Speaker 1: We hagged our way through the jungle like we were
pealing back time itself. Every branch and root we cut
and stepped over felt like it hadn't been touched in decades,
maybe longer. The heat pressed down on us, wet and constant,
and the insects came in waves that never seemed to stop.
Somewhere overhead, monkeys shrieked and fell silent, just as quickly.
That silence always made me pause. None of us spoke much.
The machetes did the talking, slicing rhythmically as we followed
the barely visible trail. Lewis wore existed. I didn't see it,
but he moved with a confidence false or not. We
didn't have better options. Around midday we reached the clearing,
or more like the jungle gave up for a second,
and in the middle was a rise of uneven stone,
half swallowed up by moss and earth. It could have
passed for a hill if not for the exposed edge
of something unmistakably artificial, withered concrete, and the rusted corner
of a metal structure poking out like a broken rib.
No one said anything right away. Then from behind me,
her voice muttered low and breathless. There it is. We
moved closer, rushing back the foliage. The moss came off
in heavy sheets. Underneath a swastika, barely visible, faint from
time and grime was stamped into the concrete, half melted
from what looked like an old fire. None of us
reached out to touch it. Geez, someone whispered, we'd found it.
The bunker wasn't a myth. It was real, and it
was here. Lewis stepped forward and ran his hand along
the edge of the old hatch embedded in the slope,
tracing the rusted wheel lock. He bowled gently, and it
groaned like something waking up. The door was ajar, only slightly,
but enough that the smell hit us almost immediately, old oil,
mold metal, and beneath it all something else, sweet and rotting.
Ventilation shaft might be clogged, I offered with a chuckle.
A flashlight clicked on beside me. No words, just a
beam of light piercing down into a dark mouth cut
into the earth. None of us said it out loud,
but we knew we were going in. The ladder was
slick with condensation and rust. I climbed slowly, each wrung,
groaning under the weight, until my boots hid the concrete
floor with a dull, wet thud. The air down there
wasn't just stale, It had an artificial weight to it.
No power. That much was immediately clear and expected. The
ceiling fixtures overhead were shattered, wiring frayed and exposed like vines,
brittle and dead. The corridor stretched out ahead of us
in both directions. Jonah stepped past me first, hadn't brushing
the wall as we moved, Concrete still solid, he muttered,
reinforced and some half baked shelter. We passed a rusted plaque,
the German text barely legible. Sector one undercomfed quarters. The
rooms were narrow lined on either side of the hall,
like cells inside rows of metal bed frames, stripped of sheets.
What remained of the mattresses had slumped into soft mounds
of black mushrooms had taken root in one another had
the impression of a body long gone, just the shape
still there in the stained foam, like a fossilized absence.
Someone opened a crate near the far wall. Dust plumed
out food rations, Jonah said, still sealed. Sasha lifted one
and turned it over. They labeled everything by name, date, roll,
caloric requirement. She pointed to the faded ink Jane Nuss Lane,
three thousand calories, night watch. All so precise, but the
silence in those quarters told another story. Further in, we
found a hallway bulletin board. A photo was still tacked up,
barely hanging on four men, all in uniform German officers,
at least from what I could tell, standing in a
cramped hallway right here in the bunker. Their faces were
long and drawn, eyes sunk deep. One of them was
holding a small child. That's not wartime Germany, Sasha whispered
behind me. That's after they arrived here. The hallway ended
in a ball. Her door, half of its hinges rusted
and bent inward, like something had forced its way through
years ago. We ducked inside and found the largest room
yet storage, maybe though half the shelving had collapsed and
a fine film of mold coated the floor. Amid the
wreckage was a scorched binder. Jonas flipped it open gently,
and half of it crumbled in his hands. Manifest, he said,
eyes narrowing, look at this tight Names in columns, serial numbers,
dates of birth occupation nine hundred and seventy eight entries, men, women, children.
Sasha leaned over his shoulder, lips moving silently as she scanned.
