Creepy - Deeper & Corporate Madness

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

Deeper***Written by: Michael Roca and Narrated by: Owen McCuen***Corporate Madness***Written by: No One Of Consequence and Narrated by: Danielle Hewitt***Support the show at: patreon.com/creepypod***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepypastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications

is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. which listener discretion is advised. Creepy presents. Deeper. Written by Michael Roka.

And narrated by Owen McCune. Gold is hard to find. For thousands of years, people have been scratching out every flake and using it for everything from decorating a pharaoh sarcophagus to luring pretty girls. News of a strike will bring people

from across the world flooding in, no matter how, or uninhalatable the place it was found. I'm a mining engineer, specializing in very deep mines. I love the feeling that I'm breaking into Mother Earth's secret vault and stealing a little bit of her riches. When I was less than a year out of college, the mine I was working for had a surprise fine.

The sight of the lines of gold threading through the chunks of quartz as it was being hauled off to be refined, truck after truck after truck. Well, I'll never for it. forget it. I still dream of it. I guess you could say I got gold fever then. I'll also never forget that I didn't get one penny's worth of that fine, not a raise, not a bonus, not even a decent company Christmas party. Since then, I've preferred to work for smaller companies, but really, digging down a mile or two is so expensive, a genuinely small company can't afford to do it. One day I got a surprise

call from Nikita, a geologist I had worked with in the past on a diamond mine deep in the Siberian permafrost. She said she had come up with a new way to detect deep gold deposits. Her tests had found what should be a particularly rich spot in South Africa. A lot of the world's remaining gold mines are in South Africa, but this was well away from them in an area nobody thought was valuable that she had been able to get the mining rights. The catch was that she was working with a shoestring budget, or at least a shoestring for the type of digging she wanted to do. So the pay would be largely a share of what we found. When I worked with Nikita before, she had been a very sharp gal

and thought she might have really come up with a breakthrough invention. Besides, I was bored with my job and the thought of once again cracking Mother Earth's vault and pulling out gold. I agreed before we hung up the phone. As for who was backing us, I knew she had connections that ran back to Kremlin politicians and oligarchs. I didn't ask any questions. Starting a mine is always a lot of difficult, unrewarding work. We were in the middle of the South African Belt, flat, hot grasslands, with nothing taller than a bush to give shade. We had to truck in everything, from workers to

water, and set up a little tent village. Nikita had warned us we'd have to get down deep to find anything worthwhile. At first, progress was fast. I'm good at my job, which is why Nikita calls. called me. But when we had tunneled down more than a mile without any joy, even she went around scowling and short-tempered. Setting all this up couldn't have been cheap, and I suspect that she had spent every dollar and called in every favor she could scrounge up. The miners didn't care since they were paid by the hour, but I was starting to secretly wonder how long I should stay on a job where I was getting short pay. Finally, almost two miles down, we hit a very small, very thin vein of gold. Not worth much, but the first joy we'd had. As we followed it, it widened,

then split off in two directions, then two branches turned into three, into four, into five. Now the veins were going in so many promising directions we couldn't figure out which one to dig first. I did some calculations in my head to figure out what the whole thing was worth and how much my share would be. I couldn't believe the result, so I did them again, on paper and got the same answer. I was rich. We all were. Nikita broke out a special bottle of vodka she had been saving, and we all shared shots, sitting in a hot tent in the South African scrub with no other sign of humanity around us. Then came the hard part. The idea was to very quickly mine out everything we could. Word of a fine like this would eventually get around. There were too many

people involved. Then others would come flooding in. Our problem was, if you wanted to be strictly legal about things, the gold vein just happened to wander out of the area we were allowed to mine in. If we could get the gold out and quickly turned it into cash, we could buy more mining rights, and nobody would be the wiser. But if somebody else bought them first, well, they would no doubt object to where our tunnels were going. So when work progress started dropping off, it was a big worry. Finding gold had made everybody enthusiastic, but now the workers were bringing out less and less ore, even though the vein was as rich as ever. Some careful questions brought out that the miners were hearing strange knocking sounds, and some of them were a little scared to dig further. The knocking sounds weren't new. The miners had been talking about them for a while. But we weren't exactly hiring Oxford PhDs, and minors have always been a superstitious lot.

