Dr. Creepen's Dungeon - S6 Ep372: Episode 372: Mysterious Island Horror

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

Today’s phenomenal tale of terror is ‘We Discovered a New Island in the Pacific Ocean: I'd Rather Die than Go Back There’, a brilliant original story by Masaman14, shared directly with me via my subreddit so that I could read it here for you all:https://www.reddit.com/user/Masaman14/

Welcome to Dr. Creepin's Dungeon. Mysterious unexplored islands can terrify us because they represent places beyond our knowledge and control, cut off from the familiar world by vast stretches of ocean. For the moment we imagine setting foot on an island known as visited before, our minds begin filling the unknown with possibilities. Strange creatures, forgotten ruins, dangerous landscapes, or evidence of something that was never meant to be discovered. The isolation makes the fear even stronger.

If something goes wrong, there may be nowhere to run and no one coming to help. An unexplored island is essentially a blank space on the map. And sometimes the most frightening thing about a blank space is wondering what might be hiding there. As we shall see in tonight's feature length story. As ever before we begin, a word of caution, tonight's tale may contain strong language as well as descriptions of violence and horrific imagery. If that sounds like your kind of thing, then let's begin. We discovered a new island in the Pacific Ocean.

I'd rather die than go back there. Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown, we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word, understanding. I was laying on my back in a calm and serene sea. Gentle waves lapped against my body and warm sunlight shone upon my face.

I couldn't be quite sure just how I got here, but this place seemed only relaxing in a way, at least for the time. A distant chirping, or perhaps clicking, filled the void of sound, and I let out a gasp and took in my surroundings. The white-yellow light of the sun slowly but surely faded to a muted blue tone as the rest of the sky began to darken, and the water around me started to shift from a crystal-clear aquamarine to a dark,

ugly shade of maroon, radiating out from the size before engulfing my submerged and helpless body. Indescribable pain shot through me. I knew I had to wake up. Wake up! My eyes snapped open and I quickly leaned over to grab the television remote to turn off the channel that had apparently been playing all night. It was the worst nautical catastrophe to strike the Pacific, even the world, since the disaster that hit Tohoku, Japan. in March of 2011, over 13,000 civilians dead in 12 countries, with the most severely affected locations in the state of Hawaii and the insular nations of Papua New Guinea and the Marshall Islands and infrastructure damage as far away as Sydney, Australia.

As the United States and several Pacific nations reeled from this inexplicable tragedy, I stretched back in my recliner and halted the daily stream of news that have been pouring out of my television and into my ears. I had heard, but not exactly listened to the variety of pundits assigning blame to various personalities and agencies. The hall, tsunami, named after the hall islands where the tsunami first made landfall, it remained plastered on my TV, newspaper and internet homepages, was all anyone ever talked about in the past week, especially in my home of Auckland, New Zealand. The truth was, not a single living soul could have predicted just why or how this event could have taken place,

and I was one of the few people on earth was to become privy to this knowledge. I'd always known it might take a while for my masters of science in cell and microbiology to pan out, but it had always been a stark passion of mine ever since my families move out here in the middle of the largest body of water on earth, and although my parents had long ago moved back to the United States, I had decided to stay in the islands and pursue my interest in the fascinating life forms found here, products of millions of years of isolated involution. Upon learning of the small and harmless flightless avian species of the Kiwi that provides the nickname for locals around here, and comparing it to the gargantuan moabird that towered twice as high as a man

and is rumoured to even have hunted human children before his extinction. New Zealand truly had a firm grasp on my attention as a microcosm of evolution for a variety of species across the animal kingdom. Even the natives of this strange and remote island were of great interest. An entirely unique culture nearly wiped out from the history books when exposed to an invading force of warfare and disease. My shoddy fifth-floor one-room apartment wasn't exactly the peak of glamour, which is why I jumped at the opportunity to make something more of my meager existence. No wife, no kids, no family, very few local friends to speak of.

so what did I have to lose when I was contacted on November 13th with the author of a very lucrative, very taciturn job regarding the whole tsunami. I was working in the biology centre at the University of Auckland when I was approached with the offer. They were Americans from what I could gather, same as me. Their presence and demeanour demanding a certain aura of respect you just don't see outside of the military or law enforcement personnel. I was informed that I wouldn't be the... fully informed of the exact extent and specifications of the mission until I'd met with them

at the American Consulate General down the street and agreed to their conditions. I packed my bags that very night. So, um, you're telling me the whole tsunami is some kind of supernatural event. I inquired a few minutes into my briefing with the same gruff-looking man who'd met me the other night at the university. Not supernatural, it just appears to be caused by forces outside of the realm of what we consider normal. What it is exactly, we're not sure, which is part of the reason your team will be investigating the epicenter of this event. He responded in a somewhat short tone. Yes, sir, but with all due respect, and I'm not sure if they informed you of this. I'm a biologist specialized in cellular and microbial life.

Marine biology is not my field of expertise. You won't be examining the sea. We, we already have a separate team that will be dispatched for that in the upcoming days after meeting up with you on the ground. We've discovered a small landmass that surfaced near the epicenter of the tsunami that we've designated UL 1052. I stared at the Stoic jarhead incredulously, contemplating whether this was some kind of hoax or not. It's not volcanic in origin, and it doesn't appear to be seismically active. It's an ovoid-shaped island, roughly 3.4 by 1.4 miles across, around 3.74 square miles in land area, with no significant surrounding lagoon or atoll. Fairly flat in shape, but estimated to have a sloping concave topography that rises 50,

maybe 100 feet. I attempted to swallow this bizarre information that was just foisted upon my mind. but we have maps and satellites and GPS islands don't just appear on our planet out of nowhere I was growing noticeably more nervous and sweaty by this point well this one did he responded in a seemingly collected and unfaced tone that told me he delivered this information to many before me you don't think it's from space

like an astro-extraterrestrial unlikely, considering we would have noticed a four-square-mile rock flying into Earth's atmosphere. An asteroid of that size would be world-ending, to say the least. We know that it surfaced at the precise pinpoint center of the tsunami down to the decimal point. We know that weather, tidal patterns, and ocean currents all remain relatively standard for this time of year before the whole tsunami and the emergence of the island. I was at a loss for words. If what he said was true,

It will completely revolutionise our understanding of geology and plate tectonics. There can be major shifts along fort lines that cause massive changes in elevation along the seafloor, and there are even cases of volcanic islands sprouting up in extremely short time periods. But an island large enough to create such a tsunami simply appearing in the middle of the ocean was certainly new to me, and I imagine most mainstream biologists as well. Your flight leaves this Friday at 0500 hours. you'll be on a commercial flight out of Auckland to Honolulu or from there you'll be taking a charter flight to Wake Island

while your rendezvous with the rest of your team the Navy will be escorting you and 15 other members to the epicenter 160 miles southeast of Wake Island where you'll conduct your select research and exploration that's been assigned to you for two weeks after which a check of $350,000 will be wired into your bank accounts I read aloud the NDA he'd handed me at the start of the briefing. The disclosing of any details of set assignment on UL 1052 or dissemination of any

classified information gathered before during or after your contract is expired will result in will result in death under the Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918. Yep, that's correct. Any rumors of said mission or landmass being circulated online or in the media will be denied by the US Navy and Air Force. No spreading that information will be treated as criminal foreign assets and dealt with accordingly. Hawaii couldn't get

to me any sooner. Truth be told, my nine-hour flight seemed to drag on forever as my heart pumped and my legs thumped in unison the entire duration of the flight out of a mixture of excitement, fear and anxiety. Although the money was a great

bonus, my main motivation was possibly being part of one of the greatest biological and geological discoveries of the 21st century. Couldn't help but stare out the window into the pitch black abyss of the ocean that surrounded my plane and wondered just what could have emerged from its depths.

I was never one to be too terribly afraid of swimming or water. Something about deep oceans, rivers and lakes always unnerved me ever since I'd learned about some of the more unsavory prehistoric leviathens that dwelt where human eyes were never meant to view them. Upon arrival in Honolulu, It didn't take me long to meet with the suits, or rather, for them to meet up with me.

Nevertheless, obtaining my bags after landing was still the usual pain in the earth. I guess there are some things even mass government surveillance can't fix. He only had a couple of hours to catch up with our fellow crew members at Hickham Air Force Base before we took off, but it was honestly more than enough time since there were only four other passengers on our plane, much to my surprise. strangely enough I appeared to be the only American or at least the only American born member there as I learned quite quickly that the first co-workers of mine that I met Singh and Kikana was South African and just so happened to be husband and wife before you get the wrong idea Singh began shortly after you was introduced to me my wife was actually the first to be contracted

well it's a good thing that I came highly recommended in the field or probably wouldn't have gotten this job began to ramble on over just how long and why they'd been working as anthropologists in Hawaii for what seemed like ages, when I decided to introduce myself to the large, and I do mean large, man that was sitting across from us in the aircraft hangar. You must be security, I asked, making eye contact with the hunk of a man. No, he quickly interjected with a slight eastern European accent, marine biological scientist. I quickly

apologize for my error introduce myself and slithered down into my chair in embarrassment at my somewhat prejudicial assumption that Siminoff appeared to more or less laugh it off replying

It's not just you little men with glasses that can be smart or not The last of my co-workers to arrive at the hangar Sophia, a petite Filipino geologist Was also likely the most pleasant And the only one to introduce

herself to me I found out she was one of the youngest members there, only a couple of years older than myself at 29, and maybe I would have gone for the phone number had they not confiscated our cell phones upon entering the base. It had been quite a long time since I'd had any sort of serious relationship or interaction with the opposite sex if I was being honest with myself. Hey, did you take a look at that Simon guy? Sophia Riley whispered into my ear when we boarded at the plane. He's got to be at least six and a half feet tall, and it looks just like Arnold Schwartzman,

you know, the actor. There's no way he's our marine life expert. I merely gave her a smile and a nod as I took my seat. Glad to see at least someone had a sense of humour. I was informed that the rest of the crew was already waiting for us at the Air Force Base on Wake Island, most of whom had already chartered a flight directly from the mainland of the United States, and hence we were to depart almost as soon as our arrival. arrival on one of the most remote islands on the planet.

Our remaining crew was just about what I was expecting for an expedition such as this. Including myself, we consisted of two biologists, three anthropologists, four geologists, four military personnel and survival experts, and three miscellaneous experts focused on archaeology, paleontology, and whatever other fields the US government had deemed might be in any way tangentially relevant to our mission. Whether we'd all end up being lifelong friends after this astounding and groundbreaking opportunity, I wasn't yet sure of, but I knew, for one, I wasn't going to treat this as a vacation. They paid us, they paid us handsomely for a reason.

Whether we were the absolute best or most professional scientists in our field wasn't important. After getting to know some of the other passengers on our half-day-long naval escort, It didn't take long for me to realize that nearly all of us on this mission had one thing in common. We had no families, few friends and minimal connections back home. I was just a glorified intern when I was contacted by the G-Men. Simanov was unemployed. Sophia had only just finished her master's. Our more eccentric anthropologist, Alan, was participating in this strange new trend

where millennials live in their vans and travel across the country. most of the other crew members didn't really seem to have stable jobs from those that I spoke to and none had children. This would no doubt ensure our utmost concentration and devotion to this reasonably short expedition

before the next team would be brought in. I knew that in the Marines this kind of mentality takes months of training to achieve but hand-picking the loan as an outcast of society sped that process up exponentially. For most other more integrated members of society, they might hesitate before risking their life to save a member of their

crew if they had kids or loved ones back home, that is, if the mission even came to that point. One of the archaeologists, Rick, wouldn't stop talking about how the money he was going to make from this mission was going to fix his failing marriage with his wife back home. I imagine an added bonuses that very few people would come digging in the case of any disappearances on the mission, considering we were forbidden under penalty of death of informing any outside parties to our whereabouts for the next two weeks. I had no doubt that the only reason Singh had been conscripted in the first place or so that he wouldn't come looking for his wife, if anything happened to her,

but I certainly wasn't going to tell him that. It was a slightly unnerving revelation, to say the least, but understandable. Nearly everyone crowded around the bow of the ship when someone managed to peek just the smallest speck on the horizon. I hadn't been sure what to think when I first heard of it, but I stared, slack-jawed as we grew closer and closer, discovered the island was not made up of basalt or other volcanic stone like I would have expected, but nearly enveloped in a canopy of green.

Grasses, bushes and trees covered this spectacle of nature, and had I not known better, I would have thought we were back in Hawaii. "'How is there?' I muttered to Sophia before, trailing off. "'I don't know,' she replied, without losing her gaze towards the island, "'clearly understanding what I was going to ask her. "'The ship's dinghy was dispatched when we were about 600 yards offshore, "'in cycles of four randomly assigned groupings. "'I was somewhat disheartened to hear that Sophia would be among the second group of four

"'to be dropped off at the island while I was among the last. "'I suppose my masculine instincts weren't entirely dead. But the security team, who were the first to be dispatched, assured us that when they established a perimeter set up base camp, it would be just as safe there as it was on the boat. They set off around 1pm that afternoon. It seemed like hours before the dinghyr returned, empty of supplies, and ready to pick up the second assigned grouping. I'll see you there, Sophia assured me as she, Siminov, Rick, and another I hadn't yet made myself acquainted with, clambered into the minuscule vessel. and soon set off. It was another thirty minutes before the next set of names were called off, and naturally another thirty before the last shuttle of the day arrived.

Alan, Singh, Kekana and I climbed in for what may not have been the most treacherous boat ride of my life, but it certainly felt like it, with my heart thumping away and my stomach churning at every wave. I was a bit hesitant to climb ashore for one reason alone. I always hated the feeling of wet sand getting into my shoes. But I sucked it up and stepped onto this virgin soil, untouched by mankind for who knows how long, maybe all of history. Out of all the sights I took in while Wagner, one of the more burly soldiers, escorted us through the jungle,

was just how normal most of the flora appeared around us. Luscious green vegetation, palm trees with ripe coconuts, ferns that were so densely placed, it made it almost impossible to see more than a dozen yards in any direction. Postcards didn't even look this pristine. However, during our short ten-minute walks through the jungle, I began to notice them. The spires, large red rocks jutting out from the surface every so often. From what I could tell, they were maybe four feet wide at the basin, roughly fifteen feet tall, gradually tapering off once they left the ground, coloured a rather vibrant hue of orange-red.

What are the structures for? I asked, well, motioning to one of the spies. I don't know, Wagner replied. They were already here before we arrived. They're spaced apart all over the surface of the island. Do you think they're natural? Man-made, perhaps. Look, kidder, I'm just here to keep you off from drowning or getting poison ivy.

I don't have a damn clue what this is. I took a mental note that some crew members were certainly appearing to be more reliable than others and kept pace with my equipment in hand as all four of us that had just arrived on the island gazed in awe at this alien-looking landscape. As Al Haik ended, and I set my eyes upon base camp, I was pleasantly surprised with how much progress had been made in the past few hours

since the first dinghy was dispatched. I mused over the bizarre situation I found myself in for only a minute or two before joining in conversation with some of the other researchers. Sophia explained to me that, although pillar or spire-like structures made out of rock do indeed exist in nature, it's almost unheard of to see them spaced out so evenly apart, leading us to the only logical conclusion that they had to have been man-made. As we talked, I kicked around some of the barren soil

around my feet, a bad habit I'd acquired while in the field, staring bewilderedly at the others. But who could have built such structures on a sunken island? They asked the rest of the the crew with emphasis on the sunken bit, and this far out as well. Gakana suggested that perhaps some great seafaring people had populated the island generations ago, only to have it sink due to shifting plate tectonics before having re-emerged after the recent whole tsunami, but she was quickly shot down by the geologists who revealed it would have been impossible for an island of this site to disappear without the whole plate sinking or the sea levels rising, which would have heavily affected the neighbouring of the neighbouring

islands as well. It was at this point that I noticed that I was no longer kicking up a cloud of brown dust and debris, but rather felt my shoes scuff against something solid, perhaps only a few inches below the layer of topsail. I looked down and saw red stone staring back at me, and reached out to touch it with my hand. It was smooth, hot, and somewhat porous, and more or less matched up with the texture found on the spires that littered the island. Sophia and the other geologist looked as puzzled as I was upon closer inspection of the stone, claiming that they couldn't quite pinpoint exactly what type of rock it was, but that it didn't appear volcanic in origin.

I think this answers the question of whether they're man-made or not. Sophia chimed in, much to the team's agreement. But how did they fall? She bent down and scraped at the red rock with a knife, finding it quite easy to grind into a fine powder. Why don't we try taking one of the pillars down with a sledgehammer. We could analyze the core and determine its properties and mineral components. Rick eagerly interjected.

