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- [00:00]
Agent Conroy
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- [00:15]
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- [00:58]
Agent Conroy
Beware the Redwood Bureau 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
- [01:16]
Narrator / Agent Conroy (continuation)
reports to the unsuspecting public.
- [01:19]
Agent Conroy
You have the right to know.
- [01:36]
Narrator / Agent Conroy (continuation)
It's been a few since you've heard from me, and I'll try to explain it as best as I can. If you've been listening during that time, you've heard Cipher keeping you up to date. While I was away, he told you I was dealing with the situation at Lumpkins. That was and still is true. Though I was obviously not at the site. If I were ever foolish enough to go there, you would not be hearing from me again. The Bureau has made clear and stated outright that my capture or death remains one of their standing priorities. I have to work with the patience and understanding that the moment I stop being careful is the moment this broadcast ends permanently. And while I know that outcome is inevitable, we need to spread awareness and prepare as many people as possible before it's too late. The last few weeks were spent protecting my sources. A channel we relied on for intelligence went dark without warning. A safe house in our northern network had to be evacuated without notice. And we had to help an operative go off grid after a near interception. The network is functional. Everyone currently accounted for is safe. But we lost infrastructure that took years to build. And we lost it because the Bureau has been allocating more resources to finding us than they have. In all the time I've been doing this work that leads me to the conclusion that either something Big is coming. Or I've stumbled onto the tip of an iceberg with one of these reports. It means they are under pressure on top of everything else. I believe the operation at Lumpkins has cost them more than they can publicly absorb. And the pressure has turned outward toward us. If I go quiet again without warning, you'll know why. But as long as these reports keep coming, know we're out here doing everything we can. With that said, the operation at Lumpkins has moved past Floor two. The Bureau breached Floor three two weeks ago. I have the operational records. I wish I could say their mistakes were confined to Floor three, but that wouldn't be true. What follows is a recovered archive from the original Floor 3 operation along with the field report from the breach team that opened that floor for the first time in 50 years. Listen carefully. Some of what you were about to hear explains things about what they were doing down there. And some of it raises questions we don't yet have the answers to. The answers to.
- [04:24]
Intake Officer H. Drennan
Redwood Bureau Confluence Division Subject intake Assessment Form C14. Intake Date 9.22.68 Intake Officer Drennan, H. Supervisor, Acquisitions Attending. Vasik L. Bray. Subject designation 2047. Prior designation redacted per acquisition protocol. Acquisition summary. Subject acquired via standard channels during a Bureau containment operation in Eastern Pennsylvania Region Code 14N. Subject was identified by field operatives during the post engagement sweep of an evacuated civilian perimeter. Having sustained minor injuries during the initial incident, subject was transferred via secure transport and arrived at floor three intake processing at 04.17 hours the following morning. No next of kin and the subject's documented residence was within the Bureau's retroactive cleanup zone. And the civilian casualty narrative has been finalized by the Regional Communications Office. Standard acquisition cover. Missing persons presumed deceased in the incident. Physical profile. Age estimated 26. Sex, female. Height 56 in. Weight 131 lb. Build, athletic. General health above baseline. Evidence of regular physical activity. No significant prior medical interventions detected. Notable physical characteristics, None. Anomalous. Scar tissue consistent with ordinary civilian life. Dentition complete and well maintained. Neurological baseline. Subject demonstrates above average cognitive response in preliminary assessment. Verbal acuity intact. Spatial reasoning within high normal range. No detectable neurological damage from the acquisition event or subsequent transport. Biological compatibility, blood typing, tissue compatibility and immune profiling. All completed within acceptable ranges. Subject is marked as suitable for the full range of possible applications, including cultivation procedures, neural tissue harvesting and reproductive program assignment. Psychological assessment. Subject arrived alert and has remained so through processing. Initial response was consistent with expected patterns. Distress, disorientation, verbal protest. Containment protocols implemented without incident. Subject is currently Housed in intake holding block D, pending full integration into the facility population. Subject