Maybe this was all a mistake. A slow, cold death by curiosity. He took one step backward. Then another. The walrus didn’t bark this time. It just kept going. Caleb exhaled. He was done. And then, just as he turned to leave for good, he saw something in the distance—a faint, jagged shape against the wind-whipped horizon.
Not ice. Not rock. A straight line. Sharp-edged. Man-made. As the clouds shifted, the light caught something metallic—then something else, moving. A tent. Not the kind used by researchers. This one was darker, low to the ground, reinforced with rough canvas.
Beside it were crates. Barrels. A tall antenna leaning off-center. Caleb’s stomach dropped. Poachers. He’d heard about them over the radio—groups targeting walruses for their ivory tusks, or seals for pelts.
They moved fast, set up hidden camps, and disappeared before patrols could find them. But this camp wasn’t abandoned. There was smoke curling from a barrel fire. A snowmobile, half-buried, sat nearby.