Thomas "Jack" Jackmann, an ex-policeman turned security inspector for the GNE energy firm, arrives at the Jevel Afra Drill site, a remote research station in the Central Sahara Desert during a sandstorm.

However, he instead finds the facility abandoned with signs of struggle, cryptic messages scrawled on the walls in Arabic with blood, and even the remains of a rite where a jackal was skinned and sacrificed.

The scientists then began to exhibit signs of paranoia, causing Jack to also feel paranoid and experience a vivid hallucination while trying to sleep in his vehicle.

By morning, the storm has cleared and Jack searches the facility in earnest, meeting Dr. Jenny "JC" Christensen, seemingly the sole remaining member of the science team.

Jack calls in the deaths to GNE, but the police are tied up searching for the other missing scientists, and his boss Chief Caswell orders him to stay put in case anyone returns.

Jack's superiors Caswell and Inspector Khaled later back up JC's story and presence on the expedition, explaining that the rescued Ivanoff had a sample of a kind of toxic gas released from the underground cavity by the drill.

[5] Mark L. Miller of Ain't It Cool News called it "a devilishly pleasant surprise" that fulfills its promising concept.