has asked repeatedly about the circumstances of her acquisition and the disposition of her family. Adjustment period is expected to span approximately three to four weeks, during which the subject's questions will diminish and her compliance with facility routines will stabilize. The subject is not expected to require extraordinary intervention program assignment. The Confluence Division's acquisition priorities continue to shift toward long term utility. Subjects meeting the profile of 2047 young, physically sound, cognitively intact, with no identified connections to parties capable of pursuing inquiry, represent the optimal category for assignment to the reproductive program currently under development in Block D. The reproductive program, as approved by Bureau command in the second quarter of this year, is intended to address the Confluence Division's projected long term material requirements. Current external acquisition rates, while sufficient for present operational needs, are anticipated to become a limiting factor as production scales toward projected 1975 targets. An internal breeding population maintained under controlled conditions will provide a sustainable source of biological material for both structural applications and neural cultivation without the logistical and security burden of continued external acquisition at Current volumes. Subject 2047 is hereby assigned to the reproductive program. Group 3. Subject will be housed in block D with other Group 3 assignees. Initial pairing assignments will be determined by the program coordinator following the standard compatibility review. Subject's genetic profile has been logged and indexed. Future offspring will be tracked through the internal designation system, subject number plus generational suffix, and assigned to applications based on phenotypic development. The reproductive program is projected to reach operational maturity within 7 to 10 years. In the interim, subject 2047 is cleared for limited harvesting procedures consistent with continued reproductive viability. Non essential tissue samples, including partial cortical biopsy per the neural tissue acquisition schedule are authorized at the discretion of the attending researchers. Supervisor notes. Subject to -047 represents a strong acquisition. The field team's assessment was accurate and the intake processing has proceeded without complication. Her integration into the Group 3 cohort should proceed smoothly. I expect her to be producing within 18 months. For the record, I want to note that Dr. Vasik expressed reservations during the intake review regarding the reproductive program's long term trajectory. Her concerns have been logged with command and will be addressed through established channels. In the interim, the program continues as approved and Dr. Vasic's technical contributions to the facility remain unaffected. The Confluence Division is building something that will outlast any every one of us. The material requirements of that project extend well beyond what external acquisition can sustainably provide. The internal program is not a contingency. It is The Foundation Subject 2047 is one of many. She will not be the last. H. Drennan, Supervisor, Acquisitions, Confluence Division.
- [11:28]
Agent Conroy
The intel was sparse. Floor 3 was biosynthetic. Confluence, A production facility sealed during the cascade event. Approximately 2 million square feet. Expected contents? A combination of preserved biological specimens, anomalous materials and fabrication equipment. Likely non functional after 50 years. Expected contents? They said that twice during the briefing. In my experience, expected is the kind of word that gets people killed. Six of us riding down in the elevator. I was lead. Brady was on heavy, Vega and Kualchuk on support, Bishop on comms and interface, Nelson on medical and anomaly detection. Good team. Pulled from three different operational divisions. Which tells you something about how the Bureau is running after everything. I didn't know any of them before last week. Ashcroft was on the comms. His voice was short and professional, but there was something underneath it. A distraction. Our goal was to sweep and clear, identify hostile entities, neutralize them, and establish a perimeter for follow up research teams. Standard, except for the fact that we knew what amounted to jack shit. The elevator slowed. Kowalchuk removed his magic, checked it, and then checked that he had a round in the chamber after reinserting it. A nervous habit. Brady was still. Brady was always still. Stack up. Brady takes point. Vega second. On third, Bishop, Kualchuk, then Nelson. We move slow. No around. No mistakes. The doors cycled and then paused. Hung up on a lock that had been sealed for 50 years. The mechanism strained, then released, and the doors opened. The first thing I noticed was that the lights were on. Not the flickering half dead fluorescence we'd find on the off chance one still worked. Not the emergency strips that activated when we wired up the elevators. These were perfectly working lights. Even illumination