Vostok

Four kilometres beneath the Antarctic ice lies Lake Vostok, sealed off from the world for fifteen million years.

For ten winters, drill master Yevgeny Sokolov has inched a borehole towards it. Now British microbiologist Maren Holt has arrived to make sure the first touch is a clean one. When the drill breaks through, their probe sends back pictures nobody can explain: a perfectly smooth tunnel bored into the lake floor, and soft lights moving inside it.

That night, the borehole starts to freeze from the bottom up. It climbs forty metres a day, steady as a clock, as though something below wants the door shut again.

The last plane leaves and eleven people stay behind for the polar night, at the coldest place on Earth, with no way out until spring. An American liaison has orders to keep the hole open at any cost. The lights in the lake have started to answer back. And some of the crew have stopped feeling the cold.

By midwinter, Maren understands what the refreezing really is. Lake Vostok isn't a lost world waiting to be discovered. It's a prison, and they have just broken the lock.

A chilling Antarctic thriller in the tradition of The Thing and Sphere, about the price of curiosity and the things that are better left sealed.