Speaker 1: I've seen people torn apart in alleys with their mouths
still open in prayer. I've pulled children from buildings where
the ceiling came down before the rest of the world
could blink. I've been shot at, bombed, hunted through mountains,
and dragged through the mud and corners of the world
where diplomacy meant nothing. I've seen what men do when
they're starving and have nothing left to lose. I've watched
my team get picked off by camouflaged enemies. I've helt
friends as they bled out and made promises I couldn't keep.
War doesn't change you. That's a lie people tell themselves
to explain what they've become. War shows you what you
already were. If there was fear inside you, it pulls
it out. If there was rage, it makes it louder.
I stop being surprised a long time go, and that's
exactly why they picked me. They called us phantom echo
on paper, it doesn't exist. We weren't navy or rangers.
We weren't reconno delta. We were the ones who got
sent when all the regular tools broke, When whatever needed
to be handled wasn't the sort of thing anyone could
know about. I didn't ask too many questions. I'd been
in Phantom Echo for three years when it happened. We'd
seen some strange operations before, chemical labs buried under desert
tunnels that weren't on any maps, places soaked in blood
but scrubbed clean of names. But nothing came close to
what we walked into that night. Regard the briefing and
a hanger outside Quantico, there had been a string of
care the past two months. Isolated rural stretch in the northeast,
dense forestry, minimal cell coverage, maybe three thousand residents spread
across the county. They used to rely on timber and
animal testing grants. The facility in question hadn't operated in
over a decade. It had been tagged for demolition twice,
but nothing ever came of it. Locals referred to it
as the Doghouse, which told us enough about what went
on in there. Two deputies were sent in after someone
called about movement inside. Neither one reported back when dispatch
tried to reach them, radios were dead. That would have
been enough to raise concerns anywhere else, but in a
town like that, things fall apart without anyone noticing, so
they sent back up. Ten more went in same facility.
No one heard from them either. That's when we found
out it had hit the desk of our handler. She
didn't say much, she never did, just told us. The
official story was that it was a missing person's case,
local law enforcement still handling it, and there was no
federal involvement unless a body turned up. But some of
those missing officers weren't strangers. One had served with Ruth
before retiring into a small town police work. Another had
trained with Nolan when they were still in the core.
We pushed back hard, told command we had enough ties
to justify insertion, told them we didn't trust local resources
to manage whatever was happening inside that building. There was hesitation.
They gave us the usual boiler plate about overstepping jurisdiction,
about optics, about resource allocation, but we kept pressing. Eventually
they gave us a single directive, going quiet, observe report,
and get out. We came in under a thick canopy
of early fog. The dirt road up to the warehouse
had been overtaken by weeds, gravel kicked into furrows from
where cruisers had pulled off in a rush. We rolled
up in two Matte black suburbans, the most technologically advanced
phantom echo transport. The vehicles coasted to a stop in silence,
engines off the second wheels touched the outer perimeter. We
ran cold. That meant we weren't using lights to start with.
If something was watching from inside, we weren't going to
give it a head start. There were three cruisers parked
haphazard across the lot. One was angled sideways halfway across
a patch of overgrown moss concrete, driver door hung open.
Another had its rear light still pulsing red through the mist,
casting slow, bleeding strobes against the trunks. Specter one, dismount
I said into COM's voice, Low but steady. Specter two
on me. Three and four take rear approach five six,
hold perimeter until breach confirmation. Acknowledgments clicked back Immediately, We
moved clean. Specter two came up on my left, ruth quiet, focused,
always squared away. Spector three and four joined us, and
we peeled off behind the building, boots crunching lightly against frost.
US five and six stayed near the vehicles, rifles shouldered
scanning the tree line. Nobody said a word beyond call out.
That was how we operated. The warehouse stood three stories tall,
though the upper floor looked partially collapsed. Gray cement siding
stained in vertical streets from rain and time. A rusted
loading dock door was sealed shut by a chain that
had already been cut. Bolt cutters still sat nearby, blades
rusted at the hinge. The main entry was a double
wide security door with one panel cracked open, about two
inches long enough to get a boot in. I raised
my fist, held it for two seconds, then dropped it
forward breach signal. We flowed in smooth formation, tight, rifle up,
muzzles low but ready. Interior was cold, stale. The scent
of mold hit first, then dust. We swept left and
right corners, ceiling, undershelving, light beams moved in unison, cutting
through darkness with surgical rhythm. Specter one first floor clear
and entry, I said, pressing the mic clip to my shoulder,
marking doorways, holding for deeper push. Copy came back from
three rearsides negative, one broken window, second level, nothing else clear.