spread across the reception hall, coming from fixtures that didn't match the Bureau. Standard units. Someone had to have replaced them. I could feel the faint movement of circulated air across my face. Then I noticed the smell. Oil in fumes. It smelled like a mechanic's garage. Brady stepped off the elevator first. We filed out behind him in formation. The reception hall wasn't the standard reception hall anymore. The bones of the original architecture were still there, but the walls had been rebuilt along different lines. The space opened up into something larger. The floor was clean and free of the kind of debris that accumulates in abandoned places. This is wrong, Bishop said quietly over squad comms. This floor doesn't look abandoned at all. Agreed. Everyone stay sharp. The door frame on the corridor ahead had been removed entirely. The opening widened and neatly squared off, easily three times the size it should have been. Thirty meters down, the corridor opened into a central space that should have been a junction. It was now a storage bay, and the storage bay was full. Brady held up a fist. The team stopped. I moved up to his shoulder. There were rows of them, dozens, standing in a perfect formation along both sides of the bay, held in place by racks built into the structure, dormant constructs of unknown origin. The nearest one to me was approximately 7ft tall, bipedal with proportions that were not human but were clearly designed with some sort of specific intent. Corded musculature was wrapped around the finer detailed parts where mechanical alternatives probably didn't exist. Whoever built these had understood that 1970s era technology had its limits and they wanted to exceed them. Every few seconds a quick electric pulse caused all the tissue to flex and then relax. Its head was a sensor housing, eye analogues arranged around the circumference, giving it a wide field of view. Through a transparent section in the upper cranial housing, I could see the processor. It looked like a brain, a cultivated mass of neural tissue, wet and faintly pink, suspended in clear fluid and connected to the construct through an interface that looked more like vascular integration than electrical wiring.
- [16:55]
Nelson
Oh.
- [16:56]
Agent Conroy
Oh fuck, nelson said.
- [17:00]
Nelson
Oh, fuck.
- [17:02]
Agent Conroy
Are they active? Nelson swept her scanner across the nearest rack.
- [17:07]
Nelson
Low level neural activity. They are operational, just not doing anything.
- [17:14]
Agent Conroy
There were 32 of them in this bay alone. Different models, different specifications. Command visual confirmation of intact functional biosynthetic constructs. Quantity approximately 30 in this bay alone. Status is dormant but neurologically active. Ashcroft was silent for a beat.
- [17:38]
Narrator / Agent Conroy (continuation)
Understood.
- [17:39]
Agent Conroy
If you can avoid activating them, do so. We need some phasing pack out of the bay. Slow, I said. We backed out the way we'd come in, weapons up, eyes on the racks. Nothing moved or engaged. We took the left corridor until it opened into the main production wing, and the scale of it was confusing. At least a quarter mile long, fabrication bays running in parallel, surgical theaters along one wall, heavy equipment staging on the other. It was a factory, and everything inside the space looked to have been redesigned. The machinery was bureau era at its bones, the original presses, the surgical rigs, the overhead rail system still running along the ceiling. But it had been disassembled and rebuilt, components from different machines combined into hybrid systems. The new layout followed a workflow refined over decades, and it was all running. Maybe a dozen machines in operation across the wing. Together they created a working floor acoustic that I recognized from every industrial site I'd been in, except that nothing here should have been operational for the last half a century. We advanced on the central aisle, weapons ready. Neither the machinery nor the workers reacted to us. There were five of them in visible range, moving between stations with purposeful efficiency. Each one was distinct, sized, and configured for a different task. The nearest was four, armed and heavy. The lower two arms were built for lifting, while the upper two ended in articulated instruments, almost like a multi tool. It was placing components from a tray into a housing, movements precise and fluid. A taller construct crossed the aisle ahead of us, transporting a rack of finished components as it passed. It didn't slow down. It didn't look at us. It didn't acknowledge us in any way that I could detect. They see us, nelson said.
- [20:04]
Nelson
They have to see us, and they don't care.
- [20:08]
Agent Conroy
Don't engage. Hold position. We stood for maybe 90 seconds, watching the floor operate. Three more constructs moved through the area on tasks, none of them deviating from their functions. They have jobs, I said. They aren't worried about us.
- [20:30]
Narrator / Agent Conroy (continuation)
And what happens when that changes?
