Major Story Arcs
Caroline Konard is the tough, smart leader of a team of scientists at Ice Station Hellman in Antarctica that are tasked with overseeing a toxic waste dump. However, UNOW, the world’s government, stops communication with the team and they begin to wonder whether they are being left to die.
A mysterious Grendel named Jonah shows up out of nowhere, and at the same time, the scientists start to die from a strange condition in which they quickly go mad, start bleeding from their eyes, and then burst from the inside out in an explosion of blood. Some of the scientists, led by Drake, believe that the disease is an infection and that Jonah is the host, and plot against him.
Caroline, whose late husband was a Grendel, feels sympathy toward the Grendel and argues that there’s no evidence that leads to the idea that Jonah is responsible for the scientists’ lethal condition. She begins to fall in love with him.
An earthquake ravages the base, and Caroline tries to figure out what caused it, while dealing with increasingly mutinous challenges from Drake and more bloodily-dead scientists. Alexander, ad old, overweight ex-Grendel, is her only ally besides Jonah. They eventually discover the earthquakes are being caused by a giant monster that is moving around underneath the ice.
Drake’s team of scientists capture and crucifies Jonah and leave him to die, but Alexander and Caroline save him. However, Drake has taken over the base. He allows her back in, but she is no longer in control.
She and Alexander figure out that the scientists are dying from exposure to the toxic waste, not a virus from Jonah, but Drake won’t listen. She destroys the dump, but the explosion frees the monster, and it attacks the base. Jonah goes off to fight the monster. Drake falls prey to the toxic waste condition and goes mad, attacking Caroline. Alexander saves her, and she manages to shoot Drake–but he kills Alexander first.
Outside, Jonah manages to kill the monster, but it falls on the base and kills everyone inside, including Caroline.