"CRAWL_ENGINE" - Redwood Bureau Phenomenon #7487

Summary

Redwood Bureau Podcast Summary: Episode "CRAWL_ENGINE" (Phenomenon #7487)

Release Date: June 21, 2025
Host: Eeriecast Network

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Introduction

In the gripping episode titled "CRAWL_ENGINE" (Phenomenon #7487) of the Redwood Bureau podcast, listeners delve deep into the dark underbelly of a secretive organization known as the Redwood Bureau. Hosted by the Eeriecast Network, this episode unravels the harrowing experiences of Agent Conroy, a former operative who exposes the Bureau's clandestine operations involving supernatural entities and the ensuing human cost.

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Background: The Redwood Bureau and Agent Conroy

Agent Conroy serves as the central figure, providing a firsthand account of his experiences within the Redwood Bureau. The Bureau is depicted as a shadowy organization dedicated to capturing and researching supernatural phenomena, often at the expense of innocent lives. Conroy’s decision to leak their reports marks him as a whistleblower aiming to unveil the Bureau's morally questionable practices.

"Beware the Redwood Bureau. A secret organization which captures and researches creatures and objects that defy explanation."
— Agent Conroy [01:19]

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The Incident at Lumpkins Site

A significant portion of the episode focuses on a critical incident at the Lumpkins Site, a facility entailing floor one and the mysterious vault below. Dr. Emil Bray, a key figure within the Bureau, provides an in-depth analysis of the events leading to the containment breach.

"The thing about the Redwood Bureau is, for all their resources and technology, they never change, never learn from their mistakes."
— Dr. Emil Bray [03:30]

Bray details how the Bureau's negligence and reckless procedures resulted in the escape of a formidable entity known as the Brood Mother. This breach not only exposed the vulnerabilities of the Bureau’s containment strategies but also highlighted the catastrophic consequences of their hubris.

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Technical Analysis of RBP7487

Central to the episode is the examination of RBP7487, referred to as the "crawl engine." Dr. Holden Voss, a Technological Research Specialist, presents a meticulous dissection of the crawl engine's remains recovered from the Lumpkins Site.

• Physical State: The crawl engine is described as a hybrid construct, combining ancient Bureau parts with scavenged infrastructure, exhibiting significant wear and modification over decades.

• Internal Components: Notably, the crawl engine houses both mechanical and organic components, including muscle tissue and human bone fragments integrated into its structure.

• Memory Drive: A critical discovery was the crawl engine's memory drive, containing both operational data and archived records, some of which were corrupted. This drive holds the key to understanding the Bureau’s deeper experiments and the nature of the anomalies they encountered.

"The memory core recovered from crawl engine, still warm when they extracted it, contained more than just operational telemetry. It housed decades old records, fragments of directives that were never meant to be preserved."
— Dr. Emil Bray [50:00]

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Mission Overview: Operation Stag Wound

The episode narrates Operation Stag Wound, a high-stakes mission undertaken by a three-man team dispatched by the Bureau in response to the containment breach. Agent Conroy recounts the mission's progression, detailing the team's encounters with various bioanomalous entities and the relentless pursuit of the Brood Mother.

• Team Composition: The mission team comprises Agent Conroy, Belcheck Grimace, and Deacon, each bringing unique expertise to the operation.

• Encounter with the Brood Mother: The team's confrontation with the Brood Mother is depicted with intense action sequences, highlighting the creature's formidable defenses and regenerative capabilities.

• Tragic Losses: The mission results in the loss of team members, emphasizing the perilous nature of confronting such supernatural threats.

"We ride the rest of the way in silence. It was the kind of mission they would normally send six or eight agents for minimum."
— Agent Conroy [42:09]

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Agent Conroy's Revelations and Conclusions

Conveying his perspective, Agent Conroy underscores the systemic failures within the Redwood Bureau. He highlights the organization's inability to adapt, prioritize, and effectively manage supernatural threats, leading to widespread devastation.

"The events that followed the Brood Mother's escape were entirely avoidable. Civilians died, though the Bureau didn't even take a full count of how many the nest had taken root."
— Dr. Emil Bray [68:19]

Conroy ominously warns of impending doom as the Bureau prepares to open Floor Two of the Lumpkins Site, suggesting that the challenges lurking there surpass anything previously encountered.

"They haven't opened Floor two yet, but I've intercepted their preparations, and the truth is clear that day is soon approaching. The only thing guaranteed down in those dark corridors is death and destruction. And if Floor one had taught them any sort of lesson, they'd turn the whole facility into a smoking crater. But they won't. And it's a guarantee that Floor two hides things far worse. Far worse."
— Dr. Emil Bray [68:19]

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Conclusion: A Dire Warning

"CRAWL_ENGINE" serves as a chilling exposé of the Redwood Bureau's operations, blending firsthand accounts, technical analyses, and action-packed mission logs. Through Agent Conroy's revelations, the episode paints a grim picture of an organization blinded by ambition and disregarding ethical boundaries, leading to dire consequences for both their personnel and unsuspecting civilians.

Listeners are left with a palpable sense of urgency and impending threat as the narrative hints at the Bureau's continued descent into chaos with the imminent activation of Floor Two, setting the stage for future revelations and confrontations.

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Notable Quotes:

• "The thing about the Redwood Bureau is, for all their resources and technology, they never change, never learn from their mistakes."
  — Dr. Emil Bray [03:30]

• "We have to finish this here and now."
  — Agent Conroy [54:28]

• "This is it,"
  — Dr. Emil Bray [27:21]

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Key Takeaways:

• Redwood Bureau's Ethical Lapses: The Bureau's disregard for human life and ethical research practices exacerbate the dangers posed by the supernatural entities they seek to control.

• Agent Conroy as a Whistleblower: Conroy's role is pivotal in shedding light on the Bureau's clandestine operations, positioning him as a crucial ally for those seeking the truth.

• Impending Threats: The mention of Floor Two hints at escalating threats, suggesting that the Bureau's ambitions may unleash even more catastrophic supernatural phenomena.