- [20:33]
Agent Conroy
Vega asked. We're about to find out. With any luck, this whole place is automated and we'll just do a stroll before turning it over to the paper pushers. Do not fire unless they attack. We continued through the wing, following the corridor out of the production wing, which sloped downward and ended at a sealed door. The frame was bureau era, but the door itself had been replaced with one that was heavier and better sealed. The lock mechanism was a custom piece, clearly fabricated on this floor. Why would this door need a lock? Get this open, I said.
- [21:20]
Narrator / Agent Conroy (continuation)
Warning signal interruption detected.
- [21:26]
Nelson
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- [21:52]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
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- [25:11]
Agent Conroy
Vega worked the lock. It was mechanical, not electronic. He found the release sequence within a minute, and the door opened inward with a pneumatic hiss. The space beyond was a room with warmer light, circulating air, and padded flooring that wasn't Bureau standard. There were people in here. Not bodies, not test subjects on tables. Living people, maybe 25 or 30 adults and children wearing clothes crude and hand sewn from salvaged fabric. They saw us and reacted. Not the way people react to rescue. They reacted the way you react to predators. A ripple of movement. Adults positioning themselves between us and the children, a few slipping back toward the partitioned spaces. None of them spoke. None of them made a sound. The silence was trained.
- [26:15]
Nelson
What the fuck?
- [26:17]
Agent Conroy
Nelson breathed. I held up a hand for the team to hold. We stared at the people and they stared back. I started to understand what I was seeing. They were different ages. Children who looked maybe six or seven adults who looked to be in the 30s, maybe 40s, second generation, maybe third. I could see the scars. Surgical marks, neat and clean on heads and chests and lower backs. A man with a panel of metal set into a skull where bone used to be. A woman with her left eye missing and the socket closed cleanly. A child, maybe 9 years old, with a small incision scar along the base of his neck, harvested selectively with precision, in ways that let the subject continue to live and reproduce. What is this? Vega asked. Resource production, nelson said, voice flat.
- [27:33]
Nelson
Neural tissue, muscle and tendons. I saw the processors in those constructs, the ones with the dome housings. Some of that tissue can't be grown. It has to be harvested from a developed brain, so it takes a piece small enough that the person can survive it and keep producing more children for future harvests.
- [27:58]
Agent Conroy
I looked at the man with the metal plate in his skull. He looked back at me with one eye that was alert and one that was slower, not quite tracking. The food was in a collection area to one side, pale biomass in shallow trays. I didn't want to think about what was in it. The population of this floor 50 years ago had been approximately 260 staff and over 2000 specimens. Only 30 people were here in this room, and I got the feeling that nothing here was ever wasted. Command one, we have a surviving population. Human. An estimated 30 individuals. They've been maintained as a biological resource. Requesting guidance. Ashcroft was silent for a long minute. Copy that. Continue mission. Do not attempt extraction. Continually pursuit. Say again, Command. Do not extract. Negative on extraction. Secure the facility before anything Continue mission. I stood there looking at the child with an incision scar at the base of his neck, and I said, copy. We backed out of the room. Vega pulled the door closed behind us and set the lock to its original position. Sir, vega said. His voice was tight. Sir, we can't. We have our orders. Move. We moved. Something in the team had shifted in that room. The professionalism was still there, but I could feel it too. It was looming over all of us like a dark cloud. We passed through an intersection of corridors and a worker construct was moving perpendicular to us. One of the small ones, four legged, carrying a component toward a staging area. It was minding its own business. Kowolcuk shot it. Not a burst. A single round, aimed precise. It hit the construct in the sensor cluster and it went down, legs collapsing, the component clattering to the floor with a sound that was suddenly very loud in the space that had gotten very quiet. Kowalchuk? He didn't answer. He still trained his rifle on the construct, but I could see his anger giving way to regret. The ambient