Whoa, cool it, I stammered out. For all we know, this could be one of the world's next UNESCO World Heritage Sites, or one of the seven wonders of the world. We're not sledging anything. Digging wasn't necessarily out of the question yet, due to the relatively shallow layer of soil covering the bulk of the island and the soft porous stone found beneath it. But we had agreed to split up and scout out first the perimeter of the island, starting the next morning, and then explore deeper into the heart of the island in the upcoming week. We'd landed on the northwest side of the oval-shaped island, which was tilted at a 30-degree axis in respect to the equator. Splitting into teams of two, each of us were to circumnavigate

the perimeter of the island and meet back at the premarked entrance to the base camp on the other side of the island before sundown in six hours. I was assigned for the island. I was assigned with that meathead Wagner, another shorter soldier named Perez, along with Simanov, who by now was actually beginning to grow on me, Sophia, most of my delight, Singh, Kekana, and Alan. We were the team that was to circle around the coast counterclockwise, which at an average brisk walking speed shouldn't have taken more than a few hours. That night, as I was busy dreaming and fantasizing about what kind of wondrous discoveries we would make, I couldn't help. but experienced a distinct feeling of dread.

In my dream, dark raindrops pelted my body from the sky, which had quickly shifted to a gnarly blue color. Slimy, dark tentacles slithered across the ground in every direction, wrapping around every living thing in its path. I recognized that I was dreaming, but the fear was quite palpable as I could feel the sensation of every drop of dark liquid hitting my skin and rolling down my arms. wake up. My eyes creaked open, and I was thrilled to discover that I was the first that had roused in the early hours of the morning, when the sun was still barely peaking over the horizon,

but this excitement quickly dissipated upon the realization that I'd have to wait until the rest of my squad awoke. I could have attempted to go back to sleep, but what would be the point, considering I'd have to wake up in a few hours anyways, and I highly doubted that I'd be able to calm my nerves enough to get some shut-eye before then anyways. With that amount of time, I could walk across the entire island by myself and be back before anyone noticed. And it was with that thought that I quickly rationalized what I'd do next. If there's anything I hate about tropical climates, it's the humidity, sweltering, boiling, stuffy humidity that makes your skin tacky and unbelievably moist. In the twilight,

hours when stinging sweat rolled into my eyes and made it nearly impossible to see. I looked back at the miniature flat I had back in Auckland with fondness, as even the sand, dirt mud, grime and insects couldn't compare to the... The insects, my thoughts interjected. It wasn't until now, 5.30 a.m., tricking down the beach that I finally noticed the raucous buzzing in the worst of locations. I wonder just why it had taken me so long to notice the little devils, considering the creeping itch and sensation I felt quickly resonating across my forearms and shins, and looked down to discover a plethora of small red bumps littering my skin. The funny thing is, out of all the mysteries I expected to encounter on this strange little

isle, the common mosquito definitely wouldn't have been high on the list, but I suppose if other terrestrial flora had somehow appeared on the island, and it wouldn't be entirely out of the realm of possibility to assume that terrestrial fauna would as well. This realization made me seriously ponder what other animalia, or possibly extinct animalia, one could find on this long-forgotten rock. I didn't take long to imagine myself getting ripped to shreds by some giant mutated gila monster

or being constricted by a stealthy python before being forced down its horrible gaping gullet, before my mind snapped back to reality and I dismissed these silly assumptions. Was my solitary daybreak hike along the beach an incredibly selfish and possibly foolish action to take? Perhaps the latter? Definitely the former. But just like a child on Christmas Eve, I couldn't help but to gorge some of my more curious instincts before the main event. I picked up a small stick and much like a small child began to swing wildly at passing branches, bushes and leaves,

imagining myself as some great explorer of old, slashing through the jungle. I was so preoccupied with this monotonous juvenile task that I almost didn't notice the discoloured patch of water that petered out from a large rocky outcrop which I was about to pass. I stopped in my path to take a better look. It appeared to be a slightly lighter patch of blue water that seemed most intense near the side of the rocks rather than the open ocean.

In the dim light of the morning sun it made it difficult to distinguish, but it didn't take me too long to realize the discoloration in the water was not caused by a reflection or something inside of it, but rather by a light, and it certainly wasn't coming from the sun, which had actually risen on the opposite side of the island from where I was. I cautiously approached this large stony hill jutting out into the water, amused over what could cause this luminous path,

whose greater source still remained obscured by the edges of the rock. I considered the possibilities of another intrepid explorer from our expedition, who might have left a little earlier than I had, bringing a flashlight with him or perhaps a small vessel that part itself beneath the shade of the rocks and still had its lights on. As soon as I ran at the corner and saw what was in the rocks,

I threw down my stick and I ran. Yes, yes, Alan, you heard what I said. You speak English, don't you? I blurted out a bit more harshly than I would have meant for it to come off. My agitation was a bit unwarranted, considering I was shaking my tent make-awake around two hours before we were scheduled to get up. But after the third time, he groggily slurred out. What?

With his eyes half open and mouth hanging at gate. I was nearly at my wits end. Alan, I woke up a bit early to see if I could learn a bit about the trail we were scheduled to go on today when I found this huge rock on the edge of the shoreline. And in that rock facing the ocean was a cave. So what? He quickly responded before attempting to turn over and lazily swat at me with his hand. A cave with a goddamn blue light pouring out of it.

That woke up his curiosity a bit, even if his mind was still halfway in Dreamland. He finally slumped forward and sat up in his sleeping bag before replying. Are you sure it was from the cave? Only one way to find out. By reading their face. Some of the crew were personally suspicious of me. Some were curious, but almost all were skeptical of my claims of a glowing phantom cave. I attempted to explain my reasoning further as to why we needed to leave as soon as possible

instead of at the scheduled 9am. Look, we don't know if this is some kind of natural process that occurs on this island, and how long it's going to last. It could have dissipated by the time we reached there this afternoon. No, I'm not skipping breakfast. breakfast. Simanov said as he unfolded his arms and picked up one of our pre-packaged MREs. Okay, I'm ready to go now. He corrected himself before, kneeling down and picking up a second package. Kid, you're not thinking straight. Let's all get our heads on, right? Before we

start breaking, not only our schedule, but also our protocol. That smug and reasonably calm soldier, Wagner assured me, as he put his hand on my shoulder a bit too tightly for my liking. You, I proclaimed an bout of nerves and excitement. Why haven't you radioed this in yet? You need to inform the higher-ups now. We don't have the proper equipment for a full cave exploration, and we need to get to it sooner rather than later. I, for one, really want to see this cave, Sophia pitched in.

Who else wants to see which ecosystems will develop in an isolated cave that already lies on an isolated island? Lights in those caves probably means people. Singh quickly added, are we not the only ones here on this island? People, Alan inquired, eyebrow raised. My money's on aliens. This guy really was a lot stranger than I previously assumed, I thought, and most of the crew's facial expression mirrored my inner voice.

Wagner, you need to tell your superiors about this right now. I nearly shouted as I took his hand off my shoulder and jutted my scrawny finger at his crest in a burst of confidence I didn't know. I had. It doesn't matter if we tell them now, Wagner yelled, eyes ablaze. They've already known about the caves since before you got here. The entire camp fell silent as all eyes fixed upon the stoic, muscle-bound figure. Look, a few days before you were recruited, we sent a purely exploratory scouting team onto

UL 1052, and we encountered the caves directly before leaving. This wasn't part of your briefing because we didn't deem it necessary. information. We brought the desired equipment for cave exploration. He seemingly chided, eyes moving around the crowd that had formed around us. And besides, we couldn't contact them even if we wanted to. A few of the more nervous-looking members let out short gasp with shock, before Simonov spoke up. What the hell is wrong with your radios? Nothing. The radios were just fine offshore, but for whatever reason when we're within a mile radius of this place, while our equipment goes haywire.

Radios don't pick up any frequencies. Satellize can't transmit it jack, and with most electronics, it's a complete crapshoot whether they work at all. Compasses don't even point to north, for God's sake. Go ahead, try it for yourselves. So you brought us all the way out here knowing we couldn't have any contact with our family,

friends or anyone. Singer exclaimed while glancing at his wife. You knew what you were signing yourselves up for. nothing was out of the question. That is, assuming you even read the damn paper that you put your name on. Or you were just too blinded by the triple-figure payout. Wagner harshly rebuked. Technically, he said, staring around the group,

we're all in quarantine right now. Nobody's leaving this island even if we wanted to, so no need to get antsy and rush the mission. Well, as red-faced and eager as I was, a new Wagner was right. We were to eat breakfast, pack up the designated supplies and then set off for the opposite sides of the island just as we'd intended since yesterday. If Wagner was telling the truth, then the lights in those caves weren't going anywhere.

And neither were we for the next 14 days, at least. So you said it's like a glowing blue light shining out of those caves? Sophia huffed as she struggled to catch up to me and lug the 30-pound rucksack I'd seen her packing earlier. Yeah, almost like a neon blue, but it was pretty dim. maybe due to being obfuscated from the light of the morning sun. We're like two minutes away. You'll see pretty soon. Pretty brave of you to go running off without everyone, she beamed. Oh, pretty stupid. She tacked on while we trudged through the sand.

Look, there's the rock now. I quickly pointed out as I could feel myself growing just a little bit more anxious, and it wasn't entirely due to approaching an isolated subterranean landscape with completely bizarre properties. I was remiss to see that Wagner had since taken the lead after we left base camp but he probably did know a lot more about survival and exploration than I did and I felt far safer with him and Simanov around

and I'm sure Kekaner and Sophia did as well follow me, it's quite shallow Wagner assured us as he rolled up his pan-legs and began to wade into the water closest to the rock we formed a line hugging the wall of rock as the water began to rise up past my shins knees, waist, and even began to lap up to my chest. And rather humorously, Sophia struggled to keep it beneath her chin.

But after some time the seafloor began to rise again as we came up to the mouth of the cave. Is that the rock that you saw, yeah? Simonov leaned over to ask me, I don't see any lights. They were here. Maybe the sun's just too bright at this time of day. Eventually we all managed to get out of the water. Most of us looking like we'd just taken a bite. bath with our clothes on, and we crowded around the entrance to the cave. A circular moor, about

a dozen fee height and, perhaps that same width across. However, unlike earlier, there were no spectacular lights flashing or shining of any kind, just a dark cave with bland grey slime covering the walls, likely made up of some kind of algae or fungus. So, kid, you're done creaming your pants, Wagner snidly remarked. We'll end by the book, and after we're done wasting that time, we'll go back the same way we came and circle back around the perimeter of the island as we plan. Well, what are we waiting for? I said as I pulled out my headlamp and strobe past him. Let's go. The first thing I noticed inside the cave was the smell, an immediate, acrid stench

of rotten fish and a hint of something metallic, which seemed to be copper, iron, not to mention the dramatic rise in humidity that made the musk of the cave so overpowering, and it felt like I was breathing in the noxious chemicals directly into my mouth with every breath, which I suppose technically was true on a microscopic level. Not the most romantic of locale's, I thought to myself, glancing back at Sophia who had a cloth wrapped over her mouth and nose with her hands. What do you think of these cave walls? I shouted back to Sophia after a good 200 yards of walking.

The tunnel was sloped at such an angle that the cave entrance was already completely obscured behind us, with no an ounce for the sun's rays able to reach us in these depths. The walls? I can't even see the walls or tell what kind of rock is underneath because of this junk coating everything, she replied, lifting the cloth only for the precise amount of time it took to say the words before covering it back out for dear life. Rock, wall, Simonov retorted from behind me. No, I'm pretty sure that this slime is the wall. Simanov stops a fear in her tracks, asking to see her bag. She reluctantly obliged and he pulled out one of the long metal instruments that she'd

managed to stuff in there, used for measuring rocks or something like that. What its real purpose was, I didn't know. Look, he announced, as he plunged the five-foot metal stick into the side of the cave. We stared or struck as the instrument sank six inches, then nine, then a foot, then went in all the way up to the point where Simonov's hand was gripping the thin metal rod, at least two and a half feet deep. What an earth is that? Kikana blurted out before Simonov violently ripped the rod out of the wall, releasing an unexpected, even to him, flurry of viscous blue liquid. Simonov seemed more shocked than anyone, quickly jumping back before his legs and lower body could get plastered with his unknown slime.

It seemed exceedingly hot, the steam quickly rose to. from the glowing puddle at his feet. Into our shock, the war began to ever so subtly undulate and quiver around the point of entry. Didn't expect that to happen, did you? Sophia quipped, wrenching the rod from his hand and wiping off the blue slime with the handkerchief she'd previously been pressing against her mouth. Wagner pulled out his own machete, he kept in his sheath, buckled around his belt, and curiously scraped it along the ground before attempting a mimicry of Simonov's stunt,

finding that the ground appeared to be made of much more solid substance than the gunk on either side of us. Hold on, I murmured mostly to myself. Everyone turn off your headlamps. What for? Wagner retorted. Just do it, I cried out. As our headlamps went out one by one, it was quickly apparent that this was no ordinary cave, as we found ourselves not surrounded by the pitch-black darkness we would have expected. The first thing I noticed was the glow of the neon blue substance

that had spurred it out of the wall and pooled on the floor, quickly dimming in the warm air, but still glowing nonetheless. Then, glancing all around, it was easy to see that the slime on the walls, the weed assumed was simply some kind of mould or algae earlier, was glowing blue as well. Well, that explains that, I mumbled. Too star-struck to rub it in everyone's face.

We all gave it. raised around that gently pulsating, dimly glowing blue walls in awe, even Wagner. The texture was difficult to describe, a somewhat uneven patchwork of, like giant dark blue arteries, carrying what I assumed to be the luminescent liquid that had nearly coated Simonov earlier, along with lighter blue fibrous wiring that brushed off in every direction, or coated in some kind of thick, translucent, gelatinous substance. "'I told here it was aliens,' Alan said. staring at the mesmerizing, albeit somewhat unnerving pattern that surrounded us,

but this time no one bothered to disagree with him. What's that? Sophia exclaimed, sticking a finger further out into the cave at a darker spot on the ground. Without saying a word, I swiftly switched my headlamp back on and jog the twenty or so feet down the cave toward the object that appeared to be embedded halfway into the ground. With some hesitation,

due to the slime layer that coated not only the floor, but the object as well. I knelt down and wiped away the dark, slimy sheen, revealing a black, round object. What is it? Simonov repeated, coming up from behind me, as I frantically thought to pull it up from its cosy abode. It didn't take long before I'd poured the object out of the ground, with grime and sweat covered hands, and couldn't believe my eyes. It was a helmet, a rusty, military helmet, and on the side was printed only one word in faded letters. Spetsnars. Part 2.

Spetsnars. Simmnov repeated, patiently explaining to the team. They were Soviet and, later Russian special forces. Think of them like your U.S. Marines. So what in the name of all that's unholy some Kamey, a Spesnaz, helmet, doing way out in the glowing tunnel underneath the island that only just appeared on the face of the earth a couple weeks ago. Wagner grilled him, perhaps a bit too hard considering he seemed just as confused as the rest of us. I don't know, man. Who knows if it's even real? Normally they don't even print words on the side of

the helmet like that. We've been monitoring this island like a hawk ad nauseum ever since the whole tsunami, and we'd know whether some deranged Russians try to sneak past us, which means means only one thing. Looks like the Russians were here at some point before us. Hey, I interceded, attempting to calm the situation. Let's just keep on moving. Obviously, he doesn't know any more than the rest of us. Is that really important right now? Besides, I see something else up there as well. I told him, pointing up about 20 feet ahead of us. I swept aside my pity for Simonov, who in my eyes was an unjust targeted. of scrutiny because of his nationality, and carried on down the tunnel while grasping the

Spetsnars helmet a good foot away from my body, not wanting to further contaminate any artefacts found here. But I quickly realized that wouldn't be much of an issue. My head turned towards a floor, as my lamp shone upon an abundance of strange items littering the floor of the cave, which at this point I was questioning whether it was even a cave at all. The helmet here, radio there. body armour, boots, gas masks and more were strewn across the ground in a haphazard fashion.

Their condition was congruent with, or more deteriorated than the helmet we'd stumbled across only minutes earlier, and almost appeared to be, well, digested. For the helmets I saw on the ground, they appeared to be irreparably rusted, while the body armour and uniforms had massive patches missing or severely eaten away, leaving only fibrous strings gingerly holding the pieces together. Whether it was due to natural degradation or some kind of chemical process seen only in this unearthly cavern, I couldn't tell for sure, because this wasn't exactly my line of expertise.