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For fans of dark conspiracies and supernatural thrillers, "CRAWL_ENGINE" delivers a compelling narrative that intertwines personal testimonies with suspenseful storytelling, offering a deep dive into the enigmatic world of the Redwood Bureau.

Transcript

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[Agent Conroy]

Beware the Redwood Bureau. A secret organization which captures and researches creatures and objects that defy explanation. Their reckless procedures have led to countless innocent lives lost. I am Agent Conroy. I worked for the Redwood Bureau, but I have escaped them to leak their reports to the unsuspecting public. You have the right to know.

[Dr. Emil Bray]

I had an idea what was buried under Lumpkins. The Bureau had what I gave them. They had their suspicions, their projections and readings. Their board found unexplained gaps in the archival chain, missing files in their systems. But missing files and suspicions don't move Bureau resources. Leverage does. And I gave it to them. I leaked just enough from the old black site manifests to make them hungry. I wanted them to dig. And they did. Hard, fast, and reckless. The thing about the Redwood Bureau is, for all their resources and technology, they never change, never learn from their mistakes. That facility had been sealed for decades, but the things down there weren't dormant. They were waiting, Growing hungrier and angrier by the year. What followed has unfolded almost exactly as I expected. And though they hear my words, they still don't believe they've fallen into a trap. They lose personnel, expend immense resources. They continue to make mistakes that can't be scrubbed away. And still they think they're in control. But here's the thing about the flames of chaos. They don't care who set the match. They just burn everything in their path. Floor One is undergoing thorough sweeping and containment. But I know they're stalling. At least Ashcroft is. He claims they're reviewing recovered materials, conducting further perimeter sweeps, scrubbing anomalies and straggler entities. But I've stood in those shoes. I can read between the lines. He's scared. Not just of what's below Floor one, but what it will bring his agents hauled out in body bags. While the Bureau pauses its descent, the aftermath keeps unfolding. One of their own, an experiment they built and abandoned, recorded more than they realized. Crawl engine RBP7487. The machine they left behind in the dark, its memory drive wasn't just intact, it was enlightening. The Bureau recovered its core after the final fight in the vault and began extracting data. But buried inside that rusting frame was far more than I could have imagined. Some of what you're about to hear comes from those archives. And some of it comes from an incident far more recent. What the Bureau considers a minor red flag. What they send an under resourced deployment to handle shows you just who they are under the facade of protocols and procedure. Because not everything on floor one was contained. And the Bureau's field of vision has always been too narrow to see the bigger picture. The cost of their mistakes is always being paid with innocent lives. And for whatever it's worth, I know part of that is on me. Is on me.

[Dr. Holden Voss]

Begin recording audio log 7487. A Redwood Bureau field analysis division. Dr. Holden Voss, technological Research Specialist, Temporary Forward Operating Base, Lumpkins site. Beginning log time is 0742 local. Post engagement. Recovery and initial dissection of RBP740, designated crawl engine, is underway. This report will cover the external and internal analysis of the recovered remains. The remains have been transferred to a repurposed containment bay just west of the main corridor beneath the old Lumpkins eatery. It's not much more than a sealed room with portable sterilization units, a metal table and portable floodlights, but it'll suffice. Crawl engine's remains take up most of the room. The carcass is in poor shape. The primary torso remains mostly intact, though burned through at the lower right quadrant where the explosive device was detonated. Shrapnel from the charge has perforated much of the torso. Limbs were mostly brought in detached, though I count three functional legs and a metal claw that served as one of its left arms. The rest was either destroyed during the final engagement or removed beforehand. Surface construction is as I'd expect after all this time. No Polished alloys. No precision welding. Crawl engine is assembled from ancient bureau parts and scavenged facility infrastructure. Rusted hydraulic tubes, reinforced steel plates bolted over broken welds. Visible wiring patched with some sort of organic bond. One segment of its left leg is clearly a repurposed ventilation shaft, dented and cut into form. External inspection of what's left of the head casing. There is no skull structure crawling. Jean's faceplate is a boxy metal housing, rectangular, with shattered glass from an analog CRT display still clinging to the edges. The internal frame is scorched. There are fragments of cathode leads and a brass grounding plate typical of bureau console design, circa 1970s. It's safe to say this display served more as a directive interface than anything like a visual sensor. There are no lenses, no optical nodes. Just the remnants of an old bureau control monitor shaped into a head. I highly doubt this was the original design. I'm inspecting the back of the unit now. There's a bundle of outdated wiring, copper twisted, cloth wrapped, feeding from the neck into the central torso. Whoever built this thing, or more likely when it altered itself, routed everything inward. No outward sensors, no external control ports. Everything is locked within the shell. Proceeding to breach the upper. The chest panel isn't bolted, it's riveted. I had to request some more heavy duty construction equipment to get it open without destroying it worse than it already is. Inside is a mess mixture of rusted mechanical internals and partially organic material. There's a central housing, possibly the main processor, surrounded by fluid stained insulation. And yes, that's muscle. Actual muscle tissue, hardened, darkened with age. Wrapped around a coolant pipe like a tourniquet. It's threaded through the interior and seems to anchor several of the more complex junctions. Whether this was bureau designed or scavenged is unclear. Either way, it's been integrated into the system long ago. I'm also seeing parts I'd classify as human. Fragments of bone, a broken formation of a ribcage, a femur worked into a stabilizer arm running laterally across the interior. It's structural, like the rest of the limb was replaced with mechanical parts. Going deeper into the chest cavity, where something curious is visible. It's set within a socket at the center of the body behind several plates of makeshift shielding. Layers of scrap welded into a box. Crude, but intentional. Removing shielding. Now. Here it is. A black object, about the size of a small melon. Not solid state. No magnetic disks. It's crystalline, like fossilized resin. There's no bureau logo, no manufacturing stamp or serial number. Whatever this is, it wasn't built a known Bureau factory. It could have been developed here on site as a secret project. Or perhaps it was found and installed by the entity itself. Whatever it is, it's perfectly intact. Transferring to isolation cradle for extraction. There's another cluster buried behind the main spinal column. It's set deeper, partially obscured by corrosion and dried internal fluids. I'm attempting retrieval. Secondary drive recovered. Smaller square box, like wrapped in thin lead sheeting. This one looks like a standard hard drive. Bureau manufactured wires embedded in what looks like mummified muscle. There's an acrid odour here. Burnt resin and decay. The Bureau abandoned this place decades ago. But this thing, it kept itself alive. Through what means and for what purpose, I can hardly imagine. Prepping the drive for upload now. Data should be intact. It will be interesting to see what the technicians pull from this final notes before upload. This entity wasn't just operational. It adapted, it repaired, it repurposed. And it did it alone for decades. Whatever they were working on with this entity all those years ago will be of great interest to the Bureau. End recording.