soundscape of the facility changed. Somewhere, something that had been idle had become active. Somewhere else, something that had been active had gone idle. Reallocating power to a new process. A new sound entered the mix. Heavy, distant. Multiple sources moving fast. Contacts incoming, Brady said. Multiple from everywhere. I looked at Kowalchuk. He was still staring at the construct he'd destroyed. Everybody move now. They're coming. The first one came from above. As we ran. I didn't see it deploy. I only heard a mechanical rattle from the ceiling mounted rail system, and then something drop into the aisle between us and the corridor we'd come from. It wasn't one of the workers. It was similar to the units we'd spotted earlier, but larger. Eight feet tall, layered plating across its frame, limbs built thicker than any worker designed. The arms ended in configurations that were clearly not for fabrication. It landed, straightened, and then came at us. The team pivoted. Kowalchuk fired first, still running from the anger and adrenaline that had made him shoot the worker. A three round burst to center mass. The rounds sparked off the plating without penetrating. Brady swung his weapon around and opened up full auto armor piercing. The first rounds sparked like the others, but the fourth or fifth found a joint. The sixth found it again, and the construct's advance stuttered. It adjusted fast, rotating its body to present armored surfaces to Brady. Fire rather than the joint that had been hit. Move up. We can't stay in this aisle. We pushed forward. Brady laid down covering fire as the team moved past him. The response unit took another joint hit, and its left leg bent in a way it wasn't designed to. It transferred weight to its good side, dragging the damaged limb. This second response unit came around the corner ahead of us, Smaller and faster, built on a quadrupedal frame, low to the ground. Lighter armor, but streamlined, designed for speed rather than mess. It entered the isle at a pace nothing with that much structural material should have been capable of. And it came straight at Vega. Vega fired good fire. Well placed rounds hit the armor. The quadruped shrugged him off and closed the distance. It hit him like a linebacker. The armored head plates smashed straight into his chest, the impact lifting Vega off his feet and driving him into the machinery behind him. His rifle came free and skittered across the floor. Before he could rise, the quadruped was on him, pinning him with one heavy foreleg across his torso. Get it off him, I ordered. Bishop and Nelson laid fire into its flank. The quadruped adjusted, rotating to put its armored side toward the gunfire, while keeping Vega pinned. A second forelimb extended from its body and clamped onto Vega's rifle. The limb retracted, pulling the rifle up against the construct's chest, where it was held by some kind of magnet. The first larger unit closed in on us from behind. Kowalchuk. Grenade. Kuachuk pulled a frag from his vest, armed it, and threw it down the aisle. We went flat. The grenade detonated, shrapnel pinging off the machinery around us. Nelson took something in the shoulder. She flinched and clamped her free hand over the wound. But the blast had done what we needed. The response unit was down on its hands and knees, both legs damaged, now, systems venting fluid through a breach in its side plating. Brady pivoted and put another sustained burst into the downed response unit. It collapsed fully, sensor cluster still tracking, but immobilized. The quadruped was holding Vega in place. These things were designed to neutralize and collect, not destroy. Nelson, cover Brady with me. Brady and I pushed up on the quadruped's flank. It rotated to keep armored surfaces between us and its vulnerable points. But keeping Vega pinned meant it couldn't fully optimize its defensive geometry. Brady found the joint with a foreleg at the torso. He put three armored piercing rounds into the gap. The joint actuator gave. The leg lost its lock, and the weight came off Vega's chest. Vega, move. Vega kicked and scrambled backward, gasping. The quadruped tried to grab him, but with the damaged foreleg it couldn't pivot properly, and the motion exposed the underside of its head housing. I fired four rounds into the sensor cluster. The last one found the gap between the plates, and the quadruped went rigid, then settled heavily onto the floor. Silence for maybe two seconds. Then more. Sources activated. The rhythm of production didn't stop. The machines kept cycling, but underneath all of it, a new mobilization was building. Nelson? I asked, looking at her shoulder.
- [36:31]
Nelson
Flesh wound.
