Cannibalism. Kinner knows those stories, too, a bit comforted by the fact that he was too much on the lean side to be a great meal. He didn't want to end up in that boat - he'd dine on seal or even a sled dog, and would never think of eating a human. But the possibility was always a haunting one, the kind of things people resort to when there's little choice left. And apparently something else down there found Kinner quite delicious.

"I got eaten. There was a monster down there. We found it frozen in the ice and some of us figured unthawing it was a good idea. Turned out as well as you'd expect. Big blue ugly thing with tentacles and bright red eyes with the evil glowin' in 'em. Somethin' you might be, uh, familiar with."

He hadn't been killed in the conventional way - he didn't remember what the creature did to him, but it was probably deeply unpleasant given his team's suspicions of its abilities. He's glad the creature put him to sleep before it went to work, though less out of charity and more because, if he struggled, he could raise the alarm.

"That thing's probably walkin' around where I came from, pretendin' to be me, and there ain't a thing I can do about it." Kinner's resentful, more of being impersonated than of being digested alive. The latter was unfortunate, the former was flat-out an insult. "I don't know how I ended up here."