Chapter One

Warning

Emily Hawthorne sat in the dim glow of her computer screen, the rhythmic hum of the cooling fan blending into the quiet of her lab. The lab itself was modest, located in the back of the Earth Sciences building at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, but the data she had access to was anything but small-scale. For years, she had worked closely with the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), analyzing satellite imagery, ice core samples, and atmospheric data from the Arctic Circle. It was a job that had once seemed like a simple academic pursuit, but in recent years, the stakes had shifted. The once slow, predictable rhythms of Earth’s climate were becoming increasingly erratic, and Emily had spent countless sleepless nights trying to understand why.

Tonight was no different. The clock on her desk read 2:13 a.m., yet Emily barely noticed. She leaned closer to her monitor, her green eyes scanning over the latest batch of satellite readings. Something felt off.

“Come on, show me what I’m missing,” she muttered to herself, tapping her fingers anxiously on the desk.

The data presented on her screen was unsettling. The ice in the northern polar cap had been shrinking for decades, but this year, the pace of melting had accelerated in a way that didn't match previous projections. More concerning than the rapid ice loss were the strange atmospheric shifts she had noticed in the troposphere over the last few weeks. Air currents that typically circled the poles had begun to wobble, sending cooler air south and pulling warmer air north. The jet streams, which governed much of the planet’s weather patterns, were behaving unpredictably.

Emily knew the symptoms of a warming planet all too well—sea level rise, shifting ecosystems, more intense storms—but this was different. There was a deeper disturbance at play, one that seemed to be lurking beneath the surface. She could feel it in the data, a catastrophic event building slowly, like pressure before an earthquake, but she couldn't yet explain what was happening.

Her fingers danced over the keyboard, running the data through another set of models, hoping to spot a glitch or error. Nothing. It all came back the same—unprecedented levels of methane being released from under the ice, pockets of ancient gas that had been trapped for thousands of years.

She paused, biting her lower lip as the realization set in. Methane was one of the most potent greenhouse gases, far more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. A massive release of it could tip the planet’s already precarious climate into a tailspin. She knew about the so-called methane "time bomb" that lurked beneath the Arctic permafrost, but scientists had always thought it would be a slow release, spread out over decades or even centuries. This data suggested something far worse.

“Damn it,” she whispered, feeling her heart rate spike.

Reaching for her phone, she hesitated for a moment. The scientific community could be resistant to alarmism, and the last thing she wanted was to sound like a conspiracy theorist. She had built her career on a solid foundation of empirical data and meticulous research, but this… this felt different. It wasn’t just about the science anymore. This was about survival.

Still, there was no denying the urgency of what she was seeing. The numbers didn’t lie.

She scrolled through her contacts, stopping at the name of Dr. Marcus Patel, her longtime colleague and friend, and one of the world’s leading oceanographers. If anyone could help her make sense of this, it was Marcus. She hit the call button.

The phone rang twice before his groggy voice answered. “Emily? Do you know what time it is?”

“I know, I know,” she said quickly, “but I need you to look at something.”

“Is this about the ice data again? I told you; these fluctuations are normal this time of year. It’s the polar vortex shifting—”

“It’s not that,” Emily interrupted, her voice sharper than intended. “It’s methane, Marcus. A lot of it. More than we’ve ever seen before, and it’s coming from under the ice. Something’s happening up there, and I think we’re missing it.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Emily could almost picture Marcus rubbing his eyes as he processed her words.

“Methane?” he finally said. “How much are we talking?”

“Enough that I’m worried,” she replied, pulling up another chart on her screen. “I’ve been tracking the levels for weeks, and they’re rising fast—too fast. There’s been an atmospheric shift as well, something’s destabilizing the polar jet stream.”

Marcus let out a long sigh. “Send me the data. I’ll take a look.”

“I’ll send it now, but Marcus, this isn’t just about the ice melt anymore. If this is what I think it is, we’re talking about a potential climate feedback loop—a tipping point.”

Marcus was silent again, but Emily could hear him moving around on the other end, likely booting up his own computer. She didn’t need to explain the significance of a feedback loop to him. It was the doomsday scenario that every climate scientist feared—a self-reinforcing cycle that would push the planet into a new, hotter, and far less habitable state. Once it started, there would be no stopping it.

“Okay,” Marcus said after a moment. “Send it over. I’ll call you back once I’ve had a chance to look at it.”

Emily ended the call and attached the data files to an email, her fingers trembling slightly as she typed out the details. She knew Marcus was a rational thinker, someone who never jumped to conclusions, but even he wouldn’t be able to ignore the implications of this data.

She hit send and leaned back in her chair, rubbing her temples as the weight of what she had just discovered settled on her shoulders. Was this really happening? Was the world teetering on the edge of a catastrophe that no one had seen coming?

Emily’s mind drifted back to her first trip to the Arctic ten years ago. She had been a fresh-faced PhD student then, full of optimism and curiosity. The polar landscape had seemed timeless and unchangeable, a vast expanse of ice and snow that stretched endlessly in every direction. But even then, she had known the truth. The ice was melting, and it wasn’t going to stop. Now, all those years later, the reality was far worse than she had imagined.

She stood up from her desk and walked to the window, gazing out at the frozen Alaskan landscape. The moon hung low in the sky, casting a pale glow over the snow-covered trees. It looked peaceful, serene even, but Emily knew better. Beneath the surface, the planet was in turmoil, and soon enough, that turmoil would break through in ways no one could ignore.

Her phone buzzed, breaking her from her thoughts. It was Marcus.

“Emily, I’ve got the data,” he said, his voice now alert and serious. “You’re right. This isn’t normal.”

“I knew it,” she replied, her heart racing.

“I ran it through my own models, and if these methane levels keep rising, we could be looking at a catastrophic release. I’m talking about enough methane to accelerate warming by decades, maybe even centuries.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Emily said, feeling a pit form in her stomach. “Do you think we’re already past the tipping point?”

“I don’t know,” Marcus replied, his voice heavy. “But if we are, there’s no going back.”

Emily closed her eyes, trying to steady her breathing. She had always known that the climate crisis was bad, but this… this was on a different scale entirely. This wasn’t just about rising sea levels or more frequent storms. This was about the planet’s entire climate system being thrown into chaos.

“What do we do now?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

“We need to get more data,” Marcus said. “And we need to bring this to the attention of the scientific community. If we can’t convince them, we’re going to have a hard time getting anyone else to listen.”

Emily nodded, though Marcus couldn’t see her. “I’ll start compiling everything I’ve got. We’ll need to be thorough if we’re going to convince anyone.”

“Agreed,” Marcus replied. “But Emily, if we’re right about this, we don’t have much time. The release could already be underway.”

Emily hung up and sat back down at her desk, her mind racing. She knew Marcus was right. They were on the verge of something unprecedented, something that could change the course of human history. And if they couldn’t stop it, the consequences would be unimaginable.

But first, she had to convince the world that it was real.

The clock ticked past 3:00 a.m., but Emily knew she wouldn’t be sleeping tonight. There was too much at stake, and the warning signs were already here.