The expedition started as usual. A team of four geologists was working on the coast of Antarctica, not far from the old “Vostok-3” station.
They were drilling ice, collecting samples, and checking layers for traces of rare metals. Minus forty degrees, a cutting wind — everything was as expected.
On the third day, one of the drills suddenly got stuck. It didn’t seem to hit rock, but something smooth.
When they pulled the drill back up, it had traces of metallic shine on it.
“This isn’t rock,” the engineer said quietly, staring at the radar screen. “There’s a flat surface beneath the ice. Like a slab.”
They decided to carefully clear the area. After several hours, the ice was thin enough — and beneath the ancient blue layer, a surface appeared. Smooth, gray-green, with perfectly straight edges.
At first, they thought it might be part of an old station, perhaps buried by years of snowstorms. But when they checked the exact coordinates, they realized the nearest station was twenty kilometers away.
The plate was strange. No bolts, no welds, no signs of corrosion. It felt cold even through gloves.
On one edge, there were engraved lines — like markings — but the symbols resembled neither Cyrillic nor Latin characters.
A fragment was sent for analysis to the lab at the “Mirny” station. A few days later, the first results arrived.
The alloy from which the plate was made did not match any known industrial material. It contained titanium, aluminum, and rare elements that couldn’t be combined under normal melting conditions.
But the biggest revelation came later.
According to radiocarbon analysis, the ice surrounding the plate was 120,000 years older.
That meant the object had been buried long before any human ever set foot on the continent.
They tried not to make the discovery public. The report only stated: “Unidentified metallic fragment. Further research required.”
But one of the expedition members, junior geologist Klimov, later told a journalist:
“When we got back to base, two days later the military arrived. They loaded the crate with the plate onto a transport plane and didn’t tell anyone where it was going.”
No one ever mentioned the object again.
Months later, however, satellite images of the area where the team had worked revealed something strange — a massive rectangular outline in the snow.
Perfectly straight.
Too straight to be natural.
