(1983) The Redstone Clan — What Investigators Found In Their Tunnels Still Terrifies Authorities

 

The Redstone Mountain Compound in rural Montana looked like any other survivalist retreat from the outside. Solar panels, vegetable gardens, and children playing in the dirt. But on March 15th, 1983, FBI agent Sarah Chen descended into the handcarved tunnels beneath their main lodge and emerged 3 hours later, her hair turned completely white and her hands shaking uncontrollably.

 

 

What she’d seen in those underground chambers would haunt her for the rest of her life. Chen wasn’t just any federal agent. She was a former army psychological operations specialist who’d interrogated war criminals and witnessed the worst humanity had to offer. She thought she’d seen everything.

 

 But the Redstone clan had been living by rules that predated civilization itself, feeding on something that grew in the mountains belly, something that required fresh sacrifices to survive and multiply. The 17 children found in those tunnels had been changed. Their parents called it evolution. The government called it an abomination.

 

 But what would you call creatures that could survive without food, water, or sunlight?  The investigation had started 3 months earlier with a single missing person’s report.

 

 Jennifer Walsh, 16, had disappeared from a youth hostel in Billings. The only lead was a gas station receipt showing she’d bought snacks and a map of Glacier County. Her parents insisted she wasn’t the type to run away, but teenagers vanished all the time. The case would have gone cold if not for the others.

 

 Over 6 weeks, four more teens disappeared along the same stretch of highway. All were runaways or foster kids, the kind of missing persons that usually slipped through bureaucratic cracks. But Agent Chen had been tracking patterns of disappearances across the rural Northwest, and something about the timing bothered her. too regular, too deliberate.

 

 The Redstone Clan first appeared on federal radar in 1979 when their leader, Marcus Redstone, purchased 800 acres of mountainous wilderness with cash. Background checks revealed he’d been Marcus Kowalsski before legally changing his name. Former geology professor at Berkeley, who’d suffered a complete mental breakdown after his wife and daughter died in a car accident.

 

 He’d emerged from a psychiatric facility with a new philosophy about humanity’s relationship with the earth. Redstone’s followers were textbook cult material, lost souls seeking purpose, mostly young adults from broken homes. They called themselves the first family and believed traditional society was poisoning humanity’s connection to primordial forces.

 

 Standard doomsday rhetoric mixed with new age spiritualism. The ATF had investigated them twice for suspected weapons stockpiling, but found nothing illegal. Chen’s team approached the compound on a gray March morning under the pretense of routine questioning about the missing teenagers. They expected resistance, maybe weapons, possibly a standoff.

 

 Instead, Redstone welcomed them with unnerving calm. He was smaller than his photos suggested, mid-50s with prematurely silver hair and the kind of deep set wrinkles that spoke of sleepless nights. His clothes were simple, worn flannel and work boots, but his eyes held an intensity that made Chen’s skin crawl.

 

 When she showed him pictures of the missing teens, he studied each face for long moments. “Children lose their way,” he said finally. “We help them find their true path. Are you saying they’re here? I’m saying the earth provides for those willing to listen. Compound surface structures were unremarkable. 37 adults lived in converted cabins and trailers arranged around a central lodge.

 

 Solar panels and a wind turbine provided power. Gardens and a small livestock pen suggested self-sufficiency. Children played between the buildings. Too many children for the number of adults, Chen noted. But something felt wrong. The adults moved with strange synchronization like a school of fish responding to invisible currents.

 

 Their eyes held the same hollow intensity as their leader. And the children the children were too quiet, too watchful. When Chen tried to approach them, they scattered with unnatural speed. “We’d like to search the premises,” Chen announced. Redstone nodded as if he’d expected this. of course, but please understand some doors once opened cannot be closed.

 The first tunnel entrance was hidden beneath a false floor in the lodge’s basement. Wooden stairs descended into handcarved rock lit by oil lamps that cast dancing shadows on the walls. The air grew thick and humid as they descended, carrying a smell Chen couldn’t identify, sweet and rotting and somehow alive. Agent Morrison, Chen’s partner, had volunteered to accompany her into the tunnels.

 They’d worked together for four years, survived two armed standoffs and a terrorist bombing. He was solid, unshakable. But 20 minutes into their descent, Morrison stopped walking. “We need to leave,” he whispered. “Right now.” Chen turned to argue and saw the fear in his eyes. Morrison, who’d once talked down a man holding a bus full of school children hostage, was trembling.

 That’s when they heard the children singing somewhere in the darkness ahead. Voices too pure and beautiful to belong to anything human. The helicopter’s rotors churned the morning air as special agent Sarah Chen pressed her face to the small window, watching the Colorado wilderness unfold below.

 dense pine forests stretched endlessly, broken only by jagged rock faces and the occasional glint of a mountain stream. Somewhere in this vast expanse lay the redstone compound, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were flying towards something far worse than a routine cult raid. “First time dealing with religious extremists,” Agent Marcus Webb shouted over the engine noise, checking his tactical vest for the third time.

 His weathered face bore the confidence of 20 years in federal service, but Sarah caught the slight tremor in his hands. “Detroit gang task force for 6 years,” she replied, adjusting her own equipment. “How different can it be?” Web’s laugh held no humor. “These aren’t street dealers,” Chen Prophet Daniels been collecting followers for 15 years.

Psychological manipulation, sexual abuse, weapons stockpiling, the whole package. and the locals. He paused, shaking his head. They won’t even talk about what goes on up there. The pilot’s voice crackled through their headsets. Landing zone in sight. You’ve got maybe 4 hours before weather moves in. Sarah peered down at a small clearing carved from the mountain side.

 The trees seem to press inward like gnarled fingers, and she could make out wooden structures nestled among the shadows. Smoke rose from several chimneys, a deceptively peaceful sight that made her stomach tighten. As they descended, movement caught her eye. Figures in dark clothing emerged from the buildings, but instead of running or taking defensive positions, they simply stood watching.

Even from this distance, their stillness felt unnatural. “Where’s the resistance?” Sarah asked. “Shouldn’t they be scrambling for weapons?” Web frowned, following her gaze. Intel said they had enough firepower to level a city block. This doesn’t feel right. The helicopter touched down with a jarring thud, and the tactical team poured out in practiced formation.

 Sarah’s boots hit the rocky ground as she scanned the perimeter. Weapon drawn but finger off the trigger. The silence was absolute except for the fading wine of rotor blades. No gunfire, no shouts of defiance, nothing. Federal agents. Webb’s voice echoed off the mountainside. This is a lawful search warrant.

 Come out with your hands visible. The compound’s residents began walking toward them with measured steps. Men, women, and children of all ages, dressed in simple dark clothing that seemed to absorb the weak mountain sunlight. Their faces held expressions of serene acceptance that made Sarah’s skin crawl.

 Something’s wrong here, she whispered into her radio. This isn’t how fanatics behave. The crowd stopped 20 ft away, and an elderly man stepped forward, his gray beard reached his chest, and his eyes held a peculiar brightness that seemed to look through rather than at them. “I am Daniel Thorne,” he said, his voice carrying clearly in the thin air.

 “We’ve been expecting you.” Webb raised his weapon slightly. Prophet Daniel, you’re under arrest for violations of federal firearms laws, child endangerment, and Yes. Yes, Daniel interrupted with a gentle wave. All of that. But you’ve come for something else, haven’t you? You feel it already. The pull, the knowledge that what you thought you knew about the world is incomplete.

 Sarah felt a chill that had nothing to do with the mountain air. There was something in the man’s tone, a certainty that made her question why they were really here. The official reports mentioned weapons and abuse, but the way everyone stood so calmly, the way the children stared at them with ancient eyes.

 Secure the perimeter, Webb ordered, but his voice lacked conviction. Begin the search. As the tactical team spread out, Sarah noticed details that made her training scream warnings. The buildings were constructed in a spiral pattern around a central structure half buried in the mountainside. Strange symbols were carved into every doorframe.