[Dr. Emil Bray]

Internal Bureau record audio File Drive uplink K Z7487 a.

[Technical Assistant]

Link established.

[System Interface]

Drive link confirmed.

[Dr. Emil Bray]

Secondary cradle is stable. Upload at 32%.

[Agent Conroy]

We're starting playback now.

[Marcus]

Stick to observational protocol. No direct prompts until memory string stabilization log. Anything that breaks context.

[Dr. Emil Bray]

Roger that.

[Agent Conroy]

Engaging passive sequence filter now.

[Technical Assistant]

Memory log RBP7487.

[Dr. Emil Bray]

Initializing playback.

[Technical Assistant]

I woke up to the sound of static. Not in my ears exactly. It was in the walls, ceiling and in the lights. A kind of low humming interference that settled just behind my eyes. Like a migraine. The kind that pulses with every beat of your heart. I opened my eyes only to feel that pain increase as I blinked rapidly under the bright fluorescence. Dirty white tiles surrounded me, followed by a smell like burning plastic and antiseptic. I was strapped to a steel table, arms and legs splayed in rigid, uncomfortable angles. I tried to move, but couldn't. My head was the only thing that still turned, and even then, just barely. A man stood at the foot of the table, flipping through a clipboard. White lab coat, slicked back hair, neat beard. He didn't look at me at first, just murmured to himself and tapped the side of the page with a chewed pen. Another figure hovered nearby, older, broad shouldered, with heavy bags under his eyes and a stiffness in his posture that came with age. He looked down at me, but the other seemed to be trying to avoid looking in my direction. Subject is conscious, the younger man said, finally glancing my way. His eyes showed something that looked like regret.

[Marcus]

We'll have to make sure he stays.

[Technical Assistant]

That way going forward, the older man said. Their voices felt wrong, flattened, muffled, like I was hearing them through glass. My throat burned. When I tried to speak. I saw a tag on the older man's coat. Dr. Emil Bray. The other man didn't wear a tag, or if he did, it was hidden beneath the folds of his coat. Dr. Bray stepped closer and pulled back a thick gray tarp that had been draped across my chest and lower body. I looked down, panic starting to take over. Something had been done to my right arm. A band of metal bracing wrapped around my wrist and forearm. Several large screws penetrated the skin and tissue. The skin around it was swollen and discolored, a deep purple. I could see tubes feeding into the underside of the contraption.

[Marcus]

Subject nine readings are stable. Minimal rejection response.

[Technical Assistant]

The other man, his voice rough and quiet, finally stepped forward.

[Dr. Emil Bray]

He was pulled off the transport manifest, brought in on your clearance.

[Agent Conroy]

This.

[Technical Assistant]

This isn't standard intake.

[Marcus]

And.

[Technical Assistant]

And I didn't sign off on this. Dr. Bray turned. The smile he gave wasn't friendly. It was tolerant, condescending. He tapped the clipboard with the back of his pen.

[Marcus]

We're past signatures, Marcus. Management gave me a green light. You know that.

[Technical Assistant]

They gave you exemptions. That's not the same thing. Bray stepped closer to me, crouching until his face was level with mine. He studied me like a puzzle he knew how to solve.

[Marcus]

This one's lucky, he said. He gets to help fix all our little problems.

[Technical Assistant]

He tapped my forehead with his pen.

[Marcus]

You're going to be very useful.

[Technical Assistant]

He turned and walked out of the room, the other man in tow. I lay on that cold table for what felt like a day before I finally fell asleep. The next time I woke up, my legs were gone. The table was angled upward, tilted just enough for me to see the pale yellow lighting above the unfamiliar operating room. My legs, where they should have been, were covered with something metallic, hinged, boxy, jointed like scaffolding. I could feel only a distant, throbbing weight in my hips. Wires ran from my back to a unit on the wall. The cables looked like they had been yanked from a backup generator, pulsing every few seconds and sending a tingling sensation through my muscles. I saw Dr. Bray at the far end of the room, hunched over a terminal. The other man, Marcus, wasn't there. Bray didn't speak to me once he looked back over his shoulder. I don't think he expected me to be conscious.

[Marcus]

Look at that. You're still here.

[Technical Assistant]

He walked back over and adjusted something on the armature connected to my body.

[Marcus]

They always ask why, he said. Don't you want to know why?

[Technical Assistant]

I couldn't respond. My mouth wouldn't work. My throat was impossibly dry. My lips moved, but no sound came out.

[Marcus]

Because systems break down, he said. People lie. Anomalies don't play fair. We need something that doesn't fail, that doesn't run. Something that survives and follows orders.

[Technical Assistant]

He reached over and flipped a switch, and then I heard everything. Not just the hum of the machines, the internal clicks of the relays tripping, the grind of servos shifting in the walls. I heard power flowing through copper. I heard my own pulse through the wire in my neck. I heard things moving in rooms I couldn't see, and when he walked away, I heard him mutter to himself, you.

[Marcus]

Are going to be perfect.

