← Redwood Bureau
Redwood Bureau
Facility Containment Protocol: FLOOR_1
01:34:31
Once they open this door, there’s no going back.
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- [00:00]
Sponsor Voice
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- [00:26]
Team Member 1
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- [01:00]
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.
- [01:37]
Commander Ashcroft
There's a reason this report is coming late. After the events unfolding beneath Lumpkins signals have been unreliable, not just hours. Something is interfering with long range comms. And it's not just dead bandwidth or old encryption protocols. Entire nodes are going dark. Secure archives, low orbit relays. Even Bureau satellite pings are vanishing. Mid pulse for 72 hours. A large and well known Bureau facility went completely dark. I don't know yet if this was intentional or not, but I doubt that blackout was a coincidence. As you know, one of our well established safe houses was raided after the Zenith signal interception. I couldn't run the risk of having my people taken or our records seized. We moved everything again. But now that the Bureau is engaged in a full scale operation below Lumpkins Eatery, I think it's safe to say they've backed themselves into a corner. The forgotten facility hidden beneath the dilapidated facade of the Lumpkins eatery site has remained sealed since the early 1970s. No active personnel, no outgoing data, no surviving witnesses. Just a blank spot in the Bureau's archives no one knew to ask about. Until now. Following the suppression of Corpsetide and its catastrophic engagement with Subject 9003, a breach team under Commander Ashcroft was authorized to open the vault. This is happening now. The vault is set to be opened in less than two hours. There's a lot of movement around the facility. Once they open this door, there's no going back. The Bureau's response has been overwhelming. More assets deployed to this location than any other non global anomaly in the last two decades. Mobile field bases have gone operational. Suppression teams are being prepped with tech I haven't even heard of before. Research divisions are arriving in waves, and yet none of them truly understand what they've stepped into. Whatever's down there, they want it badly. Well, they think they do. Most of their analysts believe they're walking into a long forgotten relic. Something containable. But they will file this in their archives as a monumental miscalculation.
- [04:11]
Agent Conroy
I was stationed in the mobile command center just above the breach point, seated behind a bank of terminals, each one feeding live telemetry, audio and helmet cam footage from Team 1. My job is observation transcription and immediate response to deviation. I'd done this more times than I could count, but the scale of this op was way bigger than anything I've been involved with. Commander Ashcroft stood behind me, arms crossed, as the vault door groaned under its own ancient weight. The chamber lights buzzed overhead. Interference from auxiliary grid routing, they reported. The door itself looked like it belonged in a myth, circular carbon steel reinforced with bureautech that hadn't been manufactured in decades. Its seals had held for over 50 years. A technician entered the last command string into the access port. The capacitor relay fired with a low rumb rumble and the locking arms retracted with agonizing slowness. A moan of shifting pressure echoed through the room as stale air hissed from within. There was a hush across the tent, and for the first time since the Bureau set up here, no one tapped a key or adjusted a monitor. We just watched. Ashcroft's voice came through. Steady.
- [05:39]
Agent Farren
Forward team, you are green. Proceed with caution. Priority one is data retrieval. Stay alert. Stay alive.
- [05:47]
Agent Conroy
Six agents crossed the threshold. Their suits gleamed under helmet lamps, new composites layered with the Bureau insignia and reinforced seal lines. Each one carried short barrel Kinetics, full atmospheric sampling, and two drones on standby. I knew most of their names, though only two stood out. The lead, Agent Revick, swept his light across the wall and we saw it almost immediately. Symbols. Curved, deliberate, drawn in a substance darker than rust but still reflective. They seemed to glow with a faint light, like a dying flame.
- [06:27]
Agent Revick
Command, can you see this through the feed?
- [06:30]
Agent Conroy
These symbols are glowing.
- [06:32]
Agent Revick
They're giving off a strange feeling.
- [06:35]
Agent Farren
You getting any readings?
- [06:36]
Agent Conroy
Ashcroft asked over comms. Agent Farren responded. Nothing on thermal, no EM bleed. Whatever is making them glow like that, it's not from Earth. They stepped deeper inside. Agent Sila deployed the first drone. It zipped into the hall and began mapping For a moment, the schematic looked normal. Then the lines began to loop back on themselves. The software started generating recursive corridors, some of which didn't exist in any internal blueprint. Some paths led back to the same junction. Even after turning, one hall appeared to curve inward on itself like a nautilus spiral drone. Interference, sila muttered.
- [07:23]
Team Member 1
Likely tied to sigils. Mappings unreliable.
- [07:26]
Agent Conroy
Ashcroft didn't flinch.
- [07:28]
Agent Farren
Deploy them anyways. Continue forward. Prioritize terminal access.
- [07:34]
Agent Conroy
The cam feed showed more Sigils as they went further in, each one identical in color, proportion, and style. Whatever they were, they were not scrawled hastily. They were made with intention and precision. Revik inspected one of the sigils.
- [07:51]
Agent Revick
Maybe it has something to do with.
- [07:53]
Agent Conroy
Everything being stuck in here, he muttered. The halls widened, eventually leading into a central artery that ended at a reinforced security door but partially ajar beyond it. Archival sub level node A3. The stenciled Bureau lettering was faded but still legible. Inside a preserved computer lab, dusty but intact. Rows of old bureau terminals lined the walls. Agent Rook moved first. He dropped a portable battery into place and fired up the system. Terminal Responding, he said. Drives are intact. Initiating data uplink now. A green bar appeared across our terminals. I leaned in as the uplink began to pour data in packets. Hundreds of gigabytes of black site logs, internal transfer manifests, project headers, quarantine shift schedules. It wasn't even close to everything from this facility, but it was a big chunk of Floor One's historical archive. Then the feed stuttered. Only for a moment. The green bar froze mid transfer, hiccuped once, then resumed. The analysts beside me began checking their systems, assuming it was a localized relay fault or solar interference. Another technician called out packet fluctuation, trying to triangulate the source.
- [09:20]
Agent Farren
Check the compression stream, ashcroft ordered calmly. Run a diagnostics sweep.
- [09:26]
Agent Conroy
The flicker didn't repeat, but it was such a specific error, the latency spiked. Not system wide. Just in the feed from sublevel node A3 and everything connected to it. For precisely three seconds. All camera footage shimmered. No loss, no blackout. Just distortion. A ripple, like something pressed against the transmission from another angle. Still clean. Someone reported no packet loss. Ashcroft didn't speak. His eyes narrowed slightly. He looked like he knew something we didn't.
- [10:08]
Commander Ashcroft
There it is. Data relay came online with their uplink window, just like we planned.
- [10:13]
Agent Conroy
I'm in.
- [10:16]
Commander Ashcroft
Floor one. Logs are sifting now. Packet structure's a mess. What is all this? Null entries, rudimentary encryption, and hold on. Put this on my screen when you get it open. Nice work. Okay, let's go over the data. Looks like that key actually worked. Let's see what's in here. I wonder how long it's gonna take the Bureau to get into these files. Ah, here it is. This is definitely what's taken over the first floor. Created like that, and still they'll want to contain it. Uploading now. Raw transcription uncut Playback initiated.
