If you’ve just found this, the other half of my writing is on the walls of the boiler room, which should still be intact. I’m here, locked in this terrible vault, alone. Just as I’ve spent my waking life, I’m here to die. So incredible how humans cling to their life, how much they fight before finally giving in to the nerve. Maybe it’s the hunger that has finally worn away at my will; maybe it’s the complete and utter surety of my fate. Something occurred along the way that reduced me to this, something eating away at me, maybe not the brutality of my venture, but certainly the connotations of my findings. Something shifted, and even now, I don’t know what.

When the cables got cut from the boiler, I took to my feet. In standing, I could hear the dog-head pawing away at the door, leaving me basically trapped. With bare shards of light glimmering from my candle, I assessed my surroundings. There was a steel rebar broken from the wall, and a single left-handed glove. I hoisted the rebar from the sticky filth that it was wedged in, and I slipped it beneath the crags of the smoldering embers of the furnace, which were unveiled a tremendous gut of heat. The door to the stairs had a small porthole on it, the rectangular window similar to prison or asylum cells. It creaked as I slid it open.

Broken glass and dripping water caught the glint of my candle. A dense fog consumed the odd void, I could only see the most bare of outlines. Deep, ominous breathing was just slightly audible from the back of the room, and it grew in it's noise until a climax, as the gargantuan face of the dog-head slammed against the porthole. Deeply shocked, I staggered backwards, slipped on the chemical slick, and landed on my back. Chlorine stunk the room, it's awful odor permeated every porous fabric available. Struggling to stand in the tingling pool, I stabilized myself and suited the left-handed glove. Shelves collasped outside the door, the dog-head was still thrashing around like a terrified mouse in a toilet bowl. Eyes tightly shut to divert the infernal blast of heat from the furnace, I drew the searing rebar from it's mouth. The far end was glowing a terrific orange, illuminating the wreckage around me. My arm cocked back, I took extreme caution in approaching the door.

My blood throbbed in my joints, my flesh fueled by an empty stomach. The end of the rebar was beginning to bend, ever so slightly, with the gravity, the particles so savagely excited, the physical form began to shift. Spine resting against the sweating walls, I dragged the door until the hinges reached unmanageable tension. I edge around the way, and saw nothing new. The same discord that I viewed previously, but fraught with creeping tension. The heat from the boiler stirred the cool air of the vault.

Beyond the oily depths, the light danced off the amorphous features of the dog-head. Blood mottled on the fur of the actual dog-head, of the dog-head. The various ripples of skin in its rainbow of textures and colors, bound by stitches and staples with bloody precision installed. Both sides of the thick, pale lips twitched and stretched themselves back and forth. Dozens of teeth haphazardly rooted in the festering gullet shined with intense yellow color, a tremendous malodorous wave belched from its terrible presence. I drove the rebar deep into its gut, sizzling as it passed through. The air decompressed, the internal valves and organs immediately shut down. One final bellow sounded from the vibrating chords of its throat, and it finally ceased.

Upstairs, it was like walking into a bombshell. The mattress had extinguished itself, but it still belched dark plumes of ashy smoke. Grzegorz was no where to be seen, and the dogheads were gone as well. One small, faint candle had the room wet with orange light. In the hallway, the guard who tried to join us earlier was completely reorganized in a warp of blood. His flashlight still cast an awkward beam from between his feet, and with every light off, I made good use of its beam.

Above me, the sounds of crumbling concrete and deep, penetrating groans grumbled down the pipes. I reached the laboratory, and edged through the space left by the giant door. Organic matter was shot carelessly around the hinges, buckshot dug into the thinner sheet metal, and holes bored by automatic fire pockmarked the walls. The lab was smaller than I had thought; I saw the Morse code transmitter that had been tapped, and a few gurneys with a small office in the back. There were solar panels and jumbles of wires stashed in open crates, posters with arrays of equations and formulas dotted the walls. A detached ceiling fan spun like a loose tooth on its final string of muscle, dangling from the jaw of a wounded child. My breath turned to fog in the stiff, icy air. Blood pooled in the corner of the room, starting from inside the office. From the wall, I took a circuit pipe, and steadied my breath. The office door moaned as I edged it open, and from inside, a short scuffling was heard.

