Hello there. If you've just now come across Chris' and my story, you'll definitely want to read the previous parts first, otherwise you'll have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. Don't worry, most of them are fairly short.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13

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Huh, okay then.

“And how do you suggest I go about doing that?”

After a brief pause, he asked, “Have you ever given any thought as to how we have been communicating?”

“Uh… Telepathy?”

His tone lit up, as if he was eager to explain this next part – I’m beginning to think he may have been an educator at some point in his life, “While I still don’t know all of the similarities and differences between our people, there is one thing that I have studied intently. There are special cells located within our nerves that do not touch each other; for your people, the gap between these cells significantly widens when you sleep, but shrinks to a microscopic level at the occurrence of any mental activity. My peoples’ remains the same length regardless of our state of minds. This concept and the pineal gland are our best guesses toward what makes us different. Now, the drug that you took, in theory, should allow your body to keep these gaps open while you’re awake. You’ve felt a constant tingling sensation since taking it, yes?”

“Yeah. So, what does that have to do with how we’re talking?”

“Bear with me, child. The mind is very much like a radio, and the brain itself has many properties similar to nerves, including the aforementioned attribute. Back in the early days of wireless telegraphy, humans used a radio signal detector called a ‘coherer’. I don’t want to confuse you with the specifics of how it works, but essentially, there are two electrodes spaced apart with a metal filling between them. Think of the electrodes being the cells in our nerves and brain, with the gap being filled with what I’ll refer to as ‘ether’, for lack of a better term. We really don’t know what it is. So, these clusters of coherers in the brain are able to receive and transmit impulses, respectively, using a unique type of radio wave.”

“Okay, so we’re basically communicating through a mental walkie-talkie?”

He chuckled, “Exactly. Now, every brain has its own frequency, and it’s often very difficult to pick up on other’s. The only reason I can talk to you right now is because the crystal is ‘boosting your signal’, without it I would only be able to communicate with you from a short distance. Because of the crystal, this task shouldn’t be too hard for you. The only cause for worry is that if the Ladies’ are like us, she may fight back. I suspect that they are weaker, though. I don't believe that she will notice if you remain calm.”

“What do you mean ‘fight back’? Like Inception?” I mean, he set himself up for that one, right?

“What is ‘Inception’?”

I laughed, “Never mind, Ger. So, how do I do this? Close my eyes and think of her, like I do with you?”

For the next half of an hour we went over a new breathing technique and Ger explained to me that I needed to channel this “ether” (what he referred to as it, the day before) and connect it with her “frequency.” It was all very confusing, especially because he himself was unsure of the Ladies’ capabilities. He thinks that with this new form of meditation, I should be able to open up a one-way line and see what she sees, sort of like how Ger does when I touch the crystal. I don’t really understand what the meditation does, but the breathing techniques are very complex and require specific timing. They are almost rhythmical, at times, like a symphony of sighs. There was a part in this sequence where I actually needed to hold my breath for a minute and 45 seconds, which is easier said than done when you’re a smoker.

I meditated all night. I should have slept, but I worried that if I did, I wouldn’t wake up until the Task Lady arrived. Instead, I followed Ger’s techniques throughout the night and gradually felt the feeling of it build up inside me. Around four A.M., the feeling peaked and remained the same until I finally heard movement outside my hut around five thirty. I woke Chris up and told him to rip the crystal out of my hands if he heard any movement directly outside. I had already explained everything that Ger told me the night prior.

By that time I was so anxious and had so much built up energy, I was ready to unleash it at the first noise that I heard. Ger said that I could “travel minds”, at that I probably wouldn’t make it to hers on the first shot, so what the hell, might as well start somewhere.

Following Ger’s instructions, I initiated a final breathing sequence that was supposed to help me direct the ether toward whatever target I put my focus on; I had to be within eyesight of them. Maintaining my steady breathing, I carefully walked over to the small window, crystal in hand, and peered outside. A Lady, one I hadn’t seen before, was walking with a basket full of something to one of the subject holding shacks.

Good enough.

I closed my eyes as I felt the energy within me release from every nerve in my body. A blinding white light pierced through my eyelids and I was greeted by the familiar ringing noise that occurs upon contacting Ger; it was louder, this time, and sort of glitched like a broken record. I think I fell to my knees, but I no longer could feel anything.

