D (4:52)

From Commander Nathan Ashcroft Ashcroft Ops Redwood to Oversight Board, Site Recovery ob SR Directorate Redwood Operations Liaison, North Sector Insight.

C (5:07)

Division Lead, Containment engineering field floor 2, interim results. Acquisition yield and rationale for continued phase hold.

E (5:19)

Directors. Per your request for a status explanation on the pause before proceeding to floor three. The short answer is that floor two is paying out. The longer answer is that it's paying out in ways that we will lose permanently if we rush past it with large teams and disturb the environment with our containment technology. Acquisition and loss metrics Runner doctrine. Since shifting to single operator recon collection with overwatch and staggered extraction windows, our successful recovery rate has increased 61% while personnel losses have dropped 43% compared to squad entries during initial breach week. Runners disturb less, trigger fewer cross interactions and can adhere to object specific handling logic in real time without the noise of a stack moving through an unknown ecosystem. Why not drop to floor 3? Adjacency risk? Floor 2 relics are densely co sited. Noise, vibration and EM from lower lift activation have already been shown to provoke crosstalk. We logged three distinct interference bursts during last week's generator tests. Irreplaceable data. Several relics are proven to be stateful. Once we move or shock them, the state changes and acquisition becomes impossible. Stability windows. Environmental baselines. Pressure, humidity. Ambient sound waves. Are finally predictable enough to run controlled pulls twice daily. Introducing heavy teams to push past the level will destroy that stability, and that's without accounting for opposition and munitions discharge on the lower level. Request plan 60 day phase hold. Bottom line, we are not delaying. We are preserving. Floor 2 is a finite archive of artifacts. If we push past the floor before we stabilize and extract what we can, we'll spend three times the time and lives trying to clean up the noise we make on the way down. Respectfully, Field Commander Ashcroft Lumpkin's Forward Operations.

C (8:02)

They called it a cold walk, which was, to say the least, misleading. Cold means inert. Cold meant the worst thing that you'd run into was a lecture about chain of custody. Walk means, well, not running. The inaccuracies started the morning they handed me three tags and a time limit lit. Logic?

F (8:26)

I asked.

C (8:27)