- [36:32]
Agent Conroy
No problem, she said. Vega. I can run. Then we run. The corridors twisted and turned ahead of us as we sprinted. Response units appeared at intersections, pacing us from side corridor, falling in behind us at a distance. Every junction we approached made one direction obvious and the others clearly hostile. They're hurting us, brady said. I know to where? I don't know. But we can't do shit about it now. Stay sharp. Be ready. The corridor sloped downward and ended at a wide entrance sized for the kind of equipment that redesigned entire floors. The response units paced us, stopping at the threshold and held position. That's either the best sign or the worst sign possible, vega said. Ashcroft, come in. Hostile constructs have herded us to an unknown chamber. Requesting backup. Static. I called again, but no response came. The chamber we entered was massive, clearly the heart of the entire floor. The air here was cooler, with a sharp smell of surgical sterility rather than machine oil. At the center stood an enormous work platform surrounded by articulated tool arms that hung from the ceiling like the limbs of some giant waiting spider. This was where the production facility's designer did its own mission work. And it was here, standing near the central platform, fully present and watching us walk into its room like it had called us for a meeting. I'd read the files on Crawl Engine and seen what this floor could produce. None of it had prepared me. None of it was even close. The thing was 12ft tall, maybe more, its torso tapered like an hourglass but inverted, wider at the shoulders than any doorway we'd passed through. The surface wasn't metal or ceramic, but something like polished obsidian that absorbed light rather than reflected it where joints should have been. I saw only seamless transitions, as if its limbs were liquid frozen mid pore. No screws, no welds, no assembly points. Six limbs extended from its frame, two primary arms ending in manipulators with too many digits, and four secondary appendages that curved backward like mantis claws. Its head, if you could call it that, was a cluster of lenses arranged in a Fibonacci spiral, each one tracking independently. It moved with the confidence of an apex predator that had never known fear or failure, every micro adjustment calculated to perfection. There was no part of me that thought we could fight it. I felt microscopic under its gaze. It was a God within its own domain, and we were little more than ants. Go on, nelson whispered.
- [40:04]
Nelson
Oh, God.
- [40:07]
Agent Conroy
The nearest lens rotated toward her voice with inhuman precision. The entire spiral then realigned, each lens independently adjusting to capture a different member of our team, cataloging us with the cold efficiency of something that handed out fates worse than death. Weapons hot. Target center mass sustained fire on my mark. I choked out, surprising even myself that I was able to form the words. Mark Brady's large caliber rounds deafened me, the muzzle flash lighting up the chamber and strobing bursts. Bishop and Kowalchuk's rifles joined the cacophony, spitting brass that pinged against the floor. Vega twisted his body, grimacing as he leaned on his good side and squeezed his trigger in controlled bursts. Nelson's fire right next to me was a dull staccato in my already ringing ears. The air filled with gun smoke in the thunder of five weapons emptying their magazine at point blank range. The rounds struck the obsidian surface and vanished like raindrops on hot pavement. My magazine emptied. I blinked, waiting for the impact damage that never came. Where armor piercing rounds should have torn through metal and circuitry, I saw only the faintest of white scratches across its chest. A few tiny flecks of its outer coating drifted down like black snow. The thing stride now never faltered, never hesitated, not even to compensate for the kinetic energy of our combined firepower. It simply absorbed everything we had and kept coming. Sir? Brady said. His voice had gone very calm. I don't think there's a way out of this one. I didn't answer. There was nothing to say. He was right, and every one of us knew it. Break and engage. Spread out. Hit it from every angle. Use everything. My team scattered, using the surrounding machinery as cover, putting fire on it from five different directions at once. For a few seconds, the coordination of the attack created the illusion of effect. Then it chose its first target, and that illusion shattered. It moved toward Brady with the same fluid motion. Brady had the heaviest weapon. The thing had identified him as the largest source of new energy in the room, and it walked toward him three strides. Rounds shattered off it from every direction, but it almost didn't seem to notice when its nearest limb extended towards his weapon. The motion was almost gentle. Brigi didn't stop firing until the limb closed around the barrel and the rifle was simply not in his hands anymore. It stepped past him and headed towards the next of us. Pull back to the threshold. We are it had moved again before I finished the sentence. Bishop had the comms equipment and the scanner, the next highest value