I don't think I've ever been on a project where they didn't complain about something mysterious. Personally, I'd been down in the mind plenty of times, and it never heard anything. The different layers we were tunneling through were all very stable. Our seismographs didn't show any tremors, and all the support beams were securely in place. As long as the tunnels were safe, I didn't care what they sounded like, so I had ignored it. But one of the foremen, an experienced, no-nonsense guy named Luan, came to my tent after his shift to tell me the knocking was now rhythmic, not just simple repetition, but a complicated pattern.

I asked him what sort of pattern, while in my head I ran through the machinery we were using, and what sort of noises it might make. He hesitated, opened his mouth, then hesitated again. That was the first time I started to wonder what might be going on. He was usually blunt and direct and had never been reluctant to speak his mind. The taps were in a pattern, he said, that felt like a language. Of course, my immediate reaction was to tell him that wasn't possible, that it must be from one of our own machines.

Luan looked uncomfortable, and he said he knew that, but the sounds seemed to come and go and change on their own without caring what we were doing. Anyway, whatever it was, the miners were whispering to each other that something was down there, and it was talking to us, telling us to go away. Well, scared miners are bad for business, even if it was nonsense. I told Nikita about it.

She started swearing in four different languages. Apparently, some of her backers had unrealistic ideas about how fast mining goes, and it started pressuring her to get more gold out of the ground and quick. She hinted the backers were less the type that sued you in court. than more of the type to send out angry mercenaries. Nikita had a closed-tent conversation with Luan. I don't know what was said, but when he came out, well, black skin can only get so pale,

but I swear he had turned into a sick gray. Work speed picked up after that. Three days later, we had a death. A little before noon, workers came boiling up out of the mine, with word that one man had gone off all alone, which he shouldn't have, and had been found crushed to death. I asked if he had been crushed by a machine or a collapsed tunnel or what. No, they said, he had just been crushed.

Now, mining has never been safe work. Mother Earth doesn't approve of our thieving, and sometimes she catches somebody. So far, everything had been fine. It was very bad luck that our very very good luck that our very first accident was fatal. But the miners said there was no way they were going back down again. Nikita didn't swear this time.

Her hand was shaking as she poured herself a full glass of vodka. I went down into the mine to inspect the accident. Luan and two of the miners who had found the body volunteered to go along with a stretcher to carry out the remains. You probably think underground is dark and cold. Actually, most of the earth is liquid, melted rock thousands of degrees hot, and all that means heat comes welling up. We were far enough down that you could have cooked on the bare rock, and if you wore the wrong shoes, you'd cook your own feet. Constantly cooling a deep mind is one of its biggest problems, and even then we can only get the air temperature down to the level of a hot summer's day.

Outside had been hot enough. Now I could feel the sweat start to build. and then run down and roll off me as we took the long, slow elevator ride to the work level. The miners led me and Luan from the central work area to a tunnel, then to a smaller tunnel, then to an even smaller tunnel. Mining tunnels aren't dug out any larger than they need to be, and they aren't lit any better than they need to be either. The heat came from everywhere, and with the dim light and close, dark walls that we didn't dare touch,

it was uncomfortably like strolling into an oven. Normally a mine is a noisy place, with dozens of workers using dozens of machines, but now it was disturbingly quiet. You could hear every shuffling footstep and heated breath. When we found the body, the others held back so I could do a safety inspection of the location. I had brought a powerful flashlight for that.

When I shined it on the body, I wish I hadn't. I had imagined a falling rock had hit him on the head or maybe crushed and trapped a leg so he bled to death. Grusome enough, but things I had seen before. Instead, he had been flattened. His entire body looked like it had been pressed into the hard, hot rock of the floor, like if you took a grape and stamped on it.

Worse, the heat was slowly roasting what was left of him. I could smell it, even o'clock. over the stink of the sweat pouring off all four of us. Eager to look away, I began playing the light around, searching for what could have crushed him. There was nothing. No sign of damage to the shaft, no large rocks, no heavy equipment.

Nothing dangerous at all. It was just a dead end, where the gold vein had run out, abandoned and forgotten. I asked what the man was doing here at all. God knows we get plenty of dead ends, and this one didn't seem even slightly interesting. The men shuffled their feet. It was Luan who told me that the man had said he was going to investigate the source of the knocking.