What the hell? I muttered as I sifted through the remains of some god-forsaken mission consisting of helmets, gloves, vests, pants and jacket. As I coughed out the foul air after my brief jog, nearly gagging on its stench this far into the tunnel. I called out to the rest of the crew to further investigate. Well, winter accessories, Simonov muttered, shuffling through the fatigues. Perhaps they were washed in by the time. It didn't take me long to realize he was right. All of the items of clothing we'd found here, and there were a good amount, seemed to be suited for Arctic training, combat and exploration.

Well, whatever it was, those poor Ruskies were doing on this godforsaken rock in the first place. Scanning over the clothing myself, I quickly realized that they were, in fact, of Russian origin. Almost all of them were eroded or shredded beyond repair. Once Simanov was done rifling through the remains of our due and predecessors, he placed what he was carrying into my arms and turned back towards the rest of the group. I think we should be leaving now, Simonov advised, wiping the grime from his hands onto his shots. I second that. I second that. agreed Perez, who was by now backing up towards the end of the pack. We practically jog back the way we came, eager to escape the lost passage from hell,

although I wasn't all too thrilled with having to carry the artifacts that we discovered. The walls of the pathway seemed to be growing brighter and brighter by the second, bathing our faces in the luminous azure hue, while simultaneously they appear to be vibrating and undulating faster and faster. couldn't bear to look at them and kept my eyes focused on my feet and the bundles of soviet contraband normally i'd be fascinated by the discovery of this mould or algae-like mire that coated the walls would be itching to give a further inspection to this as of yet undiscovered life-form if it really was alive at all but well something about the coursing blue lines mimicking veins simply did not sit well with me and in the moment i prioritized living over curiosity Fucking run, Wagner shouted, as we nearly broke into a full-on sprint. Sweat was now pouring off my face in buckets, absolutely coating my back, chest arms,

an even crotch, mingling with the seawater that had yet to completely dry from our earliest stint through the shallows. I was never one to be a record-setter for the hundred-yard dash, especially uphill with a backpack full of supplies and arms full of garments. but the adrenaline coursing through my body made me feel light as a feather. I was suddenly jolted to reality as I roughly slammed into something large and unwieldy. Simanov didn't even look back at me after our collision, but I certainly looked up at him. Why do you stop? I asked, moving around him to get a better look, but no one responded. Well, they didn't need to. What stood in front of us?

was a rounded clump of bright blue goop who seamlessly mowed into the walls around us. The opening of the cave was sealed off so smoothly and so uniformly, it was almost as if it was never even there at all. It took us a few minutes of deliberation before agreeing to continue into the cavern, hoping against hope that another exit could be discovered on another part of the island, or whatever this place was. Sophia was rather adamant about staying behind alone at the now Walled-off cave entrance in case it opened back up again.

But after some convincing, I managed to get her onto the bandwagon with the rest of us. Our retreading of the path was far more solemn and quiet than the first time around, and by this point I had already discarded what I was holding, figuring our lives were more important than some Soviet relics, and shockingly the wars had ignited to a vibrant neon blue, rendering our headlamps completely obsolete, which most of us had turned off anyway to conserve battery. I still saw the same strange patterns pulsating across the cavern's interior,

and it still gave me the same unnerving feeling when I first saw. As we trotted along, noticeably more jittery than at any point since we'd landed here, I began to spot them. Deep inside the glowing translucent walls of the cavern, there were what looked like small black patches strewn haphazardly here and there. I pointed them out first to Simonov, and then the rest of the crew, not even bothering to speculate as to what they might be.

As we furthered our descent both deeper into the island and deeper beneath the surface, I found out that they were not patches, nor were they small as I first ascertained upon my initial glance, but rather globules of free-floating reddish-black objects. They seemed to be getting closer and closer to the surface the longer we walked. And after walking for what I estimated to be about 500 yards, they were practically bulging out of the walls, creating a strange and unsettling contrast with the rest of the tunnel. Wagner was about to poke at one of the strange dark objects embedded on the right side of the wall

with his machete when Sibinov grabbed his arm. Don't even, Sivinoff warned, and Wagner looked at him with the same. the look of understanding on his face, appearing thankful that someone had stopped him from such a reckless act. Whatever it was, messing with the ecosystem in this alien environment was not a very splendid idea, considering that the contraction of our previous entrance

may or may not have been related to the acupuncture Siminoff performed on the side of the tunnel. After another 15 minutes of walking or so, the dark pockets began to peter out, but we made what was possibly the most shocking, discovery of the day. As the walls of the tunnel began to widen out and the ceiling started to slope upwards, we came upon the mouth of what seemed to be an even bigger cavern than the one we were in now. The glowing blue jelly was relegated to the roof hundreds of feet above us in this massive cabin, raining down light almost like an artificial sky which stretched as far

as we could see. The reason our vision was impeded was due to a plethora of large rocks and stone structures that expanded nearly to the edge of our eyesight, perhaps further. The ground also seemingly morphed from the smooth, faux-organic material from earlier in the tunnel to dirt and red rock, not unlike that found on the surface. But by far the main star of the show was the number of large stone pillars that lay across this place, some standing upright, others leaning on each other, but most completely flat along the ground or crumbled into dust and mixing with the ashen earth at their basis, and I wondered if they could might possibly be related to the red stone spires we discovered on the surface. Without saying a word, I ran to the lip of this new cavern's

entrance, and started to half sprint, half slide down the hill that remained our only obstacle between this new mystery to be unraveled, and as I grew closer, it became very clear that these structures were not at all similar to those found on the surface, as rather than tapering off into points near the top. They appeared more as rounded columns of stone, although I was still too far away to make out for sure. Sophia was quick behind me, and by this point had completely ditched the heavy rucksack at the top of the hill, although in a cloth she still carried the heavy metal instrument that Simeonov had used to function of the cave wall earlier, clearly not feeling entirely comfortable with putting it back in the bag with the rest of her belongings.

These pillars, I inquired while gesturing to the abundant stones. What do you think they're made of? Hard to say, dolomite, limestone maybe, she responded, engrossed in the rocks and sediment deposited at the base of one particular column, which was around four feet wide, and as for how tall it was, I couldn't begin to guess, but it didn't quite reach the ceiling of the cabin. The rest of the team had followed us down the embankment, But their attention was set elsewhere, as I could see Alan picking up some stone fragments from the ground.

Hey, Singh! Alan shouted to where he and his wife were inspecting a rough patch of earth. What do you figure of this stone here? You're South African, right? Patron on it looks to be of some kind of African origin to me. I mean, my first guess was alien, but I guess anything's possible. Well, hold on now. Just because I'm from Africa doesn't mean I know about.

all of African anthropology. Singh started while Alan grew closer with his friend. He handed it over, and the three of them began to study what looked to me to simply be a small, concave stone fragment. Actually, began Kekana, grasping in the stone in our hands, it is African. Egyptian is a matter of fact. Or at least it's based on the style of pottery found during the late period of ancient Egyptian

history, or perhaps the Ptolemaic dynasty. "'Egyptian?' I suddenly interjected in a voice a bit too high-pitched and squeaky than I would have liked. How could ancient Egyptians have made it way out here to the Pacific Wend for, all we know, this island could have been underwater? What's up with the columns? Are they Egyptian, too?' "'Not Egyptian,' Singtrowoff, sliding his bare hand across the subtly ribbed surface of a nearby pillar. They look, um, to be Greek, actually. Well, at this point my head was spinning. How in the war could ancient Egyptians or Greeks have made it to the bioluminescent cavern

of the lost island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? I thought to myself. Alan spoke up and gathered us around for what he proclaimed was an important revelation that he guaranteed would completely blow our minds. Look, he began with more confidence than I'd ever seen him wield. I have a theory, and I want you to take it. it seriously. He continued with the most stern of expressions, eyebrows furrowed and I squinted. It's going to sound a bit outlandish, but is it any more outlandish than the things we've

seen since we arrived on this island? Just get it out there, Bought Wagner. You see, thousands and thousands of years ago, the Greeks wrote about a place like this. He began. Plato chronicled an entire city on an island that vanished. overnight. I believe that this is that island and we're in that city. So, you're saying we're in? I started before being interrupted. Atlantis, precisely. I think that if we continue snooping around here, we'll find more and more evidence to support my theory. Everything lines up so far, only I don't believe that the city sunk into the ocean. I think the city sunk to the ocean. I think the city sunk

into the ground and then the island went into the ocean. Really? Then how do you explain the Soviet fatigues? Winter fatigues nonetheless? What the hell is Atlantis doing way out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? Shouldn't it be in the Atlantic Ocean, considering its name? Well, here's what I think. You can take it or leave it.

Alan continued while beginning to pace back and forth around the pillars. We all stared at him dutifully. This place, this landmass, clearly didn't just pop into existence the other week during our nation's worst tsunami in history. How do you figure it got here? And in pristine condition too. He looked around the group and locked eyes with me in particular. That's right. He was moved here from somewhere else.

I don't think this is a natural island at all. Just look at that tunnel we came out of the glowing ceiling above our heads. I think this place is a vessel, a vessel that came from out of this world. Alan concluded, looking somewhat satisfied with his brusque dissertation. The group fell silent before immediately erupting in a squabble of accusations of absurdity on the part of Alan, who stood unfazed by our mockery, completely content with his proud logic. Singh and Kekana hypothesized that perhaps the island was settled by ancient Greek or Roman sailors, who got lost on the way to India or elsewhere in Asia.

Sophia was still occupied with studying the structures and rubble that towered over us and said that she couldn't tell how old they were due to unnatural erosion patterns. But it could have been anywhere from hundreds to thousands of years old, and she assured us it certainly didn't look like a hoax to her. Start wasting your time with your Discovery Channel bullshit theories. Wagner cut us off. This place wasn't created by aliens. but it does however have

rusky fingerprints all of Wagner ended his sentence abruptly as most of us took sight of something slithering around the pillars around 40 feet away from our circle something that could only be described as alien

Wagner and Perez immediately stepped forward guns raised as out from between two faded tanned pillars the thing stepped or more aptly splashed out from the shadows between the duller bright blue light shining from the ceiling and the light from our headbeams we were able to make out the same British black blob we'd encountered cocooned in the gelatinous walls

of the tunnel it had a somewhat smooth and rough surface but the best way to describe it would be if ferrofluid was being stretched in all directions simultaneously while attempting to locomote in any given direction as this curious horrid creature began to slink from between the pillars we noticed it left behind a thin, inky black trail in its wake, and it lets out the most horrid combination of clicking, chirping and scuttling noises, something I found akin to nails and a chalkboard, in which I found quite odd since I couldn't spot a single orifice or organ on the creature, with the exception of slimy black tendrils

which shot out and attached to any and all neighbouring objects within a foot radius around it, including the neighbouring pillars and the ground. As it grew nearer and nearer, the creature seemed to change from an amorphous, ever-shifting blob into a more humanoid shape, albeit extremely unshapely and crude, to say the least. It almost looked like what a three-year-old would draw when attempting to portray their family members in the preschool art class, and it would appear that the subterfuge was failing as parts of his gooey, black outstretched arms began to drip down and plop onto the ground before being reabsorbed by its wobbly stumbling legs.

Unlike in most horror movies, the soldiers that were with us weren't stupid enough to attempt to contact with this dripping maroon madness, or do something asinine like order it to halt. We all had a common understanding that this thing was not human and likely did not have the best intentions for us. Wagner took the lead, turning off the safety for his rifle and opening fire on the monstrosity at around 10 yards, with quite stellar accuracy, before Perez joined in. Their shots were definitely hitting their mark, as black gunk exploded out from behind the creature,

peppering the wall and pillars in its wake. Just at that very moment it lurched forward, moving quickly, almost as if it was leaping across the ground in an extremely fluid motion. Surprisingly, it went for Perez first, completely vaulted, into the poor man's chest and knocking him and his rifle to the ground as the rest of it scattered, shrieking in terror. The creature stood over the down man, almost as if it were inspecting him, before one of the dripping fluid tendrils of God knows what snaked down from its arm and directly into perr's chest, clearly knocking the wind out of him and rendering him

unable to even scream. But something certainly did escape from his mouth just then, a combination of the combination of bright crimson blood mixed in with the creature's own disgusting dark fluid with the two mingled before it became clear that the fluid was the dominant substance

being released from Perez's outstretched mouth all the while Wagner released the rest of his clip into its side I only managed to get a brief look at this while fleeing to the right at the tail end of the remaining crew but Wagner continued to shoot

with his air quickly running out of ammunition and switching to a barretta, putting round after round into where he assumed the creature's head would be. At this point, the creature's head lifted up from its latest victim and pointed its foe arm in Wagner's direction, shooting at a spray of dark tendrils directly into the top right quadrant of the soldier's face, completely flooring him within seconds and sending his barretta flying out of his hand

and into our general direction. Well, against my better judgment, I halted what? the crew continued on running. As fast as I could, and while the creature was distracted with hovering over its prey, I sprinted towards the carnage, and without skipping a beat, leaned down, picked up the pistol, started once more in the opposite direction, unfortunately gaining the creature's attention as I did so. Although I had a lead of a good 30 feet, I knew it could cover ground fast, and in a fit of testosterone-fueled fury I pumped my legs like an Olympic sprinter, knowing that this time it really was a matter of life and death if I wasn't quick enough.

Shockingly, at this pace it didn't actually take me too long to nearly catch up to the rest of the group, although still at the back and I turned around and saw to my horror that the creature was now joined by two others, all of them moving in that mesmerizing yet horrific manner of sliding and splashing along the ground. As I witnessed the creatures swim through the air towards us in all their hands, twisted glory between the clicks and hisses and wet slaps of their fluid tendrils along the ground. I heard one speaking what I could only describe at the time as nothing other than an alien language. "'Pomouh-Irubiminear!' gargled out one in a horrific display. "'Posah!' said another, the ending of what I assumed to be its word morphing into a distorted, ungodly clicking pattern.

Although horribly obscured, I could still tell that the sounds of the creatures were emitting were, without doubt, some kind of language, a fascinating, albeit relevant discovery considering the more pressing matters at hand. This distraction almost cost me my life, as I'd failed to notice the rest of the group splitting off. It was only after a few more seconds of me blindly running forward with my eyes dead set on the abominations that I heard Simonov cry out. over here my friend I turned and saw that the entirety of the group had diverted and entered a small hole that appeared up in the wall on the right side of this gargantuan cavern

I started making a beeline up the steep hill that led up to this newly discovered tunnel I spat and widened and gibbed and cursed the entire time during my ascent up the treacherous terrain littered with gravel and stones of varying size knowing that one trip would spell out certain death but if I could just regroup with the rest of the crew in the newfound tunnel,

perhaps it could lead to some kind of safety. However, I peered up and saw that the entrance to this new tunnel was very quickly beginning to contract from the outside in, closing in with a material not unlike that we'd stumbled upon at the entrance of the very cave that trapped us in this hell, and hence my brain furiously sent signals down to my legs to drastically pick up the pace, even if I already felt like they were about to snap at any second.

I propelled myself headfirst up and into the contracting opening, that by now was only a few feet in diameter. I almost felt like I'd looked back to see oozing dark maroon tendrils grabbing my leg and dragging me back into the fray, but thankfully I landed on the other side, frantically scrambling deeper on my hands and knees, hacking up the stench that was coating my lungs. I looked back and saw that one of the creatures had shoved its head into the open, which by this time was the size of a basketball. Ubai Mina! The creature croaked out in the most horrific of displays.

I saw Kekana Singh and Sophia clutching their faces in terror, right before Simanov, wielding the metal rod from earlier, smashed it directly into the head of this abomination, sending a spray of inky gunk flying out of the hole, leaving nothing but black and red residue to slide down the now solid wall of flesh that had closed us in yet another catacomb.

I know I shouldn't have signed up for this, man. Alan repeated to himself, pacing back and forth. Why on earth did I ever trust the government in the first place? They probably weren't even playing on giving me a payout. Now I'm a fucking dead man. Alan, stop panicking and get a hold of yourself. Simanov shouted, grabbing his shoulders and vigorously shaking him back to the moment. Let him stay here and rot with the alien.

since, Singh stated, strapping up his boots and standing up. We're getting the hell out of here. Mankind was never meant for a place like this. We could still hear the things, the aliens, wildly screeching, hissing and clicking from the other side of our only line of defence. Hey guys, I stammered out between bouts of wheezing and coughing. I don't know if I'm going completely screwy,

but it almost sounded like those creatures were speaking to each other, like they were intelligent, I stammered out. I heard it too. Simonov assured me, you are not crazy. Yeah, Alan chipped in. Those aliens were probably giddly chatting with each other about and which one of us looked the most tasty. Those were not aliens,

Simonov insisted with a scowl across his face. Simulov leaned against the wall for support, but immediately grimaced in disgust as I could tell that the slimy exterior of the wall was quickly oozing through his shirt and lightly coating his back. Man, I've seen this enough times to know where this is going, Alan whimpered, clearly letting fear completely take control of his mind at this point. This isn't a movie, I assured him, more to comfort myself than anyone else.

