**1. A Lonely Post**

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From the moment Maya arrived at the remote radio outpost, the landscape pressed against the windows like a living wall. Ice and rock stretched to the horizon in every direction; no footprints but her own marked the endless grey plain. Silence was absolute and unyielding, broken only by the whine of the diesel generator she insisted on running day and night. She had volunteered for this posting to escape the city’s noise, never realising that the hush of the tundra could feel so vast and unforgiving.

**2. The Faint Distress Call**

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On the twelfth night, as Maya tuned her receiver through snow static, a soft crackle and a single word shimmered on the airwave: “Hel–”. The signal vanished as quickly as it came, leaving behind only the hiss of empty channels. Heart thundering, she replayed the recording and adjusted the antenna, determined to catch more of that trembling voice. Every loneliness- steeped hour she waited brought another fragment: “…please…find…me…”

**3. Fractured Certainty**

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Maya’s confidence wavered. Had the voice been a radio glitch or the echo of her own isolation taking shape? The base’s echo chamber reflected her questions back in distorted tones. She noted each clue in a weathered notebook, tracing the signal’s tiny shifts, as if following a breath across the void. By dawn, her mind felt as brittle as the frozen ground outside.

**4. Into the Void**

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Fuelled by a restless dread, she wrapped herself in insulated layers and stepped into the blizzard at first light. The radio transmitter slung over her shoulder was heavy with equal measures of hope and fear. Each footstep crackled in the snow, thumping like a heartbeat in her ears. Blurred shapes in the swirling grey teased her vision—rock or ice? Some distant movement, she convinced herself, must be the source of that broken plea.

**5. The Unseen Responder**

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Hours passed. The wind eroded every footmark until Maya was truly alone. Breathing hard, she raised the transmitter’s antenna and whispered into the microphone, “I’m here. Respond if you can hear me.” Static answered, then the same urgent rasp: “Hel– …bef–”. The message was cut off again, but Maya’s chest tightened—she was no longer certain which of them was adrift in the silence.

**6. The Endless Waiting**

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Back inside, frost crept along the windowpanes as the generator stuttered. Maya pressed her ear to the receiver, scanning the trackless wind for another broken syllable. The clock ticked louder than ever, its hands moving with measured cruelty. Every static burst could hold the key to rescue—or the fragments of her unravelled mind. Outside, the cold waited.

Maya never spoke of the full message she finally recorded, nor did she say whether anyone ever answered. On her return, the station stood as empty as she’d found it, yet she carried with her a single sentence scrawled in the margins of her notebook:

“In the vast hush, we are never wholly alone—but we may learn to fear our own echoes.”