We moved room by room. First man slices the corner.
Second watch is high. Third moves through the threshold. The
fourth holds the rear two keep watch, and all four
doors are intact. No forced entry. PaperWorks still sat in
trays as if abandoned during a lunch break. No one
ever returned from whatever happened here hadn't started in a panic.
It had sunk in low. Specter one to all units,
I said, advancing north corridor, staging at interior junction. Maintained
sweep until next ping. We cleared the northern section and
regrouped to the main junction. One person was missing Specter three.
Then his voice came in overcom's contact possible access point
south Wing utility corridor, moving to investigate. Specter one copies
echo actual regroup on Specter three's position, Keep visuals tight,
weapons heart. We formed up and moved quickly, clearing the
stretch with practiced discipline. Specter three inspect four was standing
in a narrow service hallway. The lights aimed at a
collapsed shelving unit that had partially buried a stack of
old maintenance crates. Behind the debris, flushed with the floor
was a square hatch metal aged to a reddish brown
edges warked with rust. A short length of chain hung
from the side snapped clean through at the center. It
had been locked once. Specter six adjusted his grip on
the rifle and knelt to inspect the latch. Blood, he said,
old but not dried. Looks fresh compared to the rest
of this place. I stepped closer, pulling the flashlight from
my vest to get a better angle. The hatch was
scored along the edges, as if something had clawed it
open from underneath. The flooring around it had scratch marks
leading inward. Stack up. I ordered two and three on breach,
four and six secure the perimeter, five stays on overwatch.
Specter three braced the hatch, counted down from three and pulled.
The metal groaned against the frame before lifting with a crack.
The smell hit instantly, chemical rot. Beneath that, something else,
sharp and oily, biting at the back of the throat.
We dropped chem lights into the dark below and waited
for them to settle. They clinked against concrete, revealing a
vertical shaft with three bar studded rungs bolted into the wall.
Specter Io went first, then me, then the rest. The
air grew colder the further we dropped. My boots hid
the basement floor with a sharp slap. The walls were
a mix of bare concrete and panels of old surgical tile,
greenish gray, cracked in places. There were drains spaced every
few meters. The whole place had been designed for runoff.
One main hallway stretched forward, framed by doorways on either side.
Heavy industrial fixtures hung from exposed beams above us, most
of them flickering, some dead. The hum of the electrical
grid echoed through the walls with an uneven pulse. Some
of the lights buzzed, as if struggling against resistance. They
couldn't overcome. Specter one to all units, I said, interior
secured basement layout seems consistent commenced sweep pears gold blue, red,
maintain radio discipline. Teams acknowledged. We broke off that corridor,
long curved, windowless disappeared around a bend that none of
us could see past. It had a feeling to it.
We had no idea what we were walking into. Gold
Advancing ahead, I said, into the colms. As Specter two
and I pushed deeper into the corridor, the curve of
the hallway gradually straightened, stretching toward a heavy door at
the far end. The other teams peeled off ahead of us,
each taking one flank. Our boots echoed across the concrete.
The sounds followed by the close, lifeless air. Blue team
clearing room ten, negative on contact, Red team entering storage,
blood and walls, no bodies. I glanced toward Ruith Specter two.
He gave a sharp knot and kept low. His rifle
moved in tight arcs across the hallway. As we advanced,
my own breath started to slow. Training madeor body control
fear without even noticing muscle steady, steps measured, but something
about this place started pulsing against that discipline. We reached
the final door. It was sealed heavy with a forced
viewing panel, fogged from inside, no visible locks, just the
steel handle slick with something red that had dried in
sharp edged streaks. I raised the closed fist, signaling the
breech sequence once more. Ruth stacked beside me, checking his six,
and then looking forward. I gave the countdown with my fingers, three, two, one.
We breached. The smell was worse than rot, worse than
dead decomposing bodies. It was the stench of blood broken
down in heat, metallic and wet but turned thick by time,
a meat stench soaked in aeumonia and something sour like digestion.