They listed them all nurses, engineers, even barbers. No ranks,
I asked, She shook her head, only functions. They were
building a self contained population. In the far corner we
found the radio room, or what was left of it.
Shattered glass and twisted knobs lay scattered across the floor
like shrapnel. An old broadcasting mike hung from its wire,
swinging slightly in the humid draft. Banks of analog equipment
were ripped open, fuses missing, wires yanked out in clumps.
Doctor Kettley crouched down next to one unit and muttered,
this was military grade, state of the art for the time. Sabotage.
I asked. He didn't answer, but the way he stood
up told me everything. We lingered in the radio room
longer than we should have. No one said it, but
something about the broken equipment unsettled us in a different way,
not just because it was destroyed, but because it had
been intentional, as if someone had wanted to make sure
no word ever left this place again. We moved on.
Sasha suggested we start marking rooms as we went, chalk lines,
basic numbering, smart idea. It helped gave the illusion of control.
Past the supply wing, we found a heavy door, partially ajar,
with a tarnish brass plate above the frame. Officer untercomfed
officers quarters. The air inside was different. Still, dust floated
in the beams of my headlamp, like falling snow, untouched
for decades. Jonas moved toward the desk, opened a drawer empty,
another paper scraps, a yellowed photograph of someone blurred and smiling.
Nothing useful. Sasha knelt beside the trunk. Help me with this.
I unclasped the rusted latch and helped to lift the
lid inside her wall. Officer's coat folded beneath it, something
wrapped tightly in a stiff brown cloth tied with a
leather strap that cracked as she unwrapped it. A journal.
The leather was dark, almost black with age, but still intact.
A rusted iron clasp held it shut. Sasha took a breath.
This might be useful. She worked the class blose. It
took effort, it hadn't been opened in years. A sharp
metallic snap then a shudder as the leather flexed. She
peeled it open carefully, revealing thick, yellowed pages, covered in tight,
immaculate writing, and on the inside cover scrawled in deliberate
blocky script, I am Eric Mahler, Engineer. If these pages
are found, know that we are not all willing. We
exchanged glances for a long second. No one said anything.
Then Sasha turned the page and we began to read.
May twelfth, nineteen forty five. I have arrived in South
America at last. The journey was as surreal as it
was harrowing. After months of uncertain passage by submarine and
stolen air craft, we landed on foreign soil with the
promise of salvation. The promise was whispered with fervor by
those who orchestrated our passage, a promise of a new beginning,
away from the ruins of a lost war. Dozens more
arrived in the weeks that followed, Scientists with eyes bright
from hope and despair, soldiers whose uniforms were astained with honor,
as with regret. Families clinging to the belief that they
too might start over. We were all emigrants of circumstance,
united by the lie of salvation. In time, we began
the construction of something vast, an underground complex that stretched
out beneath the unforgiving jungle. We labored, our hands and backs,
broken by ceaseless work. Slave labor, both forced and self imposed,
carried bricks and mixed mortar in the dim light of torches.
The complex was designed to be our haven. One day
we would shelter as many as a thousand souls. Already
the numbers grow, and each new arrival reinforces our resolve,
though and gnawing doubt stirs at the edge of my mind.
June third, nineteen forty five The days of growing colder,
though the jungle remains unyielding in its humored embrace. Communications
with Germany have all but ceased. At first, the higher
ups maintained that the war raged on had justification to
seal us inside this very bunker. But now with every
passing day, I find my certainty waver. The radios have
fallen silent, and the orders we once received from Afar
and nothing but echoes of a past that no longer exists.
Inside these walls, the leadership insists we remain sealed in.
They assure us that outside the chaos reigns that our
isolation is the only means to preserve the future. Yet
I wonder, if the war has truly ended, why must
we be locked away in the dim corridors. I hear
the soft laughter of children, the sound both haunting and tender.
New life has been born here in the dark recesses
of this underground world. They grow up, knowing nothing of sunlight.