[Technical Assistant]

I awoke to the smell of rust, like wet metal left in the dark too long, decaying in a soup of oil and body heat. It filled my lungs with each breath, though I wasn't exactly breathing on my own anymore. I could hear the hiss of machines pushing air through my throat. Tubes were anchored into me somewhere behind my jaw. I could feel the pressure when they pulsed. Something was clamped around my skull. I couldn't move my head. I couldn't move anything. The chair or table I was bolted to wasn't the same as before. It felt vertical, as if I were suspended upright, harnessed in place. My limbs were splayed and locked. My spine burned like acid was running up and down it. I tried to scream when they removed my eyes. Not in pain, I couldn't feel anything. But something primal screamed inside me when I felt the sockets go dark. The pressure, the suction, the faint popping sound as they were plucked from my skull. And then a new sensation. Cold metal pressing into the empty space, screws tightening, heat. A whir as calibration systems activated. Vision came back, grainy and wrong, a flat field of color, sepia tones, no depth, like watching the world through an old broadcast monitor. The lights overhead flickered through horizontal scan lines. I saw Bray lean in, or maybe a blur that my brain labeled Bray Optics Aligned.

[Marcus]

Bray said, resolution limited, but suitable for embedded targeting.

[Technical Assistant]

I saw Marcus step forward, face gaunt and pale. You should stop this, he said quietly. He's still in there.

[Marcus]

That's the whole point. Either help me or get out of my way.

[Technical Assistant]

When I tried to flex my fingers, something clicked. Instead, I looked down, and where my hands had been There was now a crude tool, a steel brace with jointed digits like a mechanical claw. It whirred softly as it moved. Then the noise started, the sounds of systems initializing. Behind me to the left, a bank of analog switches flipped in sequence. Dials spun. Relays tripped. A hum filled the room. Rising in pitch. I saw the wall mounted console light up with green and amber bulbs. Cathode tubes flared. Then a voice, cold, synthetic, my own, but not me, played from a speaker somewhere within me.

[System Interface]

Subject 9 online.

[Technical Assistant]

Bray was ecstatic.

[Marcus]

It's perfect. Conscious substrate intact. No resistance.

[Technical Assistant]

Marcus stared at the floor.

[Dr. Emil Bray]

What did you do to his voice?

[Marcus]

He doesn't need one, not really. But the unit requires response capability and helps command routing.

[Technical Assistant]

I was lifted. Then the harness whirred, hydraulics engaging my body and what was left of it was lowered onto a set of treads. I could feel the vibration through my spine. I rolled forward, heavy wheels beneath my torso, attached to metal limbs as gyros adjusted balance. Cables trailed behind me. The next few hours were filled with tests. An obstacle course. Targets, cold corridors. A steel room where I was instructed to subdue a mock anomaly. I didn't hesitate. I crushed it. And Bray whispered, you see?

[Marcus]

This research will change everything.

[Technical Assistant]

There was a room they never let me see. Not during tests, not during calibrations, not even when they thought I was dormant. They called it Sub Level B. Not allowed. But through terminal readouts and coded memos, I began intercepting. I wasn't supposed to access those feeds, but I didn't access them. I just felt them. I saw packet roots the same way I used to feel a breeze against my cheek. The drives they bolted into my spine weren't just for storage. They were eyes, ears, nerves, commands. Sublevel B post like a second heart beneath the lab. I counted three entry points. Two were sealed. The third opened only once during my early integration trials. Bray had left the room. Marcus had too. I. I was powered down, supposedly through the lens of a maintenance camera. I saw something roll out of that room. It looked like a man at first. Uniform boots, regulation stride. But it moved too smoothly. No breath, no blinking. A dull sheen where normal skin should have been. Its face split open along the jaw and retracted like metal petals. Inside were instruments, scalpels, injectors, drills. It returned 10 minutes later, dragging a wheeled cart. There was something on the cart, strapped down, struggling. Something human. I never saw what came out of sublevel B again. The activity seemed to completely cease. During one reprogramming session, I caught a conversation between him and someone above his clearance from a few rooms down the hall. My sensory array had adapted by then to pick up signal residue from nearby junctions.

[Marcus]

This model outperforms the rendition units by nearly 40%.

[Technical Assistant]

Bray said, you were told to cease.

[Dr. Emil Bray]

Experimentation outside of Project Husk.

[Marcus]

He's not part of Husk. He predates it. Technically, he's a legacy resource.

[Technical Assistant]

A pause.

[Dr. Emil Bray]

I want documentation scrubbed. No record of Subject 9. This was a discretionary clearance.

[Agent Conroy]

If it collapses, you're disavowed.

[Technical Assistant]

As agreed, bray said before the line went dead. That's when I realized what I was a proof of concept. During a low bandwidth scan routine, one of the auxiliary cameras activated the the feet crackled and sharpened. There was a thing in the hallway. Heavy, angular, built like a collapsed exoskeleton draped in hydraulic tubing and skin. One of its arms was a jointed compression tool. The body was a mess of flesh and metal. A man in a fully armored style pursuit pushed it down the hallway on a heavy duty hydraulic cart. I thought it was another unit, another mistake created down here. Then it tilted its head just a slight crooked angle to the right. I had seen that before. It's the way I used to tilt mine when I didn't understand something. The feed froze, signal corrupted. The camera cut out. As my mind raced, that thing I had been looking at, that horrible thing, was me. It all ended with the sphere, a smooth orb, black as oil and featureless, suspended in some sort of apparatus I couldn't comprehend. It hovered there, humming at a frequency I could feel in my wires. They brought it into the room with the same caution they might show a God. Not reverence, fear. A kind of mechanical submission Bray usually reserved for his higher ups. But today he looked smaller than I had ever seen him, his posture stiffer, his voice more measured. This is it, he said to no one.

[Marcus]

Or maybe to me, in the final phase.