- [11:00]
Agent Revick
I have been called many things in my life, but only one title has ever mattered. Historian of the righteous. It is my duty not to interpret, nor to lead, but simply to record, to preserve. I do not question the shepherd's word. I do not place my own thoughts beside the wisdom of the Scripture. I only listen, watch and write. I was given this duty three years ago. Sometime after the shepherd first found the scripture. At that time, we were fewer in number. But truth will always find those who seek it. When the shepherd first opened the flesh bound pages and spoke the words aloud, all doubt was silenced. We gathered in the old cisterns that night and we listened to the first reading. The words did not echo in the air, but inside of us. Like remembering something you had known only in a past life. The scripture is not for everyone. Even to those of us chosen. Its pages are inert. Symbols without meaning. A maze without solution. Only the shepherd sees its structure clearly. He told us that the scripture was not written. It has always been that it came from no man's mind. That it found its way to him through channels not meant for human understanding. He bore this knowledge with grace, though it weighed on him visibly. Over time, he grew quieter. He smiled less. But he led us. We built the compound by hand. We tore out the wild grass, mixed our own clay and razed walls with the sweat of the unclean. Everything must be earned. We believe that comfort breeds corrosion, that ease leads to rot. The world outside is evidence of that. A place of indulgence, of synthetic morality, of people who refuse to see their own eternal destruction. But we see. The Scripture allows us to see. And what we see cannot be forgiven. There are no illusions among the righteous. We are not seeking paradise. We are not calling down a God to love us. What we are doing is necessary. What we are building is purity. The Scripture has shown us what must be done. The vessel was chosen last spring. I knew him before the selection. He was soft spoken, but strong and faithful. I will not record his former name, as the shepherd instructed us to forget it. He is no longer who he was. He is to become the first of us who will Burn away all doubt. He is to be transformed through fire, not of flame, but of flesh. The scripture says the soul is a knot that must be pulled free, that only pain can unravel it. That through agony the spirit may be reformed. It is not cruelty. It is not punishment. It is love in its rawest form. A terrible, beautiful mercy. Tomorrow, the preparations begin. I will record everything for those who come after, for those who must remember what the world tried to bury. The shepherd did not choose the vessel hastily. The scripture revealed it slowly over many weeks. I remember the day the announcement was made. We gathered in the atrium after the fourth bell, where the sun cast sharp red tinted shadows through the narrow slits of stained glass. The shepherd stepped forward in silence. When he raised his hand, all murmurs ceased. His voice was soft, but carried. The scripture has shown me the vessel. We waited in stillness, one by one. Heads turned as the shepherd's hand extended and pointed. There was no gasp, no outburst, only a breath drawn in held and the slow, deliberate steps of the chosen man as he approached the altar. I will not describe him in detail. I have already begun to forget his name. That is as it should be. From that moment forward, he was no longer brother, no longer friend. He was only the vessel. The preparation began immediately. The shepherd and three of the Elder Righteous led the vessel to the sanctum, a small chamber carved beneath the chapel floor. The rest of us resumed our work in the fields and kitchens. Though a quiet hush settled over the compound, no songs were sung that day. No one laughed. That evening I was summoned. As historian, I am to bear witness. The scripture does not speak of preservation in ink or paper. But I believe my task is one of spiritual clarity. To document is to honor. To describe is to prevent corruption by forgetfulness. If the world outside ever finds what we have done, they must see it not as madness, but as truth in action. When I descended into the sanctum, I found the vessel seated cross legged in the center of a chalk drawn circle. Candles lined the outer ring, their flames still and tall. The shepherd stood to the side, watching, not judging, not commanding, only observing. The vessel was calm, peaceful. His eyes were closed, his lips moving silently, mouthing verses I did not recognize. Over the next few weeks, the rituals intensified. The scripture does not call for cruelty. It calls for purification. Through incisions. The guilt of the flesh is released through starvation. The soul is reminded of need. Through isolation. The mind is made clear of worldly distraction. Each evening I was permitted to sit and record. The man, the one we now called the vessel was not quiet by virtue of Peace. He screamed until his voice gave out, until he could do nothing but weep and tremble and bleed. He begged not for salvation but but for release. The shepherds said this would be the case. The scripture does not speak in metaphor. It is not a thing to be deciphered or interpreted, but a living will etched in forms beyond language, too precise to allow abstraction. What the shepherd reads from its pages, he reads with unwavering certainty. Each symbol made flesh is a command, not a suggestion. And we obey, for to do otherwise would be to undo everything we are. The first glyph was to be carved into the chest. Not a simple marking or branding, but a spiraling structure of curves and bifurcating lines, etched with surgical intent that any deviation would mean spiritual rejection and physical death. The shepherd did not use a blade. The instrument was a sliver of bone, curved and honed until it could part flesh with reverent precision. Its origin was never spoken of, though some among the righteous believed it had been pulled from the body of a living heir of a nation's king. Whether this is true or lore, I do not know. I only record what is whispered among the righteous. The rites were never hurried. The scripture demanded precision, and so the shepherd proceeded with extreme care. Every incision was exact. Some were shallow, meant to map the flesh. Others dug deep into muscle, sometimes through bone. One ritual required the partial removal of a rib to reach the liver, where a glyph had to be carved directly into the organ itself. Each right left him closer to death. His body would shiver violently in the aftermath, teeth chattering, limbs twitching as he was wrapped in ash soaked linens while verses were whispered into his ears. Once the glyph was complete, the vessel was laid flat upon the altar stone and anointed with ash drawn from the coals of burned supplication scrolls. The wound was packed with moss, harvested during the eclipse moon and sealed beneath fabric strips embroidered with psalms and red thread. We waited three days. No rot took hold, no infection. Instead, the skin around the glyph took on a sheen, faint and waxy, and the edges of the wound fused, not closed, but integrated, as if the body itself accepted the glyph as a new organ. The following glyphs required more. One was to be placed over the solar plexus and could only be activated if the vessel had fasted long enough tremors to begin. Another was embedded beneath the ribs, carved through an incision that was later sewn shut, burying the mark where no eye could witness it. Each carving came with its own preparation. In the nights between the Vessel was fed through thin broth, infused with marrow and dried herbs. Always, according to the scriptures, cycles. The process took a year. Not for ceremony but for survival. Every line had to be perfect, every shape. Precise errors meant more pain. Nearly any one of these rites, if done improperly, could kill him, and he had to live, had to endure for the vessel to be filled. He did not grow quiet from reverence. He grew quiet from exhaustion and torn vocal cords. Some days he passed out mid ritual and had to be revived with bitter herbs packed beneath his tongue. Other times he would go limp but still tremble, his eyes fluttering, his fingers curling around. Nothing more than once I thought he had died and it had all been for nothing. But eventually, things started changing. After a particularly horrendous rite in which the shepherd split the flesh along the back and carved a seal on the spine between the shoulder blades, the skin began to discolor with an unnatural pallor, like smoke. It settled beneath the surface. Some of the symbols in his flesh began to almost glow faintly, like the faintest dying flame was shining through, barely visible at certain angles. I attempted to copy them, to write them down, but I couldn't. When I tried, it was like the lines warped. They refused to be put on paper. The shepherd told me not to try again. Pain, he said, is the ink of the soul, and these truths are only for flesh. The final glyph was not carved at all. It was poured, boiling liquid, script made from ground stone, fermented blood, and the dust from a sealed reliquary unearthed during the red flood season. The shepherd recited six verses in words none of us recognized, while the mixture was applied across the chest and allowed to seep through the pores. And then the vessel screamed. It wasn't just pain. It was something else, something deeper, like air being torn from the lungs of the world. The walls of the sanctum cracked, the candles went out, and we were then left in an absolute silence. Since then, the vessel does not rest. His skin radiates warmth. His presence causes the flame to lean toward him even when he does not move and he no longer casts a shadow. Whether he has accepted his role or has been devoured