The room beyond was wide, its walls tiled in the
same crack surgical green, and the lights buzzed with a low,
uneven hum. They were all there, the missing officers. Twelve bodies,
maybe thirteen. It was hard to tell if it was
even a body, strung up from the ceiling by their
own veins. The tissue had been pulled from wrists, ankles,
even faces. Some a cords of vascular tissue looped through
eye sockets and threaded into the rafters. Others had their
arms opened at the elbow, the tendons splayed and pinned apart,
as if someone had tried to peel them into patterns.
One man's legs were bent backward and suspended by ropes
of ligature carved from his back, tethered to iron scaffolding
like a grotesque poppet. One officer's face had been sliced
vertically down the middle, split open to reveal muscle and teeth,
the two halves hanging open draped across his shoulders. His
eyes were still wet, ruth dry, heaved beside me owed
his rifle for a second, bracing against the wall. What
the hell, what is this, he muttered, voice clipped, trying
to stay on Commons protocol but failing. I stepped forward,
barely managing to steady my grip. Specter one to all teams,
I said, loud, now we've located the officers. They're deceased.
Multiple units, heavy mutilation, intentional positioning. This is a kill
sight Repeat, this is a A burst of screaming cut
across the radio. Sharp violent gun fire immediately followed rapid bursts,
some automatic, some staggered and wild. Contact contact Red teamers, movement,
Blue team. We're hearing the fire, red report, then more gunfire,
no return call. I looked at Ruith. His face had
gone pale beneath the tactical helmet. He adjusted his rifle
and nodded. Once neither of us spoke, he turned back
to the hallway. Specter one to all units, I said
into the radio. As we backed out of the flesh room.
My voice was steady, but I could feel the tremor
at the edges. We need a regroup. Repeat, we are regrouping.
Meet at center corridor, intersection of sectors. We seemed to
be compromised. Copy that came from Blue Team. No response
from Red. Still, Ruth was at my side again, rifle raised,
scanning every shadow that shifted across the tile. The hallway
swallowed sound in a way that made it difficult to
tell where gunfire had originated somewhere ahead, but muffled smothered
by the bend in the corridor. My boots struck the
concrete with a hard rhythm, and I could hear Ruth's
breath catching beside me in short, sharp pulls. We cleared
the first curve and spotted Blue Team moving fast toward us.
Two silhouettes framed by flashlight spill, their beams cutting through haze.
Then I hadn't been there before. There was condensation gathering
along the walls, smeared in wide, greasy arcs. The air
had grown denser, thicker, as if something had shifted in
the pressure around us. Blue Team status. I called out
negative contact. Visual came the response hasty and clipped. Something
moved across the hall no silhouette, but the lights went
out for two seconds, full blackout. Red Team hasn't responded.
We passed their last known location. No visuals, no bodies,
we fell into step. Blue Team at the front, now
Team Gold trailing behind. Formation was loose. Tension had crept
in without anyone admitting it. Every rifle was up, safeties off.
We didn't wait for full regroup. The priority had shifted.
We needed eyes on red and fast the hallways. Second
curve was just ahead, cutting off our view past the
column of load bearing wall and a row of sealed doorways.
The overhead lights grew more unstable. Then Blue team stopped.
They just froze. One of them raised their hand, flat
and trembling contact front. He said, low and tight through
the colms. We held our breath. The other, barely above.
A whisper followed with what the hell is that thing?
He didn't finish his sentence. The gunfire started without another word.
Flashlight beams danced across the wall as one of them
staggered back, shouting orders. We couldn't make out. Rounds ripped
through the darker head Muzzle flashes lit something massive, tall
enough to nearly reach the ceiling. Hunched but fluid. For
a second, I saw something move, a ripple across flesh
where flesh shouldn't have been. Tendons stretched over a bone structure,
that bent in directions I didn't understand. Then it vanished
from view. Raised his rifle finger to trigger, but couldn't fire.
With Blue Team directly in the path, neither could I.
We just watched, and in front of us the corridor
became a slaughterhouse. The lights above us dimmed all at once.
The hum of electricity dropped into a low register, as
if the voltage itself had been pulled for a filter.