I wanted to say I was sick of this knocking nonsense when I heard it for the first time. The taps were rapid and varied in strength from quite light to very strong. When it finished, the others looked at me to see my reaction. I could understand why they thought it was like. like a language. It certainly didn't seem to be random. There was some type of cadence and pattern to it. Then the taps started again, and I would swear that even though it was long and complicated, the pattern was repeated exactly from before. Maybe it's not that miners are superstitious. Maybe it's that going into a mine makes you superstitious. Even I wanted to get the hell out of there.

I ordered the miners to get their friend's remains and kept shining my light along the walls, looking for something, anything that could explain the noises. Then came the knocking that started again, only this time it was simple, repeated hard blows. One of the miners made a noise from a throat too tight for proper words and pointed back down the shaft behind us. I turned and saw a crack opening in the floor.

I shut off my light, some ancient instinct telling me not to draw attention to myself. It started as a darker line on the dark rock, as thin as a spider's thread, then slowly widened until it was two or three fingers wide. Something started coming out of it. It squeezed and oozed down, looking like a thick, clear gelatin with pink tendrils and blobs floating in it.

You get water underground, but this was too, too. thick to be water. They came out in a steady, unhurried pace as we watched. Eventually, all of it was out of the crack and lying on the floor of the shaft, a large pool of ooze. Then they began to move and inflate. It slowly expanded until it was upright, about the size of a large human, standing on seven legs. No, more like seven tentacles, bending and twisting in a way nothing with bones could manage. The pink things inside rearranged themselves into some sort of order. It was a creature with a head shaped a little like a squid or octopus, but its skin was clear so I could see pink organs and entrails floating around in it. There was a wrinkled pinkish

white ball, too, that might have been a brain. On the surface of its skin were a host of large, flat, white eyes. Instead of turning to look, they floated through the creature's body until they were all pointing directly at us. The tentacles beat out a pattern on the floor, making the tapping noise as we had heard before, and now I was sure it was some type of message. One of the miners screamed, a high-pitched shriek of pure terror,

and tried to run past the thing. A single tentacle flashed out, wrapping itself around his leg, and pulled him back. The creature pulled the thrashing man under itself and dropped onto him, then began to deform itself, spreading itself out flat again, completely covering him. So he became just a shape trapped under the thing.

And it started to press down. I could hear bones crack as the man continued to scream, even though it seemed impossible he could still have breath. His shape, visible beneath the creature, slowly flattened, while the thing kept its eyes on us, showing no sign of effort or hint of emotion. Then there was a sick, splattering sound, and the creature went flat against the floor,

the shape of the man entirely gone. The screaming, at last, stopped. Then the thing slowly rose, and we could see the fresh body squashed against the stone exactly like the one we had found earlier. The dead man's fluids dripped off the bottom of the thing. It began to move towards us, slowly, but it had just shown more strength

than all three of us combined could hope to match. There are dozens of dangerous objects in a mine, and we had none of them. I would have liked to have had a good diamond-tipped drill right then. Luan picked up the stretcher by one end and slammed the other end of the creature, trying to drive it back, but he made as well been banging into the rock face for all the good it did. The other miner picked up some flakes of the stone that had been left lying around and started throwing them. Perhaps he played cricket. He had a strong arm, but they ricocheted off harmlessly.

its skin might be clear, but it was very tough. I took one step back, then another, but the end of the tunnel was right behind me, leaving no way to escape except past the creature. Only when my back touched the scorching rock that I remember the heavy flashlight in my hand. I didn't swing it. Instead, I turned it on and shined the beam right into the thing's eyes.

Maybe some inspiration told me that an underground creature would dislike bright light. I was very right. It spun away from us and ran, all seven tentacles frantically tapping away. We ran after it, panting in the hot air, Luan adding his flashlight to mine as we chased it, our twin lights bobbing as we tried to keep them on the creature's glistening skin. When it turned off into the darkness of a side tunnel, the three of us sprinted right past, desperately trying not to trip on the uneven floor, heading for the elevator to the surface.