by it, I do not know. The scripture does not speak of consent. It speaks only of completion. And we are nearly there. Soon after, the shepherd called for the final rite to commence, his voice quivering not with fear but with awe. The vessel was brought to the central altar, glyphs smoldering faintly beneath pale, smoky skin, breath exhaling in slow, measured huffs like the bellows of an ancient forge. We gathered around him, each of us carrying the final tokens of blood, ash, bone. These were burned, crushed, and scattered in a circle, as instructed by the scripture. The shepherd knelt beside the vessel and whispered a single word, not in our tongue, but in a language the scripture had revealed only once, and even then, only in a dream. The vessel opened his eyes. The room did not darken, but everything in it seemed to pull away from the light. Candle flames bowed in toward him. Shadows collapsed inward. The air wavered, and he rose. No one spoke. His movement was uncoordinated but deliberate, as though each limb was learning its place in a new order. Bones cracked beneath skin in realignment. As he stood upright, impossibly tall, his vertebrae seemed to rise through his back like a blooming structure, glyphs glowing deep red along his spine. His mouth opened to reveal something. Light, or a suggestion of it, poured from within. But it wasn't illumination. It was exposure. His body had grown long and lean in proportions no longer correct for a man. The torso had stretched to an unnatural length. Ribs warped outward like the framing of a broken cathedral. Patches of skin had been peeled away entirely through the last year of rites, revealing networks of muscle laced with glyphs carved directly into meat and bone. Where joints once turned cleanly, there were now exposed, exposed caps of gristle and reformed bone. His arms hung too long, wrists bending too far, fingers ending in nail like points thickened by callous and heat. The fingers twitched rhythmically, as if anticipating something. What remained of his face was a reminder of suffering. The mouth had split wider than it once was, the lips long since cut away and sealed with rings of charred scar tissue. His nose had caved inward, crushed during one of the rites, and the skin around his eyes had blackened and tightened, cut and cauterized many times over. And yet, beneath all that ruin, the structure of the man he once was remained faintly visible in the symmetry in the shape of his jaw beneath the ruin. It was the familiarity that made him terrifying. The shepherd scrambled back. He looked shaken. Some among the righteous began to cry, maybe in confusion or fear. A few knelt unbidden. Others looked at one another, unsure. We had expected the divine, a savior. What stood before us wasn't those things. What stood before us was something hard to describe. It was malevolence. It was hatred and destruction, a shape molded from pain and fear. What we had considered purification was something far different, and what arose from our work. One of the younger acolytes reached forward. A gesture of reverence, I think, or maybe an instinct to affirm faith. The vessel turned to him and it saw him. He looked through him, past his skin, his sins, his breath. The boy froze. Blood began to well from beneath his nails. His mouth opened to scream, but no sound came out, only a wet rattle as his body began to stiffen and fold. Not violently, not with force, but like paper soaked through and peeled apart. He collapsed inward, weeping fluid from every orifice, his eyes fixed on something none of us could see. The righteous scattered. No command was given, no instructions shouted. It was simply too much. Some fled, some knelt. One began to babble confessions to no one, listing transgressions no one had known. Another struck her own face with a stone until her eye came loose. They were repenting as the newly awakened invoked some deep, alien passage. The scripture had not warned us what the vessel would become, only how it must be prepared. We had assumed purity would be tranquil, holy. But the things standing in the circle now radiated a judgment without mercy, without limits. The shepherd collapsed to his knees, eyes wide, arms trembling as he tried to speak. The vessel turned toward him slowly, head tilting. With inhuman grace, it said, I ran. I cannot lie. I was not brave. I am not pure, and I was not prepared. I heard screams as I climbed the chapel steps, sobs desperate and raw. All around me. The flames no longer flickered. They spun, twisting into cymbals, mid air. I write this now from the upper loft, where the doors have been barred and the candle burns low. I have not slept. I have not moved except to drink rainwater gathered in the cracks of the stained glass. It has been three days. The screams echo from below. The screams of the faithful, the righteous, those who remained behind when I fled. They were not cries of pain so severe you can hear the soul being unmade. They never stopped, not once in the last three days. I cannot face it. I do not wish to be cleansed. I lay in the shadows, trembling, listening as their voices fracture anew, each broken plea painting the chapel in a new layer of horror. Wait. I hear something else. Boots heavier, firmer. Voices shouting commands barked with urgency. I peered through the slats and saw them. Strangers in armor, their faces obscured by mirrored visors, their hands gripped around weapons that deafened in blinding flashes. They moved with purpose. I do not know who they are. Outsiders, certainly. Sentinels of the old world, perhaps guardians of order come too late. They entered the chapel like a storm. Confident, clean. They did not kneel. They did not whisper. I did not see what followed. I could not. But I heard it. The weapons screamed. First, rapid bursts. Then came the tearing of stone, the groaning of the beams the warping of sacred architecture and the screams. Not like those of the righteous. These were clipped, shocked short, one after another, as if the realization of their mistake came too late to warn the others. One of them ran. I saw him through the broken window, helmetless, bleeding. His eyes. I do not know if they were gone or if they simply refused to see. He collapsed near the chapel gate. Silence followed. The smoke rises now from the floorboards below. I hear footsteps again, but not the sharp rhythm of soldiers. These are slow, weighted. The awakened walk still. And I remain here, hidden among the rafters, too hollow to pray, too afraid to move. There is no scripture left for me, no instructions, no absolution. I hear more voices below, shouts, static, more conflict, but they are muffled now. I can hear them getting closer. The floors and walls are beginning to crack. If this is the last thing I write, please know this. We wanted to do only good. Our intentions were pure. Please forgive us.
- [30:31]
Agent Conroy
Warning Signal interruption detected.
- [30:36]
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- [31:53]
Team Member 1
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- [32:54]
Agent Conroy
Signal connection restored. Ashcroft's voice came through the comms with a sharp edge.
- [33:02]
Agent Farren
Data upload complete. Keep an eye out for any other terminals. We need the data from the restricted access points. Continue with sweep protocols. Weapons hot. Terminate anything hostile.
- [33:14]
Agent Conroy
The agents acknowledged and stood, staggered clicks on my screens. The team advanced from the data center and entered a new corridor, its walls lined with faded yellow hazard striping that hadn't been seen in decades. Looks like some kind of reinforced personnel wing, farran said. Not residential. Could be security offices or medical substructure. As the camera feeds swept left and right, I noted faint damage. Small gouges in the walls, cracks in the floor tiles, none of them recent and none of them consistent with gunfire or typical breach tactics. The hallway veered sharply at a T junction. On the right, a decontamination chamber with cracked shielding and the bureau's old insignia melted halfway off the glass. On the left, a blast door pen peeled backward as if torn open by something that didn't understand Hinges reading residual.
- [34:14]
Team Member 1
EM distortion, sila said. Very weak but persistent. Like something passed through recently.
- [34:22]
Agent Farren
Define recently, ashcroft replied.
- [34:26]
Team Member 1
Within a few days. Maybe hours.
- [34:29]
Agent Conroy
The team pushed deeper. We've got more sigils, revic said. Larger.
- [34:35]
Agent Revick
More complex.
- [34:37]
Agent Conroy
The corridor opened into a vast central chamber. The floor was composed of metal grate plating, partially rusted but not sagging. The walls had a strange bulge, arched and curving, as if trying to emulate organic growth. One section had completely collapsed inward, revealing a torn cavity in the structure. Exposed support beams had been bent outward, each one nearly a foot thick. That kind of deformation required force well beyond aging or human intervention. What do you make of this? Revick asked. He ran a hand over the bent beam and his gloved fingers came away with a streak of brownish black residue.
- [35:21]
Team Member 1
No heat, no radiation, sila confirmed. Whatever did this is big and hopefully gone.
- [35:29]
Agent Conroy
Cut the chatter, Ashcroft snapped.
- [35:32]
Agent Farren
Keep moving.
- [35:34]
Agent Conroy
They proceeded down another corridor. The next 30 meters were uneventful, except for the rising humidity. Condensation formed on the outer edges of each helmet cam lens. Pipes hissed and gurgled in the walls. Old coolant lines struggled to find function. Somewhere above, a vent expelled a slow stream of gray mist. This area was used for isolation chambers, faran said. Containment cells for non humanoid specimens, most likely.