Inside, there was a small desk with a heap of disorganized books and manila folders. A human corpse was piled beneath the desk; the back of the head was completely reamed open. My efforts to avoid looking were in vain, my skin felt the rush of anxiety from seeing the body. Above the desk, there was only one paper visible. It was pinned to a corkboard and written in frantic Russian. It was addressed to the first person who finds it.

I leaned closer to the document, a rustling; the same as heard before, began again. In that instant, before I could turn my head down to investigate, a coil of fingers wrapped around my ankle, and I burst into panic. I beat the bony spine of the dead scientist with the circuit breaker until my heart nearly heaved and exploded. The fingers relaxed and another hand appeared, both slicked with blood, they were prone. A gangly, shivering Zhi Zhang crawled out from under his fleshy, warm den. My brain began fizzling, my heart stilled, my every pore seized up. Rolling the body from his back, he stood up, hands remaining in a trembling defensive position. All 90 pounds of him were near collapse, his hair mussed and thick with blood, his eyes wild and heavy with woozy fatigue. The circuit pipe fell to the ground and I laid my palm on his shoulder. Loudly, for some reason, knowing he couldn’t understand me, I asked if he was OK. He muttered something and nodded furiously. With his wrist in my hand, I motioned towards the door, and he jerked my arm back. Crouching down, he dug in the pockets of the dead scientist, and revealed a six-shooter. One round was missing.

I slipped the document into my boot for safekeeping. I needed to find safety, to find sustainable shelter. The boiler was going to freeze over, n0 was already prone to infestation. Now with Zhi in tow, the need became doubly crucial.

Black and worn, the handle of the gun was edging out of my back pocket; Zhi scuffled behind me as we made the way to the stairs. Upon heaving the door open, a surge of dark, frigid water rushed our legs. Another dead Russian left with the waters, and with him, a whirlpool of reddened bog. The staircase went the entire length of the silo, in case the elevators were broken or powerless. Looking up, flashes of gunfire illuminated the chasm; a water main must have been hit, causing this black rain to pool at our feet. Zhi edged closer. The echoes of combat grew louder as we ascended, with the water, parts of steel and loose flesh pelted our backs.

After the first case of stairs, the door to the hall was locked, and so were four other doors with four other cases of stairs. On the sixth, the source of the previous gunfire was found. A soldier was against two dog heads; his rifle was warped beyond repair, his bones utterly crushed. He was, for the most part, reorganized and headless, revealing another source of the dark rain that drenched my face. Wound eternally upward, the stairs persisted with us. Each door was air locked shut, dead soldiers in the wake of their duty, only one dog-head was to be seen. It was perforated with dozens of bulletholes, and the soldier who committed the act was not four feet from his enemy, stilled forever after taking his life. Zhi and I halted our motion at n11, for each floor there were four staircases, and not every stair was structurally sound. Climbing became a full body exercise.

The stairs ended at n12. They tried to go on, but the steel was utterly destroyed, melted, shattered, and flattened. Luckily, Zhi was able to squeeze in through a gap in the concrete and open the door to floor n12. N13 is where the outbreak was first detected, and I had a feeling that Igor went there, to make the most of the chaos at hand. Nonetheless, the elevator was in shambles, and the stairs were incapacitated. The hallway was only slightly illuminated by dying fluorescent bulbs. Water pouring from broken mains, dripping from cracks in the ceiling, gunshots, shouts, groans, and an orchestral cacophony of steel against steel against flesh against concrete, our every nerve was hammered to its absolute edge. In the deep end of the way, a gargling green fire exposed an emergency ladder, simply steel rungs bored into concrete.

Funereal, our cautious procession to the ghastly green glow. A gigantic slab of ceiling collapsed behind us, pouring only more freezing water and dust past our feet. Two halls collided to create a T-junction. Down one, was an awful emerald blaze, the other, was spewing black smoke and rich fountains of sparks. I stood in the middle, trapped.