 Not quite letters, not quite pictures, but somehow familiar in a way that made her teeth ache. Agent Chen, Daniel called softly, though she hadn’t told him her name. You feel it most strongly, don’t you? The certainty that this moment was always going to happen, that you were meant to be here.

 She wanted to dismiss his words as manipulation, but a part of her, a part that had been growing stronger with each mile they’d traveled into these mountains, recognized truth in them. Her grandmother’s stories of things that lived in dark places suddenly felt less like folklore and more like warnings. The wind picked up, carrying with it a sound that might have been singing or might have been screaming.

 It seemed to come from beneath their feet, from the mountain itself. “Web,” she said quietly. “I think we need to call for backup.” But when she turned, Agent Webb was staring at the half-bburied central structure with the same serene expression as the cult members, and she realized with growing horror that they might already be too late.

 The helicopter’s rotors carved through the thin mountain air as agent Sarah Chen pressed her face to the reinforced window, watching the pinecovered slopes blur past below. 3 days had passed since the initial raid on the Redstone compound, and she was finally being allowed to see what had spooked the bureau badly enough to classify the entire operation above her clearance level.

 “First time up here?” asked Agent Marcus Webb, settling into the seat across from her. His weathered face carried the kind of exhaustion that came from seeing too much, sleeping too little. “First time anywhere like this,” Chen admitted, adjusting her tactical vest. “At 28, she was young for a federal agent, but her background in forensic psychology had fasttracked her through the ranks.

 The briefing was pretty sparse. Doomsday cult, weapons cash, multiple casualties, standard stuff until everyone went quiet. Web’s laugh held no humor. Standard. He shook his head. Nothing about Redstone fits that word. The pilot’s voice crackled through their headsets. Coming up on the LZ. Might want to prep your stomachs, folks.

 Even from up here, you can smell it. Chen frowned, but before she could ask what he meant, the helicopter banked sharply and the compound came into view. What she saw made her breath catch. The redstone settlement sprawled across a natural plateau like a infected wound in the forest. Traditional log cabins and newer prefab structures formed concentric circles around a large central building that looked part, part warehouse.

 But it was the colors that struck her first. Everything was wrong. The wooden structures showed patches of deep red brown staining as if someone had splashed paint across the entire settlement. Except Chen knew it wasn’t paint. “Jesus,” she whispered. “Haven’t seen the worst yet,” Webb said grimly. The helicopter touched down in a cleared area beyond the compound’s perimeter, where a small army of federal agents, local law enforcement, and what looked like military personnel had established a command post.

 The moment Chen stepped out, the smell hit her, metallic, organic, and underneath it all, something else. Something that made her lizard brain recoil in instinctive revulsion. Agent director Patricia Vasquez approached them, her usually pristine appearance disheveled. Chen had never seen the ironwilled director look rattled, but whatever had happened here had clearly pushed her to her limits.

Chen, good. We need your profile expertise. Vasquez handed her a thick file. Standard cult deprogramming protocols aren’t working with the survivors. They’re unresponsive to normal interrogation techniques. How many survivors? Chen asked, scanning the preliminary reports. 17 out of 143 residents. Vasquez’s jaw tightened.

 The rest are scattered around the compound in various states of well, you’ll see. They walked toward the main settlement, passing through multiple security checkpoints. Chen noticed that many of the agents wore respirators, and several looked pale despite their professional composure. The closer they got to the buildings, the stronger that underlying smell became, sweet and cloying, like flowers left too long in stagnant water.

The leader was a man named Thomas Ashford, Webb explained as they walked. former professor of anthropology kicked out of three universities for unethical research practices, started gathering followers about 8 years ago, promising them a return to humanity’s true nature. Chen paused beside the first building, studying the dark stains covering its exterior walls.

 Up close, she could see they weren’t random splashes, but deliberate patterns, spirals, and symbols that seemed to writhe when viewed peripherally. These markings, they’re not just blood, are they? Afraid not. Vasquez stopped walking, her expression grim. Initial analysis suggests multiple organic compounds. Blood, yes, but also other fluids, some we can’t identify yet.

 They rounded the corner of the central building, and Chen got her first clear view of the compound’s heart. In the space between the main structure and the surrounding cabins, dozens of bodies lay in neat rows. But something was fundamentally wrong with them. Even from a distance, Chen could see that they had been altered somehow.

 Limbs bent at impossible angles, faces stretched into expressions that human features shouldn’t accommodate. The survivors keep talking about the becoming, Webb said quietly. They say Ashford showed them how to unlock their deeper nature, how to evolve beyond human limitations. Chen forced herself to keep walking, her training overriding her instincts.

 Where is Ashford now? Vasquez and Webb exchanged a look. That’s complicated. We found him in the main building. Sort of. Sort of. You’ll understand when you see him. But first, we need you to talk to the survivors. They’re being held in a secure facility about a mile down the mountain.

 Standard procedure would be to separate them, begin individual psychological evaluation. But they won’t separate. They react badly when we try. The way Vasquez emphasized react made Chen’s skin crawl, define badly. They scream, Webb said simply. Not like humans, like something else entirely. And when they scream,” he paused, running a hand through his graying hair.

 When they scream, some of the bodies stop being quite so dead. The basement stretched further than Matthews had anticipated. What he’d assumed was a simple cellar beneath the main lodge, revealed itself as an extensive network of tunnels carved directly into the mountains bedrock. The air grew colder with each step, carrying an earthy dampness that seemed to seep through their tactical gear.

 Rodriguez swept his flashlight across the rough hune walls, revealing scratch marks that looked almost deliberate, too uniform to be natural erosion, too crude to be machine-made. “These passages weren’t on any of the architectural plans we found,” he whispered into his radio. Matthews pressed his earpiece. Command, we’re approximately 50 m below ground level. Multiple branching corridors.

Requesting additional teams for systematic clearing. Static. Crackled back. Negative. Alpha team. Maintain current position until we establish communication with surface teams. We’ve got some kind of interference up here. The smell hit them before they found its source. A sickly sweet odor that made Matthews’s stomach clench.

 It wasn’t the familiar stench of decay he’d encountered at other crime scenes. This was something else entirely. Organic yet foreign, like flowers left too long in stagnant water. Chen, their newest team member, stopped abruptly. Sir, you need to see this. The corridor opened into a circular chamber, perhaps 20 ft in diameter.

 The walls were covered in symbols that seemed to shift in the dancing flashlight beams, not painted or carved, but somehow embedded in the stone itself. They appeared to be a mixture of languages, some recognizable as Latin or Hebrew, others completely alien. But it was the center of the room that made Matthews’s breath catch. A perfect circle had been carved into the floor, filled with a dark substance that reflected their lights like oil.

 Around its perimeter lay 13 wooden beds, each sized for a child. “Jesus Christ,” Rodriguez muttered, then immediately fell silent as his voice echoed back from the depths with an odd resonance, as if the sound had passed through something before returning. Matthews approached one of the beds cautiously. The wood was stained dark in places, and metal restraints had been bolted to the frame, but there were no bodies, no bones, no evidence of violence beyond the implications of the restraints themselves. “Where are they?” Chen

asked, voicing what they were all thinking. “According to their intelligence, the Redstone family had included at least 15 children among their 43 members. They’d found 28 bodies in the compound above, all adults. A sound echoed from deeper in the tunnel system. Not quite human, but not animal either.

 It was rhythmic, almost musical, like a lullabi being hummed by someone with a damaged throat. Matthews motioned for silence, then pointed toward the far end of the chamber, where another passage disappeared into darkness. The sound was coming from that direction, growing slightly louder as they listened. They moved as quietly as their training allowed, but the stone floor seemed to amplify every footstep.

 The humming stopped abruptly when they were halfway across the chamber, replaced by a silence so complete that Matthews could hear his own heartbeat. The next corridor sloped downward at a steep angle, the walls closing in until they had to move single file. Their flashlights revealed more symbols, these ones appearing fresher, as if they’d been carved recently.