Wendel glanced over my shoulder at the forms. It's the one with the card, he said. You'll know it when you see it. Keep them all separated. Contact will likely trigger an event. I can't stand the desk jockeys. A single gust of wind would break the dweeb in half. Yet somehow pencil necks like to send hard, disciplined men to their deaths on a daily basis. I'd love to drag this little fuck along just to one of these times. Wipe that smug look right off his bobble head. I bury these thoughts. He's technically command at this junction. How separated? I asked, instead of saying what I really think. He wheeled out a card that had several black duffels. I grabbed one and looked in surprise at the man I knew couldn't carry even if someone had a gun to his head. They were probably 40 pounds each. These should keep you and the artifacts safe, provided you don't do anything stupid. I stared blankly. He stared back. He wasn't joking. They really expected me to lug around £120 pounds on top of my own gear down an abandoned death trap. Sure, teams had already been sent in, but look how that worked out. Ten guys in, one guy out. Haven't seen him around after that either. Probably sick or worse. Plenty of runners going in, single man missions. Charting, grabbing. Basically playing fucking minesweeper one human body at a time. And lucky me, saddled with an extra £120 like it's no big deal by a guy that couldn't bench the bar on his best day. Complete bullshit. The lift descended with giant clinking gears pulling me further into the bowels of the smellish facility. It was big enough for nearly a whole squad, but instead carried Only me. The speed of this thing was a joke. So much time to think about every single wrong decision I've made that led me here with a thud, carrying the finality of my own coffin. Closing it brought me to the maw of Floor two. My boots echoed through the empty reception area that hadn't seen a mob since Nixon, and my radio answered the silence with a thin bed of static. Overwatch chirped into my ear in a mostly garbled voice. We have you, Vance. Block starts now. At least I wasn't completely blind in here. The already collected data by previous teams and runners was overlaid on my hud. Fuck me if this place wasn't creepy. What's that phenomenon where empty places that don't look right? Put your hair on end. Subliminal spaces or something? Fuck, I can't remember. But whatever it is, it's this place. Doesn't help that pretty much everything left down here can kill you. I saw them pulling out some kind of suit earlier, almost like a chest plate made out of alien hide or something. I bet you they'll make some poor son of a bitch put it on. My HUD pinged, highlighting a corridor where I needed to take a right only to find the right hand corridor was pitch black. My visor auto pivoted through night modes, settling on a green bled thermal. The air was cold enough to show my own heat signature leaking everywhere. There were no other signatures in this wing, not even rats. I should have felt comforted, but stillness grated. I adjusted the duffels, doing the math in my head on how much time I'd lose if I dropped one and had to backtrack. Wendel's warning echoed. Contact will likely trigger an event. No one in command knew what event meant, except that it always got capitalized on the paperwork and that it usually meant one less you. My left thigh ached from where the lower duffel was pushing against my holster. Approaching target, I muttered into the mic. Not that anyone would answer. Overwatch only tapped in at this point to issue threats if I fucked up. My first stop was a door labeled O3. The official target designation on my HUD read Lucent Precipitate. Don't expose to open air. The unofficial note written in grease pencil along the frame just said Glass rain. Do not shake. Nice. Probably need to walk even slower now. The only thing colder than the air outside the room was whatever they kept in here. The lucent precipitate shone like a bag of gold glow sticks gone super critical. I didn't need some dipshit with a PhD to tell me not to open the vial. Using the special glove they gave me, I carefully picked up the pen sized object. Even through the high tech protection, it felt cold in a way that threatened to empty me out. One of the duffels had a label matching the object. I unzipped it with my other hand and to my surprise, there was a specialized containment unit inside. That was nice at least. Probably won't have to worry about shaking it around too much. You'd think they'd brief you on these things before sending you down with a head full of nothing. One down, two to go. Out of the room, slightly down the corridor and another right. My HUD showed the way. The next retrieval was labeled pH1 phonophage, which sounded like something that would eat into my brain and control my body, so that was a delight. Soon enough I was at the door, indicated by my hide. There wasn't anything fancy about it, just one of those old thick steel slabs. But taped next to the handle was a set of beat up ear coverings. I took the hint and slapped them on. Instantly sound was pulled away. Not even the ringing of my ears was present. Even my own thoughts seemed to have been quieted. Inside, the room was smaller than I expected. The walls had been covered floor to ceiling in some kind of thick acoustic foam. The phonophage sat squat and ugly on a steel cart. It wasn't a speaker and it wasn't a capsule. It was a matte black drum the size of a paint can with a perforated stainless band around its middle and a single lever on top set in the closed position. Stenciled letters DO NOT listen. I didn't and wouldn't. I closed my eyes, held my breath, and placed the drum in the appropriately tagged carrier. This one was lined with some sort of foam that held an odd composition. It fit perfectly and seemed well designed enough to hopefully nullify whatever this thing is. I couldn't help but wonder how they knew the exact size and shape of these things, but still somehow needed to send me down here alone, lugging around 200 pounds of gear to get them. The ear covers went back on the door handle. I don't know why, but returning things to how they were seems like showing a place respect, like