Redwood Bureau: Facility Containment Protocol—FLOOR_2 (August 16, 2025)

Podcast: Redwood Bureau
Host: Eeriecast Network
Episode: Facility Containment Protocol: FLOOR_2
Starring: Josh Tomar as Agent Conroy

Episode Overview

This chilling episode—told from inside and outside the harrowing world of the Redwood Bureau—dives deep into the secrets of FLOOR_2, a clandestine facility beneath a humble diner. Through firsthand narration and confidential reports, former Bureau agent Conroy exposes the catastrophic results of greed, containment failure, and the Bureau’s disregard for human life. Infiltration turns into existential nightmare as a retrieval team descends, unleashing horrors both literal and metaphysical that question the very nature of identity, agency, and consequence.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stakes: Aftermath and Accountability

[02:48–05:58]

• Conroy addresses the silence in the transmission, explaining the gravity of recent events at Lumpkins' Diner and the Bureau's attempts to suppress the fallout.
• The diner is no longer untouched; now it's a fully militarized zone sadistically “wounded” in public, reflecting the Bureau’s capacity for denial and overconfidence.
• Quote:

  “The Redwood Bureau's house is rotten and it will fall.” (Conroy, [03:59])

• Conroy admits his own role in exposing the facility, emphasizing accountability. He warns Bureau operatives listening that it might not be too late for them to reclaim their conscience.

2. Descent into FLOOR_2: Preparation and Unease

[05:58–17:10]

• The infiltration team, equipped with high-tech gear, descends to a level sealed for 50 years. The mission is fraught with uncertainty since all intel is outdated.
• The elevator ride amplifies tension. The group’s survival experience and specialized equipment are seen ironically, since “our intel added up to about zilch.”
• Upon entry, the desolation of the lobby, warped documents, and faded murals set the stage for deeper anomalies—including strange moss, impossibly geometrical relics, rooms covered in frantic notes, and destroyed containment units.
• Early explorations reveal relics and containment failures, exemplified by the note:

  “This place should have never held these things so close together. Proximity itself was a risk that simple.” ([17:01])

3. Into the Labyrinth: Otherworldly Horror

[17:11–29:00]

• The team traverses a corridor not present on their maps, entering a physical and psychological reality increasingly unmoored from physics.
• Disturbing phenomena ramp up: muscle-like flooring, inhuman growths, and sounds that alter perception and suggest manipulation of free will.
• First Major Relic Incident: The team is drawn to, and one agent touches, a shifting, impossible object suspended above a woven bone-like platform.
• Reality unthreads violently:

  “Time folded in half. We were falling through layers of light and motion that had no sequence... Sound became weight.” ([26:05])

• The team is cast into a surreal, alien world of pulsing skies and grotesque, predatory vegetation.

4. Survival in the Alien Domain

[31:37–51:10]

• The narrative details a desperate trek across a shifting, hostile terrain where natural and metaphysical laws break down.
• They encounter mutated Bureau corpses—former Floor 2 staff—twisted beyond humanity and fused with alien residue; a key revelation of what became of those who failed containment before.
  • Quote:

    “This is the employees from Floor two, right? What happened to them?”
    “Don't care. Whoever they were, they're dead. We aren't. If we all want to keep it that way, we're getting to that.” ([33:22])

• An iridescent relic fragment found in a corpse’s chest triggers psychic anguish:

  “The writing resolved itself in my mind... Execution. Then the word vanished, replaced by another and another, cycles of meaning winding in and out of my mind, each leaving a residue of sickness and clarity.” ([35:20])

• Hostile entities attack, causing mass casualties as monoliths made of suffering consume the squad.
• Visual horror ramps up (“Thousands of corpses splayed or amalgamated into the structures... trapped in one moment of living that never ended.”)
• Only a few survive the onslaught, and they’re drawn to the orb-like relic hovering above a bottomless chasm.

5. Encounter with the Relic: Transformation and Loss of Self

[46:45–55:06]

• The narrator, compelled by the relic fragment, triggers catastrophic reality-warp by merging the piece with the main artifact.

  “I screamed as the shell pressed the fragment into the writhing hollow at the core, and the effect was instantaneous. The orb yawned open. The chasm beneath us didn't collapse. Instead, the worlds above and the worlds below folded toward each other like a book closing and melting into something else entirely.” ([49:47])

• Through the relic, the agent experiences the agony of all who perished; the artifact’s “hunger” is for a person, not an object—a victim sharpened by survival.