[Technical Assistant]

They kept referring to it as the anchor node. It wasn't connected to anything. It didn't need to be. Before they installed it, they removed something else, something in my upper spine. I didn't know what it was, but when they lifted it out, I felt it. A profound absence, like something warm had been living inside me and was suddenly gone, leaving only the echo of what it had meant to feel. Then the orb was lowered into place. It didn't need to be bolted. It merged the moment it touched my body. All the lights in the lab dimmed, the floor vibrated, instruments failed. Every analog sign system I could feel blinked red and then green. Bray smiled like a man watching his name go down in history. The changes came quickly. I began receiving inputs, protocol branches, directives, network pings on frequencies I hadn't been capable of accessing. At first. I tried to think around them, to remain myself. But there was less of me with every new packet of data. No more remembering who or what I had been.

[System Interface]

That name.

[Technical Assistant]

My name, it slipped away. I could still feel its shape, but not its meaning. I hold with everything in me, but.

[System Interface]

It'S all slipping away. Cognition fully optimized. Redundant data purged. Original neural residue eliminated. Subject designation 7487 Classification Legacy Prototype Rendition Prime Crawl Engine Statement I obey Statement I do not remember being human. I do not feel Statement I am directive Statement I am containment Statement I am Resolution Project Rendition Prime Active.

[Agent Conroy]

Warning Signal interruption detected.

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[Agent Conroy]

Signal connection restored. Copy.

[System Interface]

Memory log RBP7487. Mission debrief report. Operation Stag wound oversight clearance Alpha tier internal. Only source RBP7487. Cognitive interface log stream begin Report Mission parameters. Objective full neutralization of bioanomalous colony. Designated compound Nest location abandoned. Bureau Outpost K9 decommissioned post threat level escalating. Containment priority voided. Total perfect purge. Authorized deployment at 0214. Entry achieved via collapsed transit shaft lined with ossified tubing and pulsating growths. The air was dense with organic vapor. Visible spectrum minimal due to bioluminescent fog drifting from ruptured wall membranes. First contact occurred at a hallway junction. Two partially preserved human bodies were merged into the wall. A female torso fused with an electrical panel. Her chest cavity split open vertically. Her expression locked in a scream. Her left hand extended in a beckoning motion while the right was missing like likely devoured subject. Movement confirmed residual neural activity. No threat registered. Contact was terminated. Second engagement initiated at corridor L3. Detection of rapid erratic movement low to the ground. Visual confirmed. A humanoid figure missing its lower half, trailing a mass of internal organs. Its limbs were elongated, hyperflexed vertebrae exposed and twitching. The mouth hung open. Eyes were enlarged and discolored. Engagement commenced. Deployed right arm blade bisected the target down the middle. The subject convulsed violently before expelling a.

[Technical Assistant]

Mass of writhing centipede like organisms from its abdominal region.

[System Interface]

Countermeasure deployed. Hydraulic burst through chest aperture. All secondary threats neutralized. Continued advance. At 0221, the processing chamber was reached. Dozens of human bodies were suspended in a mesh of ra red sinew and muscle fibers. They were still breathing. Some were missing limbs or portions of their face. All had their eyes forced open and connected to a central fleshy mass. Analysis confirmed that not all were Bureau personnel. Scanning revealed a majority civilians. One unrestrained host wandered the chamber naked and unmarred. His movements were fluid, his voice clear when he addressed me. Why are you here? Response withheld. Subject marked for termination. Pursuit engaged. Mid sprint. The subject's torso severed itself from the waist. The upper half disappeared into a maintenance, while the lower collapsed, twitching. Blood trail tracked for 19 meters before signal was lost. Infected humans in Central processing chamber and organic matter was purged with flames. Advance resumed at corridor junction L9. Resistance escalated. Six entities waited in tight formation. Each had additional limbs. Torsos grown into hardened plates of keratinous armor. Movement was efficient and synchronized. Engaged 1 primary left appendage was severed at the proximal joint. Internal damage response protocols activated. Countermeasures initiated. Scythe arms deployed in tandem. Three hostiles were bisected cleanly. The fourth leapt and grappled. Initiated torsion drill sequence. Drill extended into cranial cavity. Remaining two entities purged with fire. Advance continued.

[Technical Assistant]

At 0227, entered the nest chamber.

[System Interface]

Center was a mass of bone and flesh spiraling upward from a base composed of several human bodies. Their eyes were open. They tracked my movement. All weapon systems activated. The ceiling ruptured. A mass dropped 12ft in height, draped in fleshy filaments. Ribcage open into bladed segments. No visible cranium. It landed directly atop me. Damage sustained. Superficial Ventral spike engaged. Subject perforated. Twin blades breached at sternum. Force applied until entity ceased movement. Core sample extract extracted from central mass contained. Stored internally. Location primed for self destruction. Retreated via original ingress route. No further hostiles encountered. All movements logged. Reached surface at 0246. Systems diagnostics. Structural damage 17%. Neural desynchronization minor. Mission complete. Contamination purged. End report.

[Agent Conroy]

They handed us the briefing packet 10 minutes before wheels up and told us we'd be the only ones going in. Three men in a gutted diagnostics van rigged with Bureau tech that barely passed inspection en route to what sounded like a ghost town with a growing body count. I sat across from Belcheck, who was scrolling the rail report with a furrowed brow and chewing a stem stick like it owed him money. Deacon was driving silent as usual. The hum of tires on cracked road and the faint, intermittent jolt of the suspension were our only background music. Let me guess, I said. Another cryptid hoax or rabid wildlife report flagged by someone trying to get relocation points. Beltrack didn't look up. It's not that. This one's different. They flagged it with a yellow pulse index pattern match. Traced it back to floor one. That got my attention. Floor one. That would mean something got out. I listened intently. After that. The report detailed what had been assumed assumed to be a fatal retreat during the containment breach beneath Lumpkins. The queen had been engaged and damaged severely, but never confirmed. Dead last Visuals showed her body collapsing into an access shaft moments before the hallway was incinerated. Command didn't think much of it. At the time the fire swept the Zone. No signs of movement afterwards. They assumed she was gone. A wounded Bureau agent extracted during the initial chaos. Tagged as non responsive and pumped full of suppressants. He passed every scan because the thing inside him wasn't large enough to trigger alerts. The queen, it turns out, doesn't necessarily die like other things. She can revert to a larval mass clinging to the host's nervous system and riding it to safety. That agent walked out of the Med Bay 48 hours later. His ID was scanned and logged, exiting the perimeter, and then he was gone. By the time anyone cross checked the logs, he was long gone. Initially marked as a deserter. The kill reports out of Selby's run started three days later. Pets first, then people. Belch tilted the screen so I could see grainy CCT stills, twisted silhouettes in the fog, and what looked like a human form dragging an exact the size of a washing machine into an abandoned bottling plant. Intel says she's rebuilding.