maybe if I leave everything undisturbed as possible, these anomalies won't chew me up and spit me out. The corridor to the next target was longer. The floor had warped in patches, so rotten underfoot it made me think of false panels and old stories about pit traps. The Last stop was the reliquary bxf, which meant nothing to me yet a lid logic warning and a skull flashed in the margins of the HUD overlay. Some asshole had taken the time to code in this custom warning into the system, but they couldn't be bothered to brief me on what the fuck lid logic is. I swear, sometimes it feels like someone's trying to cut payroll one KIA file at a time. The rest the door was unlocked. I opened it. Inside, the reliquary sat on a waist high column, an oside suite with window glass, glass that had warped into waves. The box was beautiful, a kind of dark wood with veins of iridescent intersecting hinges, brass bright lid engraved with layering squares. It was somehow affixed to the column in a way that would require some serious equipment to remove, even then, probably with a great amount of damage. Beside it lay a yellowed card that was surprisingly intact. BXF opening LOGIC state A falsehood Reorient yourself. Do not apologize. Who writes this? I muttered. I swear half the shit I see is either a joke or a game to somebody. I set the duffles down, felt my arms tingle at the sudden lightness. I read the card again, as if another pass would clarify anything, and then placed a hand on the lid. The wood was warm, direct opposition to the ambient temperature, and thrummed slightly under my palm as if it were waiting. State of falsehood. Well, hell, I could do that. I'm extremely well compensated for my work, I said. Nothing happened, of course. No click, no theatrical beam of light. For a second I thought maybe this was a long con and I would popped the thing open to find nothing but a dead rat and a note that said Gotcha. I lifted and the latch clicked open a fraction, not all the way enough for the box to consider the question answered. I swallowed, thinking for a moment, and said, I don't hate this job. The second latch gave, allowing it to open a little more. My mouth went dry. One more lie. No one died on my last mission. The last latch let out a whispered click and allowed me to open it without a further strain. There was a stone which looked ancient and weathered. Carefully pulled it free. It was much heavier than it looked. The surface was faintly tacky, as if it was trying to grab hold of me. Quickly I placed it into the appropriate duffel. That of course had a near perfectly fitted containment unit. I hoisted the three duffles and started for the elevator. LP03 left shoulder pH1 right BXF dead center against my spine. Kept at least 6 inches between bags. I was pretty sure the bags alone were enough distance, but I still wanted to keep these things as far from each other as possible. Let's be honest, probably nothing would happen. You know how these eggheads are. The corridor felt colder than on the way in. The lights dimmed by a notch that made me think I was imagining it. The slab of my boots thinned like sound was being skimmed off and put somewhere else. The first lab window I passed was fogged on the outside. A fingertip I couldn't see drew a single word. Slow and neat return. I kept walking, admittedly a little faster. That's the rule down here. Head forward, eyes on the prize. Seen one too many. Hey, what's that? Moments end with unclipped body cams and a mop detail. The corridor stretched the way. Headquarters. Stretch time. Same number of lights. More distance between them. My HUD clock blinked, skipped back a second, and then corrected itself. The floor felt like it had a slope I couldn't see. My boots came down, but the echoes didn't quite match. On the next glass panel. The condensation followed. The invisible finger came back. New word. Same neat hand turn. I didn't. The urge came back like a spasm. Sudden, stupid. Persuasive. I tightened my grip on the straps. Left hand confirmed LP03. Hard cased and quiet. Right shoulder feeling pH1's weight, cold and dead. The center bag pressed BXF's pod along my spine, warm in a way that was more danger than temperature. 20 meters. 30. The right wall developed a door that I know hadn't existed on the way in. Same worn paint, some stenciled letters. Same bureau hinge. Too perfect. The handle twitched a fraction. Negative, I said to myself, trying to steady my conviction. Not my door. The handle froze. The wall around it bulged. Paint stretching screws. Walking out of the hinge one turn at a time. The corridor shortened. It was almost like I shortened the next overhead light slid closer by three feet without moving at all. I felt the floor decide I'd already turned and then punish me for not noticing. Overwatch. I've. I've got a problem. I started. A white hiss and then a clipped half sentence shoved through it, metry spiking every activity. Static ate the rest. Air rushed past my face as the new door's seal sighed open. Cold air bit at my cheek. Everything in me wanted to react, to run, to drop the bags and draw my weapon. But I swallowed it down. I counted my steps under my breath and focused on the way back. 5, 6, 7. The next lab window was fogged when I reached it. Same neat hand scrawled a word I could see in the corner of my eye. Look. My eyes wanted it before my brain could fill in the blanks. That's the thing here. Humans and anomalies don't play by the same rules. I stared at the seam between wall and floor instead and listed five true things under my breath to ground myself. Three heavy bags, straps digging into my shoulders. One corridor, one exit. One me. The glass thudded, almost making my heart jump. When I didn't look, the fog swirled like a storm, and a horrible scratching etched into the glass as more words formed. Look. Look. Look. I kept going. A sign above a door that hadn't existed a minute ago blinked to life. Break room. Light humming. Coffee steaming on a warmer I recognized from a different facility in a different year. Next door down, medbay in the old bureau font. A cot with a blanket folded with the kind of care you only see on command visits. Advance confirmed. Status Overwatch cut through.