Their only lullaby the hum of machinery and the distant
groans of the bunker. I cannot shake the feeling that
we are no longer the architects of our fate, but
rather subjects in a grand experiment. The silence from the
outside grows ever more oppressive, and with each passing day,
the control exerted by those of the helm titens like
a noose. I fear what might come next, and I
write these words in the hope that they may serve
as a warning should anyone ever find them. September fourteenth,
nineteen forty six. I have not written in some time.
The work has consumed us all. But it is not
construction that keeps our hands busy now in his research.
Though I am an engineer by trade, I am often
called to assist with logistics and infrastructure in section three,
the medical wing. It is there that the whispers began.
They called it Project Morgan Mint, the Man of Tomorrow.
Project a rebirth, they say, a better human, a stronger
on one who will be ready when the Reich rises again,
if not in this lifetime than the next. I've seen
the files. The injections are not just vitimin serums or
nutritional supplements, as they claim in official meetings. There are compounds.
I do not recognize, radiation laced fluids, growth accelerants, even
samples rumor to be derived from fungi found deep within
the jungle. Some subjects are brought in at night, barely conscious.
Others are volunteers selected with honors, but none of them
returned to the dormitories. A man named Dieta, a chemical
assistant from Sector two, questioned the project openly last week.
He was gone by morning. We were told he had
requested a reassignment to an external outpost. I don't believe
that outposts exist. Three nights ago, while checking airflow systems,
I paused near the ventilation shafts above the lower levels.
I heard something, a scream, not of pain, but of
pure confusion. It was drawn out in hollow, like someone
was trying to scream, all underwater. Then came the thud,
something slamming against the docted work. Once twice. They sounded
like heavy slaps. I have stopped asking questions, but I
haven't stopped writing them down. February seventh, nineteen forty seven.
We were lied to. There is no Reich, there is
no war, there is no Germany waiting to be reborn.
One of the young technicians and communications Rudolph barely twenty,
smuggled in a radio from the surface during a supply rotation,
a homemade receiver tuned to civilian frequencies. He played a
broadcast for US clear as a bell a station out
of Santiago, Chile, a full broadcast in Spanish, music, advertisements,
and politics. We lost long ago. The higher ups knew.
They have known this entire time, all of it. The isolation,
the lockdowns, the rationing, the indoctrination was to keep us here,
to maintain a closed system, a laboratory, not a refuge.
When the truth spread, there was panic, yelling in corridors,
officers pulling side arms. Rudolph was taken, so were the
three others who heard the broadcast directly. They said it
was a security breach, that outside voices are contaminated. A
few of us discuss mutiny quietly in passing. It lasted
two days before some one betrayed us. I was beaten,
not enough to kill, just enough to remind. One man
was dragged to Sector three. No one has seen him since.
I believe now that we are no longer survivors, rather
we are subjects. October twenty third, nineteen forty seven. It
is happening too fast now. I can hardly keep track
of the day's Sickness is everywhere, not just fatigue or malnutrition,
but something deeper. Flesh turns soft, almost sponge like, eyes
glaze over. Some have developed a sort of fever that
doesn't burn the skin but warps the mind. Men forget
how to walk, Women scream at nothing, and children are crying.
The experiments have escaped containment. No one says it out loud,
but everyone knows. It began with a breach in Sector three.
A door left open, a containment cell damaged. The lights
went out for less than two minutes, but it was enough.
They don't resemble people anymore. One moved through the upper
maintenance corridor. Last night, I didn't see it fully. It
moved in a sluggish pace. I heard gasps, then nothing.
When I returned with two others, there was no blood,
just clothing. Three men gone with no sign of struggle,
only the scent of salt and bile in the air.
Today I opened a sealed supply crate in the communal hall.
Inside were plastic wrapped packages. I read the labels coded
sterile clinical protein units processed, but it was warm. I
took a knife and cut one open. They were feeding
us the failures. Some knew, some didn't, but we ate anyway.
We had no choice. I vomited until nothing came out
but bile. I have not eaten since November ninth, nineteen
forty seven. This will be my final entry. There is
no more order here, only rituals, grotesque imitation of structure.