When we reached the elevator, I was shaking so hard I had to sit down. my legs wouldn't hold me. Luan stared blankly into space, and the other man cried, tears making tracks through the dirt on his face. The elevator was painfully, agonizingly slow as it clanked its way towards the surface. Every second I expected the elevator to freeze or collapse

or somehow be pulled down by the thing below us. When we reached the surface, I stumbled out of it as fast as I could. I babbled some sort of explanation to Nikita. She, clearly drunk, stared at me, uncomprehending. Not that it would have been any easier to believe sober. I suppose it sounded like I was a drunk one. She cursed me and said she wasn't afraid of anything and was going down to the deepest part of the mind to prove it was safe. When she started to stride towards the elevator, I grabbed her

arm to pull her back. She shook me off, but Luan caught her from behind and simply picked her up. miners are much stronger than geologists We put her in the back of my Jeep And drove for the nearest town All around us the miners were also leaving Packing up their few possessions Grabbing chunks of courts with raw gold embedded in them Throwing all of it into our pickup trucks

Then crowding on top Luan and I didn't say anything as we drove Jolting across the belt Startling gazelles and sending them bounding away Nobody wanted to still be in Canada at night to meet whatever came up out of the shaft in the dark. Nikita, still cursing us, bought a one-way ticket to Rio, saying she was going to have to change her name to hide from her backers.

Luan retired from mining and opened a bar, which, he told me, make it easy to get drunk when he remembered the creature. I remember the creature, too, in my dreams. The dream is always the same. I'm back in that dead-end tunnel facing the thing. But instead of running for the surface, I go down, down the crack it came out of, deeper and deeper, impossibly deep, until I find an entire city of them. I can hear the tapping, the constant tapping, as thousands or millions of them,

walk through their own tunnels or squeeze themselves through cracks so narrow I couldn't fit my arm into them. I see carefully carved pools and trenches of magma, providing an unbearable heat and a dim red light. I'm still a mining engineer, but I only work on shallower mines now, none of them digging out anything as exciting as gold. I think that's what caused it. We dug too deep in the wrong place and angered them.

Maybe Mother Earth really does have a vault that I've been robbing all these years, and they're the guardians. At least they won't come all the way to the surface to reclaim what I've already taken. I think they won't. I hope they won't. I pray they won't. Creepy presents corporate madness, written by known of consequence,

and narrated by Danielle Hewitt. Standing on my balcony, I watch as the storm rolls in. I used to love storms when I was younger. My twin sister and I would watch them from our bedroom, window. I no longer look at them with wonder, but with a sense of dread. The wind starts out gentle enough, with a hint of ozone in the air, signaling the coming rain. Dark clouds roll in, bringing with them the gentle rumblings that soon turn to body-shaking growls. Flashes of brilliant

light that can be blue, white, or even purple explode overhead, burning brightly for a moment or two. A soft patter of rain begins, and can easily turn harsh with increasing winds, falling in a torrential downpour. These days, storms hold a different meaning for me. It always makes me think of the beast we let loose that day. His song had been heavenly to my mind, urging me to do what I knew I shouldn't. Thinking back on it, I think he got to my sister long before. before he reached me. Erica had always been the more adventurous of us. But something about that island in the lake always called to her.

I believe it had been the master, subtly bringing her closer. Erica was the more willful of the two of us. All my life I went along with what she wanted, being dragged along by her will. He took his time with her, possibly because he was weak. Or perhaps because she was stronger,

why else had he chosen me to release him only to leave me behind? Well, I'm not weak anymore. I've taken measures to ensure that. Images of that horrid beast enter my mind as the storm gets closer. I can't remember the last time I watched a storm without seeing his bulking mass in my head. Those tree trunk legs, muscled torso in arms, waving hair like a black sea an enemy,

beard of small tentacles. He marched right past me, casting me aside in favor of my brave sister. Never have I been so grateful for such a blatant rejection. Yet my loss is devastating. Not for him, but for my better half, For years I have been trying to find her, but to no avail.

She alludes me at every turn, missing her every time I get remotely close. I have only to look into the mirror to see her. But I am a shadow compared to her radiance. Maybe that's why the master chose her over me. Erica draws in a crowd with that brilliant smile of hers, as bright as the lightning before my eyes. She's aimed that smile as an executive for the Eldridge conglomerate, acquiring businesses and partnerships to expand the empire.

