Speaker 1: I wouldn't say we were evil, just bored. Eighteen years old,
first semester of college, two cocky for our own good.
Me and Derek mostly kept to ourselves. We weren't jocks
or frat types. We just liked messing with people. And
Jeremy was easy. He sat in the front row every class,
always took perfect notes, didn't talk to anyone like literally,
not once did I hear the guy make small talk,
even with professors. Just walked in with that same weird
little leather note book, eyes forward, no phone, no earbuds.
Who does that? It was like he was LARPing as
a nineteen fifties honors student. Plus, there was something about
him that rubbed people the wrong way, not that they
ever said it out loud, but everyone knew he was off,
like he didn't understand how other people worked. He never
got sarcasm, never reacted to jokes. If you bumped into
him in the hallway and said my bad, he'd just
stare at you like he was trying to decide what
species you were. He was rich, too, That didn't help.
His parents owned heartly by Logics, this huge farmer lab
that basically funded half the scholarships on campus, dead billboards
all over town with pictures of babies and smiling doctors,
clean white font, soft lighting, innovation from molecule to miracle.
Jeremy didn't act like a rich kid though, no flashy clothes,
no car. He wore the same beat up brown hoodie
almost every day. Derek and I started off small, just
dumb things, swapping out with his pens, hiding his bag
during lunch, calling him weird and embarrassing nicknames. He never
said a word back. He didn't even look at us
half the time, just kept walking, notebook clutched to his
chest like it was worth more than his spine. That
annoyed Derek more than anything. The way Jeremy acted like
we weren't even there. It was Derek's idea to check
his locker. Said it was a social service, whatever the
hell that meant. Mostly we were just bored between classes,
and Jeremy was always gone for lunch, probably hiding somewhere
with that stupid notebook of his scribbling equations or drawing
alchemy symbols or whatever weird stuff he was into. The
lockers weren't even locked. They were those old metal ones
with a padlock loop. But most people just use the
built in latch. Jeremy's was witch shut with a pencil
of razor, like he really thought that would keep anyone out.
Derek popped it open with a single pull. Inside books
all stacked perfectly. Note books, a couple of protein bars
in a zip lock, no decorations, nothing to allude to
the fact that a human was using this locker. It
looked more like a filing cabinet. What kind of psycho
keeps the locker this clean, Derek muttered, flipping through a binder.
Does he sleep in ear too? I was the one
who found the paper, folded and tucked behind a text book.
Looked like a grocery list at first, but then I
opened it up and realized it was directions and left
at the red house into the tree line. Walk until
you see the broken fence, past the creek wooden cap
in north facing door. Just that and at the bottom
scribbled several times. Make sure not to forget. Derek leaned
over my shoulder and squinted. Dude, what the hell I grinned?
Told you he was up to something. Derek took the
paper and held it like it was radioactive. You think
this is like where he goes to play wizard or something.
Who knows what that kind of kid gets up to
in his little hideout in the woodsman. Derek snorted, weird
little freak. We were still laughing about it. Where we
walked into kem lecture. Jeremy was already there front row,
has always writing something in that ugly brown notebook. We
slid into the row behind him. Hey, Jeremy, Derek whispered,
no response, You forget something. Jeremy didn't turn around, just
kept writing. I tapped the back of his chair with
my foot. We found your directions, man, you know red house,
broken vents, secret helf cabin. What's out there? Your moon crystal?
He froze pen midstroke. His shoulders locked up, and for
a second I thought he might actually say something. Derek
cleaned in voice louder, What do you even have in
there that's so important? He reached over and snatched the
notebook out of Jeremy's hands. Jeremy spun around, eyes wide,
don't he started, But Derek already had opened it. He
flipped to a random page and squinted. This hummund, hummund, dude,
what is this? This humunculus has shone from it. Jeremy screamed,
not yelled, screamed high and sharp, like we just lit
him on fire. He lunged forward and ripped the note
bug from Derek's hands so fast and nearly tore in half.
Derek toppled over, and Jeremy just turned and ran out
of the room, clutching it to his chest like a
wounded animal. Everyone in the room went silent. I felt
the heat in my face. Jeremy had, by all means,
just embarrassed us. Derek sat there for a second, jaw slack.
Then he blinked and said, did he seriously just do
that to us? I shrugged. Guess we had a nerve.
He looked at me, then at the door Jeremy had
vanished through. Dude. I said, let's go to his little hideout.
Derek frowned. What, Yeah, let's see what he was so
adamant to hide from us, I said, confidently. The walk
started off easy. Once we spotted the Red House, a
little squat place with peeling paint and a rusted mailbox.