We're not going to die, and we will find a way out of here. Those aliens just killed our only protection. We're fucked, Alan shouted. For Christ's sake, they are not aliens, you perfume. Simanov blurted out with a raised voice, now noticeably aggravated. Oh yeah? And how can you be so sure? Because that wasn't an alien language they were speaking. Simonov began as his eyes drifted to the ground.

It was Russian. Help me. Please. Help me. Simonov translated solemnly, taking in a deep breath and bow. pausing for a second before finishing. Kill me. The dread was now palpable on the face of every surviving crew member, especially Alan, although Singh and Kakara expressed more of what seemed to be worried. My Russian is not as good as my Ukrainian ever since I left my home country 20 years ago,

but the languages are very similar. I could clearly make out the words after the fourth or fifth time they were spoken, or however it was that those things were able to make those sounds. Well, however incredulous it sounded that those things, those unholy freaks of nature, could make a cheap mimicry of a language, an actual human language. I had to believe it since I'd heard it for myself. But those things, I began, they're not human, there's no way they could be. Maybe not anymore, but I think this answers our question of what happened to the missing crew, the Soviets, Zirnoff replied.

I nearly hesitated back there when it almost came through the hole after us once I heard it speak. We had begun walking down the tunnel by this point, by looking at Simonov's face, even in the thick, humid air and radiant blue lights that surrounded us, I could tell that he was completely drained of any colour, and I'd take a guess that if I had a mirror that I'd see the same in my own face. Sophia was practically clinging on to us, more so Simonov than myself,

but careful not to stray more than a couple of feet away after that horrific display that we'd witnessed. You really think it's them? I inquired. What could possibly turn a man into an animated mass of petroleum? Plus we saw them in the walls earlier. I'm sure you noticed that. They still could be aliens, Alan shouted from ahead of us, but both of us ignored him, seeing the serious psychological toll this experience was having on it. I'd noticed a distinct bend in the trail we'd been walking on for the past couple of hours, and it almost seemed to circle back around.

I'd seriously hoped that we weren't just being led in circles, or going further into this nightmarish realm. Siminoff was still grasping the large metal instrument he'd used to secure our first act of retaliation on the creatures, while I had tucked Wagner's Beretta into the front of my waistband, which I have to admit was remarkably uncomfortable, despite what television shows would have you believe. After rounding a particularly sharp bend in the path,

an opening to another cavern was quickly becoming clear. Only this one was definitely not the same one we'd just left, since I'd estimate they were a good 20 or 30 yards deeper underground than when we first started walking. Although smaller, the layout to this cavern was very similar to the former, and similarly, I immediately spotted more stone structures. only these were far more recognisable as actual buildings and had less damage done than the ones from above.

We cautiously poured out from the tunnel, rapidly missing whatever false sense of security had provided for us and peered around the ruins. I spotted a glimmer in the dim blue light being emanated from the ceiling and saw, much to my surprise, that it was a machete. I can't believe there's more Greek structures here. This thing stated, somewhat lost in the moment.

This has got to be the most fantastic anthropological discovery in the history of the world. I'm not going to lie, discovery isn't really a huge concern of mine right now. I quit back at him, reminding him of an ever-so precarious situation. And that's when I spotted it. A large figure around 50 feet away in the ruins, wearing those familiar tan and green military fatigues. I dashed over and confirmed my suspicions when I saw a disheveled Wagner leaning away from us against a large stone wall. I couldn't believe he was still alive.

Wagner! Holy shit! I shouted, astounded by what I was seeing. The figure then turned to face us, revealing a scene that can only be described as a living nightmare. Holy shit, man. I repeated. Only the tone and emphasis of my words expressed an entirely different attitude than before. The upright portion of Wagner's face had bloated to extreme levels

you wouldn't expect to see outside of an emergency room. Thick black veins ran up and around the new growth on his head, trailing down to other parts of his face, neck and Lord knows where else. His eyes had taken on a cloudy sheen, but I could still make out bloodshot sclera. Only instead of red veins, they were closer to black in colour, matching that found on his face. Dark fluid leaked out of every orifice, leaving troughs of shadowy liquid smeared across his face, hands and uniform, and what parts of his skin I could see that weren't covered in bulging black veins or the oily substance, took on the pallor of a corpse.

Jesus, Wagner, what happened to you? Where's Perez? Perez. Perez. Wagner hoarsely replied before getting his bearings. Oh, a little guy. They grabbed him already, but he's fine. The rest of the group had approached now. Their heads cocked in confusion,

only with terrified expressions plastered on their faces as well, clearly overshadowing the puzzle. What? Who? Who took him? Anyways, has anyone seen my car keys? Wagner drowned on, completely ignoring my questions, seemingly in a daze. Oh, my arm has been killing me, and I really think I gotta see my doctor.

He interrupted his own sentence after being wrapped up in a raucous coughing fit, ending by wiping his mouth with his sleeve, leaving a trail of black ooze smeared across his face. Wagner, we're going to take you to see him. see a doctor, I promise, but first do we have to get off this island? Island, he rasped in a quizzical manner. No, no, no, no. I came back from the island weeks ago.

His face suddenly took on a look of extreme confusion. Why are you guys doing in my house anyways? Well, the man had positively lost his marbles, I thought, not knowing whether he was ever going to be okay again. Wagner pushed himself away from the wall, open his mouth to speak, but instead of words, a volley of reddish black tar came pouring out of his mouth like he was a freshman who had too many beers at his first house party. It pulled on the ground at his feet, and Wagner lifted up his face to take a look at us, peering down and noticing what I

was holding in my hand. I can't speak for the others, but I was certainly at a loss for words. Hey, kid, Wagner started. What are you doing with my machetech? at the end of his sentence morphed into a rapid clicking sound as he attempted to eject the words from his vocal cords. I immediately took a step back in shock. What's happening? He let out, as black slime drooled down his lips and added to the shimmering puddle. Taking a cue from the rest of the group, I slowly started backing away with my arms outstretched in a defensive posture.

Wagner, stay right there. We're going to come back with some help for you, okay? Smyonov stated in a lie so obvious I wondered why he even bothered it in the first place. Hey, don't go. I don't feel very good. It was all he was able to get out right before another jet of the same reddish-black fluid shot out from his mouth in an impressive display of projectile vomiting, which I had to swiftly part my feet away from to keep from getting soaked. Wagner, stop, I ordered, as he slowly stumbled after us in a drunken manner,

although I could tell that he wasn't completely incognizant of yet. You need to stay here. You can't come with us right now. I don't think it's safe for the rest of the crew. No, you, no, you have to get me out here, please. Wagner wailed as his voice quickly deteriorated into a garble mess of cliques and chirps, almost sounded like a human being attempting to imitate a cicada on a warm summer night. He reached his arms out towards us,

and I noticed the oozing black blemishes that littered his skin underneath the sleeves of his arms, and I knew for a fact that I wasn't letting him anywhere near me. I looked over to the group and saw that, without a word, Sophia had already taken off and I motioned for the rest to follow her and once more we began our sprint through this cursed place. I didn't know how long my stamina would last

or how long my body would put up with this before it collapsed under sheer exhaustion but that was certainly a preferable option to the alternative. Weigh, way! Wagner, or at least the thing that used to be Wagner, screamed at us, running after us in a fury. the black tar dripping from his body like sweat of a star athlete.

I dodged and ducked my way through the remnants of this lost civilization, something I'm sure Alan would equate with the urban practice of parkour, and words could not express the absolute terror I felt knowing the infected Wagner was only feet behind me in this subterranean maze of horrors. The very last words he said to us while chasing us through the darkness of the ruins have stayed with me ever since. Don't run away, don't run away, Wagner screeched a rather pitiable tone.

The most disturbing aspect of it was that he didn't seem to be angry or violence or aggressive. He only seemed to be absolutely terrified like us, and I imagine in an immeasurable amount of pain and suffering. Don't run away, do run away, do run... He was abruptly cut off as I turned around to see him trip over a stone, column that lay flat along the ground. He broke his fall with his forearms, but his face still smacked against the dusty ground, sending a wave of black ooze splattering onto the floor from his face,

almost as if someone dropped a carton of milk. As he crashed to a halt in his own muck, I saw that it seemed as if his right arm had actually broken off halfway down, revealing nothing inside but the very same gunk and slime that the creatures we saw earlier were made of, who somehow kept the arm attached in one piece despite its mangling. Even though the thread of Wagner seemed to have been dealt with on its own, we continued running and I knew that I for one was merely seconds away from gagging and expelling the contents of my stomach. I carried on with a combination of fear and disgust and terror and guilt, but I

rationalised to myself that there was nothing we could do for Wagner at this point. With any luck, we lucky few could escape these underground depths with our lives and never visit this island again. In fact, I planned on staying away from islands altogether in the future. Maybe moving somewhere nice inland like Montana or Wyoming. Here, Sophia shouted from the front of the group, pointing at another tunnel entrance in the side of the cavern. It couldn't have been any worse than trying our luck in the Greek city

with the half-dead plague man, so I hedged my bets and entered after them. We'll send a retrieval mission for Wagner once we get out of here. I panted out to the group, trying to justify our monstrous actions. Right now our priority should simply be to get out of here and let the world know what we've seen. But it didn't seem like anyone was absorbing my words,

as I saw that once more they'd all come to a halt shortly in this tunnel. "'Germostia! "'Siminoff let out. "'The first time I'd heard him speak in his mother tongue. "'They gathered in a half-circle facing the wall, "'huddled around something that seemed to be of great interest, "'or at least interesting enough to briefly forget about the oozy-fied Wagner. "'I could tell that they were shot by their expressions,

"'but at this point I assume that nothing could truly terrify me "'more than anything we'd seen already. But I was wrong. What? What is it? I asked, while coming up from behind him and parting them aside so I could get a better look. I took one look once I was inside the tunnel

and nearly dropped the machete. I was still white-knuckling from before. In the wall was a large black cocoon comprised of that all-too-familiar reddish-black slime, with tendrils and a patchwork of other fibres stretching out in all directions. Although buried under a few feet of the translucent slime that comprised the tunnel walls in these depths, I could still clearly make out what lied in the centre of the hellish mass.

The bloated and butchered face of Perez gazed out from the substances embrace. His mouth fixed open in a noiseless scream and glazed over eyes bulging out of their sockets. Part three. We're going to die down here, aren't we? Kekana stated, more as a matter of fact than an inquiry, while her husband attempted to comfort her. Die, I thought. Or something far worse than that.

Despite being submerged under what I would assume to be an aerobic fluid, incapable of being breathed in by human lungs, I could see that Perez's mouth was still ever so subtly moving. up and down, almost too slow to be perceived. I could tell that he was struggling to speak, and glancing at his hands I saw his fingers twitching slightly in the blue coating. He must have been in an inhuman level of discomfort and suffering. He's still alive. I spoke up and slowly approached his not-so-permanent resting place. I poured out Wagner's Beretta, and with a shaky hand, pointed it directly at the man's face, which expressed nothing but pure

terror and agony. I poured the trigger, sending a bullet flying directly into his skull and out the other side, sending out blood, gore, bits of skull and black goo mingling with the other contents of the wall. I began to turn away after my horrific but necessary decision to put the tortured soul out of his ministry when I caught a second look at the mass out of the corner of my eye. The black clump was now visibly writhing and vibrating. First I was a little bit of the first only slightly, and then more vigorously with black, slimy tentacles of ooze sliding up and over Perez's still blindly spasming face, filling in the cavities of his mouth, nostrils, ears and even eyes. This process continued until anything that could even remotely hint to the

fact that what was once inside that wall was a human being was lost, and all that remained was a black mass, not unlike the ones we'd encountered earlier in the initial tunnel. I don't think that a retrieval mission is going to be fruitful at this point. Simanov bluntly stated, and the rest of the crew solemnly agreed. Right, let's keep moving. I exhaled in the dank tunnel, filled with a stench of rotten meat and fish, and with a metallic aftertaste. It almost seemed like the further along the tunnel we walked,

the more the temperature raised. It was easily 90 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface directly before we started our exploratory voyage. and I'm not sure if it was just the humidity, but down here it felt easily to be 15 or 20 degrees warmer than that. The air nearly felt like there was a fine mist suspended throughout it due to the extreme humidity, whenever I wiped away sweat from my forehead, especially the region around my eyes, it seemed like a new layer had formed before my hand even returned to my side. I almost considered removing my shirt or other layers due to how disgustingly wet and dirty I felt from the inside out. but I didn't want to expose any more of my bare skin to what other horrors may be lurking down here in the dark.

After another 20 minutes of travel through this particular tunnel, I checked my watch and found it hard to believe it had only been a few hours since we'd first entered into this abyss. It felt like a lifetime. If so many horrible things had happened to us in such a short time frame from when we arrived, who knew if we could even have survived an hour more down there, or possibly even days? since that was when the next queue was scheduled to arrive. The tunnel had an obvious upward slope,

unlike the last two we traversed. And I just now noticed that physical toll all of the adrenaline and sprinting had taken on my body in the last couple of hours, as I felt my muscles burn with lactic acid. But I knew that resting, even for only a few moments, could be death in this place.

I almost sighed in defeat when we came upon an entrance to yet another large cavern, knowing that whatever was in here probably meant nothing more than additional running and terrors yet to be seen. But I quickly deduced that this was most likely the same main cavity that we'd escaped the creatures from, which held the bulk of the ruins we'd seen so far. Those things could still be lurking out here, Sophia said,

her nails digging into Simonov's arm. I'd rather face an army of those before I could look at Wagner's distorted face for even one more second. I retorted, and at the time I truly meant it. Wagner's fate, as well as that of Perez, was something which sent shivers up my spine, even in the disgusting hot, wet muck of the tunnels. To lose your life, to die, even to die horrifically was one thing, but the transformation and total loss of your humanity was not so easily grasped.

This was the opposite of brain depth, as rather than the body remaining intact while the mind melted away into oblivion, the body was hijacked and rendered useless. to the host wall, the mind was taken along for the ride. A helpless passenger in its own body turned prison. We were clearly on the opposite side of the massive cavern, however, as I didn't recognise any of the terrain around us, but most of the ruins this side actually looked to be in much better shape. Full buildings were visible from where we exited the cave,

and can't be described as anything other than what you'd see in a textbook describing some of the cities of ancient Greece or the Mediterranean. I asked a South African couple, as our resident anthropologists, what they thought some of these buildings might have been used for. Well, that one there with the arched entryway was like a public bathhouse, Kekana pointed out as we walked through the ghost town. That one there that's nearly formed pieces was likely a temple used for the worship of the gods. It was as we passed this open-faced structure that I noticed some crude lines etched into the ground in front of the this long abandoned temple. On the ground, chiseled into the rocks, one word stared back at us. Thanatos. Even though I didn't know much about ancient Greek culture or history, I was still

somewhat competent in phonetically pronouncing different scripts from around the world. Hmm, vanatos, I stated inquisitively. What's that? Well, literally translated, is a Greek noun meaning death, but Thanatos is also known as a figure in Greek mythology depicting death. Kikana spoke up. What, like Hades, a second ruler of the underworld, I inquired, that explanation making a lot of sense to me considering where we were. No, not like the other gods, more of an anthropomorphized version of death, similar to the grim reaper depiction as we see today. Singh corrected me, seemingly pretty eager to get a word in.

So what? They were praying to it or something? hoping that death would spare them in this godless corner of earth, amused over to the group. Maybe, Siminoff said, while crouching and running his hands against the rough stone on the ground thousands of years in the making. But maybe, I find it more likely that they were praying for death to take them before something else did. We had positively no clue on where the hell we were heading or what we were doing in the middle of the subterranean ruins, but needless to say we were shocked when another haggard figure came stumbling out of the darkness. The bioluminescent ceiling had dimmed to a dull

presence some time ago, and we'd since switched back to our headlamps. So the moment my light shone upon the intruder, I immediately pulled out the pistol I had in my waistband and pointed it the figure before realizing that it was indeed a fellow human, at least for now. Who are you? I shouted, not yet lowering my gun from chest level. Wait, wait, he shouted back, defensively raising his arms above his head. My name's Rick. I was on your boat. Rick, the archaeologist. Ellen spoke up for the first time in a while. What are you doing here? Where's the rest of you?

of your group? I'm the last one, Rick frantically murmured, lowering his hands to shield his eyes from the light of six headlamps directed at him on full power. We need to go now. Whoa, what happened? I probed. We found a cave about ten minutes into our walk across the island. We went in to investigate, but we were attacked by these things, these disgusting fucking creatures. Rick shouted as he came nearer and I lowered my gun. We saw the same things, I bellowed, those slimy dark red things that move like a liquid across the ground.