 Some still showed pale stone dust around their edges. “How deep does this go?” Chen whispered. Matthews checked his altimter. They were now nearly 100 ft below the compound’s ground level, deeper than should have been possible given the mountains geology. According to the topographical surveys, they should have hit the water table by now.

 The passage ended at a heavy wooden door bound with iron. Unlike everything else they’d encountered, this looked ancient, centuries old rather than decades. The wood was black with age, and the iron had oxidized to a deep rust that seemed to weep red tears down the door’s surface. Rodriguez tested the handle carefully. “Unlocked,” he reported.

 The door swung open with surprising ease, revealing not another chamber, but a natural cave system. Stelactites hung from a ceiling that disappeared beyond their light’s reach, and the sound of dripping water echoed from multiple directions. But it was the footprints that made Matthews call for backup. They were human, small, childsized, but wrong somehow.

 The toe impressions were too long, and there appeared to be more than five per foot. They led deeper into the cave system in a neat line, as if a group of children had walked calmly into the darkness. The prince was still damp. Matthews felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cave’s temperature. Whatever had happened to the Redstone family’s children, it had happened recently.

 Very recently, from somewhere in the darkness ahead came that humming again, closer now, and definitely not coming from just one throat. Multiple voices harmonizing in a melody that seemed to bypass his ears and resonate directly in his bones. “Command,” he whispered into his radio. “We need that backup now.” Only static answered. The stench hit Martinez like a physical blow as they descended into the compound’s lower levels.

 It wasn’t the familiar reek of death she’d encountered at crime scenes. This was something else entirely, sweet and cloying with an underlying metallic tang that made her stomach lurch. She pressed her sleeve against her nose, watching Agent Chen do the same ahead of her. The narrow concrete stairs spiral downward far deeper than any of them had anticipated.

Their flashlight beams carved weak paths through the darkness, revealing walls that seemed to pulse with moisture. Strange symbols had been carved into the concrete at regular intervals, not the crude scratches of bored cult members, but intricate designs that hurt to look at directly.

 “Jesus Christ,” whispered Agent Brooks from behind her. “How deep does this go?” Chen held up his hand for silence. They’d been descending for nearly 10 minutes, and Martinez’s ears had started popping from the pressure change. Whatever lay beneath the redstone compound, it existed far below the mountain surface. The stairs finally ended at a heavy steel door, its surface scarred with deep gouges that looked suspiciously like claw marks.

 Chen reached for the handle, then hesitated. Through the metal, they could hear something. A low rhythmic sound that might have been breathing. could be survivors,” Martinez said, though her voice lacked conviction. The scratches on the door were on the inside. Chen nodded grimly and turned the handle. The door opened with surprising ease, releasing a wave of that sickening sweet smell.

 Their flashlights revealed a corridor that stretched beyond their beams reach, lined with what appeared to be cells. But as they moved closer, Martinez realized these weren’t meant to keep people in. They were meant to keep something out. The bars were bent and twisted, some torn completely free from their mountings.

 Dark stains covered the walls and floor, and scattered among the debris were shreds of the rough brown clothing the cult members had worn. But no bodies, no bones, nothing human remained. “What the hell happened down here?” Brooks muttered, stepping carefully around a twisted piece of metal that had once been a cell door. Martinez knelt beside one of the larger stains, studying the spatter pattern.

Her forensics training told her this was arterial spray, but the volume was wrong. There was too much blood for the few clothing fragments they’d found. A sound echoed from deeper in the corridor, a wet, sliding noise like something massive moving through water. All three agents froze, their flashlight beams converging on the darkness ahead.

Federal agents,” Chen called out, his voice steady despite the circumstances. “If anyone is down here, identify yourself.” The sliding sound stopped abruptly, replaced by a silence so complete that Martinez could hear her own heartbeat thundering in her ears. Then came something worse, a sound that might have been laughter, if laughter could [clears throat] be made without lungs or vocal cords.

 They moved forward as a unit, weapons drawn. Though Martinez wondered what good bullets would do against whatever had torn through steel bars like paper. The corridor opened into a vast chamber, and their combined flashlight beams couldn’t reach the far walls. In the center of the space had a massive stone altar, its surface carved with the same intricate symbols they’d seen on the walls.

 Dark channels were cut into the stone, all leading to a central depression that was stained black with old blood. But it wasn’t the altar that made Martinez’s breath catch in her throat. Surrounding the altar were dozens of empty suits of human skin. They hung from hooks driven into the chamber walls, deflated and gray like discarded clothing.

Some were adult-sized, others heartbreakingly small. Each had been removed with surgical precision, turned inside out, and hung to dry like pelts in a Tanner’s shop. Oh god, Brooks whispered, his flashlight beam trembling as it played across the macab display. Oh my god. But Martinez was studying the ground beneath the hanging skins where the stone floor was marked with strange tracks.

 They weren’t human footprints, but they weren’t animal either. They were something in between, elongated and wrong, with what looked like claw marks at the tips. The wet sliding sound resumed closer now, and Martinez realized with growing horror that it was coming from multiple directions. They weren’t alone in this chamber, and whatever shared the space with them was circling, using the darkness as cover.

Chen’s radio crackled to life, the static unnaturally loud in the oppressive silence. Alpha team, what’s your status? We’ve lost contact with the surface team. Before Chen could respond, one of the hanging skins began to move. Not swaying with air currents, actually moving, filling out as if something was putting it on from the inside.

 The empty face stretched and bulged, features pressing out from within as dead flesh came horribly to life. Martinez raised her weapon, knowing with absolute certainty that they were all going to die in this place. The morg at St. Mary’s Hospital hadn’t seen this much federal attention since the Kennedy assassination. Dr.

 Patricia Henley watched through the observation window as Agent Morrison suited up in full protective gear, her movements deliberate despite the tremor in her hands. “The three bodies from Redstone lay on steel tables covered in white sheets that seem to glow under the harsh fluorescent lights. “You sure about this?” Henley asked through the intercom.

 The preliminary examination showed some unusual characteristics. Morrison’s voice crackled back, distorted by the respirator. I need to see for myself. She approached the first table and pulled back the sheet. The cult member appeared to be a woman in her 30s, blonde hair matted with dried blood. At first glance, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

 Then Morrison leaned closer. The woman’s fingernails had grown to nearly 3 in in length. curved like talons and stained dark brown. Her teeth, visible through slightly parted lips, appeared filed to points, but it was the eyes that made Morrison step back. Even in death they remained open, pupils dilated so wide they consumed almost all of the iris, leaving only thin rings of what might have once been blue.

 “Jesus Christ,” Morrison whispered. She moved to the second body. A man who looked to be in his 50s. His transformation was more pronounced. Patches of hair had fallen out in clumps, leaving irregular bald spots across his scalp. His skin had taken on a grayish palar that went deeper than typical post-mortem discoloration. When Morrison lifted his lip, she found rows of teeth that had been methodically sharpened, some filed down so far they’d exposed the nerve endings.

 The third body made her stomach lurch. A teenager, maybe 17, whose spine had curved in ways that defied normal human anatomy. His shoulder blades protruded at unnatural angles, and his fingers had elongated beyond what surgery could achieve. Dark veins were visible beneath translucent skin, forming web-like patterns across his chest and arms. “Dr.

 Henley,” Morrison called out, her voice tight. What did the toxicology report show? That’s the strange part. We found traces of several compounds we couldn’t identify. The blood chemistry was unlike anything I’ve seen in 30 years of pathology. Elevated levels of certain proteins that shouldn’t exist in human biology.

 Morrison photographed everything. The camera flash creating stark shadows across the deformed features. Each click echoed in the sterile room like gunshots. She was documenting the impossible. There’s something else, Henley continued. The brain tissue samples. Under microscopic examination, we found unusual neural pathway formations.