We turned left like the direction said, and stepped into
the tree line. Branches curled overhead, thin and brittle. Everything
underfoot was damp, patches of old leaves and broken twigs,
all softened by rot. It wasn't raining, but the air
had waked to it, heavy with moisture, cold too, an
early autumn kind of cold. We followed the directions carefully,
as carefully as we could from my memory and Derek's groans.
The path got clearer the deeper we went. At first
I thought we were just making good time, but then
I realized the ground had been worn down. Something or
someone had been walking this way a lot. The grass
was crushed flat, no fresh prints, but the path was obvious.
Fifteen minutes in we spotted it through the trees. The cabin.
It sat, hunched at the edge of a shallow clearing,
small weathered croked just enough to make your head tilt
as seel. Square window at the front, clouded with grime.
Derek slowed down behind me. This the place I didn't hesitate.
You see any other cabins nearby. The door wasn't locked.
I pushed on it, and the hinges gave a low,
drawn out creak. Inside it was dark, no windows on
the sides, or if there were any, they were blocked off.
We clicked on our flashlights and stepped in Jeremy. Derek
called you home, no response. The air was stale, and
the cabin was one room, mostly empty. There was a
wooden shelf against the left wall, lined with a few
closed boxes, a workbench beneath the window, scratched and stained
but white clean, an old sink in the corner, the
kind with a hand pump. Well, nothing in air looks fun,
Derek muttered, shining his light across the floorboards. I was
about to respond when my beam landed on something at
the back of the room. A square cut into the floor,
barely visible from the way the boards lined up, and
a heavy iron runged trapdoor set within the hinges, and
a recessed handbill. I stepped closer. There were scuff marks
around the edge, some smudges of dirt, and other details
that made it easy to assume that this hatch was
used frequently. Derek stepped up beside me and whistled, low,
Guess this is where the real free show starts. I
reached down and pulled the handle and listened as the
door opened, cold air drifted up from below. The hatch
opened with more effort than I expected. My arm shook
by the time it finally gave The air that came
up wasn't foul, but it was cold and dry, with
a faint hint of chemicals I couldn't name. We stared
down into the narrow stairwell, wood at first, then concrete,
no railing. The flashlight beams stretched just far enough to
catch the bottom steps. Derek hesitated behind me. Are we
even sure this is his cabin? He asked? You really
going to act scared? Now? Who else would it belong to?
I said, as I stepped down each step and flexed
under my weight. Once we hid the concrete section, the
sound changed, less groaning wood, more hollow echo. At the bottom,
the passage flattened out. We stopped in front of a
steel door, tall and wide enough to belong in a
fall out shelter. It had no markings, just a bolt
lock across the center and a long horizontal handle beneath it.
I slid the bolt free, the metal resisted. It squeaked
half way, then gave I raised my voice, Jeremy, come
out freak. It echoed down the hall behind us and
disappeared no reply. I looked at Derek and the best
words he could muster rop were a shrug and a
dumb expression. I gripped the handle and pulled. The space
beyond wasn't big, but it was dense, maybe twenty feet across,
maybe more. The flashlight beams skated over cold surfaces, steel counters,
scuffed tile, tall metal shelving units packed tight with containers
and glassware. Beakers and clips adorned the area. None of
it looked abandoned. The dust was minimal, the floor was clean.
This place had been used recently, maybe even today. There
were two doors at the far end of the room
plane no labels. My eye caught a set of glass
cylinders built into the side wall, some empty, others too
murky to see inside. One of them held something pale
or maybe just sediment. Step beside me, Does this not
look like a lab he said, and nodded slowly. I
guess it kind of does. We walked further in boots,
soft on the tile, flashlights cutting through the dim and
still no sign of Jeremy anywhere. We approached the two
doors on the other side and chose the door on
the right. It wasn't locked, just the push plate and handle.
The hinges groaned as it opened, and the lights fell
into the room beyond. It was colder in there. In
the center of the room stood a surgical table, stainless steel,
tilted slightly, fitted with shoulder restraint and a dark draying
Beneath it. A folded towel sat at the edge, stiff
with something dry and reddish brown. To my left was
a tray of instruments scalpels, clamps, scissors, neatly arranged, all
clean IV bags hung from an aluminium stand in the corner.
Two of them were full. Another lay collapse on the floor.
Above the table was a surgical lamp with three segmented
arms frozen mid adjustment, aimed down as if expecting someone.
At this point, we both knew we were in a
place we had no business being in there, but we
had gone too far to turn back. Neither of us
wanted to wuss out. Derek moved closer to the stack
of boxes. His parents really let him play scientists in
the woods. I looked around the room and said, it
does look like some extreme kind of role play to me.
Derek went quiet for a second. Then dude, I can't
wait to tell everybody about this, especially now that I said.