- [36:05]
Agent Revick
We seeing any cage markings?
- [36:08]
Agent Conroy
Revic asked.
- [36:09]
Team Member 1
Negative.
- [36:10]
Agent Conroy
Then Silas feed rotated.
- [36:13]
Team Member 1
Strike that. One Cell door has bureau level double wells, triple plated. But it's open.
- [36:20]
Agent Conroy
There was silence for a beat.
- [36:22]
Team Member 1
Correction. It's not just open. It's been peeled.
- [36:29]
Agent Conroy
The camera panned across the jagged edges of the door. The interior of the cell was black. Not from shadows, from soot. The walls were charred in circular patterns, as if heat had bloomed from inside a living thing. More sigils lined the floor. One of them still pulsed faintly. They moved on through another hallway, this one tighter, lined with file cabinets and collapsed shelving. Bureau uniforms hung like shed skins along hooks by a now dead security kiosk. Rook paused. Come look at this. He angled his light toward the far corner. Corner. There were claw marks, deep ones running parallel, too uniform for an animal. They cut through the corner plating and into the concrete beneath, like the wall had been paper. We scanned the rest of the feed in silence. Ashcroft leaned forward.
- [37:27]
Agent Farren
Continue sweep. I want eyes on anything housing power arrays. Somewhere are other surviving terminals. We need that data before we can.
- [37:36]
Agent Conroy
Proceed to the lower levels, the team acknowledged. We tracked their progress across layered blueprint overlays. The readings from paths they hadn't directly traveled were still mostly distorted. Halls registered at angles that didn't exist, and elevation levels were inconsistent. And then there was a sound, faint, but there, somewhere in the distance. Revic stopped, raising one hand hold. The team froze, listening intently. The audio captured a soft sound in the distance, not identifiable. Am I hearing people? Farrin asked quietly. Silas Camera shifted slightly.
- [38:22]
Team Member 1
I think that's talking or whispering. It's layered. There's something else mixed in.
- [38:30]
Agent Conroy
None of us breathed on the screens. The hallway ahead of the team remained still, but the sound grew. Not closer, just louder. The agents took cover, weapons drawn, but the corridor ahead remained black. The noise pulsed again before everything went still. The distant murmur shifted. What had first resembled whispers now began to resolve into something else entirely. Cries. Guttural, wet, drawn out. Not screams of panic or rage. These were sounds of suffering, long and keening, agonized. Farran's voice broke through, strained. Are those people? No one answered. The audio feed kept rising. Behind the human agony were other layers, low chuffing growls that rose and fell like breath pushed through twisted lungs. Ashcroft didn't give any new orders. He just stared at the monitor, jaw set. The agents remained frozen, weapons raised. The corridor was black, still, and deceptively empty. They continued forward, cautiously following the sounds. The corridor ahead seemed to widen and contract like a lung, its walls marked with rows of softly glowing sigils that vibrated subtly. There was a strange static in the audio feed now, not enough to interfere but enough to remind everyone monitoring that the team was getting closer to something. Then the corridor ended and the room opened. The agents emerged into a massive chamber. Their helmet lamps were stopped before they could reach a wall, caught by a haze that wasn't fog or smoke. And everywhere, everywhere were sigils scrawled across the walls, floors, and even the ceiling like constellations. Their glow cut through the haze and pulsed ominously. The haze began to clear, revealing the true horror of the room. Suspended in impossible states of prolonged torment were bodies, skinned torsos pinned to the wall, intestines looped through rusted rings driven into bone. Men and women split at the waist and still breathing, rib cages cracked open and bent outward. Some were seated against the walls, their flesh fused to stone, lips trembling in a state of silent agony. Their eyes moved, their chests rose and fell. They were alive somehow. In the command tent I heard someone whisper a prayer and immediately fall silent. Another tech dropped their headset, unable to look at the monitors. These weren't civilians. These were Bureau agents, hardened, clinical, precise and even. They had no words. Agent Revick stepped forward.
- [41:38]
Agent Revick
What the fuck?
- [41:40]
Agent Conroy
Dozens of people, more even, were arranged in a geometric lattice around the chamber's perimeter, many impaled or hanging by chains. Some were suspended and stretched, their spines curved backwards, bodies dangling yet their heads still turned. Others simply hung by what remained of their tendons, every inch of their bodies flayed and leaking, held together by something dark. There were even several anomalies nailed to the wall. A werewolf looking creature with its intestines pulled out of dozens of holes in its body, let out a constant low whining noise. Something that looked part man, part snake was broken and crumpled in the corner. Flesh peeled away completely at equally spaced intervals. Life signs everywhere, Farran reported shakily. Everything in here is alive and conscious. Some of the victims were sobbing, the sound like someone trying to cry through a throat full of broken glass. Glass. Others wept or moaned. The sounds all blending together in a hellish cacophony, while many just stared blankly into an unseen abyss. The worst was the one's chanting, a low alien whisper made of harsh, unintelligible sounds. In the center of the room stood a raised platform. Blood pooled at its base. Even from the helmet feats, the viscosity shimmered unnaturally. Lying across the altar was a man now fused with stone chest split and wedged open like a dissected offering. The organs had been carved with sigils. Some were pulsing with that dull glow. The head was tilted to the side, jaw slack, mouth cut to wear, a wide grin exposing blackened, chipped teeth. Then the victim stirred, every one of them in unison, a flexing of shattered limbs, eyes turning, mouths gaping for breath. One of them began a deep guttural sob that built until it became a scream so raw it shredded across the audio feed. Others joined in, not all at once, not in rhythm, a cascade, a domino of torment echoing from wall to wall until the chamber was alive with the sound of perpetual suffering. Others chanted words that scraped the line between prayer and plea. A few simply moaned, a long, low sound like an instrument being slowly destroyed. The sigils flared, glowing brighter, pulsing faster. Pull back, revic said. We need to before he could finish his order, the entire room rumbled. A harmonic hum filled the air not heard but felt inside the chest, the teeth, the spine. I could feel it in my chair, watching the feeds. We all could. I gripped the edge of the console. Someone in the tent vomited behind me. Whatever did this wasn't there yet. But this was its sanctuary. And it knew we were here. Commander, one of the analysts called out from across the tent, panic barely suppressed. We've cracked a portion of the archive. Sending a packet to your screen now. Ashcroft's display updated in a stuttering flicker. With a few clicks, I mirrored the information drop on my own screen and read as the files came in. RBP number 10, the repentant threat level disastrous Trans dimensional summon Non technological. Confirmed link to cult activity related to unknown deity. My mouth went dry as the words words scrolled. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't just some regular entity. As far as the Bureau's records were concerned, it was a demigod containment method. Primary containment sustained via proximity anchoring of artifact number 1016A. The scripture? A biologically bound tome collected from the origin site. Entity displays full dormancy when the artifact is sealed and maintained with strict containment protocol. Stability requires continuous rotational invocation of encoded glyph sequences under sterile conditions. Containment Chamber constructed with layered cycle reactive alloy reinforced by recursive sigil etching and null symmetry warding. Observer rotation limited to 15 minute intervals. Exposure beyond threshold results in mental contamination. Failsafe protocol includes activation of counter wards and localized structural collapse of containment sector. Access to failsafe requires multi party executive clearance. Containment failure timestamp 1973 failsafe protocol failed. The screen filled with countless other files from the RBP report, a reconstruction, structured memory sequence, journal records, and historical date. But I quickly minimized that the repentant had been down here, sealed away like everything else in the chamber. Revick's team backed toward the exit, weapons at the ready. The sigils continued to blaze. The victims were weeping, some of them chanting, blood streaming from eyes and mouths as they repeated their prayer.