Men still wear uniforms. They marched the halls as if
the Reich still listens, as if this place is anything
but a grave. I was part of a small group
who tried to escape. There was an auxiliary hatch built
during the early days before the lockdowns. We found it
behind the water reserves, hidden under rebar and rotten crates.
Six of us planned to leave. We never made it
out together. Something followed us, a failed subject, if you
can even call them that. I saw its face for
the first time, a man on once new fissure. I
think his skin had melted like wax and re formed
in sagging layers. His jaw was unhinged, his ribs pulsed
like gills. He moved without urgency, like a predator that
knows nothing can escape. He crossed the jurgun against the
wall with one arm. I saw bones snap through his
thigh like dry kindling, and I screamed until her voice
gave out. Then tried to run and slipped on the
floor and what remained of someone else. We sealed the
hatch behind us, but I was injured. My leg is broken,
I can't walk. I volunteer to stay. The others are gone, now,
up that ladder and back into a world that might
not even be waiting for them. Maybe they'll make it back,
maybe not. I no longer care. This journal will remain
with me. If you are reading this, you must understand
we were not all complicit, We were not all monsters.
We didn't speak right away after the journal ended Sasha
closed it with both hands, slowly, like it might shatter.
She sat back on her heels, mouth slightly open, in
a stun silence. Jonas had been pacing in a tight
loop near the bed. Doctor Kettley hadn't moved at all.
He stood by the desk, arms folded, staring at the
floor like it owed him an answer. I couldn't think,
couldn't find a thread to hold on to. The words
were still echoing. Then Kettley spoke, we can't stop here.
I looked at him. What are you talking about? He
turned toward us, slow and heavy. This journal is It's
only a part of the picture. If half of what
he described actually and down there, we owe it to
history to see the rest. There could be evidence, proof,
biological remnants. You want to find them, Sasha asked, her voiceless, hoarse,
the things he described, I want to know if they're
even real, he said. Jonas nodded, arms crossed tightly over
his chest. He's right, we're already in. We can't just
run now, Jonas, We should run, Sasha said, rising to
her feet. This isn't a science project. This is a
mass grave, building a lie. There's a reason they sealed
it up. She looked at me, eyes raw, Tell me
you don't want to keep going. I didn't answer. The
air was changing heavier close to sour. I hadn't noticed
until then, but it was there. Clinging to my clothes.
Footsteps behind us. We turned to see Louis duck into
the room. His face was pale, a thin sheen of
sweat catching the light from his head lamp. He looked
at each of us, then down at the journal in
Sasha's hands. I read a few more pages, he said.
I didn't want to, but I did. He swallowed hard.
There's something wrong down here, and I don't want to
be a part of it. We're going down, Jonah said.
Louis stared at him, then turned to me. Don't go
with them. I didn't answer. A minute later he was gone.
The air felt colder once he left. The stairs to
the lower level had nearly rusted through, but the structure held.
We descended one at a time, our boots clanging softly
against the metal, echoing of the shaft. My head lamp
flickered once and stabilized. The damage was obvious from the start.
The walls were warped and bulging in place, like something
had pressed from the other side with slow pressure. Entire
panels were cracked open, revealing tangled veins of rusted piping
and torn cables. One segment of the ceiling had collapsed inward.
We dugged beneath it, crawling through to reach the next corridor.
As we moved farther down the corridor, the signs of
collapse became less like age and more like a struggle.
The walls were scarred with impact marks, some shallow, some
punched in deep. Sasha brushed her hand across the jagged
hole near a doorway. Her fingers came away, flaked with
rust and something darker beneath it. Bullet holes, Doctor Kettley
said quietly. Close range. We looked around and they were everywhere,
pock marked across the hallway, clustered around corners near doorways.
