SOUTH POLE - FABIAN GOTTLIEB BELLINGHAUSEN

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