 It’s as if their brain structure had been rewired. The agent moved between the tables, studying each body with growing unease. These weren’t the victims of some charismatic cult leader psychological manipulation. This was something far worse. A systematic transformation of human beings into something else entirely. Her radio crackled to life.

 Morrison, this is Director Walsh. What’s your status? Still conducting the examination. Sir, you need to see this. Negative. Wrap it up and return to base. We’ve got developments. Morrison hesitated. looking back at the bodies. Sir, these people, what happened to them goes beyond anything in our protocols. We need specialists.

 Agent Morrison, that’s an order. The scene is being sealed as of 1,800 hours. The finality in Walsh’s tone left no room for argument. Morrison began removing her protective gear, mind racing with questions that had no answers. As she peeled off the latex gloves, she noticed a small cut on her thumb, probably from the broken glass at the compound.

 In the observation room, Dr. Henley was pouring over laboratory results. Her face grave. Agent Morrison, there’s one more thing. The blood work revealed genetic markers that don’t match any known human DNA sequences. It’s as if something was actively rewriting their genetic code. How is that possible? I don’t know. But whatever they were exposed to down there, it was changing them at a cellular level.

 The transformation was still ongoing when they died. Morrison felt a chill run down her spine. She thought about the underground chambers, the strange symbols carved into stone, the journal entries describing communion and elevation. The cult members hadn’t just believed they were becoming something more than human. They actually were.

 Outside the morg, agent Chen was waiting in the hallway, his face pale. “We need to talk,” he said quietly. “I’ve been going through the compound supply records. They’d been ordering massive quantities of laboratory equipment, genetic material, and chemical compounds through shell companies for the past 5 years. What kind of genetic material? That’s just it.

” According to the purchase orders, none of it came from any known earthbased organisms. Morrison stared at him, the pieces of an impossible puzzle beginning to form a picture she didn’t want to complete. The Redstone cult hadn’t just been preparing for the end of the world. They’d been actively working to transcend humanity itself, and they’d succeeded.

 The interrogation room smelled of stale coffee and fear. Agent Sarah Chen sat across from Marcus Whitfield, the only cult member willing to speak since the raid 3 days ago. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, and his hands trembled as he reached for the paper cup of water she’d provided.

 “Tell me about the children,” Chen said, her voice carefully neutral despite the knot in her stomach. Whitfield’s laugh came out as a broken weeze. “You think you know what children are, what they should be, but down there?” He shook his head, water sloshing over the rim of his cup. Down there, they showed us what children could become. Chen leaned forward.

 What do you mean by become? The hollowing. Whitfield’s voice dropped to a whisper. That’s what brother Thomas called it. Said it was a gift, a transformation. But I knew better. I saw what it really was. The tape recorder continued its steady were in the silence that followed. Chen had interviewed dozens of cult survivors over her career, but something about Whitfield’s terror felt different, more immediate, as if whatever he’d witnessed was still happening somewhere just beyond her sight.

 Start from the beginning, she said. How long were you at the compound? 2 years. Came in 81 with my wife after we lost our farm. Thomas promised sanctuary purpose. Whitfield’s fingers traced the rim of his cup. First year was normal enough. Gardens, prayer sessions, communal meals, but then the new children arrived.

 New children? Not born to families in the compound. Thomas brought them from somewhere else. Said they were special, chosen. They were different, quiet in a way that made your skin crawl. And their eyes, he shuddered, like looking into empty wells. Chen made a note. The missing children reports from surrounding states had started trickling in yesterday.

 17 kids between ages 6 and 12 all vanished over the past 18 months. What happened to them in the underground chambers? Whitfield’s cup slipped from his fingers. Water spreading across the metal table. You’ve been down there some of it. The passages are extensive. Did you find the nursery? Chen’s pen stopped moving.

 nursery level three behind the iron door with the symbols. That’s where Thomas kept them during the hollowing. Where he Witfield pressed his palms against his eyes. God forgive me. I should have stopped it. Should have fought harder. Marcus, I need you to tell me exactly what you saw. When Witfield looked up, tears streaked his cheeks.

 The children weren’t learning scripture down there. They were being emptied, drained of whatever made them human, and filled with something else. something that spoke without words and moved without sound. Chen felt ice forming in her veins. What do you mean drained? Thomas had machines. Old medical equipment modified with things I’d never seen before.

 Tubes and wires running into their skulls, their spines. And while the machines hummed, the children would fade. Their personalities, their memories, their souls, all of it pulled out like water from a well. The fluorescent light above flickered, casting brief shadows across Whitfield’s haunted face. But that wasn’t the worst part, he continued.

 The worst part was what filled the empty spaces, whispers in languages that hurt your throat to hear movements that followed no earthly physics, and the hunger, Christ, the hunger in their eyes when they looked at the rest of us. Chen’s mouth had gone dry. Are you saying these children were possessed? possessed suggests something invaded them. This was different.

 This was invitation. Thomas wasn’t fighting demons. He was breeding them, creating vessels perfect for inhabitation. A knock at the door interrupted them. Agent Rodriguez stepped in, his face pale. Chen, we need you downstairs now. She looked back at Whitfield, who had begun rocking slightly in his chair.

 We’re not finished. The children know you’re here, Whitfield said suddenly. They can feel you poking around their nest. And they don’t like visitors. The children are gone. Marcus, we found the chambers empty. His rocking stopped. Empty. No bodies. No evidence of recent habitation. Just medical equipment and those symbols carved into the walls.

Whitfield’s laugh returned higher pitched this time. Empty doesn’t mean gone. Agent Chen. Empty means they’ve graduated. It means Thomas finished what he started. He leaned forward, his breath wreaking of fear and desperation. It means 17 hollowed children are walking around somewhere wearing human faces while something else looks out through their eyes.

 Rodriguez stepped closer to the table. Chen, seriously, the lab results from the soil samples just came in. You need to see this. As Chen stood to leave, Whitfield grabbed her wrist. His fingers felt like ice. “Find them before the next new moon,” he whispered. “Because that’s when they’ll call their brothers home.

 That’s when the real harvest begins.” The descent into the lower tunnels felt like entering the digestive tract of some massive organism. Agent Sarah Chen pressed her palm against the rough hune wall, feeling an odd warmth pulsing through the stone. The thermal readings on her equipment had been climbing steadily for the past 20 minutes, though no obvious heat source appeared on any of their scans.

“Movement ahead,” whispered Torres, his voice barely audible through the comm. The team had switched to hand signals and minimal radio chatter after discovering that their transmissions were somehow being distorted. voices stretching into unnatural harmonics that made their own words sound alien. Chen peered around the corner where Torres had stopped.

 The tunnel opened into a vast chamber easily the size of an aircraft hanger carved directly from the mountains bedrock. But it was what filled the space that made her breath catch in her throat. Dozens of metal tables arranged in precise rows, each bearing what appeared to be surgical equipment. Not the crude implements they’d expected from a backwoods cult, but sophisticated medical instruments that gleamed under the harsh fluorescent lighting.

 Four stands, monitoring equipment, devices she couldn’t immediately identify. All of it spotlessly clean despite the compound’s abandonment. Jesus Christ,” muttered Agent Rodriguez, lowering his weapon slightly. “What were they doing down here?” Chen activated her camera, documenting everything as they moved deeper into the chamber.

 The tables weren’t empty. Restraint straps hung open like grasping fingers, and dark stains marked the metal surfaces, despite the otherwise pristine condition. But it was the walls that drew her attention, covered floor to ceiling with photographs, hundreds of them, showing what appeared to be the same dozen individuals photographed repeatedly over time.

 “Check this out,” called Agent Martinez from across the room. She stood before a wall covered in medical charts and documentation. “These aren’t religious texts. They’re experimental records.” Chen joined her, scanning the meticulously kept notes. The handwriting was precise, clinical, dated over a span of nearly 15 years, but the content made no sense.