B (23:19)

Your vitals are met if the environment is reduced.

C (23:23)

My heel caught the lip of a grout line I hadn't noticed on the way in. The lights drifted a notch dimmer and returned. A man stepped out ahead of me and took up the middle of the hall with the posture of someone trying not to block a doorway. Windle clipboard to chest. Tie too tight. He shouldn't have been here, and we both knew it. Do not bring BXF upstairs, he said, his lips moving just a little too early. Protocol breach. Return to staging. I didn't stop. I didn't break stride or pretend he was real. When my shoulders brushed him, he felt like a sticker, dry and thin and flat against the wall. He stayed there after I passed, turning to watch me in a way that was more of a glitch than a movement. I rounded the corner and saw the bay, inner gates already open, panel lights awake. Same scuff marks as before, but something in my head was screaming. I couldn't pinpoint what it was, but something wasn't right. I stood still and let my body tell me what was wrong. The air carried what almost looked like a faint shimmer. The gate shouldn't be open. It's manual. I had closed it per protocol. I kept my eyes on the platform and searched my mind for anything that made sense, and suddenly it hit me. The yellowed card beside BXF when I found it. State of falsehood. Reorient yourself. Do not apologize. This is safe, I said out loud, feeling like an idiot in a Frying pan. The sign over the break room flickered off behind me. The bay ahead stuttered and showed its seams. The open gate wasn't a gate, just a dark rectangle painted over a dip. Vance, we have partial visual. Overwatch came through again clearer. Where are you? We're getting contradictory readings. I. I don't know. I thought I was at the elevator, but all I see is a pit. I think BXF is manipulating me somehow. Do you have a location for me? The silence that followed was deafening. It was like the pits at idle, waiting to see if I'd be thrown in or not. Command, please advise. The only thing that answered was static. The lobby window across the bay fogged from the inside as I was caught looking at it. I couldn't take my eyes off the window as a shadow coalesced into a form with its forehead against the glass. It was a shape I knew all too well. Hair hanging in strands, skin loose and sickly under the dirty gown, his mouth forming words I felt even before they came. You said you would be there for me. Even though it was my brother. I knew it wasn't my brother, that it couldn't be. I'd wished so many times for this chance. The apology clawed its way up my throat like a physical thing. I knew it wasn't real, that this was all some sick game, but that didn't lessen how I felt. I would have given anything to tell my brother how sorry I was to go back and do things things differently. My body fought to say the words against my mind that told me I couldn't. The tag's instructions screamed into my mind. Do not apologize. That line had made no sense when I read it, but now I was literally biting my tongue to stop myself. I focused on the lid. Logic. State of falsehood. I was there for you. The words hurt coming out more than words can. He smiled. Not my brother. The suit of sadness and pain they'd wrapped around a memory of him. He pressed his palm against the window and pushed. I should have looked away, but I couldn't. I watched as the outline of him bulged, the glass stretching until it didn't even look like glass anymore, just a thin layer of plastic sheeting between us. The first bulge failed to break the barrier but sent spiderwebs through the cloudy pane. A syrupy thread of saliva or pus strung from his mouth to the glass as he screamed silently, then pulled back his head as if to build momentum. His smile stretched and tore wide across his cheeks as he brought his head, rocketing toward the barrier. The cracks spread slightly, but his face deformed with a sickening crunch and blood spray. The smile never wavered as his head drew back and smashed against it again and again. I looked on in horror as the face I'd known turned into something horrific, all the while keeping that grin. State of falsehood, I said, the phrase coming out like a sob. I looked straight at the glass, at the agony written in that base. I said, I never wanted you to come home. The glass sizzled. The shadow twitched and slurped sideways, running down the far wall in a stripe of yellow scum. Reorient yourself, I said aloud. I let my head roll forward, letting the fever dream of the corridor melt. I closed my eyes and panned my shoulders to the cold air, trusting nothing, measuring the real only by the weight in my hands and the pain in my legs. For a second the world flickered back into the basement. I remembered the smells came back. Concrete, dust, machine oil, my own sweat. I could see the elevator cage clearly across the open stretch of floor on the far end of the hall. The window splintered. A single finger pushed through, then an entire hand, then the whole shape of him crawling out through the wire mesh glass. My brother's face was smashed, broken, bleeding, and torn. He moved with the same rolling limp I remembered from the care facility, the same hospital gown, though now it was covered in blood and fluids that left a wet trail behind him. He moved faster than anything so broken should. Three bags, one corridor, one exit still won me. I ran. Not a jog, not a tactical retreat, a full sprint, knowing better. Men had died for indecision here, the weight of it all threatening to pull me down as my legs and back screamed in protest. The corridors shrank and stretched, flickering through layouts as if it couldn't decide which version of hell I belonged to. Sometimes it was plush and blue, lit and carpeted, like a forgotten hotel. Other times the walls got closer, skin thin, and I saw things breathing and writhing on the other side. I kept my eyes tunnel locked on the elevator's brass mesh, its familiar shape a lighthouse in a storm that didn't want me to reach it halfway down the corridor, if there was such a thing as a hallway anymore. A sudden shriek split my hearing. It came from the inside of my own skull, went blind, knees