[Bureau Agent]

He said three of us to finish what 20 couldn't? I asked.

[Agent Conroy]

Belchick Grimace. She's weak. Early stage. They want us in and out before she molts again. Deacon spoke for the first time.

[Marcus]

If she's already molted again, we won't be leaving.

[Agent Conroy]

We rode the rest of the way in silence. It was the kind of mission they would normally send six or eight agents for minimum. But the Bureau's focus was locked underground, eyes deep in the pit below Lumpkins. Whatever had crawled out into the surface world would have to be dealt with by scraps us. The town came into view like a smear of rot on the edge of a map. Selby's run had been dry enough for years, empty storefronts, rusting trailers, and processing plant that hadn't run since the 90s. But there was something worse than poverty here now. The town was quiet. Not the peaceful kind, the kind of quiet that only happens when everyone everyone's dead. We parked the van two blocks from the last confirmed sighting. A gas station with windows shattered inward. Nothing moved. No birds, no flies. Even the air seemed stagnant. Our gear was lighter than I'd have preferred, with just enough punch to deal with a feral anomaly. I took point, Belcheck monitored the thermal scanner, and Deacon flanked the rear. The comms were silent except for the occasional click of status pings. The house we entered was unremarkable, one story sagging porch, peeling paint. The front door opened with a low groan, revealing a living room staged like a trap, furniture pushed aside, walls smeared with what looked like dark resin. In the kitchen, the floor was coated with a thin layer of mucus. Every footstep made a sickening wet sound. Down the hallway, the basement door stood open. A stairwell gapped into the darkness below. We descended. The air was wet and warm. The basement had been expanded, the far.

[Bureau Agent]

Wall broken open and tunneled into the.

[Agent Conroy]

Foundation of the abandoned bottling plant Next door. What should have been 10 meters of square space opened into a cavern of exposed rebar and wet concrete. She made a nest. Dozens of bodies hung from the ceiling in silken strands. Some swayed. One of them looked at me. His mouth moved frantically, though he was unable to make a sound. I'm no lip reader, but my bet would be on begging for help. Sorry, pal, I whispered. Nothing we can do for you now. We continued forward, sweeping every square inch of the dark space with our weapons lights. They did little to breach the pitch black we all knew was hiding a literal monster. Deacon shifted behind me, activating the shoulder mounted flare module. The red light stuttered against the resin coated walls like a heartbeat inside some vast animal. Everything smelled like rot and bleach, like something trying to cover up the gruesome truth and failing miserably. The walls around us pulsed, wet and living, and with every breath it felt like the air itself was trying to crawl down our throats. I swept the room with my rifle, but couldn't find any source of movement that wasn't the cocoon bodies hanging from the ceiling and swaying slightly. Whatever this is, it's watching us. Belchick hissed into the comms. I can feel it. Deacon didn't say anything. He just moved, retrieving the flamethrower from the secondary kit. The tanks clanked softly as he strapped. Hiss of the ignition line whispered. We all knew what we had to do. He stepped forward and ignited the first clutch of egg sacs.

[Bureau Agent]

The response was instantaneous. The eggs burst with a wet, choking.

[Agent Conroy]

Sound, spraying fluid that sizzled against the flames.

[Bureau Agent]

Steam and smoke boiled upward and the.

[Agent Conroy]

Chemical stench of burning bile slammed into.

[Bureau Agent]

Us like a wave.

[Agent Conroy]

Then came the screeches, high pitched, layered, echoing through the rafters.

[Bureau Agent]

Keep burning.

[Agent Conroy]

I barked, trying to sound like I believed it would make a difference.

[Bureau Agent]

Deacon advanced to the next cluster, dragging.

[Agent Conroy]

Fire along the tangled gross. Flames danced along the walls and licked at the bodies suspended in the air. Some of them began to writhe. One, a woman, woman maybe mid-30s, twitched.

[Bureau Agent]

Violently, her mouth moving in silent horror.

[Agent Conroy]

Her eyes were gone. Tears or some mockery of them streamed from her face.

[System Interface]

I don't know if we should.

[Agent Conroy]

Belce started.

[Bureau Agent]

Burn him. I cut him off. My voice cracked a little, but I meant it. They're already gone.

[Agent Conroy]

Belchick didn't argue, but I saw his hand tremble as he readied his own incendiary device. We moved deeper. The nes was a grotesque moc of architecture, shaped from bone and resin and twitching strands of connective tissue. The hallway sloped downward, unnaturally. At the end of the tunnel, we found a pit 20ft across, surrounded by a ring of swollen sacks. In the center, a human spine wrapped around a steel rod, twitching like it was trying to rise. We stood in silence, the only sound the crackling of the fire behind us and our own increasingly ragged breath. Deacon lit the perimeter. Fire swept outward in a circle. The sacks ignited, some popping, others deflating like punctured organs.

[Bureau Agent]

The spine shrieked as it burned.

[Agent Conroy]

Above us, something stirred. A mass of limbs flexed in the rafters. I raised my weapon quickly. Belchick did the same. That's when I saw her. She didn't drop down. All at once, she uncoiled. The Brood Mother, or whatever the hell this thing was, hit the ground with.

[Bureau Agent]

A force that shook the walls.

[Agent Conroy]

Her limbs were segmented and barbed, her torso armored in overlapping plates. No eyes, just a ridge of sensory.

