The Nowhere Steps

De: Darlene Zagata

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

The last transmission from the Vance-Sloan expedition came at 14:47 GMT on November 23rd. It was a burst of static, followed by Dr. Edward Vance's voice, distorted and barely recognizable:

"The stairs... they don't go down. They go... elsewhere. If anyone receives this, mark these coordinates as forbidden ground. Some doors should never—"

The transmission ended there.

Three weeks later, a rescue team found their abandoned camp in the Atacama Desert. All equipment remained untouched, as if the team had simply vanished mid-task. Only two members were ever found alive, discovered seventy kilometers away, wandering the desert with no memory of how they'd gotten there.

Their story, when they finally told it, was deemed impossible by every scientific authority. The coordinates they provided led to solid rock. No staircase. No entrance. Nothing.

The Chilean government classified the incident. The rescue report was sealed. And the two survivors—Dr. Edward Vance and Dr. Alice Sloan—disappeared into obscurity, refusing all interviews, all requests for information.

This is their story, reconstructed from fragments of testimony, corrupted expedition logs, and the whispered warnings of local guides who have always known that some places are meant to remain lost.