Ruth stepped beside me, frozen mid aim, his rifles still
trained ahead. Blue Team stood just ahead of us, still firing.
Their muzzles lit brief fragments of something. Then I saw
them from the ceiling above the nearest support beam. Something
began to emerge. Thin tensils slid down, first, translucent and
shimmering in the flickering light. They pulsed with a thick
fluid movement, undulating in short jerks. Then more followed. I
tried raising my gun, but they dropped too quickly to react.
They hit the floor like ropes soaked in blood. One
of the Blue Team operators, Santos, saw them a second
too late. A long, fleshy appendage coiled down behind him.
They reached the cross's shoulder, fingers made of living surgical tools,
scissors of folded cartilage, syringes filled with amber colored fluid,
barbed hooks embedded directly into pink muscle. The limb moved
with no sound but a twitch of wet tissue stretching
under strain. Before Santos could turn, a needle rammed into
his shoulder, plunging deep with no resistance. His scream cut
through my head. Set with such rawness, I dropped my
fingers from the trigger. It wasn't a shout of pain.
It was shocked, terror, betrayal by his own body. His
limbs convulsed, the veins and his neck swelled black against
the skin. Then they began to move. The needle dragged upward,
lifting him by his own circulatory system. His body went rigid,
arms flailing once before they locked. Blood vessels stretched from
his skin, pulling free with a sickening pop. As the
flesh tore, he rose into the air, his body unraveling,
veins peeling from his limbs like pulled wires, muscles splitting
apart in ribbons. His scream collapsed into a gargling moan,
then nothing but air, moving through torn lungs. I growed
earth by the back of his vest and pulled him,
forced us both into motion. Our boots pounded against the concrete,
water and blood slick beneath our souls. I didn't look back.
I didn't want to see if that thing was behind us.
I only wanted walls between it and us. We ran
deeper into the corridor, past the junction, past the doorways
we hadn't cleared yet. One of them stood half open,
the overhead light inside flickering in dull pulses. An exam room,
by the looks of it. I swung through first, rifle up, eyes,
cutting across every shadow, empty lenonium floors, an overturned gurney,
a sink still stained with something that had dried into thick,
crusty lines. No movement, no sound except the thudding in
my chest. Clear, I shouted. Ruth slammed the door shut
behind us, and braced his back against it. I grabbed
a metal tray cart, flipped it and wedged the corner
into the handle. Then we both shoved an old filing
cabinet against it, scraping it across the floor with a
grind that felt bone shatteringly loud. But we didn't have options.
The lights above us blinked again, slower now. The ceiling
fixture pulsed once, then went dim. We were left in
the dull wash of emergency lights lining the floor, casting
everything in weak red that made our skin looked bruised.
Ruth's mouth was open. He was trying to catch his breath,
but nothing came steady. I wasn't doing any better. My
own lungs felt dry, hollow, as if the air had
thickened around us and refused to be taken in. We
scanned the room again, this time looking for cover. The
cabinets wouldn't do. Neither were the table. I spotted a
storage closet on the far wall, the handle slightly rusted
but still intact. I yanked it open, shelving lying the inside.
We climbed in and shut the door behind us. There
wasn't enough space to sit. We crouched shoulders to shoulder,
back against the steel wall. I could feel Ruth trembling
beside me. I didn't blame him. My hands was shaking.
Two then we heard it. Footsteps was something similar, at
least the floor grown beneath the weight of each one.
Whatever it was, it wasn't rushing one step, then another,
then a pause, then more, back and forth, again and again.
It wasn't searching. It already knew where we were. We
didn't move, Our eyes stayed locked on the sliver of
red light under the closet door. There was no mistaking
what we were hearing. It was waiting. Twice something dragged
across the door frame, metal scraping on metal, then something softer,
a sound that reminded me of wet skin sliding against tile.
The handle never turned, the door never budged, but it
stayed there. Breathing. Ruith leaning close, his mouth almost against
my ear. His voice was cracked and dry. We need
to go. If we sit here, we're done. You hear it.
It's out there waiting. It's gonna get in. Eventually, I
turned my head just enough to meet his eyes in
the dim red light. He looked pale and soaked with sweat.
His hands trembled around his rifle, not from fear, from helplessness.