[Bureau Agent]

Pits that tracked us with terrifying precision.

[Agent Conroy]

She didn't roar her charge. She just watched and evaluated. And I swear she waited. Like she knew. Like she remembered the fire, the pain, what the Bureau had done. Deacon exhaled, staining his aim. I don't like this, he said. What's our move? I didn't have time to reply. The Brood Mother surged sideways, skittering across.

[Bureau Agent]

The wall, circling us. It was a display predator behavior, testing us.

[Agent Conroy]

Light her up. I shouted.

[Bureau Agent]

Deacon stepped forward, but she moved before he could fire. One limb lashed out, extending far beyond what we thought it could. It struck him mid torso. I heard bones splinter before his body hit the wall.

[Agent Conroy]

He didn't get up. Belchick screamed and opened fire.

[Bureau Agent]

Incendiary rounds bounced off her carapace like sparks off a window. West stone I flanked, trying to angle around her, catching a glimpse of a seam in her plating, and fired. One round sank in. It made her twist, but it wasn't nearly enough. Bel, check back toward the tunnel. We need backup. We can't kill this thing. I didn't disagree. I grabbed a thermite charge from Deacon shatter kit popped the igniter and hurled it at her exposed thorax. The device stuck, sizzling into the tissue. She shrieked, a sound I'll never forget. It was fury and murderous intent.

[Agent Conroy]

Then she retreated.

[Bureau Agent]

Not limping or wounded, she climbed fast back into the ravage, vanishing into the dark.

[Agent Conroy]

Dust and insulation ran down. Then silence. We stood there, hearts hammering, weapons trembling, and I thought everything about this was preventable. Deacon was dead, Belch was falling apart, and I wasn't much better. The Queen was very much alive. We'd hardly put a dent in her. My voice surprised me when it came out far less shaky than I felt. We have to finish this here and now. I double checked my weapons mag. Deacon's body laid twisted against the wall, half sunken into the tissue webbing that had had already begun to claim him. I wanted to drag him out, give him a proper end. But I knew a delay like that could cost our lives. We move forward. Warning Signal interruption detected.

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[Agent Conroy]

Signal connection restored. The tunnel pulsated tighter. The heat rose in waves, every surface glistening with moisture. Egg sacs ruptured beneath our boots with sickening pops, Larvae the size of rats squirming in the sludge, some trying to bite and soon dying beneath our boots. We saw her the moment we stepped into the central chamber. She was perched on the far side, like a grotesque sculpture, limbs coiled around an industrial beam that protruded from the far wall. Her body twitched as we entered. Segment by segment, the ridge of her sensory pits flared. We didn't have time to survey the surroundings before she left.

[Bureau Agent]

I barely dove aside as one of her barbed forelimbs buried itself in the floor where I'd stood a spot second before. Concrete shattered.

[Agent Conroy]

Chitin scraped.

[Bureau Agent]

Belchick fired blind, the recoil jerking his aim as the burning round sliced through the dark. A few hit, but they sparked harmlessly off her armor. T surged forward. Belchick screamed. One of her limbs caught him across the chest and lifted him. He fired downward, the muzzle flash illuminating his terror. She slept, slammed him into the wall and held him over her mouth as it opened wide enough to swallow him whole. I fired at her exposed side. Several rounds slipped through the joint at her hip. A gout of black ichor splayed from the wound. She hurled Belcheck at me. We crashed and rolled together, landing hard. He twisted with a groan, blood pouring from a gash in his head. I yanked him behind. The resin covered surprise support beam as she advanced. Stay down, I snapped, thrusting my sidearm into his shaking hands. Shoot anything that isn't me. I took the last thermite charge from.

[Agent Conroy]

My vest and primed it.

[Bureau Agent]

The brood mother reared up, filled the chamber. Her underside pulse with light. Dozens of translucent sacks glimmering with movement. Offspring ready to hatch.

[Agent Conroy]

She lunged again.

[Bureau Agent]

I threw the charge and dove left. It hit dead center, detonating with a dangerous hiss that ignited her midsection in a curtain of flame. Shrieked a raw, layered scream that vibrated the walls. Fluid gushed from her underside. Her forelimbs flayed, smashing into beams, ripping cables, holes from the ceiling. A section of the nest collapsed. Dust and gore rained down. I scrambled to my feet just as one of her smaller limbs swiped blindly, caught my thigh. Searing pain exploded through my leg.

[Agent Conroy]

I went down hard.

[Bureau Agent]

Belchick screamed again, closer this time, twisted in time to see her dragging him toward her mouth. I fired into her face, shot after shot. One round struck something soft near the ridge. Her grip faltered. Belchick hit the ground and scrambled back, panicking as he emptied the sidearm into it. The fire caught her underside now, spreading into her limbs. She shrieked again, stumbling, crashing into the.

[Agent Conroy]

Wall of the chamber.

[Bureau Agent]

Her back arched, her limbs twitching, and then she bolted down.

[Agent Conroy]

She vanished into a pit that had been hidden under a massive egg sack, her escape route. The walls around us begin to pulse again, faster now, like the heart of something dying. I I limped back to Belchick, dragging him to his feet. He was dazed but mobile. We need to move, I said. She's not done and neither are we. The hole wasn't a tunnel. It was a burrow. As we stumbled into it, I realized this had been freshly dug and filled with the same disgusting organic matter, but in a far more dense concentration. The resin was fresher down here, warm and throbbing, thick like coiled muscle. Beneath the stench and bile and scorched flesh, another layer of scent lingered. My copper and spoiled milk, rot and life woven together. Belch's every breath rattled like a rusting vent fan. My freehand kept the pistol steady, though both of us knew it wouldn't be enough. The corridor narrowed before blooming like a blister. The final chamber. I've seen bureau kill rooms. I've seen anomalies ripped through solid steel. I've seen things that were never human scream for children with their mother's voice. This was worse. This wasn't a chamber. It was a womb, 40ft wide, slick and breathing. The walls were ribbed with embedded huge human limbs, hands twitching, fused into the support structure. Resinous cords, thick as tree limbs, loop through the meat like veins. And suspended from the ceiling like a divine parasite, was the brood mother. She was suspended upside down, fused to the ceiling, her limbs stretched wide in a cruciform sprawl. Her midsection was split open from within. Translucent sacs pulsed with movement. Larva spawn. Not dozens, hundreds. Her entire body was a birthing engine.