buckling, almost dropping, all three carriers. When I blinked back, the world had gone negative, lights black, shadows pulsing white, and every door on both sides open and grim, grinning. Windle was at the end of the hall, but he wasn't Windle, his suit was wrong. His hands hung loose and too long at the end of his arms and his head was backwards on his neck, mouth working silently. His head spun on the hinge of his neck like a bead on a wire, mouth wide, teeth lined all the way down his throat. Everything in me screamed to drop the bags and claw my eyes out. The logic of the moment was simple. This thing wanted me to break, to quit, to fail. The rules. I said, I'm not afraid, my voice a shaky croak. Wendel's arms flapped, then hung limp. His head stilled, mouth closing. He looked like a marionette whose strings had been cut. The walls pulsed. I saw the corridor's seams, its stitched up transitions, and the latticework of the world behind the world. I ran. I didn't look back. Every step in this place was chancing a landmine, but all I could do was keep moving, repeating one corridor, one exit, one me. Like a mantra. Black blood pooled from under every threshold, the glass windows now all fogged and every one of them had a face inside, watching a parade of every dead friend, lost squad, half remembered training buddy who'd eaten it in the field. I bore down, grit my teeth, and counted my steps. The elevator's cage was right there. I dove in, slammed the control, and heard the shattering of glass behind me as the first wave of them broke free. I almost laughed, a mad barking sound. When the lift lurched and actually went up. The scream followed, rising through the shaft. My own voice doubled, tripled, boring into me. I kept the duffels braced tight and tried to keep my breathing even. The cages rattled. The gears shredded my nerves one spine at a time. Halfway to floor one, the lights blinked out. My HUD scrambled, then went blank. For a second my senses seemed to go blank as well. I could have been moving up or down or not moving at all in the stall. I felt the pressure of all three objects like they were in silent standoff along my body. The hatch at the top of the lift rattled. Something was up there, let a waft of blood and rust to the grating. Emergency lighting came on, barely enough to see my own hands. The hatch popped. Long thin digits slipped through the seam. I recognized my mistake before I made it. I was about to scream my brother's name. I wanted to. Everything in me wanted to. To call him down and see him one more time and maybe say sorry, maybe say I wish things could have been different. Instead I bit into my tongue until I tasted blood and tried to focus on what was real. The hatch strained as his mass pressed through the grate, ripping and cracking, his face crammed in the ruined remnants of my brother. His lips worked, but the words only became noise, the sound building into memories. I felt his weight in my arms in the night he quit fighting. I felt the grip of his hand on mine as the machine stopped. All I ever wanted was to tell him some gentle lie to ease his crossing. And here he was, shoving the truth back down my throat. Fate of falsehood. Reorient yourself. Do not apologize. The hatch bulged under the full weight of him now, his face stretching through the mesh on and neck like a giraffe, mouth ripping all the way across his broken face, the skin splitting and running with yellow tinged blood. His gaze locked on me. There was a real accusation in it, and all the moments I'd let him down gathered in a pressure wave I could feel across my chest. I couldn't outpace the memories. I could only endure them. I looked up at my brother's ruined face snaking through the opening, mouth torn wide, and said what I needed to say. You were never a burden. You were the only good thing in this whole miserable life, and I never avoided you. As if in response, the entire lift shuddered and my brother's head snapped back with a sound like a breaking bone. I braced for the next attack, but nothing came. The lights returned and the hatch was empty. No sign that anything had happened. I slumped to the cold metal, letting my heartbeat find a rhythm. The elevator continued to grind upward at the top of the cage opened with a bureaucrat's indifference. The doors parted. On a squad already waiting at the threshold. Not a mission hypo or desk jockey in the bunch. They wore rebreathers and full containment gear. The duffels were out of my hands before my feet even cleared the cage. One of the Bureau guys extended a flat palm, halting me. Decon now. I wanted to argue and lash out, but my brain was still shorting out. They pulled me through a side corridor into the autodoc unit whose doors shut with a sucking vacuum. Hands undid my harness and jacket, stripping me in seconds. One of them actually took the time to fold my shirt before tossing it into the incinerator bin. I'll never understand what the fuck is wrong with some of these people. There's nothing dignified about Bureau decon. You stand there with your arms up and your feet wide while they soak you, scrub you, flash blast you with light that stings your retinas and makes the blood in your eyelids pulse with afterimages. The process is ancient and high tech at the time, like being oozed down by the world's cruelest car wash while a robot recites the legal risks of non compliance. At the end they hand you a towel barely big enough to cover your ass and walk you shivering into a stainless steel ward where six other guys sat in the same state of humiliation. I recognized exactly none of them, but caught that wild animal look in every pair of eyes. Survivors. At least for now. I couldn't stop scanning the walls, half expecting a face to bulge through the glass. I didn't see my brother, not in the steel, not in the seams where wall met floor, but I couldn't let myself relax. I kept turning the sequence of events in my head as if I might find some crack in it where the last hour made any sense. Someone must have tagged me as fragile because a doc in bureau blue came straight over. He was the opposite of Wendell, muscles over bone, hands flat and scarred. His badge read Watson.

