Lost in Darkness

November 27, 1993. The Atlas Mountains in Morocco are covered in snow and largely empty. A motorcycle officer named Simo, riding for the Royal Gendarmerie, is sent to investigate the unexplained disappearance of a patrol car somewhere in the Middle Atlas range. He becomes stranded in the forest before finding any answers, and what he encounters in the trees is not the missing officers. The forest contains creatures that have no natural origin — spider-like Lurkers moving low to the ground and massive translucent Shoggoths moving above it. At the center of the area where the creatures are most concentrated sits the Oppenheimer Institute, a research facility run by an American company during the Cold War to develop technologies for combating Soviet expansion. The connection between the Institute's classified experiments and the things now hunting through the snow is what Simo needs to survive long enough to uncover.