- [47:30]
Agent Revick
Let us be cleansed. Let us be seen. Let us be clean.
- [47:35]
Agent Conroy
Then everything stopped, every voice and sound silenced in the same instant. The lights from the drones and flashlights dimmed to black. The feed held for half a heartbeat, then re illuminated as the room filled with a color I still don't have the words for. Not red, not black. Something in between. Something both. The center of the room cracked. The body on the altar twisted and popped, the sounds of bone cracking and flesh ripping echoing through the room. The floor in front of it bloomed open like a wound giving birth, and it rose, the repentant seven feet tall, tall maybe more slender but impossibly dense. Its flesh was stretched taut over blackened bone, its ribs exposed and engraved with scripture that writhed like worms. Its mouth had no lips, just a slit of teeth grinning outward, forced there by removal of tissue. Where its eyes should have been were burning glyphs. Its spine twisted like a crown, branching into sharp ridges that curved around its shoulders like jagged wings. Its fingers were long, ending in blackened claws, each dripping a thick tar like ichor. When it stepped forward, the room responded. The victims screamed in fear and primal terror, as if their nerves had been rewired to acknowledge its presence. Ashcroft 2 stood.
- [49:13]
Agent Farren
Engage.
- [49:14]
Agent Conroy
Revik didn't hesitate. He gave the order and opened fire. His team followed suit. Immediately, Seilah lobbed a fragmentation charge across the chamber. The impact was biblical. Rounds ripped through the air, slamming into the Repentant's torso. Blood and ichor sprayed, but it didn't fall. It staggered, only to vanish in a blur of movement, reappearing across the room mid lunge. Farron went down in an instant, torn in half from clavicle to hip in one sweeping motion. His scream didn't even make it to the tent before his feet cut the blast from Silas. Grenade tore open a section of the wall and five of the suspended bodies with it. Screams of agony filled the room again, this time mingled with the sound of meat striking concrete. Revik rolled behind a pillar. The repentant's hand followed him, carving the air with a shockwave of force that somehow managed to tear a slice in his armor.
- [50:17]
Agent Pratt
Move.
- [50:17]
Agent Conroy
Ashcroft shouted into the comms.
- [50:19]
Agent Farren
You need to spread and flank.
- [50:21]
Agent Conroy
Rook fired a thermal grenade, striking the entity square in the side. It howled an unholy roar like a choir burning alive, and retaliated. With a gesture, the floor beneath him exploded in a spiral of glyphs, tossing him across the chamber like a rag doll. Rifles roared, sigils burst. Victims dropped from the ceiling in showers of gore. The repentant moved like a phantom, each strike impossibly fast. When it twisted, the air bent with it. When it screamed, debris rained down. It raised its own arms and chains, buried in bodies holding them up. Ripped free, they writhed like snakes, coiling mid air before lashing down into the floor. Two of them pierced through Scylla's shoulder and thigh, pinning her like a dissected insect. She screamed and fired upward, but the rounds curved midair and spun away from the repentant. Revic vaulted across the platform, snatching one of the grenades from Rook's vest as he passed. He primed it, rolled under the swinging arc of a hooked limb, then jammed it into the repentant's back. It detonated a moment later. Fire spread up its spine. Smoke filled the feed. There was silence, and for a moment we thought. Then the feed cleared. It stood still, half its face missing, bones exposed, the grin now wider and more dreadful. It opened its palm. Glyphs spiraled outward like a bloom of knives, and the entire room exploded in a shockwave of force. Revic flew into a column. Rook vanished in a wall of blood. The command feed blinked. Static burst. One by one, the cams died. Only Silas helmet cam remained, her breath ragged, blood filling her suit. The chains impaling her slowly dragged her towards the shattered altar. Then we saw the repentant moving toward her. Ashcroft's hand hovered over the mic.
- [52:27]
Agent Farren
Agent, stay with us. Help is on the way.
- [52:31]
Agent Conroy
The last thing we saw was its face lowering beneath the frame. And then the signal died. Commander Ashcraft wasn't the kind of man to freeze. While analysts shouted, feeds died and whispers of panic passed through the tent like a contagion, he issued orders with the clarity of a gunshot. No consultation, no second guessing. Two Units were deployed before most personnel had even parsed what they'd witnessed. Two teams, not one. That alone spoke volumes. It went against Bureau standard operating procedure. Redundancy meant increased risk. Too many unknowns, too many assets on the ground. Too much cross contamination of perspective. But Ashcroft didn't care. The Bureau's doctrine could not quantify what was unfolding below. He had made his decision. Agents were dying.
- [53:26]
Agent Farren
Priority is recovery and suppression, he said. Sweep the field, extract survivors. Engage on sight. No hesitation.
- [53:34]
Agent Conroy
They moved like wrath, made manifestations. Boots thundered against the sigil stained steel. Two strike teams, Echo and Vulture, descended into a nightmare that had already consumed the first. These weren't scouts. These teams were geared for war. Reinforced suits bore Bureau prototype plating thicker than anything standard issue. Some carried shoulder mounted rail accelerators. Others bore hyper pressured flamethrowers and stacked plasma lances kitted with explosives and countless other tools of destruction. Their only purpose was to break something unbreakable. They reached the edge of the warzone in record time. HUDs lit up with data parsed from decrypted archives. Vital signs pinged faint pulses. Ahead, the chamber loomed on screen. The interior appeared worse than before. Ashcroft was watched with clenched fists as bodies still twitched beneath the collapsed sigil structures. Smoke curled like ghostlight where the repentance still stood, somehow even more grotesque. The earlier wounds had not weakened it, they had transformed it. More scripture burned across its form, and something embedded in its torso throbbed with a pulse that matched the resonance of the screaming walls. The entity turned before the teams even cleared the threshold. It was aware. Perhaps more than aware. It was expecting them. Before any command was issued, Echo Team opened fire. Railrounds screamed forward, catching the repentant and blasting off chunks of flesh and bone, revealing scorched muscle beneath. The impact would have eviscerated most other entities, but the repentant didn't flinch. Instead, it retaliated with a shriek. A wave of force that didn't just hit it shredded the air around it, tossing several agents backward like dolls hurled in a tantrum. The chains scattered along the floor shot outward like spears, skewering one agent clean through the abdomen and dragging him across the blood sick stone floor in a trail of arterial spray. Another agent attempted to provide covering fire, but was grabbed mid stride and slammed into a stone pillar, his armor crumpling like a tin can. Then vultures split wide. One group heading for the central platform to reach surviving members of the recon team. Medtechs under active fire dragged Rook free from a pile of debris. His Lungs whistling, punctured as he clung to Life nearby. 2. Two others pulled Revic's broken body from the corner.
- [56:14]
Agent Farren
Agents, you are cleared to terminate. All means authorized.
- [56:18]
Agent Conroy
Ashcroft barked, watching the feeds cascade through. Chaos. His voice cut through the tension like a scalpel from Echo's rear line. A seismic charge launched and detonated directly beneath the repentant's feet. The floor cracked. The shockwave rippled through the glyph covered walls. Several of the sigils shattered like stained glass under the force. Their light snuffed out in bursts of ash and flame. The repentance staggered, but only momentarily. From its chest, something pulsed brighter than before. It was the book, its pages fluttering open and closed like a dying heart that refused to give in. One of the suit's onboard HUDs tagged the anomaly with flashing red. That was the target, Agent Pratt. Already moving, he didn't wait for orders. He recognized the moment. He had served with Ashcroft long enough to know what needed to be done. That's it, ashcroft said, more to himself than to anyone else.
- [57:16]
Agent Farren
That's the tether.
