Today was an interesting day.
I was preparing for work when I got a message from my boss that I will be staying home today… Everyone was.
Why was that the case? Some sort of accident in the nearby chemical plant.
I remember looking at my phone bewildered, was this some sort of prank or what? Not five minutes later my friend called me, “Just turn on the television, you have to see this” he said.
I did just that, I turned on the TV, and lo and behold, our local news station was telling everyone in the local area to stay indoors for the next 48 hours due to a “chemical leak”, to close our windows, and only go outside in an emergency.
Now, this was weird. But my friend had one good point, this was probably connected to the restricted area just outside the town which popped up last month. One day it was just a forest where we used to camp out when we were younger. The next day it was fenced up, barbed wire included, filled with armed men who were certainly not with the military, or at least they didn’t want to look like they were.
I am not going to mention a string of strange disappearances just around that area, and some weird animal sightings as well… Something was up and we all knew it. The chemical leak was an excuse, but for what?
I had a million ideas to be honest, anything from some sort of government black site, aliens or God knows what. But what it actually is… It didn’t even cross my mind.
I am probably the only person, other than the first person who initially found out, to know the truth.
And it came later that day when I heard a knock on my door. I was in the bathroom at the time so I needed a minute until I was able to answer the door. When I did, there was no one there. But on my doorway was something wrapped in a newspaper.
I was very hesitant to bring that… Whatever it was into my house. Well, you would be too considering the situation.
Nonetheless, curiosity killed the cat as the saying goes. I brought it in.
Once I unwrapped the thing, I found it to be a tape. A tape recording, I haven’t seen one of those in years. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a tape player… Or so I thought, I remembered my parents left a bunch of old things at my place. And after checking the attic I found an old dusty tape player. After coughing up a lung from the amount of dust I kicked up by just picking the thing up, I managed to haul it back down. I cleaned it up and checked if it was still functional. Everything seemed to be in order, I thought so at least.
Now for the tape itself, something was written on it, “IMPORTANT!!! N.T”.
I didn’t recognize the credentials, but they seemed familiar.
I’ll let the recording speak for itself, because… You’ll see.
-————————————————————————————————————
*sounds of shuffling paper, heavy breathing*
“Is this thing on?”
*Light tapping*
“Great… Okay… My name is Nicholas Fenton, I am uhh… I’m a hacker you can say. It’s a bit more complicated than that but…”
*silence*
“I really don’t have the time to go into detail or tell you my biography or whatever. I’ll make it brief. Approximately one month ago in Clarkson county, a multinational company going by the name Viaduct Incorporated purchased about 25 acres, or 10 hectares if my math is correct, of forest a few miles out of Klindale. That town has a population of around 20,000.”
“Viaduct Inc. is, on paper, a chemical company producing fertilizer among other things. But the parent company of Viaduct is one PhysCorp, a research institute of all things… And the parent company of PhysCorp is none other than Black Rock.”
“The 25 acres bought outside of Klindale were to be used for building a chemical plant, even though it was the worst place to build a chemical plant for multiple reasons. It was too close to a populated center and the forested area was a nature preserve for God’s sake.”
*silence*
“Shit… wait.”
*shuffling*
“Okay, okay… Where was I… Yeah… PhysCorp is a research institute specializing in quantum mechanics, which makes its ownership of a chemical company even stranger. But I won’t beat around the bush, they did something there. More precisely, they did an experiment. They did construct multiple buildings right in the middle of the newly purchased land but it wasn’t for fertilizer. It was for experiments. From what I’ve surmised from the emails I’ve gathered from the higher-ups it was some sort of ‘Gateway Project’. That is the name of the operation, and they weren’t even trying to hide what they were doing.”
*silence*
“They built a gateway to God knows where using methods beyond any government’s capabilities. There was a lot of technical jargon in those emails I couldn’t understand all of it, I couldn’t read all of it damn it. But the gist of it was that, a gateway to some other dimension.”
“The dimension in question, as they described it is… It is quite literally hell. Constant volcanic activity, rivers of lava with a barely breathable atmosphere. I’m surprised it’s even sort of breathable, as they describe it… Originally the goal was to research the alien landscape and prospect it for resources. And they did find a lot of resources, but some of them aren’t even on the periodic table. But what piqued their interest was the wildlife…”
“There is life there, alien as it is, there are somehow living beings on the other side in that… Inhospitable hellscape. And of course, they did what they did best and capture a few, they experimented and researched, dissected. Those things are truly alien, and dangerous. Virtually every single being there evolved to resist immense heat, to the point where you could throw them into lava and they would fucking swim in it like you threw a dog into the water…”
“But I digress, everything was fine until they encountered, and I’ll quote this verbatim ‘A humanoid entity which exhibited human-like intelligence.’ Intelligent life… But there is a more detailed description of those things whose highly adequate scientific name is ‘Igni Daemonum Sapiensis’ which literally translates to ‘Wise Fire Demons’… The subtlety…”
“Those things, those so-called demons started to cause problems both on the other side and on our side. At first, they just observed us, but then they started to get aggressive. We just waltzed into their territory without asking, I can see the reasoning behind the aggression. There had been attempts to communicate, but all ended in either MIAs or KIAs. They weren’t really fond of having a nice chat, that’s for sure.”
“Fast forward to today…” *deep inhale and exhale* “There has been a breach, I’ve been following this situation closely for half a month gathering evidence and information. I’ve been planning to leak this. But the situation has changed. I can’t upload the information directly, I can’t use electronics at all. I must not be tracked. I have everything on a hard disk which I’ve hidden somewhere safe. For the person first hearing this, check the newspaper, you’ll know where to go.”
“As for the breach… This was something that started gradually, slowly ‘they’ started to leak out of the gateway. A lot of casualties on our side, unknown to them. The situation was contained partially. But those flimsy fences didn’t stop the buggers from going deeper into the wilderness and ending up near civilization. The surge in missing persons was for that reason, as well as the sightings of weird animals and whatnot.”
“I estimate that within a day or two they’ll have Klindale on lockdown, they can’t kill those things. the smaller animals yes, but the humanoids, the humanoids are nigh impossible to kill. I’ve seen pictures… Oh, Jesus the pictures. The video as well, where they tried to kill the thing somewhere in the forest, that poor bastard filled that… thing with an entire mag of lead and it didn’t even fucking wince!”
“For anyone hearing this, arm yourselves. Preferably have a water cannon with you, or a bucket for that matter. The only effective way to stop them is through water, from what I hear. Though I have no way of confirming that as of yet. Pray for the rain. Once the lockdown starts within a day or two everything will go to shit, the incident reports are going to start pouring in and the government will go into damage control. And you know well what that means.”
“One more thing, th-“ *silence*
*faint knock*
“Shit!”
“Clarkson Police Department! Open up!”
“I gotta go, god damn-“
Tape end
-—————————————————————————————————————-
As I am writing this, I have my pistol on the table with three magazines. Like that will be of any help… I feel safer with it.
I filled as many bottles with water as I could.
It’s early evening now, I’ll try to get out of town going south. There is no panic as of yet, but it’ll start pretty damn soon.
I can see smoke in the distance from my window, some sort of fire.
Shit, I think I heard a gunshot.
Okay, anyone reading this, this is a heads-up. I wish you the best of luck, and I hope this just blows over… I hope.
I’ll try to get out of town now, I’ll post this first. They’ll cut the internet any minute I think, and the power as well.
Wish me luck, I’ll need it.