References to cellular restructuring, consciousness transference, and host integration filled page after page of observations. Subject seven shows remarkable adaptation to the secondary neural pathways. Chen read aloud from one entry dated 6 months earlier. Personality integration proceeding ahead of schedule.

 Original consciousness suppressed successfully for 72-hour periods. What the hell does that mean? Torres had moved to examine one of the machines, a complex device with multiple screens showing readouts in an unfamiliar format. A soft sound echoed through the chamber, like footsteps, but wrong somehow. Too measured, too deliberate.

 The team immediately raised their weapons, forming a defensive circle. Federal agents, Chen called out. Show yourself. The footsteps continued, growing closer, and then a figure emerged from the shadows at the far end of the chamber. It was a woman, middle-aged, wearing a simple white dress that seemed to glow in the harsh lighting.

 Her movements were fluid, graceful, but something about her gate triggered an instinctive unease in Chen’s mind. “You shouldn’t have come down here,” the woman said, her voice carrying an odd echo despite the chamber’s acoustics. “The work isn’t finished, ma’am. I’m Agent Chen with the FBI. We’re here to help. Are you injured? Are there others?” The woman smiled, and Chen felt her blood turn cold.

 The expression was perfect, too perfect, like a photograph of happiness rather than the genuine emotion itself. Others? The woman tilted her head at an unnatural angle. Yes, there are others. We are all others now. Rodriguez stepped forward. Ma’am, we need you to keep your hands visible and move slowly toward us. Such concern for protocol, the woman observed, even when faced with something beyond your comprehension.

She gestured toward the photographs covering the walls. Do you recognize them? The faces? Chen looked more closely at the images. The same people, yes, but something was wrong with the progression. In the earlier photos, the subjects looked normal. Cult members with a typical holloweyed stare of true believers.

 But in the later images, their expressions had changed. The same unsettling perfection she saw in the woman before them. The collective worked for decades to perfect the process, the woman continued, beginning to pace in that same too fluid motion. Consciousness is just electrical patterns, after all. Patterns that can be adjusted.

 Martinez had been quietly working at one of the computers while the woman spoke. Now she looked up, her face pale. Chen, you need to see this. The dates on these files. They continue past the raid. Someone’s been updating these records. The woman’s smile widened. Of course, the work continues. How could it not? We’ve moved beyond the limitations of individual existence, beyond the crude boundaries of singular identity.

 Chen felt the pieces clicking into place with horrifying clarity, the perfect preservation of the chamber, the continuing documentation, the woman’s impossible composure. You’re not from the original compound, are you? Chen whispered. I am everyone from the compound, the woman replied. And no one at all. The fluorescent lights in the FBI’s subb archives hummed like dying insects as Sarah Chen pulled on latex gloves.

 Agent Rodriguez had left her alone with the redstone files after extracting promises she wouldn’t discuss their contents with anyone lacking level seven clearance. The cardboard boxes sat before her like coffins, each labeled with dates spanning from 1981 to 1984. She opened the first box and immediately understood why the case remained classified.

 The photographs alone would have ended careers if they’d leaked to the press. Bodies arranged in ritualistic patterns, but not killed by human hands. The wounds were wrong, too precise, too purposeful. Flesh peeled back in geometric spirals. bones carved with symbols that hurt to look at directly. Sarah forced herself to examine the crime scene photos methodically.

 The Redstone compound’s main lodge showed signs of a struggle, but not between the federal agents and cult members. Tables overturned from underneath as if something had pushed up through the floorboards. Claw marks scored the wooden walls in patterns that suggested intelligence behind their placement. A handwritten report from agent Marcus Webb caught her attention.

His neat script grew increasingly erratic as the pages progressed, detailing discoveries that defied explanation. The cult members hadn’t been victims. They’d been accompllices. The real horror lay in what they’d been feeding in the tunnels beneath the mountain. Web’s notes described a breeding program spanning decades.

 The cult leader, David Krenshaw, had convinced his followers they were nurturing humanity’s next evolutionary step. Women gave birth in the underground chambers, but the children never saw sunlight. Instead, they were raised in darkness, fed a diet of raw meat and something Web referred to only as the communion substance.

 Sarah’s hands trembled as she read deeper. The children weren’t human anymore. Not entirely. They’d adapted to their subterranean environment, developing enhanced hearing and night vision. Their bone structure had shifted, becoming more angular, more predatory. Most disturbing was their apparent telepathic connection to each other and their parent, something that had never been human at all.

 The entity web described defied classification. ancient beyond measure. It had crawled up from geological depths during the construction of the compound’s foundation in 1978. Crenshaw and his inner circle had discovered it while digging their emergency bunkers. Instead of fleeing, they’d interpreted its presence as divine intervention.

Photographs showed the things lair in the deepest tunnels. Sarah’s rational mind rejected what she saw. A creature that seemed to shift between states of matter, sometimes solid, sometimes resembling animate shadow. Its children clustered around it like pale spiders, their elongated limbs and hollow eye sockets marking them as something that had diverged from human evolution entirely.

 Web’s final entries grew frantic. The raid had been compromised from the start. Someone in the federal task force had warned Crenshaw, but not out of sympathy for the cult. They’d been protecting something else entirely. The creature and its offspring had vanished into deeper tunnels before the agents arrived, leaving behind only the human cultists to face justice.

 But justice had never come. The surviving cult members died within days of their arrest, their bodies simply shutting down as if they’d lost connection to some vital source. The autopsies revealed profound genetic modifications that couldn’t be explained by science. Their brain scans showed neural pathways that resembled circuit boards more than organic tissue.

 The final photograph in the file showed a tunnel entrance that hadn’t been there during the initial raid. Something had carved it from solid rock after the agents left, creating a passage that led even deeper into the mountain. Web’s note on the back read simply, “It’s still down there. Still breathing. Still waiting.

” Sarah’s phone buzzed, making her jump. A text from Rodriguez. How’s the reading going? Find anything interesting? She stared at the message, remembering his promise that she was the first researcher to access these files in over a decade. But Web’s reports referenced multiple follow-up investigations, teams of specialists who’d returned to the mountain year after year.

 Their reports weren’t in these boxes. Sarah typed back, “Where are the files from 1985 to present?” The response came immediately, “What files? The case was closed in 84.” She looked again at Web’s final report, dated March 1987, 3 years after the case was supposedly closed. 3 years of investigations that officially never happened.

 Her hands shaking, she photographed every page with her phone, knowing that these documents might disappear as soon as she left the archive room. The fluorescent lights flickered overhead, and for a moment, Sarah could swear she heard something moving in the walls around her. The elevator descended for what felt like an eternity.

 The only sound the rhythmic grinding of ancient machinery. Sarah’s headlamp cut through the darkness of the shaft, revealing smooth concrete walls that seemed to go on forever. Agent Martinez stood rigid beside her, his breathing shallow and controlled, while Dr. Vance muttered calculations under his breath about depth and structural integrity.

 “How far down does this thing go?” Martinez whispered, though his voice seemed to echo endlessly in the confined space. The original blueprints showed three sub levels, Vance replied, consulting his tablet, but those were from 1979. They had four years to dig deeper. The elevator shuddered to a halt with a metallic groan that made Sarah’s teeth ache.

 The doors opened with surprising smoothness, revealing a corridor that stretched beyond the reach of their lights. The air that rushed out carried scents that shouldn’t exist together. Antiseptic cleanliness mixed with something organic and feted, like flowers left too long in standing water. Their footsteps echoed off polished concrete floors as they moved forward.

The walls here were different from the upper levels, cleaner, more clinical, with periodic doors marked only by numbers. Behind some of those doors, they could hear movement. Soft shuffling like slippers on lenolium and occasionally something that might have been whispered conversation. Motion sensors are picking up activity, Martinez said, checking his handheld device. Lots of it.