- [57:17]
Agent Conroy
Pratt sprinted through the madness. He ducked beneath a wild chain that cracked the floor behind him, vaulted over the ruins of a sigil covered body, and planted himself within striking distance of the Repentant. From his back, he pulled a specialized weapon, an experimental device that shimmered like obsidian and thrummed with power that didn't belong to anything made on Earth. It looked more like a relic than a weapon, a fusion of science and something ancient. The weapon's capacitors charged with a whine that made every nearby monitor flicker. The chamber itself seemed to recognize the danger. The repetitive tentant convulsed, its flesh boiling around the embedded book. Flesh snapped taut, writhing like serpents as its chest heaved outward. Then from its mouth, a wave of pure glyphic energy erupted, a torrent of luminous script that vaporized a soldier mid sprint, reducing him to drifting cinders. Another soldier hurled a magnetic trap into its leg. The field collapsed around the creature's ankle, locking it in place for only a heartbeat, but it was more than enough. The Repentant screamed, not in pain, but in a desperate, resonant defiance that rattled the bones of everyone present. Then the weapon fired. A lance of light, impossibly dense, absolutely silent, pierced the air and struck the book directly. The clasp cracked. The COVID peeled back. Pages turned of their own accord, warping at the edges, then catching flame. They tore apart into particles too small to see, disintegrating as if they were being erased from existence. The repentance stopped. Its body twitched, spasmed, then began to fall inward. Glyphs dimmed. Flesh unraveled like coiled silk. The entire figure collapsed in a kind of unmaking. It was being withdrawn from reality. The singularity at its core tightened to a pinpoint. Scripture bone and the ancient hatred that bound them all were sucked through that impossible space. Then, with the final pulse, it was gone. The altar cracked. The glyphs faded to soot. The humming ceased and the screams stopped. All across the chamber, victims, what remained of them, slumped in place. Some exhaled their final breath. Others collapsed, their agony dissolving into stillness. None revived. None spoke. The repentance dominion had ended, and with it the prison of perpetual pain. In the command tent, Ashcroft didn't speak. For several seconds. The entire room held its breath.
- [60:12]
Agent Farren
Confirmed suppression, he said at last.
- [60:15]
Agent Pratt
Entity neutralized, Pratt replied. 1016A destroyed. All readings flatlined. It's done.
- [60:24]
Agent Conroy
No one in the tent cheered. No congratulations passed through the feed. The victory had come at a cost. This was only the first floor, and there was still plenty unknown left. Ashcroft stepped away from the terminal and turned toward the map overlay. A new indicator had appeared, a red dot. The drones were working now, actively mapping and sending back real time data. Then another dot. And another with a repentant gone, entities were coming out of hiding.
- [60:59]
Agent Farren
Pratt Hostiles coming your way. You are cleared to terminate. You are cleared to terminate.
- [61:12]
Agent Conroy
Warning.
- [61:12]
Commander Ashcroft
Signal interruption detected.
- [61:16]
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- [62:03]
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- [63:27]
Team Member 1
On WhatsApp no one can see or hear your personal messages. Whether it's a voice call message or sending a password to WhatsApp, it's all just this. So whether you're sharing the streaming password in the family chat or trading those late night voice messages that could basically become a podcast, your personal messages stay between you, your friends and your family. No one else. Not even us. WhatsApp message privately with everyone.
- [63:57]
Agent Conroy
Signal connection restored.
- [64:00]
Agent Pratt
We weren't 10 seconds past destroying the repentant when Ashcroft's voice cracked over the comms. No time for congratulations. No chance to catch our breath.
- [64:12]
Agent Farren
Brat. Hostile signatures incoming, fast. Multiple vectors. You do not have time to exfil. You hold that position. Do you copy?
- [64:23]
Agent Pratt
I turned from the still settling dust where the repentant had been removed from reality. Behind us, the corpses had gone still. Some looked almost at peace. Others were too torn apart to look like much of anything. Copy, I said, already reloading. We'll hold. The remaining members of our two teams fanned out into overlapping fire lanes. Drones buzzed overhead, mapping every corridor and blind angle, trying to anticipate whatever was coming. We had less than a minute to prepare. My HUD flickered with motion pings from deeper within the floor, blips that moved entirely too fast. I set my back against the northern wall of the chamber, the air around me thick with the smell of scorched flesh clinging to rusted metal.
- [65:14]
Agent Conroy
We've got movement. South corridor.
- [65:17]
Agent Pratt
One of these secondaries barked, his voice barely cutting through the tense silence. I raised my rifle, the night vision overlay turning the corridor ahead into a glowing green. Uncertainty. Then shapes, several of them loping like animals struggling against fear. Then faster, with violent intent. The first thing that charged us looked almost human, emaciated, naked, its limbs long and bending at unnatural angles. It didn't scream. It grinned, mouth stretched impossibly wide. Bullets tore it apart mid lunge. Behind it came others, dozens, each more twisted than the last. One looked like a child's drawing of a spider, all legs and glistening black eyes. Another moved by, dislocating its own bones to slither like a snake. One had no legs, only arms, dragging her jets bulk forward with surprising speed. Gunfire lit the gloom. Muzzle flashes and plasma rounds seared the air, carving lines of death through the first wave. Grenades detonated in tight, concussive blasts, sending limbs and gore in every direction. But they kept coming. Some of these things had no vital signs, no heat signatures. Others burned too hot, as if something inside them wanted out. Ashcroft's voice crackled through again, reading a.
- [66:50]
Agent Farren
Surge in activity across the entire first floor. It looks like everything still alive down there is heading your way.
- [66:57]
Agent Pratt
They're not getting past us, I growled. We began to fall into rhythm, each corner of the chamber flashing with muzzle bursts, team members rotating like clockwork between cover and suppressive fire. But it was far from clean. It was chaos. One of the newer secondaries, a kid named Donner, took a hit from something that leapt from the ceiling. By the time we turned our fire on it, his upper half was gone. Blood pooled with oil on the steel floor. The lights overhead flickered again, and still they came. We had the advantage of firepower training armor, but they had numbers, rage, and whatever twisted survival instinct had kept them hidden from the glyphs and agony for over 50 years as the entities thinned out, turning into piles of torn flesh and blood. Somewhere deep in the writhing darkness beyond our gunfight. Fire. Something howled. It was like the station itself had found its voice, and it was screaming. I stood amid the aftermath of the first wave, breathing smoke and rot. Blood pooled in uneven lines across the grated floor, steaming where it met still hot shell casings. Ordinarily we'd prepare teams with specialized gear for just one of these entities, but down here there were no rules. It was kill or be killed. The teams were quiet but not idle. Some took position behind reinforced corners. Others scavenged extra magazines from fallen agents and repacked what gear they could. My hand stayed tight on my rifle, eyes scanning the corridor ahead. The air had a pulse to it, something beneath the noise of our breathing and the subtle whir of gear servos, like the station was preparing another assault. Then Ashcroft's voice broke in tighter than before.
- [69:03]
Agent Farren
Pratt, we've got motion across all wings, something big. Drones are malfunctioning.