F (36:45)

You awake?

C (36:46)

He asked, shining a penlight in my eyes. Yeah. Wish I wasn't, was all I got out before they dragged me into here.

B (36:57)

Warning Signal interruption detected.

C (37:02)

Monday Sidekick the AI agent that knows you and your.

F (37:05)

Business, thinks ahead and takes action task at anything seriously.

E (37:10)

Monday Sidekick AI you'll love to use Start a free trial today on Monday.com.

D (37:17)

This episode is sponsored by Mint Mobile. You already have enough bills to worry about utilities, car insurance. Time to say no to overpriced phone bills. Switch to Mint Mobile today to get Premium Wireless for 15 bucks a month. Ditch overpriced wireless and their jaw dropping monthly bill, unexpected overages and hidden fees. Plans start at 15 bucks a month at Mint. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. I've used Mint before and their prices are a great deal and their data speeds and reception are likely as good as, if not better than, what you currently have. Ready to say yes to saying no? Make the switch@mintmobile.com Ericast that's mintmobile.com Ericast upfront payment of 45 bucks required equivalent to 15 bucks a month limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 GB on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. C Mint Mobile For Details.

G (38:32)

This episode is brought to you by Disney. This Thanksgiving, Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde are back on the big screen. So grab your family and friends as Disney invites you to return to Zootopia for the Fur nominal movie event of the holiday season. See all your favorite Zootopia characters, plus new favorites in the most paw esome movie of the year. Don't miss Disney Zootopia 2 when it hits. Hits theaters everywhere November 26th. Get your tickets now.

B (39:02)

Signal connection restored.

F (39:06)

