Archive MT-308 · Epistolary horror

The Last Airdrop

There were thirty-eight people stationed at ECHO-17. Then there were forty-nine.

Published 13 September 2026

There were thirty-eight people stationed at ECHO-17.

Then there were forty-nine.

No aircraft had landed. No personnel had been transferred. No new names appeared on the official roster.

And nobody at the station seemed concerned.

When a routine resupply flight arrives at the isolated Arctic monitoring station, its seven-person crew disembarks.

The security cameras count eight.

The eighth man has a name. His colleagues recognise him. Photographs prove he was there.

There is just one problem.

Sgt. Aaron Pike does not exist.

As investigators begin examining ECHO-17, the discrepancies multiply. Personnel appear without arriving. Records rewrite themselves. Photographs change. People acquire histories they never lived.

And every attempt to evacuate the station only makes the population grow.

Someone—or something—is adding people.

Worse, it is getting better at making them belong.

The Last Airdrop is a found-document horror novella told through classified reports, flight manifests, transcripts, personnel files and recovered correspondence.

Part of the Malachi Thorne Archives—standalone cases of impossible events preserved in documents that should not exist.

Count them before they land.