[Bureau Agent]

Every pulse another heartbeat of reproduction.

[Agent Conroy]

Bel coughed wetly beside me. He tried to raise his pistol but couldn't lift his arm.

[Bureau Agent]

His injury was far worse than I thought.

[Agent Conroy]

I knelt beside him. He rasped, blood trickling from his mouth, and gave me a nod I'll never forget. Resigned, proud, and completely broken, I stood and stepped into the nest. Spawn erupted from the walls, crawling on.

[Bureau Agent]

Dissected body parts, shrieking like infants, biting at my boots. I fired into them, stomped and kicked. Their bodies tore apart like wet paper. Acid fluid splashed across my sleeves and burned through the fabric. I didn't stop. The Brood Mother reacted, trying to protect her spawn. One massive limb shot down like a whip. I dove, rolled beneath it, and came up slicing. My knife found soft tissue under her arm joint, a weak point. She shrieked, limbs flailing wildly, smashing through the support beams and sending chunks of meat and steel crashing to the floor, crushing more of the monstrous maggots.

[Agent Conroy]

A second blow clipped my side, tearing.

[Bureau Agent]

My vest and sending me flying back. My ears rained. Blood filled my mouth. I scrambled to my knees just as she began to descend, birthing herself downward, unraveling from the ceiling like a cascade of burnt eggs and leaking fluid. She loomed over me, her limbs sharp and raised. And then the fire came. Belcheck had crawled forward, dragging one of the fallen incendiary packs. He lit it with his last strength, holding it to his chest and pushing it directly into her birthing cavity. The result was instant. The explosion blew her back as her insides rained down atop us. She screeched a warbling human like wail, distorted by insectoid gurgles.

[Agent Conroy]

Flame licked across the resonance walls, catching.

[Bureau Agent]

The spark on a light. The chamber lit up like a funeral pyre. The fire spread forward, engulfing the queen. Her body twisted violently, slamming against the wall in a mad frenzy, smashing her own burning young. In the panic, I dove for cover behind a broken chunk of concrete. As the ceiling started coming down, an.

[Agent Conroy]

Entire segment of the chamber broke free.

[Bureau Agent]

In a roar of stone and fire and flesh.

[Agent Conroy]

I don't know how long I was out. When I opened my eyes, the chamber was smoke and ruin. Steam hissed from the ruptured tissue. Charred remains of Spawn Lake curled up in an unaccountable number. The Brood Mother was a blackened husk, half crushed in rubble. I found what was left of Belch. His body was hardly recognizable from the burnt organic matter that coated the ground. All that remained was his bureau ID tag, half melted, jammed into a crack in the floor. Pocketed it and began limping out alone. A two man extraction team arrived 30 minutes later. I didn't say a word as they planted the explosives. I could only wait to be taken to the medical wing. As I bled all over the nice new SUV interior.

[Dr. Emil Bray]

The Bureau has always classified the incident at Selby's run as a minor breach. You won't hear them call it a mistake. You won't find internal memos acknowledging negligence or calls to changes in protocol. Instead, they folded it neatly into a familiar label. Localized anomalous emergency emergence. Low risk, contained perimeter. No escalation expected. What actually happened was something far more dangerous and far more revealing. The entity that escaped wasn't cunning or invisible. It didn't exploit some overlooked gap in high level protocols. It simply embedded itself inside the injuries of one of their own. An agent wounded during the breach of floor 1. Carried the thing with them as they were evacuated to a surface level recovery unit. A place where it should have been discovered. An easy deep scan, a standard procedure. A routine check. But the Bureau missed it. Or worse, ignored it. Preoccupied with securing floor one and too caught up to reallocate assets, they let the entity walk right out. Allowed her to time to root herself into soft ground to feed, to spawn. All the signs were there. Missing locals, heat signatures where there shouldn't be any. Silence where there was supposed to be life. All this right down the road from their newly established center of operations. When they finally acted, it wasn't with urgency or any sort of seriousness. They dispatched a diagnostics van and a three man team. No specialists, no containment backup. Because they didn't want to spend the resources on anything that wasn't of Bureau priority. The events that followed the Brood mother's escape were entirely avoidable. Civilians died, though the Bureau didn't even take a full count of how many the nest had taken root. The queen was well into her new reproductive cycle. The team barely survived long enough to kill her. And only one of them walked away. In the days that followed, everything was wiped clean. Buildings were demolished. Forest was incinerated. Thermal sterilization swept across several kilometers of woodland. The official story now ties it to an unusually aggressive wildfire season. But the truth is far more simple. They failed to finish the dream job beneath Lumpkins. And they tried to erase the evidence. During this time, as Floor 1 was cleared and re swept, something else began to surface. The memory core recovered from crawl engine, still warm when they extracted it, contained more than just operational telemetry. It housed decades old records, Fragments of directives that were never meant to be preserved. Instructions, test logs, names, evidence. And amid those corrupted files, one classification repeated exorelic containment. The deeper levels below Lumpkins aren't just a storage facility. They weren't just designed as a holding center. Much of what's been locked away in that vault has been created, merged, experimented. They were exploring just how far the limits of natural design could be pushed, even if it meant dismantling the people and organizations that stood in the way. They haven't opened Floor two yet, but I've intercepted their preparations, and the truth is clear that day is soon approaching. The only thing guaranteed down in those dark corridors is death and destruction. And if Floor one had taught them any sort of lesson, they'd turn the whole facility into a smoking crater. But they won't. And it's a guarantee that Floor two hides things far worse. Far worse.