If we move, I whispered, we die faster. Ruth shook
his head just once. We can't stay here. I leaned forward,
voice even lower. Now you saw what happened, I was
Santo's stumped an entire drum of seven six y two
into it, full auto, chest arms center. Man, it didn't
even seem like whatever they were shooting had slowed down.
I paused. The footsteps started again. I don't know if
it feels pain. I don't know if it sees in
the way we do. But I know bullets don't stop it.
We tried to run it. Hears us. You go out there, Ruth,
you know what happens. Ruth looked away, jaw clenched tight.
Ruth tapped my leg once, then again. I locked at him.
His eyes were no longer panicked. Something in him had hardened.
The sweat was still there, and his chest still moved fast,
but his face had gone quiet in a way that
I had seen before a decision had been made. I've
got a flash, he whispered. I throw it far enough
down the hall, draw it forward. I can loop back around,
pull it away from this side. No, I said immediately.
My voice was sharp, louder than I meant. I pulled
it back in time. You won't make it, I might,
he said, if I wait for the exact moment between steps,
I can time the throw, make the move before it resets,
get fire enough before it hears the echo off the tiles.
You won't make it, I repeated. We're gonna die in
here if we don't try something, he said, pulling the
flashbang from his vest, he checked the fuse thumb running
across the pin. If I make it out, I call
for evac. If I don't, wait sixty seconds, then move.
I grabbed his arm hard, look, he said, breaking eye
contacts with me. I'm not trying to kill it. I'm
just giving us a chance. I didn't let go of
his arm for a second. We both sat there frozen.
Then he pried my fingers off one ahead of time
and pushed the door open, just wide enough to slide through.
He paused once in the gap, rifle slung flashbang in hand.
Sixty seconds, he said, wait for the pop. The door
clicked shut behind him. I counted the seconds in my head,
but I never made it to ten. The flashbang went
off close enough that my ears filled with a solid ring.
For a moment, I thought he'd done it. For a
moment I thought his plan would work. Then came the scream,
but not human. The air behind the wall shuddered with it.
Something massive struck the ground hard, A wet slam that
shook dust from the overhead duct. Then another scream, this
one human. I dropped my head, clenched my fists, and
pressed my back against the wall. The screaming became an
animal thing, sharp gasps between gurgling brakes. I heard bones crack,
multiple at once, then a long, dragging scrape. Ruith screamed again,
short at this time, then nothing. I stayed in that closet,
curled tight against the steel frame, hands covering my ears.
The silence that followed was worse than the noise. It
was filled with a slow dripping of something thick. Hours
passed that way, maybe more. I don't remember falling asleep.
I don't even know if I did. My body shut
down at some point, but my mind stayed sharp enough
to keep me awake on the inside. That kind of
exhaustion eats at you differently. It strips away the fear
and leaves something slower behind. So when the sound finally came,
it didn't register as real at first. Gun fire, not
the bursts we trained with, not our rifles. These were
deeper and heavier, but unmistakable gun fire. Each impact sounded
like it had metric tons of weight behind it. I
straightened against the closet wall. My hands moved on instinct,
clutching my rifle, though I didn't raise it. I had
boots hit the ground in tandem. Orders shouted and clipped burst,
but I couldn't make out the words through the ringing
that still haunted my hearing. Something massive hit the ground.
Then silence. This was the silence that comes after impact,
the silence that follows certainty. The closet door swung open.
My body folded inward before I could stop it. My
hands shot up in front of my face. My breath hitched.
Every muscle braced the pain that had already played out
too many times in my head, but it didn't come.
A gloved hand grabbed my vest collar and he yanked
me forward. My boots scraped across the tile, and I
landed hard and the exam room floor, blinking against a
sudden change in light. A figure stood over me, motionless.
He wore matt black gear textured with a hexagonal weave
I didn't recognize. The armor looked dense, layered with composite
plates I'd never seen issued. His helmet was sealed, no
eye lip, just a smooth black shell with a small
set of circle events over the mouth. Who the hell
cleared you for this sight? His voice came through a
filded modulator, deep and level. I opened my mouth, Nothing came.