Another shift in the silo, the concrete settled and more began to break away. Another tremendous core of material smashed down the smoky hall, sending a gust of toxic haze down my throat. I prepared for the worst, and lo and behold, the outline of a dog-head, fumbling and wheezing, manifested in the black. Swift as an underfed technician can be, I drew the pistol from my back pocket and fired into the shadow. For each shot, I heard a responsive shriek. Five shots about the chest and head, and the creature dropped with a great thud to the ground. Still feebly pawing at the concrete, it whimpered for life. Zhi hoisted a great tooth of cement above the dog-head, and released it. The result was a satisfying, albeit muffled crunch.

The water main had quelled a certain amount of the fire, but it still raged in its entropy-driven stupor. With each step a potential trigger to a deadly collapse, we eased to the empty shaft. Between us and the ladder existed an empty elevator shaft, a searing inferno, and the rest was slicked with non-potable water. Zhi rubbed his eyes, the chemical smoke irritated every pore. I felt the burn deep into my skin and face, my nostrils questioning their very existence. From deep in the dark, I heard more calls. More dogheads, active, and they sensed our presence. Four scrambled over the load of ceiling that had fallen before, and I began to sprint with Zhi not short behind. Three dog-heads slammed into the wall behind us, corrected their direction, and began their starved gallop on our path. My every cell winced as I jumped through hell, through the elevator shaft, and on to the rung of the ladder. Zhi landed with unexpected grace, at least compared to me. I bit my tongue with such severity that my mouth was leaking a great deal of blood. Before the pain hit me, I was already out of sight. Looking down, four dog-heads in total leapt the gap, only to fall screaming to their deaths.

The ladder went the length of the silo, but we stopped at the bay of n13. Parallel and reversed to the opening, I summed up my courage. My legs coiled like springs, hips against my chest, hands hooked to their rung. In a brief and explosive gesture, I pounced off the wall and landed on my ribs, on the crumbling concrete of n13. Zhi followed with mocking ease. He was a gymnast of some sort, and I suppose that it finally paid off for him.

Through the halls, there was nothing left. Whirlpools of blood circling drains, every human guard vanquished, and only a few dog-heads were left dead. Sparks came down from the ceiling, dust and water collected at our feet. At the end of the hall, there was a crossroads. To our right and left, there was a wall of garbage of concrete, leaving only the direct route. Past the door, I could see floodlights.

We entered the bay area. The gunshots that were so commonplace had stopped, and now, the settling of the structure and the wisps of dust against the walls filled the ears. I cautiously placed myself under a beam of light. Turning left, my heart stilled. It was the great mouth of the silo, the edge of the rocket was still visible over the shattered glass. I edged closer, Zhi followed. Down the shaft, there was a short coil of stairs, obviously installed recently and haphazardly. Fog and snow wound spirals around the rocket; its metallic carapace was worn and scratched from the absence of a roof over its head. Wind whistled through each wound in the surface. Frost formed on the rigid steel barriers separating me from the staircase. I turned my back to the rocket, and looked to the light. From a distance, a gristly groan was heard. I braced myself and reached for my empty pistol. From shadows, into light, the figure manifested. Trailing blood, Igor’s white face caught my reddened eyes. His right hand was completely missing, in it’s place was a furious spire of bones and muscle. A solid pool of blood formed as he stood directly under the light. In two seconds, he slowly creaked his head back and forth. He fell to his knees and then to his side, and shortly thereafter, he expired.

It was quiet. There was wind, snow, ice, and blood. From the darkness, another silent creature appeared. Behind it, there were three others. Behind those, there were two more. Through light and dark, we were separated by twenty meters. Every point of my body was warped behind feeling, it ached and hurt, both deep sore knots and sharp, jagged pains. My nostrils were filled with the awful odor of burning rubber. Hands were tingling and numb, my back was tight and resistant to bending. Eyes were hot and sleepy, itchy from the smoke, and my vision was blurred from relentless adrenalin. My tongue tasted blood and reverberating bitterness of thirst and the accumulated soot from breathing smog.