How many impressionable youths has she enticed to join the religion? Growing the old one's power. Too many to count. I managed to find a lost college student I was hired to locate, only to find the body, but not the soul. That innocence had been replaced by, something vengeful, something angry with a smoldering rage. I watched as he fed a man to the hellish prawns. Were they some kind of offspring from the master? I never got to ask as they devoured the

abuser slowly. An agonizing death I wasn't strong enough to see to its end. The screaming echoes in my mind as the thunder rumbles above me. Go back to my parents and tell them you've found me. but you were unable to sway me back to their society. I have fully embraced the master, and once this loathsome son of a bitch is dead, I will commit myself to being one of his soldiers. I had delivered his message, though I had changed some of it.

It would have only caused them more pain and me more trouble had I mentioned the son-in-law he killed. Shortly after, I discovered another of my sister's bloody deeds. a violent raid to the north that left countless body parts thrown about a water processing plant. It had not been a find of my own doing, but one a new client brought to me. Brittany Raylan, the recent bride of Pyramid's CEO,

and the main contributor to the operation. It had been a company under Pyramid's umbrella, the brainchild of a man found ripped to pieces. Mrs. Raylan showed me photo. The man's head was placed on top of his desk, a demented look of painful amusement frozen in the dead flesh. It's war between the two empires now, and she sought my insight. The master sent my sister there, using my name to infiltrate before sending in his soldiers. I knew it had to be for a reason more than what they were doing on the surface.

The master never does something for a simple reason. there are layers to his actions. In order to figure out the motivation, I first needed to understand what went on there before the slaughter. It was some sort of environmental project, an endeavor to solve one of the world's many concerns. As soon as I was told they were evacuating sections of ice from beneath the ocean, I had but one question.

What did they find? her husband, Marcus Raylan, had been silent in our meeting until that moment. He claimed that there had been no discovery, but I knew he was lying. I then felt something pressing in my mind, an invasion of sorts, but I expelled it. It had not been my first time, but even though the invading force was something new, I've learned to shield my mind from such things, ever since. Since the master's song made me release it, I have taken measures to ensure nothing could force me again. There are old magics in the world that have long since been forgotten.

But I'm in the business of finding such things. After the last time the master used my body to deliver a message, I took actions to protect myself. The tentacle that attached itself to my finger has tried to communicate with me since that day. but I am shielded. I knew the couple before me was other than human. But as for what? I cannot say. Mr. Raylan was reluctant to tell me about himself.

But he claimed we have a common enemy that we both know more about than we should. I now find myself in an enemy of my enemy situation. But it's a breakthrough I never imagine. possible. This could grant me access to information about the master that I couldn't find otherwise. I'm willing to divulge what I know if they're willing to do the same. Lightning flashes in the sky and I swear I see a shape behind the clouds. Is he there now? Amidst the storm? Looming over the city like some kind of massive demon? The master is roughly man-sized. But I don't know what he's

truly capable of. I've seen short videos of shadows and storms that resemble a winged behemoth. Are those images real? Or fabrications created by people who want to fool the world? My phone chirps. A new message. Mr. Raylan has sent a car to fetch me. I go inside and put on my long leather coat,

concealing the compact 9mm pistol at the small of my back. It's a new acquisition, thanks. to all the horrible things I've been seeing lately. So far, the master has been trying to bring me into the fold. But how long will he tolerate my rejections before he decides to just have me killed? The 9mm hollow points won't do anything to him. But it should stop anyone he sends after me.

The car outside is a large black SUV, the kind with three rows of seats. The windows are so heavily tinted that they're probably illegal. A man in a black suit stands at the back door holding an umbrella, and upon seeing me, opens the door. The rain isn't heavy by any means, but my wide-brim hat keeps the drops off my face. As I climb in, I find a woman wearing a deep blue suit sitting in the back row.

She welcomes me and offers me a seat in the row to my right. It's facing her, with its back to the driver, compartment which is separated by a pane of glass. I thought only limos had this kind of setup. I slide on to the seat, gliding over the supple leather. It even has that new car smell. I've never met the woman before, but she knows exactly who I am. Kindly, she addresses me as Detective Jones and asks me to go over some paperwork.