I tried again. We were responding to a call local
PD missing personnel we had. He didn't wait for me
to fix. He reached down, grabbed me under the arm,
and hauled me upright with one hand. His strength was effortless,
mechanical foremost. I stumbled as he pulled me forward back
through the ruined exam room toward the hallway beyond move,
he said, I followed. There was nothing else I could do.
As we rounded the corner, back into the corridor where
Blue Team had fallen, I saw the others, a full squad,
all wearing the same armor, six of them working in
complete silence. Two were standing beneath the scaffolding where some
of my teammates and friends had been strung up. The
bodies were still suspended, the veins pulled tight like wires
in a loom. One operative stood on a portable rig,
humming with faint blue light. Using a blade that vibrated
faster than my eyes could track, he sliced cleanly into
the vascular cords severing each. The other caught the falling
corpses in reinforced sheets of black mesh, wrapping them fast
and sealing them with something that hissed when activated. I
turned my head to the left. Another figure stood in
the center of the hallway over the remains of what
looked to be Blue Team. There was almost nothing left,
blood soaked the walls, Limbs had been torn into segments.
One of the torsos had been fused to the ceiling above,
veins pinned through the tile. The operative aimed a compact
device at it, adjusted a dial, and pressed the trigger.
Flames burst forward in a controlled stream, blue white, hotter
than anything I'd ever seen. The sound was low and steady,
more pressure than raw. I watched the remains break down
in real time. They just disappeared. I didn't even get
to see Ruth's body. None of them looked at me.
As we moved through the carnage, another operative broke from
the group and stepped in front of me. He carried
a device in his left hand, small black rectangular with
a ring of senses pulsing around a central lens. He
held it up to my face without a word. A
sharp light flickering across his eyes. He glanced down, scrawled
with his thumb, then muttered under his breath, minimal exposure,
no strain with intolerance, psychic contamination below containment threshold. The
one who had pulled me from the closet turned to
face me directly, even through the modulated filter. His voice
was colder than anything I'd heard in a briefing room.
You were never here, he said. I didn't answer. He
reached into a pouch at his side and pulled out
a small black envelope, sealed no writing. He shoved it
into the front pocket on my vest, then stepped back
without another word. I stood in that hallway, surrounded by
the dying echoes of my team's final moments, and understood
something that none of our training had prepared us for.
I filed the report less than twenty four hours after
they pulled me out, standard procedure, full after action debrief, name, date, coordinates, objectives, outcome.
Except nothing I wrote down matched anything in the system.
My clearance codes failed, my logging access had been restricted.
When I finally made it through to our handler, she
stared at me across the screen without blinking. There was
no deployment at that location. She said. I told her
about the call. She didn't respond, just tilted her head
and clicked through something on a second monitor. I couldn't
see her expression never changed. There's no mission filed under
that directive. You've been on mandatory leave for fourteen days.
Your team is listed as KA during a training exercise
in Arizona. I told her that was impossible. She continued
as if I hadn't spoken. Your discharge is being expedited.
We'll have a transport arranged within the hour. Further questions
can be submitted through the medical review board. Then the
screen cut out. They sealed the identities of everyone on
Phantom Echo. Official statements said equipment failure during desert training,
no remains discovered, close caskets, military honors. I was not
listed as present. When I returned to the safe house,
they had temporarily assigned me. I finally opened the envelope
I was given. Inside was a single photograph, black and white, grainy,
A figure half shrouded behind a surgical screen, limbs spread
across an operating table that didn't have restraints. Its body
was twisted long, slick with something that gleamed under fluorescent light.
The shape was human at first glance, but the proportions
were wrong, too much stretch across the arms. The fingers
were extended curved outward on the back of the photograph,
written in block capitals with the pen that had bled
through the paper. The fingers were extended curved outward on
the back of the photograph, written in block capitals with
a pen that had bled through the paper. Containment protocol
Marionette and beneath it her phone number the Military center psychiatrist.
I told him nothing. He checked boxes, scribble notes, and
after the fourth session, submitted a recommendation for full discharge
under psychological duress. I haven't heard from anyone since I
haven't heard from my handler, and all agencies screen my calls.
I call the number given and it was an arrangement
to join a private military presumably the team who came
in and rescued me. Deep down, I want out to
put this life behind me, but I have a feeling
that if I don't join, I'll disappear Kia during a
training exercise and scrubbed from all records.