Six of them. Staring us down. Each one different, taking from a great palette of inhuman color, their skin distorted and stretched, the savage dog-heads poking out from their left halves, growling and gnashing their teeth in horror. I looked at Zhi, and he was in a meditative trance. His eyes caught mine, and he nodded. I edged to him, and he gently pushed me away, and nodded once more. In a selfless act of sacrifice, he laid his life down for the creatures, giving me a momentary chance to escape. A split second was all it took for the dog-heads to attack, they scrambled their bloody path through the strobes of light and dark, and in that instant, I was gone.

Where there was once a window overlooking the rocket, I dove, and hit the stairs with a horrible crunch of the ice against my bones. In an attempt to pick myself up, I began to slide down, each ridge of the stairs smashing into my back.  My greatest fear came to fruition, the stairs ended, and I was in freefall. For however many stories I feel, I fell silent. But for the wind and snow, I could only hear Zhi being torn to pieces by the pack. The cushion of snow broke my fall, and two of my ribs. Hands and legs numbed, I began to claw away at the snow, staring up at the triumphant rocket that eclipsed the moon. After minutes of redundant digging, I came upon a vault, the secret storage vault discussed by the scientists before hand. The door was open only a crack, and I edged in.

Here I am now, writing by a fire that started with a few bed sheets and now has consumed most of two hospital gurneys. It is far too cold for me to last much longer, there is no food and no way back up. The other door is, the one that leads to n1, is ruined.

I’ve got nothing more to tell you, so I leave you the letter I took from the dead scientist.

This writing will take place over a few days. In case of another outbreak, I’ll leave it out so that someone might have that small chance of finding it. The things that I have seen in these labs, I wish I could erase from my mind and from this universe forever, but alas, I am weak. Enclosed here is the history of this project.

In 1936, the Germans funded an underground laboratory to investigate mystic ideas of psychic communication, ‘common thought injection’(also referred to as: ‘Detached Inexorable Influence’), and many other ways for adopting mind-control into their burgeoning spectrum of warfare. The project was established in Poland, by an underhanded deal between the Nazis and the crumbling remains of the Polish government, under a inconclusively worded agreement to share the studies. After six years of unreported findings and thinning funds, the Nazi’s installed Treblinka, a medium sized concentration camp over the lab. With the impenetrable fog of war as their ally, the ‘Nematomorphic Blast Project’, a far wider scale version of thought injection, began with unrivaled vigor. The true nature of the studies will be discussed later in this briefing, but in short, certain tests with rats and mice uncovered an obscure network that connected the consciousness’ of the rats, even if they were separated by lead walls, concrete, or steel. This network is malleable, and with advanced technologies, the rats could be controlled through separate influences, broadcast by infinitely complex disruptions in the electric waveform, for each species a different frequency could be heard. The largest manipulation was when one rat would be fed regularly, and the other rat would be starved, and with the frequency adopted from the healthy rat, the other could be convinced that he was eating, and not withering away. Emotions of anger, fear, lust, confusion or excitement could be transferred to the other test subjects through this interference. Just as the study was going to expand into larger scale experiments, the war began to draw to a close. The Germans began a frantic sprint of closure, turning a forced labor camp into a slick slaughterhouse, and nearly every prisoner was killed before the camp was abandoned.

What history doesn’t reveal is who survived this camp. Towards the end of its tenure, outbreaks and rebellion became increasingly common, and one of the most valiant efforts was by a group of eleven Russian prisoners who managed to subvert and kill their way into the underground lab. When the camp was shut down, the Russians came out of hiding and returned to their homeland, with a stash of files and records of the experiments. This perked the Soviet attention, and they began to analyze their modes of manipulation. The Nazis began this project, and the Russians found ways to blacken it, and make it even more malicious than ever though possible.