As I moved closer to the stack of boxes. Derek
was standing next to. They were cardboard and stamped in blue,
hardly by logics. Derek saw them too. His flashlight hovered
over the logo for a second. We know we have
the right person. Derek gave out a half hearted chuckle
and turned back to the hallway. Let's check the other room.
Maybe that's where he is. The second door was heavier
than the first. I had to lean my shoulder into
it to get it moving. The hinges protested the hallway
we stepped in. Last thing I noticed was the glow,
a soft green light humming from the far wall. It
cast everything in a low aquatic haze, flickering faintly with movement.
Rows of tall, cylindrical pods lined the walls, maybe eight
feet in height two feet across. Each one was filled
with a thick liquid, not water, something heavier, slightly viscous,
almost gelatinous. The way it moved, shapes floated inside them,
some small, some large, all of them indistinct, bloated silhouettes.
I couldn't tell if they were alive or just suspended there.
Some were curled in on themselves, others just hung. A
few pots were empty. One was cracked instead, watching the
surface of the liquid as it rippled faintly beneath the
green light. Derek stood behind me, silent. I muttered, more
to myself than anything. Now this doesn't look like role play.
Maybe this actually belongs to his parents, Derek quipped. We
didn't hear it right away. The room hummed with low power,
not machinery exactly, just the background noise of his system
still alive. Shuffling from the far end, just beyond the
last row of pods, slow at first, like something dragging
across the floor, A wet movement, almost muffled. We stopped, Jeremy,
Derek called out, his voice echoed against metal and glass.
We know you're there. No response. The shuffling continued, like
it knew where it was going, accompanied by a low, rustling,
almost moist sound, something between breathing and licking. We began
walking toward it, running on nothing but pure unadulgerted confidence.
A flashlight shook a little in our hands. Derek's beam flickered, stuttered,
then steadied again. The sound grew clearer. Now it was
easy to identify the sounds of scratching, licking, and breathing.
I stopped walking. My throat was dry. I could sense
something was wrong, Jeremy, I whispered, Still nothing, but the
noise didn't stop. It was coming closer, Still no footsteps.
I raised my flashlight a little, focusing toward the back
row of pods, where the green glow was weakest. Then
something moved. It came from around the far side of
one of the large cylinders. I thought it was a
person crouched low to the ground, crawling, but then it rose.
My flashlight caught the shape full on. I froze and
it did as well. It stood upright, but barely. Its
spine bowed forward, forcing the thing into a permanent hunch.
The legs were too long Ditgiti, grayed like a dog's,
with tendons visible under paper thin skin. Feet splayed wide,
four toes, clawed, human in shape but not in function.
The arms hung low, longer than they should have been,
fingers ending in nails. They looked more like cracked hoofs
than claws. Its skin was uneven, mottled gray and pale brown,
dry in some spots and slick in others, like parts
of it had dried out while the rest kept growing.
Tufts of coarse hair clung to the back of its
neck and spine. Patchy and unclean. One shoulder looked almost
normal human muscle, familiar shape, but the other was swollen,
bunched with asymmetrical tissue, a mass that pulled slightly when
it moved. Its face was pointed, stretched forward into a
narrow snout, but not quite long enough to be animal.
The skin there was tight, almost translucented pulled too hard
across a skull that didn't match. Its eyes were white
set and cloudy, rimmed in red. There were no eyelids.
And then the jaw opened, not down but out. The
skin around its mouth split in four directions, revealing a
dark gullet and rows of teeth that spiraled inward rather
than back. It sniffed the air once, quick and shallow.
Then it came at us. Derek screamed as it collided
with him, knocking him backward into the side of the table.
He hit the floor hard, flashlights scattering across the tiles.
The thing dropped on top of him, hands slapping the
ground for balance. Mouth opened wide enough to split the
skin at the corners. I didn't think. I just grabbed
the nearest thing I could find, a metal rod leaned
against the wall, and swung it at the creature's side.
The hit landed and it shrieked, not high, pitched deep.
It rolled off Derek and stumbled sideways, knocking into one
of the pods as if flailed. The glass cracked then
gave way. Green liquid spilled across the floor, thick and slow.
Something inside the pod hid the ground with a heavy slap,
curled pale, twitching. It looked like a combination of an
anteater and a human. It twitched again, then moved arms,
dragging its body forward like it didn't understand how joints
were supposed to work. Derek scrambled to his feet. His
shirt was torn, shoulder bleeding. We turned toward the hallway,
but another pod cracked, then another hairline fractures spied a
webbed across the glass, and one of the smaller ones
burst outright, releasing something lean and fast that landed in
a crouch and snapped his head toward us. Then it sprinted.
We ran. The first one grabbed at Derek's ankles, nearly
dragging him down. I turned and swung the rod again,
catching its arm with a solid thud. It didn't scream
that time, almost like it was getting used to the sensation.