- [69:09]
Agent Pratt
I swore under my breath. Understood. The corridor trembled. Somewhere ahead, something passed just out of our visual range. Then another, shadow shapes flickering where light should have cut clean. I raised my weapon, as did the other agents. The first entity to break cover was tall head brushing the ceiling. Its limbs were segmented and long, armored in bone plates that clattered softly with each movement. The way it walked was wrong. Its joints rotated one way, then another, like a thing studying how humans move, but never quite mastering it. As it stepped closer, our HUDs began to stutter. Gravity pulled strangely to the left, like the air was off balance. Engage. I shouted. Gunfire erupted, lighting the corridor in bursts of muzzle flashes. Round bones pinged off its surface, chipping bone but doing little to stop its approach. Behind it, more figures emerged, shorter twisted things, some crawling, others galloping and stuttering quadruped patterns. One sprayed a hissing mist that burned clean through a team member's armor. Another opened its mouth and emitted a shriek that came in pulses, scrambling our vision and rattling our teeth. We fell back into a narrower hall. I shouted orders, and the team responded with disciplined movements, dragging wounded, erecting makeshift barricades, priming explosives for fallback options. One agent screamed when fungal growths on the floor pulsed open beneath his boots, lashing up with root like tendrils. We severed them, but not before the filaments threaded into the seams of his helmet. His blood looked black in these shifting lights of our helmets and weapons. A sphere of light pulsed into existence down one passage. Its glow was almost beautiful, blue, white, floating in midair. One of the rookies turned to look. A second later, he collapsed, screaming, eyes pouring blood, helmet discarded, started. We dragged him behind cover, but all he could do was scream. More things poured in. One creature came down the wall like a spider, all backward, knees and snapping mandibles. Another had no face, just slits that vented steam. I ordered suppressive fire, and the thing fell back, leaving a trail of gaseous ichor that poured out of countless steaming hulls. We pulled into a narrower junction, the heat and stink of combat layering thick in our lungs. Ahead, creatures poured into the confined space, clawing over each other as we cut them down. The bodies of the fallen served to slow the tide, but still they came. Hold this line. I roared. Burn everything that moves. The agents followed orders without hesitation, several men filling the hallway with flamethrowers specially designed by R and D. I don't know exactly what accelerant was used, but the flames that came out of those were more like dragon's breath than fire. In less than a minute, the hallway was reduced to a mound of stinking, smoldering flesh. Whatever didn't get burned had retreated back into the facility, undoubtedly looking for another way to get at us. Something massive had shifted in the dark, deeper from floor one. Something with weight, with gravity. It wasn't just the sound of motion. It was the sensation of presence. We barely had time to shift formation before we heard the wet thump of meat dragging over steel, the metallic clatter of chitin against broken feet flooring. The air grew sour, laced with decay. We saw a bloated silhouette slinking from the shadows. It moved with awful grace. A torso, vaguely human, female in the loosest sense, hung above a mass of segmented, swollen flesh. The upper body was emaciated and skeletal, sagging skin stretched thin over ribs. Her face was stitched with crooked lines, lips parted in a breathless moan, black fluid leaking from empty eye sockets. Her arms, stretched out wide in a mockery of a mother's embrace, jointed the wrong way, ending in jagged, thin claws. Below, her centipede body squirmed forward on countless legs, thick, glistening and uneven, each joint flexing with wet cracks. Her arrival brought with it a tremor of instinctual revulsion. Behind her poured the spawn. The first wave came low and fast. Bloated vermin shaped horrors with slick flesh and too many legs. They squealed in high pitched tones as they surged forward. The hall filled with shrieks, a rising tide of gurgling, chittering madness. We opened fire. Incendiary rounds lit the tunnel in stuttering bursts of flame and smoke. Screams echoed off the metal walls, some from us, most from them. The smallest spawn exploded like pustules, coating the ground in a thick, corrosive fluid. Bigger ones ruptured violently, birthing smaller versions from their liquefied remains. One soldier slipped and screamed as the goop burned through his armor, the flesh on his back peeling in layers. We dragged him clear, but he was in bad shape. Then her guard arrived. Towering figures emerged from behind their queen, hardened shells of matte black chitin, shaped like knights from some twisted fairy tale. Their heads were helmeted in bone like armor, jaws clicking beneath curved mandibles. Each one carried crude barbed weapons fused directly into their limbs, blades grown from bone and glinting like rusted steel. They charged with coordination, trampling their spawn to reach us. The first one slammed into our barricade with enough force to split a support beam. It carved a soldier clean in half, gor spraying the walls like paint. The other knight rammed immediately after taking three agents with it in seconds, one impaled through the chest, another torn apart in midair, I screamed for heavy support. Sykes hauled out the rotary gun, its barrels spinning up with a furious growl. The rounds punched into the knight's chest plate, cracking it into shards. It didn't have any real effect until the fifth second of fire, when the armor finally split and the meat inside sloughed out in chunks. It fell with a noise like a collapsing building. Behind the Queen, a froth of new creatures burst from pulsing egg sacs lining her abdomen. Some were airborne, flying on twitching wings that sounded like screams in reverse. Others were quadrupeds with eyeless faces, crashing into our ranks like living wrecking balls. The remaining night knocked me to the floor as it trampled among us. I fired upward at point blank range into its abdomen. The rounds quickly found soft tissue between its segmented armor, and I shoved the barrel deeper, unloading the entire magazine as it thrashed before the dry click prompted me to fire the underbarrel grenade. The explosion was little more than a dull, muted thud, but the effect was immediate. Its body went rigid and convulsed before toppling over like a felled tree. I rose, covered in gooey green black blood that smelled like a garbage dump. The floor was a graveyard of twitching limbs and shredded flesh. We were losing ground meter by meter. The Queen let out an ultrasonic shriek. My ears rang, vision blurring, but I forced my arms to raise my rifle again. Through the chaos, I saw one of our agents, Haley, sprint past me, a satchel charge in her hands. She leapt under the Queen, drove the charge beneath its chest with the spike attachment that opens several prongs once inserted, and dove aside. The explosion shook the corridor. The Queen and her remaining spawn were thrown backwards in pieces. She shrieked again. This time it sounded more like a dying whale as she slithered backward into the darkness, blood cascading from her ruined form. Ashcroft's voice came through the comms like a slab of ice cracking under pressure.
- [78:16]
Agent Farren
Practice. Be advised. Bureau Command has issued a full denial of extraction or reinforcement protocols. Floor one must be fully cleared before we receive authorization to unlock the vault.
- [78:30]
Agent Pratt
Static buzzed across the channel for a second, as if even the Heir hesitated to relay the words. I didn't respond right away. I didn't need to. Every conscious agent had already heard it, and their silence weighed heavier than the corpses at our feet. We'd just survived a living hell. Our armor was cracked, our ammo low, and blood slicked every surface in sight, and the Bureau's Answer was stay put. Die if you have to, but finish the job. I pressed the side of my helmet, speaking low. Copy that. The line went quiet again, but only for a second. Ashcroft's voice returned. Not the bureaucratic tone from before, but something colder, personal.
- [79:21]
Agent Farren
I'm not leaving any of you. Prep fallback positions. Reinforce your perimeter. Do what you have to. Command doesn't have boots on this floor. We do.