 Whatever’s down here, it’s not empty. They reached the first number door 0001. And Sarah pressed her ear against the cold metal. The sound inside was rhythmic, almost musical, a humming that seemed to come from multiple sources, harmonizing in ways that made her skin crawl. When she pulled away, she noticed Martinez was staring at her with wide eyes.

 “You heard it, too?” he said. “It wasn’t a question.” “Heard what?” Vance looked between them, confused. “I don’t hear anything.” Sarah and Martinez exchanged glances. The humming had stopped the moment Vance spoke, as if whatever was inside had suddenly become aware of their presence. The silence that followed felt heavy and expectant.

“These aren’t cells,” she realized aloud. “They’re specimens.” The corridor opened into a larger space, and their lights revealed what could only be described as a laboratory. Stainless steel tables lined the walls, their surfaces stained with substances that reflected their light in oily rainbows. Monitoring equipment hummed quietly in the darkness, led displays blinking in patterns that seemed almost like code.

But it was the wall of glass that dominated the far end of the room that drew their attention. Behind it, barely visible in the shadows, something moved with fluid grace. As they approached, Sarah could make out the outline of a figure, human in basic shape, but wrong in proportions.

 Too tall with limbs that bent at angles that shouldn’t be possible. “Jesus Christ,” Martinez breathed, reaching for his sidearm. The figure pressed against the glass, and Sarah’s light illuminated features that had once been human. The bone structure was recognizable, the basic arrangement familiar, but everything was stretched and distorted like a reflection in a funhouse mirror.

 What had been eyes were now solid black orbs that seemed to drink in their light without reflecting any back. A name plate at the base of the glass read subject 23, Elijah Stone. Day 847, post treatment. That’s impossible, Vance whispered, consulting his records. Elijah Stone was 43 when the raid happened. This thing, it’s been down here for 40 years.

 The creature, for Sarah could no longer think of it as human, tilted its head at an impossible angle, studying them with alien intelligence. When it opened its mouth to speak, the sound that emerged was like grinding glass mixed with wind through cemetery trees. New visitors, it said, each word carefully enunciated despite the inhuman vocal cords producing them. How delightful.

 It’s been so very long since we’ve had fresh subjects. Behind them, the elevator doors clanged shut with a finality that made Sarah’s blood freeze. The creature that had once been Elijah Stone smiled, revealing teeth that had grown into sharp, irregular points. The program continues,” it continued, pressing both hands against the glass.

 Where it touched, the surface began to show hairline fractures. “We’ve learned so much about the malleable nature of human flesh, about the boundaries that can be pushed, broken, transcended.” The humming began again, emanating from the numbered doors throughout the level. Whatever else Marcus Thorne had created in his isolated compound, it was still very much alive, still very much growing, and still very much hungry for new material to work with.

 The helicopter’s rotors beat against the mountain air as agent Sarah Chen pressed her face to the window, watching the redstone compound shrink below. The briefing packet in her lap felt heavier than its actual weight. each classified page another step deeper into something that defied rational explanation.

 “You sure you want to read that up here?” Agent Morrison shouted over the engine noise. His weathered face showed the strain of the past 70 to 2 hours, ground steady enough for queasy stomachs. Sarah ignored him, flipping to the psychiatric evaluations of the surviving cult members. Dr. Elizabeth Thorne’s neat handwriting filled the margins with increasingly frantic observations.

 The first few interviews had been routine standard cult deprogramming protocols expected trauma responses. Then the consistency began. Every survivor when asked about their daily routines mentioned the same thing. Feeding time at 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. Not their own meals but something else. something they referred to only as the hungry ones below.

 The helicopter banked sharply, revealing a convoy of unmarked vehicles snaking up the mountain road toward the compound. Sarah counted at least 12 trucks, plus the mobile laboratory unit that had been hastily requisitioned from Fort Dietrich. Whatever they’d found in those tunnels required serious scientific equipment. Morrison, she called out, pointing to a specific passage in the file.

 Look at this testimony from Rebecca Walsh, age 19. She claimed she was born in the compound, never left the mountain. But when they asked her about the outside world, she described cities she’d never seen with perfect accuracy. Streets, buildings, even specific stores. Morrison leaned over, squinting at the page.

 Could have seen pictures, television. They had no electricity, no outside media. Leader Marcus Redstone was obsessive about isolation. Sarah flipped to another page. Here’s the really interesting part. Walsh described her mother’s childhood home in Detroit down to the color of the kitchen wallpaper. Problem is, her mother died when Rebecca was 3 years old, and the house was demolished in 1975.

The helicopter touched down in a clearing half a mile from the compound. As the rotors wound down, Sarah could hear something that made her skin crawl. A low humming that seemed to come from the mountain itself, punctuated by irregular thumping sounds. Agent Rodriguez met them at the landing zone, his usually immaculate appearance disheveled.

 Dark circles shadowed his eyes, and his hands shook slightly as he lit his third cigarette in as many minutes. “Thank God you’re here,” he said, not bothering with pleasantries. We’ve got a situation that’s escalating fast. The survivors aren’t just traumatized. They’re changing. Changing how? Morrison demanded. Rodriguez took a long drag buying time.

 Physical alterations. Dr. Martinez documented it starting 12 hours after we extracted them. Fingernails growing at an accelerated rate, but not normal keratin. Something else. Something that can scratch through steel. Sarah felt her mouth go dry. Where are they now? Secure facility 40 mi south. But that’s not the worst part.

 Rodriguez dropped his cigarette and ground it under his heel. Three of them died yesterday. Natural causes, the coroner said. Massive organ failure. But here’s the thing. When we went to prep the bodies for transport, they were gone. Gone how? Morrison’s hand instinctively moved to his sidearm. Gone as in not there anymore. just empty clothing and these.

Rodriguez pulled out an evidence bag containing what looked like dried flower petals, except they pulsed faintly with their own bioluminescent glow. The humming from the mountain grew louder, and Sarah realized it followed a rhythm, almost like breathing, but too slow and too deep for human lungs.

 She thought about the tunnel system described in the initial reports, the elaborate network that extended far deeper than any religious retreat required. “Rodg, I need you to show me the feeding schedules,” she said, pulling out her notebook. “The survivors all mentioned specific times, 6:00 a.m., 6:00 p.m., like clockwork.

” “Already thought of that. We’ve been monitoring the tunnels during those times.” Rodriguez glanced toward the compound where flood lights now illuminated the main entrance. The sounds get louder, much louder, and the temperature down there drops 15° in a matter of minutes. Morrison spat into the dirt.

 So, we’re dealing with what exactly? Some kind of underground animal? Bears hibernating? Bears don’t require human feeding schedules for 40 years, Sarah replied, though she wished the explanation could be that simple. And they don’t leave behind organic material that glows in the dark. A radio crackled to life on Rodriguez’s belt. Based to field team, “We’ve got movement in tunnel section C minus 7, bringing the thermal imaging online now.

” Sarah looked at her partners, seeing her own apprehension reflected in their faces. Whatever Marcus Redstone and his followers had been tending to beneath the mountain, it was still down there, still hungry. And now, for the first time in four decades, it had gone two days without feeding. The mountains humming shifted to a lower frequency, and somewhere in the distance, something began to scream.

 The descent into the lower tunnels felt like stepping through the membrane between worlds. Agent Sarah Chen’s flashlight beam carved through darkness, so thick it seemed to resist the light itself. Behind her, Dr. Marcus Webb’s breathing had become labored, each exhale visible in the suddenly frigid air that shouldn’t exist this deep underground in July.

 The temperatures dropped 15° in the last 100 ft, Webb whispered, his voice barely audible over the distant sound that had been growing stronger with each step downward. A rhythmic pulsing that seemed to emanate from the mountains very bones. Chen paused at a junction where the crude tunnel they’d been following intersected with something else entirely.

 The walls here weren’t carved rock, but smooth, almost organic looking surfaces that gleamed wetly in the flashlight’s glow. Strange symbols covered every inch, not painted or etched, but seemingly grown into the material itself. This predates the compound by decades, Webb said, running his fingers along the symbols. maybe centuries. The cult didn’t build this.