Sum heard fragments of brass casings still embedded in the
cracks between the floor tiles. Others were surrounded by long,
dried splashes of what could only be blood someone, maybe many,
had tried to fight whatever got out. The rooms on
this level had no beds, just rusted restraints, shelves of
ruined medical equipment. Doctor Kettley stepped ahead, his lamp, tracing
an open door. He froze. I turned to ask what
he saw, but before I could speak, I heard it breathing, wet,
strained like air, pushed through mucus and ruined lungs. Then
something shifted in the dark. As shape moved at the
edge of our light. Gurgling followed, long and low. I
felt the breath leave my body as something inside me
screamed to run. It was hunched in the corner, facing
away from us, a towering shape with limbs bent at
wrong angles and skin stretched too far to hold what
was inside. It was the shape of a man barely
Its skin was wet and sagging, shiny with dark sweat
or fluid, parts of it clinging to the bone, other
parts slowing off in folds where its joints met elbows, knees, shoulders.
Black fluid oozed freely and pulled on the floor in thick,
tar like globs. It was wearing something, or what remained
of something. A uniform, torn threadbare, stretched unto the fabric,
had embedded itself into flesh. The buttons were still there,
the collar fused to its body. One barefoot dragged behind
it grotesquely swollen and raw. The heel split open like
old fruit. The other foot thudded when it moved, heavy
and wet, and its face, no, it wasn't a face,
a mound of pale pull sagging and twitching, with holes
where features should have been. No eyes, just dark impressions,
like the sockets had collapsed inward long ago. Then it
sniffed a wet, rattling inhale that sounded like fluid bubbling
in a train pipe, and it turned toward us. Its
mouth opened wide. He released the groan, slow and shuddering
like a child. The sound echoed off the walls, wet
and heavy, and it slapped the wall with one massive hand,
leaving a smear of black. Doctor Kettley whispered something I
couldn't hear. His light dropped slightly, his hands trembled. The
thing stepped forward. We ran The hallway behind us felt
longer than before. Our boots hid the floor with a front,
lights bouncing wildly off the walls. Behind us. Came the
sound of meat hitting concrete, a sound that wasn't quite footsteps,
but not quite crawling either. Doctor Kettley tripped near a
broken section of piping, I turned too late. The thing
reached him in a blink. One bloated hand wrapped around
his waist and lifted him like a doll. Kettley's scream
tore through the hallway, then a crack. We kept running.
Jonas was ahead of me, nearly at the bulkhead we'd
come through when it happened. Jonas reached the doorway. He
turned to seal it. Tried to pull the reinforced door shut.
The creature's arm whipped around the corner like it was liquid.
A tendril slid into Jonas's mouth fast. His body arked violently,
feet lifting off the ground. As he convulsed. His eyes
went wide, then rolled back. His limbs flailed once twice,
then stopped. He collapsed, twitching once before going completely still.
The thing retracted its arms slowly. I backed away and
realized I was the only one left. I kept to
the left wall, then the right, mentally tracing every turn
we took. On the way down. My chest burned, my
legs wanted to give, but something beneath it all instinct
kept me upright. And then I saw the hatch we
came from. Relief hit like a punch to the gut
so sharp it made me stagger. I climbed up the
ladder and grabbed the iron wheel. Turned it nothing. It
didn't budge. I tried again, planted my feet, pulled harder.
The bolts groan faintly, but it didn't give. I felt
along the edges. There were no brakes, no external damage,
no collapse. The mechanism hadn't failed. It had been sealed
from the other side. Lewis who must have heard something
from the outside, or panicked, or maybe closed it wrong
on accident. My fists hid the hatch again and again, pained,
booming across my knuckles. I yelled, screamed his name, no
response behind me. Moisture, the faintest vibration underfoot, followed by
the moan. I shut off my light, backed into the dark.
The crawl space I'd found was barely wide enough to
fit through an old maintenance shaft, lined with torn conduit
and brittle cables. I didn't think about what might be
in it. I just dropped on my knees and slid inside,
scraping my ribs against the stone, arms, shaking as I
pulled myself deeper. I stopped maybe fifteen feet in, tucked
between two collapsed pipe junctions, Curled as tightly as I could,
My chest rose and fell so fast I was afraid
the sound of my breathing would give me away. I
clamped my hand over my mouth and waited. The thing
came into view, slowly, just light at first, bouncing dimly
from a lamp still lying in the hallway behind me.