- [79:32]
Agent Pratt
Those words hit like a second wind across the ruined hallway. Soldiers straightened. No cheers, no applause, just a shared look of grim understanding. Ashcroft was a soldier first. I keyed in a private channel. Montague, grab every charge we've got left. Claymores, thermals, mines. We're painting a welcome mat in blood. He didn't hesitate. The first fallback point was a collapsed corridor where the walls had partially given in, concrete and steel twisted into a chokepoint no wider than three men. Perfect. We could force whatever came next into a bottleneck and rake them with concentrated fire. Teams moved fast, wasting no motion. Tripwires were strung across hallways, mines buried under rubble, and automated turrets propped against splintered columns. Even the broken limbs of the centipede spawn were converted into makeshift caltrops. If it had mass and a pointy end, it got repurposed. We chose the next hold point, an old observation room with partial blast doors and reinforced glass. Montague welded the sides shut while Rook hauled over field equipment, equipment for makeshift barricades. Any second we expected another tremor, another scream, another thing that shouldn't exist, forcing itself through the narrow guts of the facility. But instead the silence held. That was worse. Around me, my team moved with calm desperation. Montague double checked proximity fuses. Reva passed out amphetamine means, slapping a fresh charge into her rifle. It didn't feel like we were preparing for a counterattack after the unrelenting onslaught. It felt more like we were building our tomb. No matter what came through those halls next, it wasn't getting past us. I looked at the walls one last time. Then I set my rifle down and began planting my last charge. The sound that came next was a low whine. Faint, mechanical, like a power drill buried under 40 years of dust and grime. Someone yelled down the hall. Movement on thermal. Then we heard it again, the whine, louder now, rhythmic. Metal dragged against metal, a pulse beneath the floor. With the sound of our first explosion going off, it arrived several more explosions. Sounds of dragging, clanking, our traps and barriers being torn apart. Soon enough, it made its way through the smoke and rubble. All we could see were limbs, dozens of them, jutting forward in a stuttering, crab like gait. The creature pulled itself from the dark like it was fighting against gravity just to move forward. Human arms stitched to metal, joints bent at every angle. Servo motors screamed in protest as old hydraulics pushed bone and steel forward. Behind the limbs came its abdomen, a mix of scavenged tech and flesh stretched across rusted plating. Veins ran alongside wires and tubing. Its head was a monitor, cracked and flickering, displaying only three pulsing words. Recall. Contain, Rebuild, Reuse. Jesus Christ, someone breathed. I didn't need to bother with a command. Every rifle opened fire. Rounds tore through the corridor, lighting the abomination in fire and fury. Chunks of flesh fell away, metal plates ricocheted. Rounds. Tubing ruptured, leaking black liquid. But it pressed forward. When it finally screeched, the sound wasn't a roar. It was modulated, like a corrupted audio file made from thousands of screams. One of its limbs fired from its side, an arm ending in a bone saw that arced out on a chain. It pierced into a soldier's chest and reeled him back like a caught fish. He didn't even have time to scream. The limb snapped him into the machine's undercarriage, where he vanished with a wet crunch. Another limb, this one terminating in a pack of surgical clamps, lashed out and seized an agent by the helmet, crumpling it like tin foil before tearing his head free. Blood sprayed in fine mist against the wall. We opened up with everything. AP rounds, thermal termite grenades, flamethrowers. Montague managed to spike a mine against the thing's abdomen, but it only staggered for a second. The whine in its chest grew higher, louder, almost melodic. Then it rammed through the barricades, smashing the dead beneath. The fucker was learning. Every limb that got shot off or burned away was replaced by a new one, a different configuration, like it was optimizing itself with our every attack. Someone threw a grenade and the thing slapped it out of the air with a detached limb and flung it straight back. The explosion took out two more agents. We fell back, one room, then another, firing as we moved. Reeva took a hit. One of the saw limbs grazed her side and opened her up. Ribs exposed, exposed, blood pouring. She didn't even slow down, just braced against the wall and kept firing. Montague. I shouted. Prep the kill room. He was already running toward a maintenance shaft that ran parallel to the corridor. The plan, if we made it at all, was ugly. Lure the thing down the shaft, detonate the box of satchel charges, and hope nothing survived the collapse. The Abomination never lost momentum. It crashed through the last of the glass, flinging body parts and pieces of desk everywhere. It hesitated, only to rip a dead agent's spinal cord loose and braid it into one of its own damaged limbs. I'd never seen anything like it, not in 15 years with the Bureau. We made it to the shaft. Montague held the detonator, arms shaking so hard he nearly dropped it. He looked at me, eyes wide. You have to get Reeva out. I'll buy you the time. I wanted to argue, but there was no time. I nodded, grabbed Reeva under the arms, and half dragged, half carried her toward the next fallback, down the connecting crawl space. Even half dead, she tried to crawl on her own. The woman was made of fucking nails. The last thing I saw as we ducked into cover, Montague standing his ground with both arms wrapped around an entire satchel pack, waiting for the thing to get close enough to take him with it. When it did, he smiled, wide and crazed, like he'd been waiting his whole life for this kind of ending. Then he clicked the detonator. The explosion was obscene. The world went white, then black, then silent. In the aftermath, my body ached, ears ringing so hard it felt like my brain was trying to escape my skull. Reva lay beside me, unconscious but breathing. The crawlspace above us glowed cherry red from the heat. Ashcroft voice, faint as a ghost filtered in through the layers of sound and static.
- [87:28]
Agent Farren
Pratt, status.
- [87:30]
Agent Pratt
I tried to speak. My tongue stuck to my teeth. Alive, I managed. Threat neutralized.
- [87:39]
Agent Conroy
Copy.
- [87:40]
Agent Farren
Hold your position. Command is authorizing the vault unlock once containment is confirmed. We're monitoring for fraud. Further movement?
- [87:49]
Agent Pratt
I nodded, even though he couldn't see me. The comms caught the click. Reva stirred, bloody and pale, looking up at me with a grin. Was that the worst you've seen? She asked, voice faint and hoarse. Not quite, I said. But it was close. We lay like that, propped against the cold, for what felt like an hour. The facility was quiet. No more howling, no more footsteps in the dark, only the slow, distant grind of machinery, and eventually even that was gone. We waited for further orders, but they never came. Instead, the vault door unsealed somewhere behind us. It was like being gifted a second life. Riva tried to stand and failed, so I half carried her down the scorched corridor. The smoke had lessened and the air tasted clear for the first time in hours. The massive door at the end was open, and the space beyond was clean and contained, untouched by the filth and horror behind us.
- [89:12]
Commander Ashcroft
In a lot of these Cases. I feel for the agents, some of them. They don't all understand yet the lengths the Bureau will go for its own interests. Some of them just want to fight against the darkness. And many of the agents sent into these types of operations are exactly that. The first to go. Nothing about this operation is clean or precise. Commander Ashcroft ordered the destruction of every biological entity his teams encountered. Certainly unexpected. And I can't imagine the Bureau is happy about that decision. The only reason the Bureau can spin this as a success is because of people like Ashcroft and Pratt. Soldiers who chose the lives around them over orders from above. Men who bent protocol without breaking faith. And for that, they'll be labeled operational anomalies and probably be reassigned after this. Or worse. Let's be clear. Getting through Floor one might have been a victory, but it isn't even close to ending the war. If you noticed, when the Repentant fell, the other entities didn't scatter. They surged. They sensed the vacuum, and they acted with purpose. That tells me two things. First, the containment structure wasn't just physical. It was hierarchical. The Bureau didn't realize it, but the Repentant wasn't just a rogue threat. It was a keystone. Its glyphs, its presence, its ritual influence, all of it held Floor one in balance. A very fragile balance that trickles all the way into this long lost facility's depths. And now that balance is gone. Second, something more intelligent than we imagine may still reside beneath. Several of the creatures that emerged bore signs of evolution. Adaptation. Not just survival, but strategy. The fact that the last entity they encountered, labeled in the uploaded files as RBP7487 crawl engine, had begun integrating organic systems, growing normal tissue from scavenged corpses. Suggests design intelligence, not simple malfunction. And if the Bureau really did create it, it wouldn't be the only project they left smoldering when the Great Reset buried this site. Which brings me to the real problem. Floor one was only the top of the descent. There are five more, and based on fragments we've pieced together from years of counter operations, two of those levels were designated Exorelic Containment and Biosynthetic confluence. I don't know what that means exactly yet, but I've read enough Bureau literature to know those aren't storage terms. Those are research designations. That means something was being made down there. What they've uncovered here is just the next step in a war that's already underway. The Bureau is reawakening things it no longer understands in a facility it hasn't fully mapped. And the deeper they go, the more they lose control, Even if they won't admit it yet. This place, this vault beneath Lumpkins, is more than a failed black site. It's a fracture in the Bureau's perfect narrative. And as long as I can keep intercepting these data streams, I'll keep showing you what they do when they think no one is looking. Because if there's one thing I know for sure, after what happened on Floor one, we haven't seen the worst of it. Not even close. Not even close.
- [92:54]
Team Member 1
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