Derek kicked himself free, and we bolted across the room,
knocking over trays, kicking carts, anything to slow them down.
Behind us, another pod exploded, more liquid, more movement. Derek
tripped as we hit the edge of the room. His
foot caught on a cable or a pipe, I couldn't tell,
and he went down hard, arms out to catch himself.
I spun around, grabbed his jacket and started yanking him up.
But one of the things was already there. It came
from the side, fast and low, hands slapping the tile.
Its skin had a stretched, waxy look to it, thin
hair spouting from its scalp in random clumps. It didn't
look at me, just grabbed Eric's leg and started pulling
backward with sharp jerking motions, like a dog trying to
tear off a limb. Derek howled. I dropped the flashlight,
gripped the rod in both hands, and slammed it down
across the thing's arm. It didn't let go. It just hissed,
turned its head to me with that split, chored grin.
We were right next to the door. I dropped the
rod and grabbed Derek with both arms, dug my heels
in and pulled, removed maybe a foot, but that was
all we needed. I let go of Derek, then grabbed
the door and shoved it open. The creature's grip didn't loosen,
so I did the only thing I could. I grabbed
the edge of the door and slammed it into its
arm once twice. On the third hit, I felt something
give a crunch of bone and cartilage. It let out
a gurgling wheeze and retracted fast, skittering back into the
shadows and all fours. Derek crawled through. I followed, grabbed
the handle and pulled the door shut behind us. The
bolt barely slid in before something slammed into the other side.
Ran up the stairs, boots slapping against concrete, lungs burning
behind us. The pounding started again, dull thuds against the steel.
By the time we stumbled back onto the road, the
sun was nearly gone. The light was turning that strange
color it gets right before dusk. Everything was washed in gray,
the trees casting long shadows across the pavement. I couldn't
feel my legs anymore. Derec was limping holding his side,
and both of us were covered in dirt, blood, and
something that smelled sour and metallic. We didn't say anything.
There was nothing to say. I didn't even know which
road we were on, just that it wasn't the one
we came in on. A hundred yards later, a small
one story house sat tugged behind a split rail fence.
There was a man out front, pushing a rusted mower
across the patch of grass. He stopped when he saw us.
At first, he didn't move, just stared. Then he turned
the mower off and came towards us. You boys, all right,
he asked. Then he took a better look at us.
Come on. He brought us inside, sat us down at
his kitchen table, clean place, smell like burnt coffee and
old wood. He handed us a towel, then her phone.
When the despatcher answered, I didn't tell them about the creatures.
I didn't mention green fluid or split jaws. I just
gave the address, told them we'd been attacked, told them
some one needed to come fast. They said help was
on the way. I hung up and finally looked at Derec.
He hadn't stopped shaking. They came in under an hour,
two cruisers at first, then her full team once the
officers got a good look at the place. We didn't
go back to them. They told us to stay put
im ts checked us over while more cars arrived, unmarked ones.
This time. Later I saw the footage on the news.
They showed the cabin from the outside, lit up in
blue and red, officers moving in and out. The anchor
called it a disturbing discovery, said authorities were looking into
a suspected unauthorized research facility connected to Hardly biologics. What
they didn't show was the basement. I heard about it
later during questioning. The steel door had been forced open.
Inside they found the lab just like we described, operating table,
surgical equipment, dozens of shattered pods, but no creatures. They
questioned us for hours, separately, then together, and back and forth.
Eventually someone confirmed what we already knew. Jeremy had been
picked up that night, found at home, calm cooperative. Said
he didn't know anything about a cabin. He was arrested,
but no charges stuck, and everybody in the town knew why.
His family was already spinning the story before sunrise. I
was in a hospital briefly, but they let me out
the next morning. No broken bones, just bruises, a gash
across my arm, and a mild concussion. I walked out
under my own power, but I didn't feel right. Couldn't
tell if it was shock or something else. I didn't
hear from Derek for days. He was still in the hospital,
puncture wounds, fractured wrist, some nerve damage, and a messed
up ankle. He couldn't stand without help. They said it
might take months for him to walk properly again, might
not ever be the same. I visited him once. He
wouldn't look at me, just stared out the window and
kept clicking the morphine button, even when I knew the
dose had already maxed out. After that, I didn't go back.
A Few days later, I got a call from the
detective who'd interviewed me the night of the raid. His
tone was clipped, professional, was tired. He told me the
charges against Jeremy weren't moving forward. Said the family had
lawyers already working over time. Claimed we broke into private property,
roffed of their son, trast a remote site used for
authorized research. Jeremy's statement said he'd been targeted, that we
were jealous, that we fabricated everything. The official report mentioned
structural damage and chemical residue, but no mention of anything
that breathed. Nothing about the pods, nothing about the bodies,
not even a word about the metal door. They buried
it all