6. Containment, Dehumanization, and Final Warnings

[55:07–59:40]

• The survivors, altered and nearly broken, reemerge in Bureau custody. The narrator is contained, his body fused with the relic, transformed into a “live interface under procedural containment.”
  • Quote:

    “On paper, he's no longer an agent or even a human. He's a live interface under procedural containment with a chain of custody. His badge traded for an RBP designation. His consent became a checkbox pre filled by protocol.” ([57:53])

• The Bureau chooses study, not rescue or repair, showcasing institutional callousness.
• Conroy ends with a dire message for any Bureau agents who still possess humanity:

  “A person becomes property the moment the Bureau finds a use for them. And once you accept that, anyone can be next.” ([58:46])

• He foreshadows further, deeper nightmares below FLOOR_2, and urges the listener to consider what orders they’ll refuse before becoming lost in the Bureau’s abyss.

Memorable Moments & Quotes (with Timestamps)

• Conroy’s grim metaphor, warning of collapse:

  “Some think the rational spirits fly out of animals, or that animal we call man like a swarm of bees... The Redwood Bureau's house is rotten and it will fall.” ([03:40–04:00])

• On the reckless proximity of anomalous objects:

  “They collected too much power, stored it too close together, and trusted made up protocols rather than common sense.” ([04:45])

• First interaction with otherworldly object:

  “The object unfolded. It unraveled outward in fractal spirals that curled through space and bypassed geometry. The room came apart as if every atom had belonged to something else.” ([25:20])

• Upon finding mutated Bureau remains:

  “We couldn’t miss the insignia… The head that remained was not entirely human. The features bled together, eyes too far apart, jaw unhinged, revealing a mouth twice the normal size.” ([32:50])

• Horror as the monoliths consume the team:

  “Thousands of corpses slumped, splayed or amalgamated into the structures, all in various stages of unlife. Many squirmed, trying to free themselves or end their suffering.” ([41:00])

• Existential agony as the artifact “claims” the narrator:

  “The relic. It wasn’t just attached. It had fused with me, becoming part of me. Filaments extended outward from the core like roots or veins, spider webbing beneath my skin, pulsing with faint iridescence.” ([54:30])

• Institutional dehumanization:

  “They reclassified him. On paper, he's no longer an agent or even a human. He's a live interface under procedural containment with a chain of custody.” ([57:55])

• Final warning to Bureau insiders:

  “A person becomes property the moment the Bureau finds a use for them. And once you accept that, anyone can be next.” ([58:48])

Notable Timestamps

• [02:48]: Conroy’s initial monologue; tone-setting and warning Bureau staff.
• [05:58]: Team prepares and descends into Floor 2.
• [12:50]: Description of abandoned labs, exorelics, and containment failures.
• [22:15]: Team enters the uncharted corridor; reality begins to unravel.
• [25:55]: Cataclysmic contact with the relic; reality collapses.
• [33:22]: Realization of the fate of past Bureau teams—mutated, consumed.
• [40:10]: Monoliths attack, squad is massacred.
• [47:00]: Fusion of relic fragment; agent’s consciousness unravels.
• [54:30]: Discovery of the artifact fused to narrator’s chest.
• [55:07]: Surviving agent reclassified as anomalous; Bureau’s containment approach.
• [57:53]: Conroy’s closing message and warning.

Tone & Style

• Narration is tense, unyielding, with poetic, existential despair intermixed with hard-boiled military procedural detail.
• The horrors are both physical (mutation, abomination) and psychological/metaphysical (collapse of time, identity, reality).
• Persistent undercurrent: the greatest threat is not the anomalous, but bureaucratic hubris and dehumanization.

For Listeners New to the Episode

This episode is a brutal, immersive journey into how institutional overreach meets cosmic horror—and loses. Through first-person survival-horror narrative and pointed critique from an insider-turned-whistleblower, it exposes the systemic failures that allow monsters (and governments) to thrive under the guise of containment.

End note: "There are deeper levels beneath floor two. The Bureau faces a choice: acknowledge some boundaries should never be crossed, or keep pushing until those boundaries swallow them whole." ([59:20])