So the rest of your team, they're dead. No, he roared, his voice amplified by fear and dread. They didn't kill them. Those things somehow, for some reason, I don't know, they picked up the other seven. they shoved them into the goddamn walls. His voice was now quivering with every syllable, and I noticed the trembling throughout his arms and legs.

I tried to go back for them, but I had no choice. They cut off the opening we came out of, and when I look back, the crew were all coated in that same liquid, screaming out to me even while we still shoved into them. Right at that second, we all heard a sickening, crunching, popping sound. and looked to see that a slimy black tendril slipped out of Rick's midsection. We shone our lights behind him to behold a very large creature, nearly ten feet tall,

that had penetrated his lower back and exited his stomach with his arm before pushing him aside and approaching our group. I immediately went for my gun, pointing it towards a thing and pulling the trigger, but nothing happened. I knew the clip wasn't empty, as I'd checked multiple times on our marks. most recent hike. But my unfamiliarity with firearms and the chaos that was playing out made it almost impossible for me to properly assess what the problem was. I turned and looked to see that

the mega-creature had traps of fear in one of the corners of the ruins, and I quickly took off after her, fumbling to grab my machete and place the gun back in my waistband at the same time. Sophie! was all I managed to get out before shamefully tripping over my own two feet, sending my arms and legs splayed across the ground, projecting my gun into the air in front of me, careening several yards before sliding across the dusty ground and coming to a hole. By some miracle, the gun had managed to slide all the way to Sophia's feet, and thankfully the girl had the wherewithal to grasp the weapon, and pointed at the thing that slunk ever closer by the second, while her arms were so badly shaking that I feared the gun might loosen

from her grip entirely, that she struggled to make eye contact with the abomination. and, Sophia, I shouted after her. Shoot it. Pull the trigger. But the poor woman remained frozen in terror, not able to make a sound or movement of any kind. The thing stomped towards her, letting out all manner of terrible clicks and hisses and words so garbled I doubt even Semenov could have understood them.

I desperately wanted to run over and rescue her like all the brave heroes would do in the movies, but I lamented that there was simply not enough time and the odds were dangerously stacked against me. Here, Simeon off bellowed towards her while waving his arms, desperate to intervene. Sophia, throw me the gun. Sophia glanced quickly towards him, and then fixed her eyes on the creature, which was only a few feet away now.

His filthy dripping vines were already snaking their way across towards her, and in that moment I could have sworn that time slowed down in that cave. She looked at the gun. switched off the safety and her eyes met with mine. Sophia placed the barrel of the dark M9A1 Beretta directly to the side of her head and pulled the trigger. I stared in horror as bits of bone, brain and blood blasted through the air, painting the walls behind them in the ground with her viscera,

likely the first time in thousands of years that they'd tasted fresh blood. My jaw hit the floor. I was sick of running by now. The Sophia's corpse slumped to the ground against the wall, with her head missing a fourth of his exterior. I charged the monster. I screamed out in rage and misery while holding up the machete, knowing that most likely my fate would be much worse

than the young woman who now lay dead in front of me, but it was my time to face my fears. I raised up the machete, poised for a hit while the creature was still preoccupied, with inspecting Sophia's lifeless corpse, and swung down with all my might on the left side of where I guessed the creature's neck to be. To my shop, the machete almost seemed to cleave cleanly through this portion of the thing, swiftly exiting its body coated in tar and striking the stone wall to my left side. Now I had its full attention, and it turns its head up to face me,

but undeterred, or possibly in a desperate move of self-preservation, I swung the machete towards its neck again, this time at an angle that aimed to swipe through the entirety of its massive neck while I still had the chance. This time there was certainly a fair amount of resistance when the machete was around halfway through, but I yanked and pushed with all of my might, sending a spray of black and red goop flying towards me, but I was quick to dodge, much to my own surprise. The creature buckled and began to collapse while it's now headless. body started to flail wildly, sending chunks of its flesh in all directions near and far,

before falling to the ground with a combination of a splash and a thud. As I peered down at the nightmare fuel, after taking a few steps back, I noticed that the black tar was quickly beginning to lose shape and become more of a liquid than when it was in motion, and it pulled over to the side, revealing a half-dissolved corpse of a man. By now silence had once more taken over this strange environment. And the rest of our group approached while glancing down, inspecting the body inquisitively. Simanov using the metal rod to poke the headless corpse hidden underneath, and Alan wiping off some of the black goo from his face while coming from the side.

You killed it! Alan led out in a sigh of relief. His face as flabbergasted as mine was. I inspected the body closer now that Simonov had flipped it to expose its front. The body of the man that had once been human was still clearly recognisable as such, but badly distorted and mutated by the contagion. His arms and legs were twisted to outrageously gangly proportions, and although his skin looked pale and dead, large black veins left a spider-web pattern across his body, with large patches of skin missing,

revealing the tar-like substance's presence throughout the corpse. I went up to approach the roughly decapitated head, when I saw that its features were nearly wiped clean, replaced instead with a clump of flesh that almost looked like the inner organs of the skull had exploded outwards, but I could still make out an upper and lower jaw that were unnervingly still slowly moving back and forth, although no words escaped. Simanov met my gaze and approached the head, immediately plunging the metal into its skull and quickly pulling it out,

which halted the movement of the jaw. He was melding, thank you. Simonov informed me as he stood back and regrouped with the rest of us. Now that's taken care of. I began, starting to somewhat regain my exterior composure. Let's get back to the subject of just what the hell these things are. That, I do not know, Simonov stated to me, before looking at the rest of the group. But I think I finally figured out what this place is.

When we first arrived, Simonov began. Our crew discovered the orange-red color of the surface beneath the soil and foliage, plus the spikes made out of the same material connected to it, that littered this place in a perfectly symmetrical pattern. I think we can all agree that they are most likely not man-made. We all looked up at him with puzzled looks on our face, curious as to where he was going with his revelation. When we came across this cave, I'm sure I was not the only one who noticed the neon blue color of the liquefied jelly in the tunnel surrounding us, or the smell.

No kidding, Alan butted in. That stuff could put an elephant down. No, not that smell. The metallic copper-scented odor. It's most likely caused by a chemical compound known as Hemosyanin. That also explains the blue color of everything around here. Okay, I started not quite sure where he was going with this. Wherever we are now, our coordinates on Earth,

it seems unlikely to me the island was always attached to it. I think it's safe to say that ancient Greeks didn't travel the earth only to colonize a sub-aquatic subterranean cavern that they would have had no possibility of knowing about. I think the island moved. You thought my ideas were stupid. Alan blurted out, clearly not buying similar. of speech. How can an island move on its own genius? Because it's not an island,

Simonov explained. It's a living creature, and we're inside of it at this very moment. We all look around at each other with various facial expressions. Confusion, fear, mourning, dread. So what you're saying is that we're currently in the belly of one gargantuan turtle, Alan mockingly suggested. No, it's not a turtle, Simanov corrected him. Judging by the red carapace, spiny surface like spiculous, the elevated temperature, the blue vascular system caused by the presence of hemocybin. I'd take an educated guess that we're actually in a rather ancient form of crustacean. A crab? We're in a giant freaking crab like what I order on my seafood play back home?

That's possibly even more asinine. You explain me to believe this garbage. There are tens of thousands of different species of crustaceans. Some are microscopic. Others are monster-sized. I'd imagine that this specimen is tens or more likely hundreds of thousands of years old, judging by what I've seen. My mind was immediately drawn back to the native species of my adopted home in New Zealand. Two avian specimens.

The kiwi, the size of a small dog. And the mower, the size of a small house. home. Sing spoke out. If what you're saying is true, this goes against all Darwinian evolution. How got a species even grow to be so old or large? A few generations would stretch back millions of years. Who said it'd have to have grown this way over a few generations? Plenty of species of both marine and terrestrial life are indeterminate growers and plenty others are functionally immortal under the right conditions. Theoretically speaking, they don't stop growing, they don't die.

The species that mutated under the right conditions might be able to grow indefinitely, especially in the ocean where it wouldn't have to support its full weight like it would on land. That is, as long as it was full of large hollow pockets of air to keep it buoyed. He concluded, gesturing around at the cavern we were in. Couple that with the phenomenon of deep sea gigantism, and I have a feeling that this is no ordinary crustacean. All the wheels began to spin in my head as I looked up to Simanov. He was the team's marine biologist for a reason, after all.

If anyone knew what he was talking about when it came to this subject, it was him. The Amelaria Sol Depies is a fungal colony in America, several miles wide that has spawned from one single specimen from thousands of years ago that simply never stopped expanding. Some species of crustaceans, like the spiny lobster, even have special organs to identify and interact with electromagnetic fields, a kind of sixth sense that... That explains the electrical malfunctions and issues regarding the radio encompasses, I interjected.

Yes, that's right. Well, what about the ruins? Singh insisted. Why would an ancient Greek civilization build their city in the center of a nightmarish mutant crustacean? I don't think that they did. Simanov continued. I think Alan was right about them building it on the surface back when this entire place was in the middle of the Aegean Sea, and possibly quite a bit smaller. Most crustaceans and other animals with an exoskeleton go through a phase called molting. It's basically when they shed their outer layer in order to grow a new one to better fit them when they increase in size.

I think their entire village may have sunk into this creature's body upon one of its molting sessions, all those thousands of years ago. Okay, Alan said, still somewhat incredulously. I'm still not buying that the crab island isn't an alien, but even if it isn't, what are those slimy creatures that have been making our lives a living hell this past day? And that's when it suddenly clicked for me. My microbiology research finally being put to good use. They're leukocytes, I clarified to the doubting man, but my revelation just left the rest of the group more confused than before I'd said it.

We have them in our bodies as well. Me and you, why blood cells? Normally that produced in the bone marrow, but here I think that they came from the exoskeleton and were distributed throughout the body by the vascular systems we've been walking through. Whenever we entered this unholy place, we triggered its immune system. We're the pathogens here. These life forms, however awful, are just doing it.

what they evolved to do. So, it evolved, Alan began, to kill humans. It evolved to take care of any and all foreign bodies invading its system that may be hostile to its survival, which, in this case, just happens to be us. But correct me if I'm wrong, doctor. The last word, Alan put emphasis on having a somewhat snarky tone. White blood cells destroy invading pathogens. They don't do whatever it is these things do to people.

Well, it's acting almost like a white blood cell and a virus, I stated, somewhat winging it from here on out. I don't know how, but it appears to take control of the host's body to use for reproduction, like what we saw with Perez, or hijacks the nervous system and controls a body like a puppet, using the brain and spinal cord as its makeshift nuclei. Well, that's one hell of a white blood cell, Alan muttered, as he walked over to the now stagnant pool

of dark liquid with the mutilated and mutated corpse looking down in disgust. Sometimes, Simanov stated in a melancholy tone, standing over Sophia's corpse, death really is the better option. He briefly knelt down to place a hand on her shoulder before closing her eyes and grabbing the barretta that was still clutched in her petite, lifeless hand. Quite the riveting theories, gentlemen, Kikana half-heartedly congratulated us, But I can't think of a better one right now, but let's get out of here before we end up as the meek core of another of those lucasites like our friend over there. Singh was still muttering to himself on how ridiculous it was that they were all located in the organs of a mountain-sized crustacean, while Alan, ever stubborn to the bitter end, still tried to argue that perhaps the crab had come from outer space.

Wait, I told her. I have just one more thing to do. I walked over to some of the ruins and followed a trail of blood, gore and black slime over to where Rick's body lay motionless face down. With my right foot, I lifted up on his shoulder, flipping his body around, revealing that the goo had already coated his face and chest and was radiating out of his nose, his mouth and the hole in his gut where he was punctured by the tendril. His eyes slowly opened, and he looked up at me, his mouth opening slightly in an attempt to speak between shallow breaths,

but all that escaped was that familiar creaking and clicking sound. I could tell, however, that he was continuously mouthing only two words. No one deserves this kind of end. I'm sorry, I stated in a melancholy tone. His body began to twitch rapidly as I brought the machete down onto his neck.

And after I cleave through the spinal cord, it ceased entirely. But his facial muscles still let out, uncontrollable spasms until Simonov brought the rod down into his skull, proving that not only did the neck have to be severed, but the head had to be destroyed as well to ensure permanent death. Hey, Singh initiated to the two of us. The guy said his group came from another opening on the other side of the island, right?

Well, with any luck, maybe it's still there, and maybe these threaks went and bugged off somewhere else. With any luck, I repeated. averting my eyes from the man we'd just bludgeoned and carved to death. We had done it as a favour, a merciful gesture to placated soon to be eternally suffering soul, but the action still sat heavy on my heart, that as well as the horrible choice of fear had made earlier. If only I had known the creature's weakness beforehand, perhaps she would still be alive. But we can't change the past, and we have to keep on pushing forward,

which is exactly what we did in those subterranean depths. We figured we'd stick near the perimeter in order to scout out more openings in the sides that may have led us to an opening to the outside world on the northeast quadrant, since we assumed the southwest quadrant's opening might still be closed from earlier. Wandering through the remains of what was perhaps

the world's most famous lost civilization was not nearly as riveting as I would have hoped for in more favourable scenarios, although the sights truly made for an awe-inspiring scene that evoked emotions that hard to put in words. Although what lay to our side appeared to be mostly just a collection of rubble, caved in buildings and half-destroyed columns, it was quite marvellous to think that at one time this entire city

was possibly a central point of Greek culture, bustling with activity on the surface before its untimely demise. But one thing that Plato got wrong was that, Rather than sinking directly into the ocean, this city sank into the very ground beneath it, before the entire island sank into the ocean. Zimanov, hey, I called out, jogging to keep pace with the Stoic man. So you believe the island was previously the lost city of Atlantis, more or less, correct? I wouldn't exactly call it that, but sure, in theory, maybe,

Simmonov replied, keeping a healthy stride at the front of the pack. Maybe one day we'll find out for sure, if we get out of here to tell the tale, that is, and people don't peg us as lunatics who lost their minds after a tragic expedition. I consciously agreed with him that it would definitely be difficult for anyone to swallow, said information, had they not experienced what we had in this place. Well, what do you figure of our infected Soviet crew? I continued. I get that they might have been sent on a covert mission and forgot about decades ago, But what's with the winter attire?

Jackets, parkers, fur gloves? It just doesn't make any sense for the climate around here. Back in Soviet times, he began, clearly having trouble getting the words out. The government did many horrible things to its people and kept many secrets from the public. Quite a bit more than your government's in the West, Amifred. There are reports of strange happenings in the Arctic and Siberian region of Russia where tens of thousands of people would disappear after their forced deportation. You think this island may have been that far, no?

Perhaps, perhaps not. It doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility for Soviets to have sent prisoners here to explore before sending in the special force. I'm guessing that once the Spetsnals had entered one of these holes on either side of the island and experienced the rapid rise in heat and humidity we've seen here, they might have discarded their cold weather garments before going any further. God, if that's true, then these poor souls have been imprisoned in the Lucasites down here for decades. Some horrors, I think, even Soviet government was not entirely prepared to deal with.

May I remind you of the number of record-breaking atomic tests the USSR conducted in Arctic territory? You really think they were trying to rid the earth of this thing? Obviously, that's just my theory. We may never know for sure. But where do you think this place even originated from? I questioned, eager to get another perspective on the subject. How could it survive in so many diverse environments and ecosystems? Why don't you ask Alan? Simonov answered.