Thankfully, I'm not one to get car sick while reading in a moving vehicle. but the language is hard to follow. Not because it isn't English, but I've always had difficulty understanding legal mumbo-jumbo. It's not a standard non-disclosure agreement, but a highly specified one. Instead of there being mentions of legal recourse for divulging any information about what I'm going to see,

this makes references to my life becoming forfeit. Considering who I'm dealing with and what this is about, I shouldn't be surprised by this. As I sign the documents, I finally take notice of the windows. The tint is illegal, because it's not tint at all, but completely blacked out. Once the paperwork is in order, we sit in the moving vehicle in complete silence. I try to prod for any information about where we're going or what we're up to, but she won't tell me anything. Not that I expected her to, but she does offer me a choice of beverages.

This is an executive car and has some high-end liquor stocked, including a whiskey that isn't on the market yet. Under normal circumstances, I would pass on the booze, but I do like my whiskey. She pours me two fingers over a single ice orb. The first thing I do is give it a good sniff, and I'm surprised at what my nose picks up on. There's sweetness here. Maple, if I'm not mistaken. Taking a tentative sip, I'm flooded with a smooth whiskey that tastes mildly of pancake syrup. But there's something else in there.

Almost like an afterthought. A kind of heat like black pepper. It's really good. And I make a mental note to keep a lookout for Helix's release. I sip at the whiskey slowly, trying to make it last. as long as possible. As much as I'd like another glass. I need to keep myself sharp,

and I'm a bit of a lightweight. Though this does make me happy I had such a carb-heavy dinner. It'll absorb some of the alcohol and it won't hit me near as hard. After a half hour, the SUV comes to a complete stop, but only briefly. We move again, only to stop, only to move again.

Slowly we are descending, like we're going down the levels of a parking garage. The vehicle makes a series of right turns going further and further down. I'm a little grateful for the blackout windows. I think I'd be more dizzy if I could see out of them. I've lost count how many times we've gone down by the time the SUV comes to a complete stop. It doesn't move this time. And I nearly jump when the door opens. The woman slides out the door and I follow up.

behind, only to be stopped once my feet touch the floor. There are three women in black suit standing before me, each bulky with muscle you normally find on men. They lead me through the parking structure that has no other vehicles in it to a door on the far wall. The heavy door is drawn back and it takes two of the muscled women to move it. I expect there to be something interesting on the other side. But all I see is a metal detector. a table, and another door opposite this one. The five of us step inside and once the heavy door is closed and bolted shut, the interesting part begins.

I'm instructed to empty my pockets and put all my possessions on the table. The first thing I do is remove the nylon case from the left side of my belt. I see the three muscled women hardened their stance, seeing it's a pistol magazine. Once I place it on the table, I inform them that I am removing my gun, and do so very slowly. I can practically feel the tension radiating from them, ready to spring into action if I make one bad move. Thankfully, I remove my gun without getting tackled to the ground.

Popping out the magazine, I place it on the table. Next, I place my left hand over the slide, turn the pistol to the side, and eject the round from the chamber into my hand. Once I place the single bullet on the table, I lock the slide open and place it next to the bullets. From there it's pretty standard, like going through airport security. I empty my pockets, then remove my hat, coat, belt, and shoes.

Two of the muscled women begin inspecting my items and clothing, looking for anything foreign in the material that shouldn't be there. One of them looks over the bagged items from my coat, not sure what to make of it. Things get awkward when I'm told to continue removing my clothing. I look at the woman that rode here with me, asking if this is completely necessary. Considering the highly sensitive nature of what I'm about to see, they're not taking any chances. As I start undressing, I look at every woman in the room.

There's no lingering eyes, just professional detachment. I don't want to do this. But if it gets me answers and more insights on the master and my sister, it's worth some mild discomfort. Stripping down completely, I watch as all my possessions are examined. They wave a few different wands over the entire table, then do the same to my naked body.

What the hell do they think I have on me? No one answers me, but I am instructed to move through the metal detector. After about five minutes of scans and examinations, I make a joke about them needing to buy me dinner first next time. The muscled woman closest to me smirks, mumbling something about being tempted to do just that. One of the others touches an earpiece that I hadn't realized they're all wearing and declares that I'm clean. I get dressed quickly, keeping my eye on the one who smirked.