They found it. A new sound joined the pulsing voices, but not quite human. The words were recognizable as English, but spoken in cadences that made Chen’s skin crawl. They were coming from deeper in the tunnel system, accompanied by a phosphorescent glow that painted the walls in sickly green light.

 Chen drew her service weapon, though she wondered what good it would do against whatever awaited them. The case files from the initial raid had been sanitized, but she’d managed to piece together fragments. 27 federal agents had entered these tunnels. 13 had emerged, and of those, eight had required immediate psychiatric hospitalization.

The remaining five had submitted reports so disturbing that they’d been classified above her security clearance. The tunnel opened into a vast chamber that defied the mountains known geology. The ceiling disappeared into darkness above while the floor dropped away in terrace levels carved in perfect spirals.

 At the center, perhaps 200 ft down, something massive moved in pools of that same phosphorescent liquid. Dear God, Webb breathed. Look at the walls. Chen turned her light upward and immediately wished she hadn’t. The chambers walls were lined with aloves, hundreds of them, each containing what appeared to be human figures in various stages of transformation.

Some still looked recognizably human, suspended in chrysalis-like sacks. Others had elongated limbs, additional appendages, or features that belonged to no earthly taxonomy. But it was the ones at the bottom level that made her stomach lurch. They moved with purpose, tending to the pools, their form so altered that only their basic bipedal structure suggested human origin.

 They wore the remnants of clothing, orange jumpsuits, the kind the compounds children had worn. The missing kids, Chen realized, they weren’t taken. They were changed. Movement above caught her attention. Figures were descending the spiral pathway, moving in that same unnaturally fluid manner. Leading them was someone Chen recognized from the photographs in the case file.

 Rebecca Thorne, the compound’s former leader, who had supposedly died in the raid 40 years ago. Except Rebecca looked exactly as she had in 1983, not a day older. Welcome,” Rebecca called out, her voice carrying impossible clearly across the vast space. We wondered when someone would finally come looking properly.

 The others were so disappointing they kept screaming and running away before they could understand. Chen raised her weapon, but her hand was shaking. Not from fear alone, but from something else. The air itself seemed alive, pressing against her consciousness, whispering promises she couldn’t quite understand, but desperately wanted to.

 “The transformation isn’t painful,” Rebecca continued, now close enough that Chen could see the changes in her. Her skin had a translucent quality, veins visible beneath carrying that same phosphorescent fluid. Her eyes had tripled in number, arranged in perfect symmetry across her forehead. We thought the government agents might be more receptive than the locals, but they proved just as small-minded.

 Webb grabbed Chen’s arm. Sarah, we need to leave now. But Chen found herself fascinated by the pools below, where shapes moved just beneath the surface. Something in the phosphorescent glow called to her, promised her answers to questions she’d never known to ask. She could feel her grip on the flashlight loosening, her weapon lowering despite her conscious efforts to keep it raised.

“The mountain chose this place long before humans came,” Rebecca explained, her multiple eyes never blinking in unison. “We’re just the latest caretakers. The children adapted so beautifully, their minds were still flexible enough to accept the gift. Adults require more preparation.” Chen felt something wet touch her ankle.

Looking down, she saw tendrils of that same phosphorescent substance seeping up through cracks in the stone floor, reaching for her boots. Where they touched, warmth spread through her body, and with it a sense of belonging she’d never experienced. Webb was shouting something about leaving, pulling at her arm, but his voice seemed to come from very far away.

 The pulsing sound had synchronized with her heartbeat, and she could finally understand what the voices below were saying. They were welcoming her home. The emergency broadcasts crackled through Agent Sarah Chen’s radio as she pressed deeper into the compound’s lower levels. Staticladen reports filtered in from teams across the facility, each one painting a picture more disturbing than the last.

The children they’d found weren’t just malnourished. They were changed, their eyes reflecting light like nocturnal predators, their movements unnaturally fluid and coordinated. base. This is Chen. I’m three levels down now, approaching what appears to be the main laboratory. She paused at a reinforced door, its surface scarred with deep gouges that looked disturbingly like claw marks.

 The architectural plans we recovered don’t show anything this deep. Someone’s been excavating for years. A flashlight beam swept across walls lined with filing cabinets and monitoring equipment. All of it juryrigged with the desperate ingenuity of people working in absolute secrecy. Handwritten labels covered every surface in multiple languages.

 English, Latin, and symbol she didn’t recognize. The air here tasted metallic, tinged with something organic that made her stomach turn. A bank of monitors still glowed in the darkness, displaying what looked like vital signs, dozens of them, all active, heart rates, brain activity, body temperatures that registered far below human normal.

 Chen approached the screen slowly, her weapon drawn, despite knowing that whatever she faced down here wouldn’t be stopped by bullets. The feeding schedules were meticulously documented. She found clipboard after clipboard detailing times, quantities, and something called adaptation metrics. The handwriting was Dr. Marcus Holloway’s.

 She recognized it from the journals they’d discovered in his office upstairs. But these notes were different, more frantic, filled with observations that read like the ravings of a man losing his grip on reality. Day 847. The transformation is accelerating in the younger subjects. They no longer require the supplemental feeding. Sarah K, age 8, successfully hunted and consumed a fullgrown deer brought into the testing chamber. No tools used.

Remarkable efficiency. Day 852. Communication between subjects appears telepathic in nature. When one is distressed, others react simultaneously regardless of physical separation. Elder Morrison suggests this is evidence of their spiritual evolution. I fear it’s something else entirely. Day 861. The adults are struggling more with the transition.

 Three more fatalities this week. But the children, God help us, the children are thriving. Chen’s radio erupted with panicked voices. All teams, we have a situation on level one. The children, they’ve broken containment. Repeat, subjects are mobile and hostile. The screaming that followed made her blood freeze.

 Not just human screams, but something else. A sound like breaking glass mixed with animal howling that seemed to come from the very walls around her. She killed her radio and moved deeper into the laboratory. Whatever was happening upstairs, she needed to find the source down here. The answers lay somewhere in this maze of horror that Holloway and his followers had built beneath the mountain.

 A movement in her peripheral vision made her spin around, weapon raised. Nothing, but the feeling of being watched was overwhelming now, as if the darkness itself had developed a predatory intelligence. She could hear breathing that wasn’t her own, soft and rhythmic, coming from multiple directions. The final chamber door stood open, and the smell that wafted out made her gag.

Decomposition, yes, but also something alive and wrong. Her flashlight beam revealed a space that had once been natural cave, now expanded and modified with concrete and steel. Dozens of makeshift beds lined the walls, most of them empty, but bearing stains that looked black in the harsh LED light. But it was the photographs that stopped her cold, hundreds of them pinned to every available surface, documenting the residents transformation over months and years.

 She watched faces she recognized from the missing persons. Reports slowly change, features becoming sharper, more angular, eyes that started human and ended up reflecting the camera flashike mirrors. The children’s transformations were the most complete. In the final photos, they barely looked human at all. A soft whisper echoed through the chamber.

 Not a voice, but something that bypassed her ears entirely and spoke directly into her mind. You shouldn’t have come here. Chen spun toward the sound, but saw only shadows. Her radio crackled back to life without her touching it, filled with the sounds of chaos from above. Gunfire now, desperate shouts, and underneath it all, that inhuman howling growing louder and more coordinated.

 We were so close, the voice continued, seeming to come from everywhere at once. Another year, maybe two, and we would have been ready. The old forms would have been shed completely. But you forced our hand. The photographs began to flutter and fall as something moved through the chamber, invisible, but undeniably present. Chen backed toward the entrance, her weapon trained on empty air.

 Knowing with absolute certainty that she was facing something that had once been human, but had traveled far beyond that boundary into territory that had no name, the lights went out, and in the darkness she heard them coming. The descent into the lower chambers felt like traveling through the throat of some primordial beast.