The guy's always got one half-baked idea at all another. Hey, Alan, I shouted out to him while he trailed behind. Do you think this island is due to radioactive waste released by America, mutating harmless species into giant monsters, or was it the alien's retribution on humanity for our treatment of Mother Nature? We both burst out laughing at that one, while Alan merely grumbled and scuffed his feet along the ground in a fit. After a couple of hours of walking through the lost city without incident, it seemed like spirits among the group had increased significantly, although we all remained cautious. It was for that reason that when we started

spotting more openings into various tunnels, we approached them slowly and weren't so quick to enter as we have been earlier. Some of them seemed promising and others were obvious duds, such as the tunnels that immediately sloped downwards deeper into the beast, or some led to chambers that completely boggled the mind, such as when I spotted a massive room with large expanding diaphragms littering the walls, or another one where blue liquid viciously sloshed back and forth. However, eventually we knew we'd found our mark when we started seeing the clothes and personal effects of our former crew. We approached this hole with the utmost suspicion, Rick's warnings echoing in our heads. And it's somewhat ironic, but when we were greeted

with the fate of our comrades, we were met with a mixed feeling of both relief and dread. Various instruments, devices and packs were strewn about the entrance of this tunnel. but by far the most horrifying aspect was the cadavers that were suspended in the walls a few yards into this one. I looked with disgust and pity in my eyes when I saw the familiar faces of my fellow crew members suspended in the gelatinous substance, as nearly half of them had their eyes peeled open, pupils violently darting around as black veins snaked across their skin and fluid seeped from their paws. I knew there was almost nothing we could do to help them at this point, but I still felt a pang of guilt,

walking past, especially when one particular member ranged his body so hard that he actually managed to move one of his suspended arms an inch or two before more tendrils embedded themselves in his body and dragged him deeper into the translucent depths. I couldn't help but look away at that point. This must be Rick's Tunnel, I said as we walked farther in. We'd be out of here in no time. We marched in a line up the tunnel that we thought just might be our saving grace. I was filled with nervousness and excitement when I saw the walls begin to light up around us. It certainly made it easier to see, and was arguably quite the strangely most beautiful spectacle, but it might have been a bad omen of things yet to come, just as when we entered.

We trotted along the path silently, which made it much easier to hear the clicking and scuttling from behind us. First quite subtle, something akin to a whisper across the room, or slight breeze in a open field. But pretty soon it became extremely apparent that we were being followed. I heard a patter of footsteps and what sadly like splashes of thick liquid on the ground behind us when we were around 50 yards into the tunnel. But I was unable to view just what was following us due to the gradual but consistent elevation of the tunnel. Despite this I instantly knew what was in store for us if we didn't put pedal to the medal immediately and haul ass out of there. Come on, Everyone, run now, I whisper, shouted at the remaining crew.

We took off at a decent pace, knowing that the creatures that were behind us would give up anything in order to have a taste of our plump red flesh, although the terrifying aspect is that there was nothing personal regarding this chase. The Lucasites were simply an extension of the immune system of the animal kingdom. They didn't distinguish between who and what they were consuming and assimilating. They had no emotions or personalities or memories. or so I thought. This time I ran, not for my life, but for my death. I sprinted and pushed myself like I never had before,

so that I may one day have a peaceful, normal death, perhaps of cancer or a car accident. Hell, even being murdered was preferable to this twisted fate of living death, being used as a puppet for an advanced single-celled organism that saw you as nothing more than a hollow vessel or means for propagation. No, death didn't scare me, but that truly terrified me. Our passage quickly leveled out to a more flat landscape, but unfortunately I still saw nothing but darkness out in the distance, which is when I realized that we'd been underground

for so long that it was actually past dusk in the outside world, a world that it felt like I hadn't seen or felt or smelled or experienced in a lifetime due to the traumatic events of the past day. We sprinted all the way to the end, when Semenov stopped in his tracks a few dozen yards away from the exits. Semenov, I shouted after him. What are you doing? We can't let those things follow us up to the surface. He shouted back to me. If they chase us up there, we'll be as good as dead. It's only a matter of time. He pulled out the same metal rod that he'd held when we first entered the caverns and, with both hands this time, plunged the instrument into the side of the cavern, which led out a minor rumbling noise and brief flash of light. He stood around for a few seconds as if he was waiting for something to occur, but when it was evident that his little stunt was unsuccessful, he went to pull out his makeshift weapon, when he and I both noticed that the cave wall had already completely consumed the rod.

which by now was already buried several feet into the gelatinous wall. By then, I could tell that both of us had already noticed the literal wave of Lucasite monstrosities, pouring down the relatively narrow hallway, barreling towards at dangerous speeds. Semenov, we have to go now. Semenov reached into his waistband once more, this time pulling out a barretta,

aiming it at the wall and emptying all six bullets. from the rest of the clip, with round after round exploding through the blue translucent material and sending chunks of vascular tissue flying in all directions. Once Simanov had exhausted the full extent of the magazine, he threw the pistol to the ground and began to sprint towards the exit, which by now was already beginning to collapse, both through our amazement and horror. By now we could plainly hear the noises being emanated by those things, such as a barrage of clicks, hisses, moans, gargles,

and most terribly the voices. Only this time they weren't in some garbled foreign tongue, but in a language I could easily recognize. Because when I look back, many of the things that are joined in the charge were my former co-workers. Please, come back. One pathetic voice pleaded from out of the blue-tinted darkness. We won't hurt you,

said another that I soon recognized as waxen. Don't just leave me here, please, pleaded a pitiful fellow whom I recognized for a brief conversation on the boat. As much as it hurt me, I knew that whatever value as members of the human species these things once possessed, it was now irrevocably revoked. I motioned for Simanov to pick up the pace, knowing that his window of escape was very quickly collapsing, and that the Lucasites were hot on his trail. quickly gaining ground on the large man, who was by no means a terrific sprinter. By the grace of God, Simanov was able to barely squeeze through the quickly contracting hole,

but not before I saw black tendrils shoot out and latch onto the sides of the portal. When Simonov was completely through, I grasped my machete firmly in both hands and blindly plunged it into the small hole that remained where the opening once was, driving the machete into something solid on the other side. mirroring Simonov's action from earlier in the main cave. The machete stuck fast in the head, or whatever it was, of the creature that lay beneath the black ooze, and I was unable to pull it out in time before it fell backwards into the tunnel,

taking my machete with it, letting out nothing but shrill, piercing shrieks as it did so. As the fleshy outside walls of the cave began to close, so too did the dim blue light from its interior, as well as the clicking and chattering and moans and screams of anguish from inside, began to fade away, locked inside forever where mankind would hopefully never tread again. Part 4. I was alive.

I'd survived. I'd avoided death and the non-death provided by the Lucasites, and being human never felt so good. I took in a long deep breath of the cool night air and thought that I might weep after being confined to that nightmarish realm for so long. After taking in lungful, after lungful of the relatively crisp ground-level air, I could finally start to feel clean and pure again, at least on the inside, as my clothes were still coated in tacky blue flesh, seawater, sweat, and even a bit of blood from hacking into Rick's neck earlier in killing him. A mercy kill, I had to remind myself. Although under any other circumstances dredging ourselves out of a cave, sopping wet in the middle of the night would be a rather

miserable experience for us this was a course for celebration and everyone there was in a rather joyous mood with the exception of Alan who either remained too thunderstruck to make conversation or was far more traumatized by the day's events than i thought i did not feel like i was only in there for a day it felt like months maybe even years it was as if i'd forgotten everything else in the interior of that a cursed creature was all that i was familiar with i didn't I think I'd ever be able to touch a crab or lobster again in my life, maybe even staying away from seafood altogether. I, uh, know our contract doesn't expire for another 12 days. I started while we trudged through the ocean to get back to dry land, but I think it's time for us to go home.

I got an affirmative from everyone there, with Singh and Kekana embracing in relief and exhaustion. First, Simanov stated, let's get back to camp. See if there's anything there that can help us get the hell out of here. They... Alan initiated, staring at the ground with his shoulders slouched. They knew what this place was. Nobody told us. Now, Alan, calm down.

I attempted to reassure him. They sent us here to die, he continued. More defeated than I've ever seen a man in my life. No, no, no. Actually, they didn't send us here to die. They sent us here as guinea pigs just to see what would happen. Well, you may or may not be right, but right now the people who send us here

are the only way for us to get out of here as well. So in the meantime, just keep your mouth shut and stay vigilant. And once the cavalry comes to take us home, you'll be a third of a million dollars richer, and nobody you know will be the wiser. But I couldn't help be upset. as well. But I knew that, short of whistleblowing and moving my life to a foreign country like Russia or China in the footsteps of Snowden, the truth about what we saw and what we'd experienced

in the past two days, along with the history behind it, would likely never make it to the public eye, and that the bulk of our crew was lightly killed or left for dead in vain. It was an unthinkable reality, but one I knew I needed to accept if I wanted to maintain any semblance of a normal life. I tell them the truth in my debriefing, warn them never to come back to this place again, take my cash prize and then retire somewhere in the middle of a desert. As our feet thudded against the wet sand at the bank, I knew that this wouldn't sit right with me any time soon, maybe even for the rest of my life.

There were images that simply can't be unseen, implications that just can't be so easily forgotten. Who knew how long the remembrance? remains of our crew will be tormented down in those deaths. That damned Soviet expedition seemed like they were cognizant for decades after their initial infection and assimilation. Maybe this was a permanent fate. Dante's tenth level of hell that somehow escaped from the nether realm and made it to our reality. Get a hold of yourself, I reminded my brain. It's just nature. It's just an animal. There is no good and evil here.

Still, the thought of having my own bodily faculties ripped away from me one by one while my mind was slowly eaten away was something I just couldn't shake. How long would my mental fortitude resist before I gave in against the overwhelming pressure of the leukocyte's infection? It's ironic, but the trek through the beach around the forest this time around felt so incredibly alien to me, almost as if I didn't belong there, or that this was an unfamiliar environment after having. having formed a lifetime of scarring memories from a local, only a few hundred feet beneath us. Passing next to iconic-looking palm trees, a beautiful surf forming in the distant ocean, and the cleanest, clearest, purest water I think I've ever seen in my life. The only thought to describe them that went through my head was deceit.

How could such a pristine and luscious environment be harboring such inhuman terrors beneath its surface? Even though we'd already exited that unholy cavern, I could still smell the same stench of blood, rot and copper, not entirely sure whether it was from the clothes on our backs or whether it had just been permanently etched into my brain. Once more, making it back to the familiar side of base camp was an odd sensation, seeing the empty tents, discarded supplies and human waste littering the area. If only the bulk of the team had known yesterday that this was the last, last time they'd ever see it again, the last time they could even see the sun again. Even I began to miss its clean rays and warmth, completely opposite to the dank, humid musk and

foreboding blue light of the tunnels. Sing! Kikana! Simonov spoke up after we arrived in the heart of the camp. You two can sleep in your old tent. You set up the other day. The rest of us will clear out some others so we can all have our own place to sleep. "'Hey, I might want my own place to sleep, too,' Kikana replied sarcastically. "'Juching by the stench that's coming off of this man,' she said while playfully pushing Singh aside. "'Yeah, yeah,' sing smirked. "'Why don't you give me a bath, then?' "'In this place, Trimhorn, buddy.'

"'Okay, come on, guys.' I interjected before it get too graphic. "'Let's just all get some sleep, and tomorrow we can try and formulate a plan to get this carapace. Why not now? Simanov inquired. It's only a few hours past dusk. I didn't really see any reason that we couldn't stay up another hour before hitting the sack, so I obliged. Alan. I called out to him as he continued walking with his back turned to us. Where are you going? But by that point he'd already ducked into one of the open tents, quickly zipping up the flat behind him.

"'Whatever. We'll continue without him. He'd probably just want to bank on an alien spacecraft coming to evacuate us out of here.' "'Yeah, we're probably right to just let him be,' Sing replied. His mind probably snapped after that young woman off to self earlier. Thank God I didn't get to look at that all. Well, I might have... Now, Simanov cut him off. We know other radios here don't work, so we won't be able to call for help, but perhaps there might be some kind of signal fire we can make in the upcoming days to call for rescue. They'll see the smoke and know that something went wrong. Well, what if they don't care that something went wrong? I rebuffed. What if Alan was right

and that was the plan all along? Seeing what kind of horrendous things would happen to us here and then study the aftermath later? Well, could be true. Probably one of the things that guy said that I agree with but what choice do we have I believe I heard Wagner say that the Navy vessel is parked only a couple kilometers offshore if the fire is big enough it'd be impossible to ignore well we um could try building a raft might be better to try and get out to them rather than them come to us kidd this isn't a TV show building a sustainable raft that won't kill us all might take longer than it would to wait for

them to come here on their own. Simanov's right, Singh added. It would certainly take longer to gather and assemble the pieces to a five-man raft than it would just to burn it all. But we have gasoline,

fire starters, and even some compound fire logs to get things going. Well, unfortunately, I lost the machete back in the caves. I lamented. I don't see any spare axes or blades around here,

so it looks like we'll just be scavenging for driftwood or extra large sticks and brush. sounds like a plan Simanov concluded Oh good night Sleep tight Don't let the Soviets bite After crawling into my old tent

With my former tentmate Alan seemingly Having chosen a new one at random I stripped off my clothes for the day Settling in on top of my sleeping bag And reminiscing for the day's events It became impossible to close my eyes for a second Before experiencing them all over again Oh, Wagner's bloated and misshaping head.

The face of Perez and the others locked inside their fleshy vessels of the beast. Sophia's, beautiful face right before it was shattered to pieces by a nine-millimeter bullet. I guess I'd never really be able to wipe those memories from my brain no matter how hard I tried. I curled up in my tent, arms wrapped around my legs. Even in the dark, my eyes were open to their widest. I thought I might never be able to sleep again, but despite my mind's best efforts, the sheer physical toll of the activities throughout the day finally hit me and I closed my eyes. Just for a second, as the smell of fish and copper wafed into my nostrils.

My eyes shot open with a startling feeling. I was unable to quite make out my surroundings yet, due to my blurry eyes being crusted over during the night, as which frequently happened after a night of restlessly. but I was able to make out the fact that it was morning or at least brightening up outside. I felt a marked rise in humidity and wiped the back of my hand over my forehead before shaking it to the side and sending several droplets of sweat flying to the ground. I rubbed my eyes and looked around, still not quite able to tell what time it was, being rather shocked considering it felt like it had only just gone to sleep.

After some time I sat up and looked at my hands, only to notice a strange blue glow coating them. Not the yellow rays of the sun that I was looking forward to. Could it be I was back in the... Shlosh! Something loud rang out from afar, and I shot to my feet, looking around and finding that I was not standing in my sleeping bag in my cozy tent, but on some dusty stone ground with pillars and rubble as far as I could see.

Everything had a strange, muted tone to it, but I could tell this was definitely in the belly of the beast once more. I looked back down at my bare feet and legs to see that beneath me, chiseled into the rock, was the same massive pattern of lines and shapes that I'd seen in front of the temple. The fuck, I murmured sheepishly. This didn't make any sense to me. I'd escaped the catacombs.

Was I dreaming? Or was my escape the dream? It was definitely a less than lucid atmosphere here. Every footstep sounding like I was underwater, and I was filled with a general sense of unease. My feet dully thudded across the earth, stepping over shards of rocks, pebble and rubble, but it didn't hurt.

I didn't feel much of anything, actually. However, one feeling that definitely floated up to the surface was curiosity. When I saw a group of shadowy figures standing in the center of the ruins a dozen yards in front of me. Hello? I sheepishly caught out to the huddle mats. One of the smaller figures nearest to me began to turn around. I slowly began to process what I was seeing.

To my extreme bewilderment, Sophia's face met with mine as she awkwardly slouched to the side. Her head cocked at an ankle, almost out of curiosity. She took one step forward, and I was able to register, the small gout on her left temple and the massive chunk of flesh missing from the side of her head, exposing pinkish red brain matter covered in a thin black coating. Sophia!

They stammered out incredulously. You're alive! With what seemed like incredible fortitude, Sophia took another step towards me, clearly lacking the basic vestibular senses related to a normal sense of balance in your average human. Why did you do this? The creature that I assumed to be Sophia aggressively probed. This is your fault.

Sophia, don't come any closer. It was what I wanted to command out loud, but instead, in my panic, all I could verbally muster was... Sophia! Now the rest of the group have become aware of my presence and turned to meet my gaze, and I saw faces all too familiar. from the past couple of days.

Wagner and many others from the other team that had entered through the opposite side of the island. Even Perez, who was easy to identify by the clean black bullet hole

in his forehead. Sophia stared at me intently with a look of disgust and hatred in her eyes. What the hell is going on? thought to myself. Not only her, but the rest of them started

their slow, shuffled towards me before Wagner broke out in a sprint. leaving a trail of gunk in his wake. No, please, I whimpered, measuring my options. I took one final look at Sophia, who by now had put her hands on her knees,

hurling a spray of black ink onto the ground and a stream so long I wondered when it would end, creating the same sloshing sound I'd heard from earlier. Wake up! I bolted upright in my tent, feeling an uncomfortable layer of sweat built up on my face with not a single breeze in sight to cool it off. Good, God, what a nightmare.