category of new information in the the room. He saw it coming. He had time to raise his rifle and fire perhaps half a magazine before it reached him, and when it did, it lifted him off his feet with a precision that made the motion look almost like care. The tool arrays rotated down into position around him. I remember running. I remember shouting at the others to fall back, and I remember responding response units in the corridor moving to block off the retreat. Kowalchuk went down to a unit that had targeted his legs. Vega was sent sprawling back into the main room. From one of the charging quadrupeds, Nelson turned to cover me and was grabbed from behind. I felt its strides close the distance, and then one of the long forward arms reached past my shoulder and took the rifle out of my hands. The armor tracked with a rifle folded neatly across its body. Before I had fully processed that my hands were empty, a second arm took my sidearm. A third took my field knife. A fourth found the comms module on my helmet, released it on the first try, and separated it without removing the helmet itself. Forearms simultaneous. Within seconds, everything was removed from me. I was naked, lifted off the ground and being pushed into a restraint rig at the edge of the platform. It was articulated metal plating and dark polymer, sized for a human body. The clamps were lined with pads that conformed to my skin. Bishop was in my line of sight. Three of the overhead tool arrays held him suspended above the adjacent surface, and the fourth had descended to the side of his head. From the rig, I had a clear view. Its working limbs continued their examination of Bishop, but one sensor cluster rotated away from him and oriented on me. We were fresh material, equipment from a world it had never seen. I understood then what was about to happen.
- [45:55]
Narrator / Agent Conroy (continuation)
Warning signal interruption detected.
- [46:01]
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- [46:30]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
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- [48:32]
Agent Conroy
Signal connection restored. For a few seconds it just looked the lens spiral adjusted, each one shifting independently, reading me across whatever spectrums they were viewing in. Then it started on my equipment. It retrieved my rifle and lifted it into the space in front of its chest. The limbs with too many digits went to work. Within a minute the weapon was in pieces on the platform, lay out in a neat arrangement. It studied the pieces one by one, held them up to its lenses, pressed them against instruments I didn't recognize that extended from its frame when it needed them and folded away when it didn't. 50 years of gunmetal and polymer and microelectronics that didn't exist in this thing's world. And it was learning all of it, right there in mere minutes. When it finished with the rifle, it came back to me. A smaller tool extended from one of its limbs and passed across my body in a slow sweep. I felt the air move where it went by. It paused just below my left collarbone. It had found the implant. The biometric unit every field agent at my clearance level carried subcutaneous, small enough that most scanners didn't even register went still. Its lenses rotated upward, tracking the path we'd taken to get here, back through the corridors, up the shaft to a place it had never been. Then it looked back down at me. Two alarms rotated through their options and selected what they needed. Somewhere in the room, workers moved, fetching materials from places I couldn't see. An apparatus descended and settled against the side of my neck. Whatever it injected into me did not put me out. Every sensation I had sharpened. I could hear my own heartbeat. I could feel the edges of the clamps against my skin in maddening detail. I was held there, awake, unable to move, un unable to do anything except experience what was about to happen. The first cut was below my collarbone. The blade was sharper than anything I'd ever felt. My skin parted so gently it didn't even bleed at first. I felt the muscle open. I felt the implant ripped from my body in the grip of something smaller and more delicate than a human hand. It was set down on the platform next to the pieces of my rifle. Then the real work started. More incision components going in, settling into places they didn't belong. I felt something slide along the edge of my spine and find a home. I felt something warm settle behind my sternum and attach near my heart. I felt a long, thin piece work its way up the side of my neck and anchor at the base of my skull. And when it connected, something in my head that had belonged to me all my existence simply stepped aside. I don't know how long the procedure lasted. The drug was doing something to time. It could have been hours, but it felt like days. When the components were in, it picked the implant back up and worked on it with tools so small I couldn't even make them out. Then it carried it back and put it where it had been, closing the incision behind it. The drug started to pull back. My sensations were dulling, from an unrelenting agony to a complete ache that was hard to describe as