Muscles never really interested me before, but I do have to admit a mild curiosity. My gun, extra magazine, phone and wallet are left on the table. They lead me through the next door into a slightly larger square room. This one just as gray, but there's nothing in here, save for a panel just in front of the left wall. The muscled women stand around me in the center of the room as the suit does something to the panel. I'm jolted as the ground starts moving, sliding down to reveal the walls of an elevator shaft. This is like something out of a movie or a video game. I didn't think things like this existed in real life.

We go down several floors before coming to a stop, easily 50 feet below where we started. There had been a few doors on the walls as we passed, but there were no distinguishing marks to indicate a level. I've gone down some pretty weird rabbit holes trying to find my sister, but nothing like this. Unlike the doors we passed on the way down, this one is much larger with black and yellow striped paint around its edges.

It slides up on well-oiled gears, revealing a hallway, all too familiar. The resemblance to the bunker Erica and I found is uncanny, but less dirty and more modern. I follow my security detail as we pass countless doors. A low buzzing fills the cold air, indicating a lot of electricity flowing through this area. There are exposed cables and pipes along the ceiling. metal grates at our feet. I hate to think what would happen if one of those thick cables were to break

and hit the floor with us on it. Somehow I doubt the rubber soles of my boots would provide enough protection from being electrocuted. At the end of the corridor is a set of double doors, but unlike all the others, these are open.

I see a lot of moving bodies on the other side, most wearing suits and a few lab coats. There are a few without suit jackets, but that's the most casual attire I see outside of my own. Approaching I get glimpses of computer consoles, walls of monitors, and switches. There are more than a dozen people in here, and none are still for very long. A light coming from the left starts getting brighter, casting everyone in a bluish glow. I can hear a lot of talking, but I can't make out a single word. Not until I hear Mr. Raylan's booming voice.

Shut it down, he commands. And the light dies off as the electric buzzing fades. There's still a distinctive glow, but it's rather subdued compared to what I glimpsed a moment ago. We stopped just short of the doors, not close enough for me to see what everyone in there is focused on. Mr. Raylan looks our way, but doesn't make a move to join us. Instead, his wife comes out,

and I hadn't noticed her at all until now. Hello, Detective Jones. So good of you to join us. I'm at a loss for words, so I follow my default setting of sarcasm. She ignores my jab about not having much choice in the matter. I apologize for the abruptness of our invitation. But we needed time to vet you. To make sure you are indeed the sister we sought out.

Erica has fooled our people once before. Mrs. Raylan shows me a tablet, a live feet on the screen. A dark-haired woman is sitting at a table with a tanned beauty sporting fine muscles that look like they're hard one. She's seen a lot of sun while the other is pale, but not in a sickly way. Out of the two of us, I used to look more sickly. But then again, I always thought of Erica as the prettier one. One of our agents has been keeping a tab on her since my husband and I met with you. I'd very much like to know where she is right now, but that seems less a pressing issue at the moment.

You were right about the attack on Project Level's facility. Your sister was looking for something, but it was long gone by the time she got there. Please, come see. I'm a little distracted. The tentacle in its plastic baggie in my coat pocket is starting to squirm around. It hasn't done that in a while. The four women that came down with me stay at the doors as I follow her inside. Finally, I get to see what's on the left wall that has everyone's attention.

I freeze. My eyes unbelieving what they're seeing. I thought the master was a behemoth. But not so much now. The block of ice is easily two stories tall. I don't know how far back it goes. But it's at least 30 feet. across. The ice makes it hard to get exact details, but I can clearly see tentacles in a thick

body, all very similar to the master, but considerably larger. Most impressive of all, there appear to be wings behind the creature. They're not spread out so I can't be sure that's what they are, but what else could they be? We found it in our third expedition into the ice. Our people nearly cut into it when they were removing the section. My scientists took it for a perfectly preserved dinosaur. But the attack on project level indicates otherwise. I don't know how it connects to the master. But it does, even though it's much larger.

The female of the species often are. More deadly, too. I don't know how I know that, but I do. I hand Mrs. Raylan the plastic bag, the tiny tentacle from the master squirming more excitedly. I thought they'd find it interesting. But with this in their lab, I feel like my contribution is insignificant. Do you hear that? I ask as noise begins drifting into my ears.

Or is it? It's a song of sorts. And a scream builds from deep inside me. This can't be happening to me again. But the world begins to go black, and I start falling. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at creepypod on social media and YouTube.

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