I rubbed my eyes with my fingers and let out an audible groan. I had absolutely no idea what time it could have been, but I figured I'd try and get some sleep before daybreak anyways. I lay my head back down onto the pillow. Close my eyes and attempted to float back into dreamland, preferably a more agreeable dream this time. The sound of a stream of liquid splashing against the ground, followed by violent retching soon filled my ears.

Ah, this was no dream after all, I thought. I jumped up, unsit my tent, and prepared to face whatever new obstacle lie out there in the night. Alan, Alan, what's happening? Simonov exclaimed, rushing out of his tent. He was just as startled as I was by the situation, given that he emerged with nothing but a tank top and board shorts. Alan was hunched over near a large palm tree about 20 feet outside the borders of our camp, alternating between clutching his stomach and head and letting out an audible growl of pain that I heard as soon as I opened my tent flat. They left us here to die. They left us here to die.

Alan chanted in a somewhat monitor and rhythmic manner. but as he repeated the phrase it became more and more erratic and emotional. I shot Simonov a glance and we both briefly went back into our tents in order to grab a couple of handheld flashlights before rushing over to Alan's position. What we saw when we reached him was a ghastly sight to say the least. Alan's eye sockets looked like they'd sunk a good inch and a half into his face with his eyes themselves being played by bloodshot black veins.

As our lights pan down, we noticed a black secretion dripping from his mouth and off his chin. Following the trail of contaminated spittle to its logical destination, a shallow pool of bile at least two feet across, lay beneath the man, and more alarmingly, bright red liquid coated up to his forearms on each limb. Alan, where's Singh, and Kekana? Who? he asked, genuinely confess. it.

Oh, you mean that foreign couple? They're fine. He placed a bit too much emphasis on the last word of his sentence, almost as if he was trying hard to cover up a lie. Okay. Where are they? I pressed, desperate to get some closure on the matter. Here, he stated as a matter of fact.

You can speak with them yourself. He raised his blood-stained hand. and without skipping a beat, reached down behind some shrubbery and picked up Kikana's lifeless corpse by the back of the neck with his left hand as easily as he would lift a wooden puppet. Seeing her lifeless face and gorse oak chest.

I couldn't help but briefly avert my eyes and feel vomit rising in my throat before regaining my composure and seeing Alan plunge his right hand or whatever it was that used to be his right hand directly into the cadaver's throat. black veins bulged on his arm as the dark and necrotic flesh of his arm began to meld into her neck and I could see fluid clearly being transferred from one body to the other

Kekanah's eyes shot open almost immediately and she let out the most gruesome heart-wrenching blood-curdling scream I'd ever had the misfortune of him her face twisted and a visage of pure agony torment and fear before Alan wrenched his hand out of her neck and threw her body aside. Alan, you sick, fuck, I shouted to the deranged man. Is this the infection taking over?

Or were you always a psychotic son of a bitch? Alan seemed unmoved by my harsh words. In fact, he glanced at me almost quizzically, like he was confused as to why I would even be upset in the first place. They wouldn't leave me alone. He informed us. I was only mind of my own business here in the park. They simply wouldn't quit talking and talking.

You almost seemed to chuckle at this, as if it was some humorous quip he'd just laid upon us. I was still too flabbergasted to respond and merely stared straight at him in fear and disgust. Can you believe they thought that Oklahoma was an island? Alan bellowed out while grasping his stomach, as he let loose a bout of laughter, Only a serial killer could accurately reproduce.

There's not an island anywhere near here. I don't think I've been on an island in my life, actually. This was followed by more disgusting chortling and belly clutching, although I suppose the latter action was partially caused by internal pain in that area. Alan, I stated as calmly as I could. Look, man, you're just sick. You're real sick, and you don't know where you are, okay. The infection's just making you see what you want to see.

I extended my arms in a placating manner, but Alan seemed to have been taken aback by this gesture. Oh, geez, he sighed, as I could make out a visual eye roll. Another crazy, just mind your own business, okay, buddy. Maybe you aren't used to think you are. Negotiations were failing me, and I could see that the loose. Bucosite had already twisted his mind beyond repair. In that moment, I quickly thought on my toes, formulating an idea that might just placate the delirious man

long enough for Siminoff and I to make our move. Now, Alan, what I'm going to say is going to sound very strange, and I know it's going to be a lot to take in right now, but just trust me that I'm telling you the truth. I hope to God that my attempt would be a fruitful endeavor. We know that you were camping in an open, Oklahoma State Park in your van, but you're not there anymore. He narrowed his eyes and let out a series of loud, wet cops.

Something happened to you recently, and you're taken to this place. Oh, you wouldn't remember, or at least I don't expect you to, but I can assure you it did happen. Alan seemed a bit more intrigued, if anything, at this point. Semenov looked at me worriedly. Alan, you're on an extraterrestrial spacecraft right now. It's formulated to appear like a familiar natural environment on Earth to you, but I promise you are a long, long distance away from home. I prayed that he would believe the farce that I was trying to sell him in the heat of the moment.

He lowered his head briefly before glancing up. So, Alan began, spitting out black saliva at the sudden exhale. You're aliens, and you kidnap me here? No, no, Alan, we're not the aliens. Are you alien scumbags? Alan retorted. I'll never be your guinea pig. You're not taking me anywhere.

Alan's brow furrowed in rage as his arms stretched downwards, exposing another layer of blackened flesh underneath as he took a step forward. Alan, you need to cut it out right now. Simonov stated before he was abruptly cut off by the sound of bones snapping and joints cracking. as Alan's forearms began to distort themselves into monstrous caricatures of their former selves. Twisting and stretching into roughly hook-shaped appendages, ending in blunt points with the entire thing coated in the dark slime.

His hands and fingers were still visible, but badly deformed and nearly unrecognizable, almost looking more like talons or claws than human hands. Alan grunted and groaned in clear physical pain the entire time. but after his grotesque transformation, he glared at us with anger and satisfaction as the parasite that had taken over his body altered it into a deadly machine.

Was he even fighting it at this point? Simanov, move it, I called out to my last remaining ally. The Ukrainian muscle man sprang into action at once. Fortunately, just a second before the now corrupted Alan charged at us, wildly swinging his new, mutated arms in a downward swiping motion towards us. From where I was standing I saw Siminov was able to dodge a thrust by Alan's right arm by mere milliseconds. But the barrage of slashes seemed utterly relentless. I knew I certainly couldn't withstand something like that

if it were directed towards me. Simonov picked up a heavy metal case that I recognized as one of the kits used by the archaeologists and chucked it with all his strength towards the infected Allen, smashing into his face and knocking him to the ground, sending a spray of black and red mist flying from his mouth and into the air, floating around for a brief few seconds before settling down and releasing into the surrounding atmosphere. I cover my mouth just in case, not wanting to be infected with any spores that may potentially be contained in any aerosol spray such as this from an infected host. Simanov and I scrambled back towards the camp, rustling through supplies and empty tents,

looking for anything to use as a makeshift weapon. My eyes drifted to a small, fancy-looking claw hammer that was hung up on a hook by a nearby tree, most likely left behind by the archaeology team. It didn't look like a super formidable weapon, only being around six or seven inches long, but it was certainly better than nothing, considering it had a metal end.

Siminoff was still ransacking the closest tent, out of desperation when I noticed Alan get up by stretching his arms up from the ground and latching onto some low hanging branches and shakily returning to his feet. Alan's face was even more of a shocking sight than before. The heavy metal case most likely struck him with the force of a bowling ball, and the left half of it was now completely devoid of skin, showing black sinew and cracked teeth, as he opened his mouth to let out that god-awful clicking sound,

I saw a wildly flailing tongue spitting out bits of black flesh and gunk. Unlike before, Alan's eyes were not bloodshot with black veins, but now completely coated in the dark oily substance, giving them a disturbing monochromatic appearance. With Simeonov being the closer target, Alan used his arms as momentum to propel himself towards the tent, attempting to sink his claw-like hands into his neck. But right before he could,

I leapt forward, screaming. I sunk the hooked end of the hammer directly into Alan's skull, causing his head, followed by his entire body, to jerk to the side and slam into some computer equipment that was set up. Simeonov looked at me with a look of momentary thanks before fully exiting the tent and revealing that he come up empty-handed. There's nothing in that, he shouted in the panic. And let's just try and bash his head.

I replied, clearly not thinking that clearly, quick while he's still down. And with that, admittedly idiotic premise, I rushed towards the downed Alan, but he was a lot quicker than I'd anticipated, and with the same fluid motions I saw expressed by some of the fully transformed Lucasites from the caverns. He weaved his way along the ground, almost like an insect, avoiding a stomp I'd just deliver to the ground, where his head was only milliseconds earlier. Alan's body contorted itself in an extremely unnatural position, making itself upright once more. I could now clearly see the folly of such a hasty and brash decision to charge as such an unpredictable and inhuman creature. The thing that used to be Alan reared back its claw hand, ready to dig in the flesh on my head, neck or chest.

God, I hoped it would be quick, I thought, feeling utterly defeated. I raised my hands in front of my face to shield from the attack which narrowly missed, merely grazing my sleeve, when I heard Simanov screaming at the top of his lungs. I looked over my shoulder to see the crazed Ukrainian sprinting full speed with a large rock in his hand, which he brought up and over his head before slamming it down directly into Alan's mutated mall. This time, the sound of a solid object striking Alan's mug was more of a sickening crunch rather than. the wet slap of the metal case, and he immediately dropped like his strings were cut. Simanov straddled his body, pinning his arms down with his knees before slamming down the rock again, this time higher up on his dome, closer to the forehead, releasing more of a popping sound as black, red, and pink gore burst out of the skull and painted the ground in a debented

display. Simonov slammed the rock down again and again. not ceasing until Alan's head was a 100% vacant from his body, appearing as if it was never even there in the first place. Then Simeonov stepped off the mutated corpse and walked a few feet before putting his back to a tree and sliding down to meet the jungle floor. Are you all right? I called out to him,

rushing up to meet him. Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. He huffed out, clearly a physical and emotional wreck. As I approached, though, I spotted a circular, inch-sized incision in Simanov's shoulder, an incision that was already leaking black pus along with its crimson red blood. Your arm, I pointed out to him. Yeah, he got me good, but I should be fine, didn't hit anything major. No, I explained in a melancholy tone.

You don't understand. Alan only got a little bit of that gooey shit on his face, and he'd already completely lost his mind within hours. Simanov's expression immediately dropped, his eyes averting away from my face and turning to glance at the infected appendage. You're sure, he asked in a low voice, but I am sure he already knew the answer.

I only needed to let out a short nod before Simonov groaned, strain to lift himself up off the ground and start walking towards my general direction. Whoa, man, what do you do? I began before cutting myself off and turning his Simanov walk directly past me. He was heading back into the forest. But I couldn't exactly tell where he was going until I saw him crouch in the brush, lift up a small body by its arms that I quickly recognized as Kekana. The thick fluid was by now already building up in a system. and it almost appeared as if she was weeping black tears as the substance leaked out of her eye-suckets. Simonov propped her up against a tree,

before turning back and doing a bit of searching before he found what he was looking for, and jogged over and picked up Singh's corpse from the brush as well, putting it next to his deceased wife. What are you doing? I asked. These bodies, they have the same infection as Alan. Simanov panted out, as well as myself. I'm going to get them as far away from here as possible before they turn. Maybe back to the cave we first entered.

You don't have to. I do. It's only a matter of time before they're walking around, wanted to make you the newest member of their hive. I'm sure you understand why I have to go with them. By now, black veins were visibly protruding from Simonov's right arm, radiating out from his initial point of infection. You can still get out of here, he softly spoke.

Fortify yourself at the camp or make your way to the beach. Well, it wouldn't look very good if anyone saw you dragging dead bodies through a deserted island in the middle of the night. I joked attempting to lighten the mood, although I wasn't quite sure why considering the situation. I won't be dragging them, kid. He cracked a slight smile and with both arms hoisted singer over his uninsed. injured left shoulder, and did the same to kickana over his right, and stood up on shaky legs. I looked at him in shock. Clearly, I had greatly underestimated his physical prowess.

It's okay, buddy. I don't feel a thing. He smirked to me, and I wondered how I think he'd be so chipper at a time like this, knowing his fate was all but set in stone at this point. Just make sure they don't send anyone back for us. He said, turning back for the final time as he strode into the darkness of the forest. Simanov, I shed it after him. Thank you. But by this point, he didn't even turn around, knowing that he had a mission to accomplish, and I knew mine as well, to get the hell off this island and tell the world about this place.

NDAs be damned. My entire body felt completely alien at this point. I sat in a chair at base camp staring at my uncontrollably shaking hands, gently massaging each one in an attempt to calm my nerves. My ears perked up as I heard a voice come from within my vicinity. I could tell that it wasn't too far from camp, and I was immediately put into a fight-or-flight response mode once again. I jerk my head around from side to side before I heard the same muffled voice,

this time able to pinpoint its location. I jumped from my chair and bolted across Cam, opening the flap of a nearby vacated tent to see absolutely no one inside. But I did spot a small black device on the ground. It took me a second to recognise it as a handheld radio. But radios don't work on the island, do they? I picked it up, turning up the volume and pressing it to my ear. Wagner, Wagner, are you... A voice called out from the other side, before being overshadowed by a wave of static.

A pause for a second before realizing that this might just be my brief window for a ticket to end my torment in this place. I pocketed the radio and ran as fast as I could into the jungle. I emerged from the tree-line minutes later to find myself staring at the exact same beachfront we'd encountered the other day when we'd first arrived. When I felt that I'd travelled an adequate distance, I put the radio to take. the side of my head and press the button to send a message. Hello? I received an answer back quite quickly with far less interference this time. Hello, Wagner, watch your status report. We need your deep briefing for UL 1052B. Wagner's not here right now, I replied. Here's my status report. This place is hell.

What? Who is this? How did you get a hold of this radio? Look, you've got to get rid of this island. Just do what you have to in order to wipe this place off the face of the earth. Make sure no one ever comes back here again. Holy hell, man. What are you talking about?

Exactly what I told you. This place. I took a deep breath and exhaled before continuing. is straight-up evil, irredeemable in every way. To other president or general or whoever it is that sent us on this mission to just nuke this hellhole already.

Where's Wagner? I heard the voice desperately call out. What about Perez? Can you give the radio to him? Hello? Hello? I was too defeated to make exhaustive arguments and logical points to the man on the radio

and I knew I would resort to a comprehensive rant on the events of the past couple of days anyways. I knew he would think I was crazy. I would definitely find it suspicious if the only guy answering the radio was convinced that the rest of his crew was dead or mutated and preferred death over an extraction plan. I dropped the radio into the sand

and listened as the muffled and frantic voice on the other end was gradually drowned out by a sea of static before fading out altogether. I was so wary and sapped of energy that all I could do was drop to my knees and fall backwards, letting the back of my head smack against the wet sand with a dull thought. I was done fighting. I took a quick glance at my watch only to see the hour and minute hand were both spinning around wildly at an extremely atypical speed, making it impossible to tell just what time it was or how much time it elapsed.

Must be more of the island's old tricks. As the gentle waves lapped against my feet in an almost soothing motion, I like my eyes drift close, ready to be evacuated or drowned or blown to smithereens by a hydrogen bomb, anything to get away from this island. The palms of my hands sank into the wet sand, and the last thing I felt before drifting off was a bright light shining on my face,

which I could still register through my closed eyelids as a pale blue colour. I opened my eyes and took in my surroundings. I was in the caves once more, right back where I'd been when I drifted off earlier. Dear Lord, not this again, I thought to myself, looking up to the light blue ceiling and around at the dusty brown ruins. Not another dream. Well, I thought I might as well make the best of this,

found out why I'm having these recurring waking nightmares. Maybe I'm not yet at peace. with what happened to the rest of the crew. And that's when I heard it. Voices. Voices in the distance. I picked myself up off the ground and started jogging towards the commotion

that was taking place in the vicinity. I had to only walk a short distance before I rounded a corner and spotted what all the fuss was about. I saw two large, unfamiliar men forhumanly arguing with each other, bathed in the blue light from the ceiling. with the rest of the group gathered around attempting to alleviate the situation or perhaps they were just speculating but whoever they were they seemed to be professionals carrying packs and cases and instruments not unlike the ones that our group had brought

Oh, thank Christ, I thought to myself. Normal people. But before I had a moment to introduce myself or asked just what they or I were doing down here, the group of half a dozen individuals took off in the other direction, dodging and weaving their way through the ruins. I started after them immediately, struggling to keep up. Wait, I stammered, the words fumbling out of my mouth. please

please come back help me after a few minutes of chasing through the ruins I saw the group and my fellow survivors dashed into a nearby tunnel and I momentarily stopped

thinking I could take the time to get my bearings straight now that I knew where they were headed I expected to feel winded and exhausted from being locked in a dead sprint for a decently long amount of time but I couldn't feel much of anything at all actually

wake up something wet slid down my arm and I looked down at my hands to see a small drop of ink rolling down my index finger I rotated my hand over and set my forearms face downwards and inspected the sight

jet black veins ran parallel all a long pale dead skin what the shit my thoughts were racing where was I What happened to the team?