After the Germans discovered the ability for one creature to adversely affect another of a similar species, the next undertaking was the hybridization of two or more minds. In essence, two creatures could relay their thoughts through one spinal column, doubling the thought processing power of the subject.  Instead of a human using disruptors and chemicals to maintain mental output, like a man at a computer controlling another living thing, the power could be left to an individual creature, and eventually, that creature could be left in a self-sustaining environment. Given their simple nature and easy caretaking, rats would be the primary subjects. After tremendous persistence, testing and observation, the most potent and reliable test-rat was found, and the earliest form of neural implants were installed. These implants would enhance and magnify the brainwaves of the rat, giving it more influence over the other creatures. Studies found that the smaller, weaker rats wouldn’t approach the alpha before or after the surgery, so the reliability of the project was undetermined. The next rat was smaller and weaker, and after the surgery, his position amongst the other rats was shifted nearly instantly. Before fights and competitions would result in physical damage of the smaller participant, but now, the modified rat, when approached, would essentially will the other participants into submission.

The subject had finally found a transorganic means of altering the electric field that surrounds all equal life, and in doing this, he had become the instant alpha male of the pack. His electric output was tremendous, he could enter a cage full of hunger frenzied rats, and they would all instantly calm themselves. Some would fall asleep, others would roll around on their backs, but the modified rat would always have his first choice of food and of mates.

Fueled by initial success, the study began to run domestic testing on nearly animals open for modification. From fish to primates, dolphins, barracudas and buzzards, within years a tremendous wealth of information was found on animals and their electric field modifications. Each animal has different charges throughout the brain and central nervous system as a whole, and the net charge of all points in the animal will determine what frequency the animal will respond to. This keeps black bears communing with black bears, and clown fish with clown fish. Some rare exceptions occurred with mammals could communicate with dolphins, but for the most part, there was nearly no out-of-species communication. Most interestingly was the early tests on canines, and for the most part, there was no field present at all, or so much was initially assumed. During surgery, many patients expired with no warnings signs, and in review, most died of mistakes and failures made by the surgeon. Their minds cluttered with a multitude of impulses and messages, muscles rippled with spasms and painful jerks and minds spinning, the connotations became clear: canines and man were using similar electric fields.

Before the study could fully establish this newfound power, there would need to be more information gathered on conjoined twins. Having one body and two individual brainstems became a fascination of many lead doctors and technicians on the team, and early efforts were undergone to force lab-rats to give birth to conjoined twins. The predictions were true; dual-stem patients were exceedingly more potent with the neural implants and in some cases, they were seen willing an aggressor to death by overriding it’s will to breathe.

Forcing mutated birth was one step towards our final project, which was truly ambiguous as a whole. The same procedure that would allow rats to give birth to conjoined twins was used on humans with similar success. The conjoined twins were notoriously fragile, and would be artificially aged, their lives sustained by lines of morphine, dopamine, and a concocted slew of neural chemicals. After a multitude of failures and setbacks, the first eight humans were ready to receive their transmitters. Because of the varying thicknesses of the human skin and the chaotic nature of the brainwaves, different layers of skin were grafted from other deceased patients. Through the array of nerves in the body, the signals were enhanced before finally reaching exit strength, and leaving the subject. When in study, the subjects were capable of causing rapturous, nearly fatal migraines and ulcers throughout the opposing body, sometimes capable of aneurysms and inducing catatonic shock. Through waves of testing, the modified humans were unable to control their output; they refused any training and would become primal when threatened.

The first eight were detained, and when they continued to blast their electric ripples from confinement, they were rendered near comatose, and held in a reflective environment, where the punishment for releasing signals would be receiving the pains of the signals themselves.

Obedient, simple, and easily molded, the canines were taught how to use the signals to thin their pack, how to read and destroy the minds of weaker canines. This made them prime subjects for the following procedure, called the ‘auxiliary brain override’.