I've deployed on enough missions to know this assignment meant management wants to mitigate risk. The card said biological disposal D23 unknown anomalous object. I don't like it when people blow smoke up my ass in briefings. That was the kind of briefing this was. But these things don't get assigned to you as optional. So I signed, grabbed my kit, a pry bar, the ratchet spreader, a can of foam, a borescope, and went down. Floor two smells like the inside of a dead refrigerator. Everything is covered with a fine dust that seems to erase footprints the second you lift your boot. The corridor to D23 had a run of plates that didn't match. Bolts backed out. A little paint bubbled, as if heat had come through in an intense wave. My HUD led me to the approximate location. Seems it was hidden. I put my knuckles to the steel and tapped. The return wasn't an echo. I felt it in the cartilage of my nose first, then in the meat of my palm. There was a seam, or something had lifted a panel. I worked the flat of the pry bar in and lifted an edge, then fed the borescope. The scream lit a pink tube. Its edges were rigid, like the throat of a big fish. Arcs of something white and hard braced it, rib after ribbon, fine hairs combed in waves. I could have set a metronome to. I didn't like this. I pulled the scope, slotted it, and went to work on fasteners. The plate gave easier than it should have, like somebody had been softening the bolts from the other side. Behind. It wasn't ductwork. It was tissue. A round, wet lip filled the opening. Pale pink, puckered the diameter of a truck tire. The temperature coming off of it was warmer than the corridor. The smell landed between bleach and a butcher's drain. A clear filament ran from the lower rim to the tile and trembled in the draft. I fed the borescope past the lip. The camera showed a small room beyond. Whatever I was sent for was in there. I reeled the scope back, planted a ratchet spreader at 3 and 9 o' clock under the lip, and pumped until the arms bowed and the hinge buckled. The tissue flexed around it with a wet sound that crawled up My back. I leaned my shoulder into the handle to buy another click. The gap was wide enough to fit through. I slid an arm, then a shoulder, then my chest, scraping along the slick rim until the vest caught. I hiked it with my forearms and pushed past. And I was inside. My headlamp cut across a small chamber. Ceiling fixtures sagged under a translucent film. A cart sat half sunk where floor tile gave way to mucosal ridges. A stainless handrail along the far wall showed a clear bite line where the tissue had grown over it. On the right, a staging rack had fused into something branching and calcified. A flat steel tray perched on its middle shelf under a thin membrane. And in that tray sat the target. A bone colored disk, enamel glinting through a wash of fluid. I ripped the membrane with a short pull. It stretched and snapped back in strings. The ring didn't lift easily. Fine white rootlets had grown through the small holes and into the metal. I rolled the edge and felt each filament give with a faint snap against the steel. The last tethers let go and I dropped the ring into a specimen sleeve, zipped and clipped it to my harness. The sleeve tightened around the ring as if vacuum sealed. A pulse moved under the plastic. The torus flexed and flattened, pushing against the bag until the laminate creaked. I reached to reseat the clip and felt the ring press back through the sleeve, a slow muscular resistance that belonged to living tissue. The bag split open with a strange rip. The ring slid free, slick with fluid, and widened in my hands. As I caught it, what had been a palm width disc stretched into an oval, then a circle big enough to frame my forearms. Its inner surface swelled and folded, growing ridges that moved in a smooth, practiced sequence. I tried to set it down, but it rose with me, adhered to the glove and kept opening. I planted my boots and leaned away. The edge thickened, a pale collar cinching around both wrists. Pressure advanced evenly from hands to elbows. I drove a boot against it, trying to push it off, but the inner cilia combed along my arms, working their way up my shoulders. They pulled me in as I struggled. A second later, it was covering my helmet. As the opening rolled over me, everything became warmth, weight, and rhythm. The world narrowed to a tube only slightly wider than my chest. My headlamp painted the nearest surfaces in fleshy reds and mucus shine. The walls moved in pulses that matched. A drumbeat carried through tissue. Each contraction took me a body length. I wedged an elbow and tried to hold position. The next pulse rolled under me and turned the elbow into a pivot. I spun and slid forward. The radio hissed once in my ear and died as a clear fluid sheeted across the mic grille. The tube opened without warning into a volume so large my lamp showed only parts, ridges, channels, and vaulting membranes that rose and fell on cords thicker than my thigh. Heat came in slow waves from the walls. The ground was a field of broad folds, each ridge higher than my knee, running in bands that lifted and settled in sequence to carry fluids towards a darker center. Clear runoff collected in channels between the folds and dragged threads with it. Ropes of pale tissue, curls of something like fat. I climbed off the nearest channel and got a bearing. Pink finger like protrusions spread wide, packed in dense forests, bending and straightening with every long breath the place took. Membranes above sagged and exhaled a fine mist that blanketed everything, keeping it damp. I tried to run the ridgeline toward height. The ridge formed around my hands and then slackened to let them slide, forcing me to time my movement to the contractions. A stalk unrolled from the ceiling on a wet cord and brought down a lens the size of my fist. It dilated and tightened in a pattern that made my molars ache, then drifted aside as a second stalk lowered a bulb. That bulb pulsed a new sequence. The ridge under me answered by shifting downslope a few degrees. The room was regulating me like a parcel on a belt. The next surge lifted the whole field and slid me knee deep into a sump where the channels met. The liquid looked clean until it touched the torn glove and lit a cold burn that marched up my forearm. I yanked the arm clear and scraped the wet off on a fold. The fold flexed against my palm and squeezed, leaving strings that stretched like hot glue and sealed when they snapped. The suit squealed where the fluid ran and left the fabric. Puckered things grazed here. Small white bodies moved along the fleshy stalks like slugs made of tallow, leaving pale, polished tracks behind them. A translucent sack the size of a backpack ballooned from a wall, shivered, and parted along a seam to dump a rope of new tissue into the runoff before sealing and retracting below. A long slit opened and closed in time with the main thrum, some sort of valve with muscle behind it. Every opening cycle spilled a wash that gathered loose fragments into a single mass. That mass bumped my boots and held there, sticky and warm as the current pressed it against me, as if the system was trying to present it to me. My stomach cramped involuntarily. Sweat pooled under the collar of this suit and ran cold down my spine. I pushed the mass away and watched it roll back against me on the next pulse. Patient as a tide. A stalk slid down on my right and set its lens a foot from my faceplate. The dilation pattern changed. The fold under my palms stiffened, then tilted just a few degrees. The valve below widened and stayed open through a full drumbeat. The message was clear. Down. Overthinking leads to death in situations like this, so I simply dropped down. I fell further and landed softer than I expected, hitting with a soft, squishy thud and a squelch. Heat rolled out in slow layers. The headlamps started to haze over from a film that crawled under the lens. Not water, but something that beaded and refused to clear. I wiped with the back of my wrist. The smear doubled the glare and turned the beam into a milky oval. The HUD glitched, strobed white, and quit. Mask purge, did nothing. The glass fogged and kept fogging, every breath. A blindfold getting tighter. I had two choices. Crawl blind or get the thing off my face and risk the exposure. I broke the seal and lifted the helmet. Air hit like I'd opened an oven door at a slaughterhouse. Hot, sweet, metallic, and wrong in a way that promised I'd taste it for weeks to come. The liquid climbed. It came across my boots and up my shins, clear until it touched fabric and left puckers that pulled threads. I tried to get higher on the ridge. The ridge answered by tilting a few degrees and putting me back. The wash took my knees and held there. Pieces started arriving. Not random debris. Portions, pale lobes, slick ribbons, small sacks that pulsed when they bumped my legs. They gathered against me in twos and threes, then in a dozen. I brushed them away. They returned with the next surge. As the liquid continued to rise, waist height, chest height, and rising. I tried to keep my jaw clamped shut and breathe through my nose. The level came up to my collarbone. Another pulse and the liquid rose to my mouth, then my nose, and I was holding my breath the way you hold it when you have nothing but panic. Something soft met my lips. I kept them sealed until my chest burned and my hands went flailing. My body made the decision for me. I opened my mouth, gasping for air. The first mouthful hit with copper and sugar. I gagged hard enough to cramp and it still went down. The next came a second after. A ribbon slid between my teeth and I bit down, trying to stop it, but the other half simply slid down my throat. My body did the rest. I fought it, kicking, coughing, biting. But the Wash kept feeding. Each time a piece went down, another took its place, and the ones I managed to spit out came back around with the tide. It went on long enough for panic to start creeping away. My chest eased in a thin band under the sternum, and the space under that band opened. The hunger walked in and made itself at home. It didn't feel like appetite. It felt like a velocity I couldn't hope to stop. It got easier to eat once the body understood there wasn't any other choice. The buds were small at first, until they weren't. Some were ribbed, some were smooth. One had a seam, and when I broke it open, it exhaled a sweetness that put saliva on my tongue before I could chew. I remember something that looked like an altar made of bone. I remember getting lifted onto it and being offered a portion that steamed in the wet air and smelled like a childhood I didn't have. I remember thinking I would do this one more time to buy just a few more moments. I remember looking down. My hands were busy tearing into a pile of entrails and stuffing them down my throat. After that, the chambers blurred. The system carried me forward by inches, then by feet. I ate what it gave me. Sometime after that, after a lot of that, the pressure changed in my ears and the heat shifted to something external. The floor lifted, elevating me. Slowly, the mouth I'd fought through earlier unrolled itself and pulled me through. I crawled because crawling was what I had left. I hit the cool of concrete and stayed there until hands took me. Black cut in, then white.