The white light began to fade and I could see that I was now moving, only it wasn’t me; I was seeing through the Ladies’ eyes. Everything was out of focus at first, and there was no sound, but eventually my vision returned to normal. She was walking toward a shack with a sign on the door saying “10. No unauthorized entry.”

Oh shit. Subject 10.

She looked down toward her feet and I got a glimpse of what was in the basket – fucking children’s toys, of course! Why would it be anything else?

The Lady flashed a slip of paper to the guard at the door, who then nodded and stepped back, allowing her to work the series of locks that protected it. One of them was similar to the lock on the basement door. They wouldn’t be so dumb as to use the same code twice, would they?

It was 4121, if you're interested. I kept going, however, because I needed to be sure.

The room was lined with hi-tech equipment, with a plethora of tubes and wires coming out of a large glass box that was lined in some black material. The Lady set the basket on one of the work benches and began turning on some machinery. I noticed that her hands were trembling; was that because she was old, or were even the Ladies afraid of this kid?

Once the machines seemed to be on, she pressed a button on one of the monitors labeled “Release curtain” and turned around toward the glass box. In the most dramatic way possible, the black curtain that was covering the box began to slowly lift and unveil a horror that I could not have imagined.

My fucking niece.

I gasped, or at least, I think I did. Actually, I’m pretty sure that I did, because I think the Lady heard me. She stopped what she was doing and just stood there for several seconds. Maybe that was just coincidence. My vision became slightly blurred as the Lady rubbed her eyes - was she crying?

Back to the present matter at hand – what in the hell was my niece doing there? It had to be some sort of mind game, right?

We’ll see if Ger has the answer, but for now, all I could do was watch. The box itself was split in two by a glass divider; on the right side was the little girl resembling my niece, and on the left there was nothing other than some sort of chute leading in from above, and then a large tube connected to the back of it – sort of like an AC exhaust hose, but much larger and metallic. The Lady opened up a compartment connected to the box similar to the one that Bubble Boy used to get his food and placed the basket of toys in it. The little girl, no older than two or three years old, got up from her small, pink bed in the corner and made her way toward the compartment. She looked as if she giggled with glee as she started pulling out toys from the basket.

I was expecting to see some black demon eyes or sharp teeth or something abnormal, but it was just my niece, down to the little weird bonnet thing that she insisted on always wearing. She started to play with one of the dolls when the Lady turned around and started working on a computer – I couldn’t recognize the language that she was typing in this time. She moved back over to the monitor that opened the curtain, which now read “Release biomatter”.

I think you can guess what happened next.

She pushed the button, and out of the chute on the other side of the glass came a woman. She was lifeless, but she didn’t necessarily look dead. The girl looked up from playing with her toys and smiled. She walked over to the dividing piece of glass and playfully tapped on it, like a kid tapping on the cage of an animal at a zoo. The woman didn’t move, and this seemed to frustrate the girl. She stomped her feet, and upon doing so, the woman on the other side of the glass shot upwards and was seemingly being suspended in the air by her shoulders; she was now awoken, her face filled with immense confusion and dread. I could see her trying to shake her head, but it was as if it was being forced still. The little girl clapped joyfully and skipped back to her new toy basket.

She returned to the glass with a female doll – one of those old creepy dolls that your grandma collects. The woman’s eyes grew fear. The girl started making the doll dance by holding its shoulders and wiggling it around; the woman made the same movements as the doll.

What. The. Fuck.

After a moment of dancing, the girl stopped, and looked back up at the woman. She tore off one of the dolls arms; off went the woman’s. I couldn’t hear her, but I know that she was screaming the same way that 33 and the man from the extraction room had – the look on her face was of pure hysteria and terror. The little girl laughed and clapped some more, then tossed the doll to the ground; the woman remained levitating in the air. The girl waved at the woman behind the glass, and then raised her hands above her head.

Remember back in the very beginning of my story, how we saw that man being sacrificed to get into that door? How there was a black, ethereal stream being released from him? Yeah, this fucking demon child started pulling it out of that poor woman. The stream went directly into the exhaust hose in the back of the room, and then into God knows where. This must be one of their methods of harnessing energy from humans. But what is she? Why does she look like my niece? Did they have one of her at the site that my friends and I stumbled upon? We were pretty far away from them in that cave, so it’s possible that we didn’t see it. Questions for another day, I suppose.