Though it was unknown to all but the most prized and elite scientists, the new focus of the project was to further the manipulation of remote mind-control by a positional beacon. Before the signals could be broadcast, they must first be refined, and in order to accomplish this, a dominant brain would need to be inserted to override the human brain, which, although physically mature, kept the psychological status of a child. The intent was to add another brain in its entirety to supplement the system. The Soviet Union called the most brilliant of human biologists in every field, from brain surgeons, to neurotechnicians, to anatomists. The left arm was chosen for its duller nerve endings and healthy blood flow, it was amputated, and the head of a chosen canine was installed in its place.

Dozens died before their first seconds post-op, only a few made it for the first hours. After a bloody array of tests, the first five were ready for further, exhaustive experimentation, and later, replication. Their brainstems were spliced and wound in a tight coil of nerves, the human brain began to adapt to the environment, and their focus was in output of the disrupting waveforms. Rendered calm and obedient by the dog-head, the subject was now ready for electric wave extraction. The products were trained to attack aggressors and fear authority, and they soon became, through a gauntlet of brutish savagery, an advanced breed of inhuman amalgamations.

The brain surges its electric impulses to it’s different halves to bring about thoughts, feelings, and actions. The deeply rooted commands for different motives were laboriously cracked, and their signals were being made ready for broadcast. Beginning on the small scale, a distant test subject was put under direct fire of the waves. His intense suffering became monumental, his brain nearly liquefied within his skull from the searing blasts of neurodynamic energy. The signal was a success, and efforts were made to fashion an inverted signal to protect personnel on patrol, as the also endured similar pains. This would be a personal beacon that would counteract the primary offensive broadcast.

Having already staked their claim in the space race, Russia was no rookie when it came to launching satellites with military intent. A gutted launch pad in the frigid abyss of Siberia was selected for its unrivaled isolation, its off-the-map status, and for its functioning facilities. I was selected by lottery to work here, taken from university and shipped to the wastelands. The intent of the group was to create an orbiting station that could bring down shockwaves of debilitating psychic energy, further enhanced by the ground patrols that carried the ‘Dog-heads’. The orbiting platform could send an initial signal; the canine brain would receive it and translated it to the human brain, which was now completely focused on output. Depending on how the arrays of dog-heads were arranged, the signal would change its strength and size. I was in the lowest lab, working with solar-panels and self-sustaining electronics for use in space. I asked myself that same question you’re thinking, why am I working in the lowest lab, underground, when the goal is to manipulate the sunlight? The idea was tagged along with another mystery upheld by the government, the laws of relative mass. It was found that light can be amplified at a certain rate, with a very particular obstacle course of prisms and lenses, and it’s charge can be increased ever so slightly. I was to find a way to give the satellite a single blast of light energy, and have it recourse millions of times until the ship could self-sustain. The theory was that using solar panels left an excessive trace, making the craft vulnerable to enemy detection.

The Russians never documented failure in public eye, but I had access to all the projects and efforts ever made by the recent government bodies. I knew that the satellite would not work for the desired effect, and I don’t think I was alone. Rumors thrived in this pit, and soon nearly everyone knew of the outbreaks in TNV and at the other gulag. The dog-heads were becoming unstable and some went totally berserk. The entire reanimation lab in Treblinka was wiped off the map once the subjects were unleashed. The effort was already crumbling and it was becoming forevermore extreme. There are outbreaks, still, to this day. There are gulags and prisons that are suddenly erased, and the government pretends that they never existed. These are all laboratories, and they were all subjected to enormous outbreaks. There are still dog-heads out there, and we have no idea where they are.

The satellite, if it ever goes up, will cause mass hysteria, and it just might bring an end to man as we know it. Those creatures are already completely insane, and with a foreign object giving them erratic bursts of energy, they could be the deadliest force ever had on this earth. The testing is too disorganized; other creatures are still capable of mixing the signals, of magnifying them, mutating our initial brazen steps into darkness to form this terrible science.

For me, it’s too late. Too late for sabotage, too late for escape, too late for rethinking. I was dragged here because I was promised reliable income and a roof over my head, a sanctuary from the economic downturn. Now, I don’t know what I can do other than disappear.

It’s too far-gone, already. I only wish there was a god to intervene.

For the world I have betrayed, I beg for your mercy.

Goodbye.

Nikodim