B (55:27)

Warning Signal interruption detected.

A (55:33)

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D (56:02)

Hey there. Darkness prevails here. Founder of eeriecast, my little network of scary shows. I appreciate you listening to our scary content, but did you know you can support us? Get ad free feeds of your favorite shows, get a 20 discount code to the Eeriecast store and unlock access to members only audiobooks all at the same time. Just go to eeriecast.com/plus and become a member today. It's cheap and really helps us out. That's eeriecast.com/plus. Thank you.

B (56:37)

Signal connection restored.

F (56:42)

Ceiling tiles off. White hairline crack from the vent to the sprinkler head, fluorescent lighting buzzing at a pitch that made me grind my teeth. Wrists and ankles locked in vines that bit because I'd swelled under them. A brace across my chest, another across the thighs. My stomach rode up, round, and engorged. It hurt like I'd swallowed a beach ball. The intercom clicked and settled into a calm voice that filled the room.

H (57:23)

Agent Vance, you're secured in Medical two. You're safe. We need to run through a quick assessment.

F (57:32)

My throat tried to get a sentence out. Only one word got past. Meat.

H (57:42)

We'll address nutrition. But first I need you too.

F (57:46)

Meat. Louder. It came out high and thin. The straps creaked. The brace bit into my skin. The word filled my mouth and pushed on everything that wasn't the word.

H (58:03)

Did you ingest anything? Unknown on sight?

F (58:07)

Pen on clipboard. Air moving in the hall, a hinge squeaking. Meat, I said again. My jaw kept working after the word came out, a practiced motion with nothing in it. A tech leaned to the observation window and swallowed. That small movement emptied me out from throat to gut. I pulled against the cups until the padding dug and the frame creaked. Place, I said, and hated hearing it and said it anyway. Mate, Agent, the voice said.

H (58:53)

Stay with me. You're back on the surface. You're safe.

F (58:58)

I looked at the seam where the door met the frame. Air leaked there, faint and sour. My teeth started to chatter. A long sound came from my stomach that was equal parts desire and demand. Meat, I said, because there wasn't anything else left that mattered, or could be made to matter. A lock popped somewhere behind my head. Paper shifted. Boots changed position. Meat, I said, the sound coming out deep and final. The speaker clicked, followed by a sigh.

H (59:43)

Bring it in.

F (59:44)

My mouth started salivating even before I heard the muffled cry coming from somewhere down the hallway.

B (60:11)

On paper. The decision to hold at floor two reads sensible. Lighter deployment, cleaner pulls fewer funerals and practice. Every artifact they move changes the shape of the room that receives it. A vial that makes glass from air does not become less itself because you put it in foam. A drum that eats sound keeps eating even when it rides out in a padded case. A box that changes perception and only responds to lies, does not forget the taste of them when it lives on a steel shelf. They are logging in inventory, collecting valuable assets. What I think is really going on is that Ashcroft is stalling, buying time, planning his next move. It's what I would do in his position. Appease the board just enough to gain some political leverage, and I was with them long enough to know that the Redwood Bureau doesn't finish its dinner before digging into dessert. Despite all the gains on pay paper, they don't like waiting. The price in blood is always paid by someone else. One runner is now a specimen behind glass, speaking only in requests for meat because the thing he was sent in for wasn't researched. This isn't a cautionary footnote. It is the cost column catching up to the revenue line. And if you think that story ends with a successful detox and a form letter, you haven't been listening to these reports. Stable in the way Command uses it means the lines hold. That lifts work and reports arrive on time. It does not mean the space is inert. Ashcroft is trying to buy those hours. Spacing storage, rotating personnel, slow walking the next lift. He won't get to keep that pace. The board will eventually argue that momentum is key to operations. Finance will discover that several units on floor two are worth more than every deployed asset. And that makes the next breach cost neutral. Every one of these positions will sound reasonable in the room where it's argued no one in those rooms has to live with what the artifacts do when people come into contact with them. If you're working this site, hear me Command will trade your life for a data point and call it procedure. The briefings won't say that, but the requisitions will count the body bags, and you'll see where the math lands. If you're posted topside, find a good time to leave. If you're already below, step back while you still can. There is no reward for dying alone under a fake restaurant. To the Bureau, you are rotting yourselves from the inside out, mistaking action for control and containment for victory. Every asset you bring upstairs buys you momentum toward a cliff you can't see. And once you go over, you'll take the whole organization with you.

C (63:20)

You.

B (63:21)

The only way this ends differently is if the people who still know how to say no say it now. It's not too late. Not too late.