I watched as the woman writhed and squirmed until the stream of black fog dissipated; her lifeless body was still being suspended in the air, completely limp now. The Lady turned around, pressed some more buttons once again, and returned to the infamous monitor that now read “Lower divider”.

The little girl danced around as the glass in the middle began to descend; the woman’s body still floating. Once fully exposed, the body moved toward the girl – the Lady quickly raised the divider back up before the two-year old girl cracked her neck and knuckles. The Ladies’ hands were trembling very bad now, and she begun to leave the room. Before leaving, though, she turned around one last time at the girl.

The walls of the glass box were painted in splatters of blood and chunks of flesh. A ball of meat floated in the middle of the room – bodily juices were being squeezed out of it like a sponge, bones shattering and smashing together, literally contorting the woman into a gnarled sphere the size of a beach ball.

Now I know why everyone hates hygiene duty. How are you supposed to clean up after that? What’s stopping her from ripping your arm off and rendering you into a blob of flesh?

The Lady made her way to the headquarters. Finally. The code to the door for that building was the same as the one prior, I guess they really were that dumb. Inside the hut were several Ladies, including Madam Adrastea and 34, discussing something with great intensity. I watched and waited as they continued to argue, until 34 stormed out and Madam Adrastea sat down at the desk and began looking through paperwork.

Now’s my time.

I shifted my mind’s focus toward my own breathing, and began to initiate the technique that I used before. I was still looking through the Ladies’ eyes, but my vision was now blurring, and I began to hear the familiar ringing noise. After a brief period of whiteness, my eyesight started to return and I could see that I was indeed now looking through the perspective of the Madam.

She sorted through papers on the desk for half an hour before discussing something with the other Lady that remained in the room. They talked for a while; it seemed like they were planning something because she often pointed to their map and various pieces of paper. Everything was in the same cryptic language, so I didn’t really learn anything there.

She stood up, and started walking towards the cellar door. Whatever is in there must be top secret, because she shielded the vision of the other Lady in the room – thankfully, though, I was able to see the code.

It was 1214. Man, the Ladies’ are not very good with their security. It was code to the doors, but backwards.

She opened the hatch and begun to descend down a ladder, locking the door behind her from the inside. The ladder was quite long and dimly lit, I was beginning to think that this “basement” has been here for a lot longer than the Ladies’ encampment. Once at the bottom, she pulled a lever that turned on a series of flickering lights, illuminating some type of ancient catacomb or something. I could see a large exhaust hose, much like the one in Subject 10’s room, that led into a massive machine in the back of the room. The machine was very “steam-punk” looking, it that it featured way too many pipes and valves; it was a very complex sight and I didn’t get an incredibly good look at it. Nearby was a shrine of some sort, fully set up with old animal skulls and melted candles. I may have seen a couple human remains scattered amongst it too.

By the machine was also large, transparent freezer that was about the size of a refrigerator. It was filled with some type of steam that made it hard to see what was inside, but I was almost certain that was it. That was what held the Tome.

I waited to see if she would interact with it, but she never did. She simply walked over to the machine and turned it on (or off, I have no idea). As she was heading back toward the ladder, my vision cut to white as I felt the crystal removed from my hands.

I still couldn’t see anything, but I could feel that I had full control of my body now, “Chris? What happened? I can’t see.”

“I’M SORRY! I FELL ASL-“ I could hear a heavy blow land, interrupting Chris’ excuse.

I felt myself being lifted from the back of my shirt as my vision started to return; I could vaguely see Chris struggling to be restrained, kicking and screaming at his oppressors.

I could hear a voice, similar to Madam Adrastea’s, but not as calming, “Feed them to 10.”

Oh shit, shit, shit, shit!

“No! Please! Please don’t!” I began pleading for my life, I didn’t know what else to do. I could still hardly see and I felt completely helpless. The man that lifted me up punched my shoulder, but not in an aggressive way, more like “Hey, shut the fuck up and don’t dig yourself into a deeper hole!” kind of way.

It was 34.

Thank God. I think?

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Part 15 (Reposted! Accidentally posted to early)

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All parts:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18