What happened to me? Why can't I wake up? Fucking wake up. Well, this time there was no escape. An indescribable surge of energy shot through my body. My feet marched forward violently on their own without any input. I looked in abject and complete terror. Once I saw my legs being driven by their own devices,

shambling and stumbling as inky liquid began to seep out from seemingly. only every pore of my body. Oh, no, no, no, no, this can't be happening. My mind started to panic. I'd escaped. I was waiting for rescue. They were supposed to take me with them out of this place. Oh, what the fuck, what the fuck?

I let out in quick, shallow breaths, not quite enunciating all the syllables in my struggle as my body moved with a will of its own. How long had I been down here? Days, weeks, years. I glanced down at my quickly elongating and malformed limbs as the skin stretched and tall, giving me my first bout of indescribable pain

and revealing underneath rotting blacken flesh consisting of ligaments, tendons, and muscle, along with that familiar black goop. My face finally lifted itself up on its own. To meet those I'd been uncontrollably pursuing. I saw frightened faces, wide eyes and large mouths gaping in horror. And I screamed. Holy shit.

Epiloh. My alarm blared in the darkness. I slowly peeled open my crusty eyelids and struggled to reach the device, slapping my hand around blindly in the darkness before honing in on the sound and finally putting an end to the obnoxious noise. Pulling myself up and into a sitting position, I switched on the lamp at my bedside and glanced up at the clock on the wall. 4.30 a.m. My 15 by 15 foot room on the base was a little more than a hovel, but it was definitely a luxury compared to the barracks most of my men had to sleep in every night. truth be told I didn't much care for the Air Force base here in Guam but I was more or less stranded here until our assignment on UL 1052 was completed

but who knows if it would ever be completed after what they saw I strapped on my boots buckle my belt and opened the door to the outside world immediately being met with the bright lights of the hallway shining in my eyes with the artificial white light of the underground facility not quite matching the natural light produced by the sun. I shielded my eyes for only a second or two, waiting for them to adjust before I strode forward, passing a few other abodes that were similar to mine.

Passing some of the soldiers who were stationed on guard duty, they acknowledged my rank before stepping aside and allowing me further into the cold insulation that I called home for the past two weeks. Stepping through the metal swinging double doors, I geared myself for the first decontamination checkpoint as I was sprayed down by workers in hazmat suits with a fine mist of some chemical compound

that even I wasn't fully aware of what was in it. After being confirmed sterile and passing through, I picked up the standard issue CM6M respirator and strapped it onto my face. I always found it to be a bit stuffy, but it still gave a far higher degree of visibility than other gas masks and was much easier to apply and discard.

Colonel, we're ready for you now. A young man said to me before handing me a clipboard and gesturing for my signature at the bottom of the page. After signing, I carried on through the facility, going through three more decontamination stations before finally arriving at the large, solid metal door that was now only one of two different physical barriers between myself and the asset.

Sir, did they inform you of the situation in full? Lieutenant Forrester inquired, squinting at me through his partially full, fogged up respirator. Yes, sir, I am well aware, I responded, although to tell the truth, I don't think I could ever fully grasp for the information that had been foisted upon me in the last 48 hours, and wasn't entirely up to date on the condition of the asset. It was two days ago that I was made aware of the full extent of the mission of UL 1052, which was rather shocking, considering it was nearly three weeks now since the first team had been dispatched. After two contracted

teams of 23 crewmen in total had gone MIA, 16 on the first crew and seven on the second. A CDC hazmat division with an entire military platoon as an escort was ordered to investigate. What they uncovered was one of the more shocking revelations of my career in the armed forces. Let's begin, he informed me, pulling open the door and entering the chamber. I was told of the horrific discoveries the CDC crew had uncovered while in ULT 52B. the designated code for the second discovered entrance into the interior of UL 1052, but when taking a look at the asset that sat before us across the one-way glass, I still felt sweat starting to form by my brow

and could tell that my heartbeat had jumped a few beats per minute. The young man, if you could call him that, was slouched down in the chair and nearly unrecognizable as a human being in many aspects. His hands were strikingly elongated, and I noticed bone fragments jutting out from the tips of his fingers. His hand and arms had large patches of skin missing or torn apart, revealing black striated muscle tissue. The face of this creature was another sight entirely, as not only were the upper and lower lips completely absent,

which, judging by the ragged way the flesh was torn, I can only assume was self-inflicted by his own incisors, and yet black pupils ringed by dark veins stared at the ground. An extremely dark red, almost black substance was smeared across his body, following streaks across his skin, stemming from his nose, eyes the size of his mouth, dripping onto the floor in a small but steady stream. His chest huffed up and down as he took in short, ragged breaths, with his laboured breathing greatly agitating the monitoring equipment

and tubing attached to his arms, neck and chest. How did you get him so docile? I asked Lieutenant, still remarkably uncomfortable in its presence. From the stories I'd heard, he'd managed to infect not only four members of the secondary crew that had been sent after them, but also got to three of our hazmat guys before finally being subdued. They told me that his arms seemed almost fluid-like in motion as they weaved and pierced the skin of the men in the hazmat suits, and it was only a matter of hours before they too started to experience the same symptoms. They didn't think it possible at first that he actually could have been apprehended,

but after striking him in the head from behind, they were able to quickly get him in a hermetically sealed chamber. After a week of study by one of the basis neuroscientists, he concluded that the pathogen that had taken hold of this young man's body wasn't a pathogen after all, but rather the process in which the substance was causing cellular decay and binding to different receptors in the nervous system it was actually more similar to a cell.

We've been pumping him full of mechlorithorin-based solution as per Dr. Chan's instructions, Forrester inform me. It's normally used in cancer treatments, but in this case it seems to significantly reduce the rate of assimilation of the remaining human cells and resource some mental faculties of the subject. So you're using it to cure him? No, no, there is no cure.

Substance UL-1052 B12 can't be fully exhumed from the human body because it bonds with the host on a cellular level and fundamentally alters the DNA of the cells. We can delay the transformation and even give back some more rudimentary faculties to the infected, but it's only a matter of time before they're lost. I look once more at the poor soul I saw trapped in his own body in front of me. Without external stimuli, it appeared that he mostly had control over his soul. had control over his thoughts and actions. As I saw him glance around the walls and even look at his wrist in an action I assumed to be instinctual from when he had a watch, but this was about to change. Three weeks ago, this certainly wasn't what I had in mind when I thought of debriefing the crew. I still couldn't believe that this was the same young man I'd recruited from the University

in New Zealand. He seemed like such a bright young lad. What a pity, I thought. Watch, the lieutenant spoke as he gestured to the call button on the control panel. He pressed the small red button, releasing a quick barrage of static before leveling out. But this was immediately followed by a creaking and distorted howl being transmitted back from the interior of the chamber as the young infected man twisted and convulsed involuntarily and attempted to thrash his arms about despite them being shackled to the chair by the wrists with half-inch-wide steel chains. I took a step back out of instinct and placed my hand on my sidearm

but Forrester reassured me He does this every time we start a session Just be patient Lieutenant informed me Lending back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head Being in the military We all seen some shit over the years But I couldn't believe how nonchalant he was over this whole thing

And I think he could read the shock on my face Through my mask Don't worry, we've been interviewing him over the mission for 78 hours straight now without incident. If he could have escaped, I'm pretty sure he would have done it by now. Yes, sir, I acknowledged. But 78 hours, why is the debriefing period taken so long? Every now and then, the crazy bastard starts screaming and trying to break out of his restraints. He's told us most of what happened to the crew, or at least what he thinks happened.

but he's slow going at this race. Half the time he's convinced that he's healthy and begs us to let him out of here before he gets infected. How does he or it speak? Like so! Forrester pointed out, pressing the call button and leaning into the microphone.

Subject P-2709. Confirmed to ask the status report of your mission. The man, who I was now beginning to see more as a thing, shuffled in his chair before cocking his head and squeezing his hands, which made a sickening, crunching sound, sounding like a combination of bows shattering and knuckles cracking. What he led out next sent a wave of fear and anxiety coursing throughout my brain and a shiver down my spine. Mission status seem of Iran. He let out in a combination of choking wheezes spaced out by a series of inhuman clicking and chattering noises.

His face was twisted in pure agony as I saw he struggled to maintain control of even the smallest facial muscle. The tears and scratches on his face opened up and were exposed to the air once more due to the immense strain in this area, sending black and red pus flowing out in some droplets. Don't send me back, please. He pleaded with us, which was the first time I could visually see any kind of genuine human emotion on his face. But it wasn't an emotion of pain, agony or hatred. It was fear. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

From the wounds and deformities seen on this specimen, it was unbelievable that he was still alive, let alone talking and screaming. You're not going back to this island. to reassured him, before cutting the intercom and this time reaching for his pants and fumbling with his radio through his clumsy gloved hands. What are you going to do with the subject? I inquired, knowing full well that it may be above my position on the chain of command to know for sure. We're going to take a tissue sample and send it to the louse for further the study, he said before picking up his radio, tuning the frequency and pushing the button to send a message. We're ready to escort subject

P-2709 to the incinerator and decontaminate the room. I felt a little better knowing that the suffering kid was soon going to be put out of his misery for good, but still couldn't help but feel extremely unnerved by the sight in front of me. Knowing that this could happen to anyone on the globe was remarkably disturbing. Didn't know Commander Robert Wagner all too well, having only met him a handful of times before the mission, but knowing that he was likely wandering around the world. hundreds of feet underground in that unholy place made me truly pity him and the rest of the team. What do you think happens if these Lucasites ever escaped from containment? I questioned the

lieutenant, finally averting my eyes from the abomination in front of us. The infection caused by contact with Lucasites doesn't seem to halt or reverse even after being extracted from UL 1052. Chang informed us that normally white blood cells only survive outside of the body host for a very limited amount of time, but in this case the organism seems more than willing to grow, spread and infect new environments. Why haven't these things escaped containment on UL 1052 before, if the subject's assertion is true, that it's been around for thousands of years? We have no idea how it responds in different ecosystems or with different species,

which is what the tissue sample will be useful. But, for from what they reported in those caves with what happened to the rest of the crew. He trailed off. I looked back towards the containment room as I heard the hiss of the airlock and saw two of our men in Level A SCBA hazmat suits enter from the side and walk forward before the doors closed automatically behind them. The subject jerked his head up from his restraints and took a glance at the guards who just arrived.

I saw Black Line starting to fall. form and protrude on his neck and forearms. Don't worry, son. It'll be over soon. I interjected into the mite before disconnecting it once more, wanting to give at least some comfort for the soul that was trapped in the subject's body, as well as possibly keep him calm enough for our men to properly do their jobs without incident. The men approached slowly with trepidation,

not wanting to stumble in their stuffy suits or cause panic in the subject. but I could still see that he was visibly trembling, what almost seemed like, weeping. Dark fluid was starting to seep out of his tear-dubs in the size of his mouth and run down his face, which would have been alarming had I not been assured that the chamber we were sealing him in was 100% airtight. The same technology used by NASA in their spaces.

Still, I could worry etched across the guard's faces. They began to pull out the tubes, wiring another monitoring devices from the subject's body, and looked at each other in preparation to give the signal to begin extraction from the chair and into the mobile chamber. I was staring intently at the subject when I saw him make a quick jerking motion of his head up from the ground and looked directly at me, even though it was one-way glass, and he simply mouthed two words which, although I wouldn't have been able to hear since we had disabled comms, I still recognised from reading his lips, at least what was left of them. What he said, I'm sorry.

With this strange action, my brow furrowed, and I pressed my face as near to the glass as I could with the mask on, struggling to get a better view as I saw that the skin on his arms seemed like they were putrefying and rapidly decaying. In contrast to the pale skin displayed earlier, this part of his body began to darken a grayish and then nearly blackened tone. All this taking place in the span of one or two seconds. I then saw the subject struggle against his restraints on his arms, even though he knew

there was no way he could break through them, but rather than bursting his chains, I was shocked to see that the metal cuffs were actually sliding through the black and red flesh of his wrists, cutting off his hands entirely. Now that his arms were free, the subject immediately turned to face the guard on his left, sending his right stump upwards in a fury directly up and into the double-layered mask of the unsuspecting man, which, although formulated to be chemical and puncture-resistant, didn't seem to have much gift to it at all, before tearing and letting in the new stream of black fluid and gore which flew directly into his face, not only to his face, not

locking him to the ground. Although only a few seconds had elapsed, and it took my mind even longer to realize what had happened. The lieutenant had already sprung into action, slamming his fist down onto the emergency lockdown button. We sent an even larger array of locks and security measures into place on the outer doors of the chamber and activated an alarm blaring throughout our level of the facility. The red light flashed across our faces in waves, and although I couldn't hear much of the

of anything through the glass. I could still tell for a fact that the men in there were screaming at the top of their lungs, as I saw the man on the right thrashing wildly at the door with his back turned to the subject, who had one of his quickly elongating stumps arched up

aimed directly towards his lower torso. Oh, it's a good thing those doors are locked from the outside, or those morons would have been contaminating the entire base. Forrester coldly stated as I, He gazed back at him, mouth agape.

The surviving guard desperately pounded at the door before turning and directing his attention towards the one-way glass, giving us one last look of hopelessness, betrayal and understanding, before a dark tendril punctured his abdomen below his ribcage, sending a spurt of blood and blank goo ejecting from his mouth and into the interior of his mask, thankfully blocking his distorted face from our vision.

Sir, I grunted at the lieutenant. The subject. The subject had already managed to wrench himself out of the restraints entirely, and was now limping over to the glass, with one of his mutated appendages already pressed against it. He began to pound and thrash and beat against the glass with all his might, which from his perspective probably looked like he was beating against his own reflection. The viewing portal that lay between us and the thing,

no means in any danger of breaking. The glass was over three inches thick, around half that of a pothole on a deep sea submarine, and at a hardness level rivaling that of iron. I felt fairly confident that we were quite safe from harm behind it. We could barely hear the dull thumping coming from the other side of the glass, and the black smudges and streaks that were left across its surface by the subject's flailing arms were starting to obscure our sight. I had no idea how we were going to deal with this mess in front of us. Honestly, wondering how it could get any worse when two soldiers burst into the interrogation chamber from behind us. Lieutenant, sir, we have a containment breach. You're needed topside immediately.

One of the more frazzled soldiers shouted through his mask, clutching his M16A2 rifle. The situation's under control. We have the asset contained. Forresters shouted to the man, grabbing him by the collar and pointing to the enraged beast that was only inches away from gouging our flesh out and infecting us. Yes, sir, but you don't understand, the soldier huffed out. His face as red as a tomato and sweat dripping down his face under his mask. Subject P2709 is not going to escape. Get a container crew down here and we'll clean up this mess.

Negative, sir. The container crew is occupied. occupied, the other one, the bigger one, P2705, it got out. He handed us a video monitor that I recognised from viewing the camera feeds on the base. We watched as a large, muscle-bound man with a wild expression, black eyes, long twisted arms and black veins running across his body. I could do nothing more than turn to the talent in shock, most likely with the same look of bewilderment and fear that he is.

had on his face and mutter, sir, we've been breached in a defeated tone, but Forrester was speechless. His eyes were still locked on the chamber in front of us, where subject P-2709 was still pounding on the glass, but now joined by two other figures. One of their faces covered up by the spray of black and red gunk on his interior visor. The others face an unrecognisable pomp of flesh after its beating. How had they turned so fast? I thought to myself. They described the mental and physical transformation process, taking minutes to hours on UL 1052. I took hold of the tablets from the lieutenant and grafted in my own shaking hands, flipping through feeds, but I was now unable to locate P2705 or any other base personnel

in the now gaw-stained underground corridors, that is, until the very end, which was a live surface-level view. Dozens of shambling figures burst out of the facility and began to stream out onto the base, leaving a dark trail visible behind them on the monitor. And so once again, we reach the end of tonight's podcast, my thanks as always to the authors of those wonderful stories, and to you for taking the time. to listen. Now, I'd ask one small favor of you. Wherever you get your podcast from, please write a few

nice words and leave a five-star review as it really helps the podcast. That's it for this week, but I'll be back again same time, same place, and I do so hope you'll join me once more. Until next time, sweet dreams and bye-bye.