Then the sound. There was a strip of fabric barely
holding to the remains of a coat or uniform, A
piece of cloth fused into the rotten flesh of the
Great's chest, barely hanging on a name tag Marla. The
lettering was faded, but clear enough, Eric Marler. It paused
near the hatch. I couldn't see it clearly anymore, but
I could hear it. It slapped the walls, sniffed the air, loud,
gurgling in hails, like a drowning animal struggling to taste
something lost. Then he began to speak, not full words,
but it tried anyway, Hugh, Hey, mine calm. I squeezed
my eyes shut and held my breath. I don't know
how long I stayed in that cruel space. My joints
had gone stiff, my mouth dry as bone, My flashlight
had long since died, and even the fear was beginning
to thin, giving way to something worse, the quiet belief
that this was it, that I would die down here.
I'd stopped listening for it, the thing, I thought maybe
it had a lost interest, or maybe it didn't need
to hunt any more. Then light flooding in from the corridor,
warm and golden, not the sterile white of her head lamps,
but sunlight, pure and alive, crashing through the darkness, like
a resurrection. In a voice, familiar, human, cracking with panic
and gilt. I came back a pause. I'm sorry I left.
Are you there, Lewis? My body reacted before my mind could,
but I wasn't the only one who heard him. I
scrambled out of the crawl space, half crawling, half tumbling.
My legs screamed, blood rushing back into numb muscles. As
I ran full tilt toward the hatch. The air stank
of heat and rot. The moon behind me grew louder closer,
the floor shook beneath its weight. Louise's face appeared in
the open hatch above, eyes, wide, flashlight in one hand. Hey,
what's going on? He yelled? I threw myself at the ladder,
missed the first rung slam. My shin climbed anyway. My
fingers fumbled for grip the metal slick with sweat and grime.
Louis reached down, grabbed my arm. He pulled. As my
head crested the hatch. I felt the pressure shift behind me,
a blast of heat, and a wet sound. The thing
was at the base of the ladder, I screamed. Louis
pulled harder, and I cleared the opening just as a
wet mass slammed against the underside of the hatch. He
slammed it shot. The thud echoed like a gunshot, metal
shaking under the impact. We stood there in the clearing,
both of us heaving for breath. I bent over with
my hands on my knees, trying to slow my heart.
Louis paced in wide, frantic circles, wiping sweat from his face,
mouth working like he wanted to say a dozen things
but couldn't pick one. Then he turned to me, eyes
wide hollow. Where's Sasha, he asked? I didn't answer. What
about Jonas and the professor? What happened down there? What
was that thing? My lips parted, but nothing came out.
I opened my mouth again, tried to form words, but
it was like they were stuck behind everything I had
just seen felt. Lewis stepped closer. Tell me what happened.
They're gone, I finally said, I just they're gone. He
stared at me for a long time, like he was
trying to read something I couldn't put into words. Then
slowly he pulled out his phone. I'm calling someone, he muttered.
He stepped a few feet away, murmuring into the speaker,
giving what details he could location, injuries, urgency. I just
stood there, numb, watching the hatch like he might start
rattling again, but it didn't. We left before they arrived.
Neither of us wanted to be there when they opened
it again, if they opened it again, but we knew
we had to stay, and so we did. A few
days passed. The authorities came, local police first, then federal agents,
and finally some one in clean uniforms with no names
on their jackets. They wouldn't say who they worked for,
only that the Sight was under investigation and we were
advised not to speak to the press. Weeks later, I
got a call. Lewis was on the other end, voice low.
They found it. He said everything, the bonker, the journal,
all of it. And I asked. He went quiet. No bodies,
he said, finally, No people, no creatures. I didn't respond.
This could have only meant one thing. They got out