individual sensations. My arms worked when I tried them. My legs responded when the clamps released on the outside, I was myself. On the Inside, I could feel what it had left in me. A warmth along my spine, a weight behind my sternum, a quiet, patient presence at the base of my skull that my body couldn't rectify. It turned away from me and started on Vega. A worker got me on my feet and handed me my clothes and my armor piece by piece. Then my equipment, rifle, reassembled every part in its place. Sidearm, knife, comms module. Back in the helmet, Everything returned to the configuration it had been in when I walked through the door. When I stood up, fully kitted, I looked exactly like the man who had come down in the elevator. Constructs walked myself and three others also re equipped, back to the elevator. Brady, Vega, Nelson, Bishop, and Kowalchuk weren't with us. We went back through the corridors the way we'd come. At the elevator, the doors were open and the cab was waiting. A response unit gestured, almost polite, for us to get in. We got in. The doors closed. The elevator started to climb. Brady and I exchanged glances. Neither of us said anything. I could feel the signal at the base of my skull. I could feel the connection extending down the shaft as we rose, reaching back down into floor three toward the thing that had put it in me. We were rising back to the surface where deep reef and medical and psych evaluations were waiting. The elevator reached the top and they led us to the Floor one elevator and then to the surface level Decontamination and debriefing room. I tried to speak. I wanted to say any part of it out loud. I formed the words in my head. I directed them toward my mouth while they questioned us. My tongue didn't move. My jaw didn't open. The thought was still there, clear, whole, everything I needed to say. But between my mind and my mouth there was something else. Now Brady was watching me. I saw him try the same thing. I watched his mouth not move. I watched his eyes say everything that only we knew. And then I spoke. Everything I said was a lie. None of the words were mine. None of them came from my own thoughts. Brady, Melson, and Vegas spoke. They confirmed everything I said. Our stories matched perfectly.
- [56:09]
Narrator / Agent Conroy (continuation)
Floor three is the Bureau. I want to sit with that statement for a moment because I think it is the most important thing I can say to you about what you just heard. Everything that was down there, the breeding, the harvesting, the manufacturing, the reduction of human beings into components with specific utility values, every piece of it was built by the Bureau first. The architect did not invent any of inherited a system that was already in motion and it Continued that system. System with the efficiency that comes from having no other responsibilities and no oversight to answer to. What the breach team saw was not what an anomaly built in the absence of humans. It was what the Bureau's own design became when they simply abandoned it. The Bureau's eventual framing will describe the Architect as a rogue artifact, an unforeseen concept consequence, a containment failure. Something that happened to the facility rather than something the facility produced. That narrative will be a lie in a very specific way. They built floor three to do what floor three did. They approved Drennan's reproductive program over Dr. Vasek's objections. They designed Block D for the same purpose it continued serving for the last 50 years. When the facility was sealed, abandoned and stricken from the records. The Bureau did not lose control of a monster. They just locked a bunch of them in a hole and walked away. And the program continued running because something down there had the time and aptitude. What concerns me now is that the operation has not concluded in the way the Bureau is claiming. Floor three is, in their words, secured. The surviving members of the breach team are in medical processing. Research teams are being prepared for follow up entry. On paper, the Bureau higher ups are already describing it as a successful operation. Do not believe I have reasons that I am not going to detail in this report. Because those reasons are currently being investigated by people whose safety depends on the Bureau not knowing what they are doing. When I am able to share what I suspect, I will. Until then, watch the next few weeks carefully. Watch the news for reports of unusual activity, for details that don't add up. Watch for government officials with smug grins and earpieces that tell you what to believe, even when what they're telling you makes no sense. And if you work for the Bureau, you are in a position to see what your colleagues are doing. And you have noticed patterns that do not fit. Do not wait for someone to explain what you are seeing. Don't wait for them to lie to you and put your name on a list. Because you asked. I've already warned you. And I hope those of you with enough sense to listen will take what I say seriously. Because this gap presented to you by the mistakes of the organization you serve will not wait forever. You are expendable to the Redwood Bureau and the odds are not in your favor.