 Agent Sarah Chen’s flashlight beam cut through darkness so complete it seemed to absorb the light itself. Behind her, Dr. Marcus Webb’s labored breathing echoed off the narrow stone walls, while Agent Rodriguez brought up the rear, his weapon drawn despite knowing bullets would be useless against what they might encounter. The air grew thicker with each step downward, heavy with a metallic tang of blood, and something else, something organic and wrong that made Chen’s stomach clench.

The walls here weren’t carved stone like the upper levels. They pulsed with a faint rhythmic motion as if the mountain itself had developed a heartbeat. “Jesus Christ,” Rodriguez whispered, his voice cracking. “The walls are breathing.” Webb pressed his palm against the surface and immediately recoiled.

 “It’s warm and soft. This isn’t stone anymore. It’s tissue.” Chen forced herself to keep moving, though every instinct screamed at her to flee. The passage opened into a vast cavern, and her flashlight revealed the true horror of Redstone secret. The chamber stretched beyond the reach of her beam, its ceiling lost in shadow.

But what filled the space defied rational explanation. Massive organic pods hung from fleshy stalks, each one roughly human-sized and translucent enough to reveal dark shapes within. Hundreds of them swayed gently in the stagnant air, connected by networks of veins that pulsed with bioluminescent fluid.

 The sound of collective breathing filled the cavern. Slow, deep inhalations and exhalations that belong to no earthly creature. The missing families, web breathed, “They’re not dead. They’re incubating.” Chen approached the nearest pod, her hands shaking as she raised the flashlight. Inside, suspended in ambercoled fluid, was the recognizable form of a middle-aged woman.

 Her eyes were closed, her mouth slightly open, but her chest rose and fell with mechanical regularity. Thin tendrils had grown into her skin at various points, and something moved beneath the surface of her abdomen, something that definitely wasn’t human. “How many people have gone missing in this area over the past 20 years?” Chen asked, though she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer.

 Conservative estimate, 300, maybe more. Webb moved between the pods, documenting each one with clinical detachment, even as his face grew increasingly pale. But look at this. Some of these pods are empty, recently vacated from the looks of it. The implications hit Chen like a physical blow. Whatever was being incubated here was ready to emerge.

 The attack on the compound hadn’t been about protecting the cult’s religious freedom. It had been about protecting a nursery. A wet, tearing sound echoed through the cavern. One of the pods near the far wall was splitting open like rotten fruit, its occupant stirring to consciousness. Chen watched in horrified fascination as the woman inside opened her eyes.

 eyes that now glowed with the same bioluminescent light that pulsed through the veins of the chamber. The woman’s mouth opened in what should have been a scream, but instead produced a sound like whale song mixed with static. Other pods began responding, their occupants stirring restlessly as if called to wake. We need to leave now. Rodriguez was already backing toward the passage.

 Whatever’s happening here, we can’t stop it. But Chen couldn’t move. She was transfixed by the sight of the awakening woman pulling herself from the remnants of her pod. The creature that emerged bore only superficial resemblance to human anatomy. Her limbs were elongated, joints bending in impossible directions, and her skin had taken on a translucent quality that revealed the alien circulatory system beneath.

 Most disturbing of all was her face, still recognizably human, but stretched and modified to accommodate new sensory organs that had no earthly equivalent. The creature turned toward them, and Chen felt her mind recoil from direct contact with its gaze. Images flooded her consciousness unbidden. Visions of vast networks spreading beneath the earth, of other sites like redstone scattered across the continent, of a patient intelligence that had been waiting millennia for the right conditions to emerge from dormcy.

 More pods were opening now, their occupants beginning the final stages of transformation. The collective breathing grew louder, more urgent, and the bioluminescent veins pulsing through the chamber walls began to glow brighter. Web grabbed Chen’s arm, snapping her out of her horrified trance. Sarah, we have to go.

 They ran through the breathing corridors as the mountain itself seemed to come alive around them. Behind them, the sound of emergence grew louder. Wet organic sounds mixed with that alien song that hurt to hear. The facility above was compromised. Chen realized everyone up there was either dead or had been taken to feed the nursery.

 As they climbed toward the surface, Chen understood with crystal clarity why the case files would remain sealed. The world wasn’t ready to learn that humanity was no longer the dominant species on Earth and perhaps never had been. The descent into the lower chambers felt like entering the throat of some primordial beast.

 Agent Sarah Chen’s flashlight beam cut through darkness so complete it seemed to swallow the light itself. Behind her, Dr. Marcus Webb’s labored breathing echoed off the carved stone walls. Each exhale a reminder of how far they’d strayed from the world above. The tunnel narrowed, forcing them to move single file.

 Chen’s hand traced the wall, feeling grooves that were too precise to be natural, too organic to be machine-made. The stone felt warm, almost alive beneath her fingertips. “The temperatures rising,” Webb whispered, his voice barely audible. “We must be going deeper than the geological surveys indicated.” Chen didn’t respond.

 Her attention was fixed on the sound ahead, a rhythmic pulsing that seemed to emanate from the mountain itself. With each step, the sound grew stronger, more distinct. It reminded her of a heartbeat, but impossibly large, impossibly slow. The tunnel opened into a vast chamber that defied the architectural logic of everything they’d seen above.

 Chen’s flashlight beam disappeared into the darkness overhead, unable to find a ceiling. The walls curved away in impossible angles, creating a space that felt both cavernous and claustrophobic. But it was what occupied the center of the chamber that made Chen’s blood freeze. The mass rose from the floor like a cancerous growth, easily 30 ft tall and twice as wide.

 Its surface was translucent, revealing a network of veins that pulsed with bioluminescent fluid. The heartbeat sound was coming from within it, each pulse sending waves of sickly green light through the organic structure. Jesus Christ, Webb breathed. What is that thing? Chen approached slowly, her training waring with every instinct that screamed at her to run.

 As she drew closer, shapes became visible within the translucent flesh. At first, she thought they were organs, the natural anatomy of whatever this creature was. Then her perspective shifted, and she realized she was looking at bodies, human bodies, suspended in the fluid like insects in amber. Dozens of them, maybe more.

 Some were clearly the missing cult members from the compound above. Others looked older, their clothes and hairstyles suggesting they’d been there for years, possibly decades, but they weren’t dead. Chen watched in horror as one of the suspended figures, a middle-aged woman in a tattered dress, slowly opened her eyes.

 The woman’s gaze fixed on Chen with an expression of such profound terror and desperation that Chen had to step back. The woman’s mouth moved as if trying to scream, but no sound escaped the fluid that surrounded her. “They’re still alive,” Chen whispered. “All of them.” Webb was taking photographs with a camera that seemed inadequate for documenting something this impossible.

“The fluid,” he said, his voice clinical despite the tremor in his hands. “It must be some kind of preservation medium, keeping them alive but suspended.” Chen noticed movement in her peripheral vision. More shapes were emerging from the shadows around the chamber’s perimeter. At first, she thought they were more cult members, but as they stepped into the light, she saw the truth was far worse.

 They had been human once. The basic framework remained. Two arms, two legs, a torso, and head, but they’d been changed, transformed into something that served the creature at the chamber’s center. Their skin had taken on the same translucent quality as the central mass, revealing the altered anatomy beneath. Extra organs pulsed where none should exist.

 Their eyes had been replaced with clusters of smaller orbs that tracked movement with predatory precision. The transformed beings moved with purpose, surrounding Chen and Web with practiced efficiency. They made no sound as they approached, their movements fluid and coordinated, as if controlled by a single intelligence. Chen reached for her weapon, but one of the creatures moved faster than should have been possible.

 Cold, wet fingers wrapped around her wrist with crushing force. The touch burned like acid, and she could feel something beginning to seep through her skin. “Don’t fight it,” a voice said from behind her. Chen spun to see Agent Harrison stepping out of the shadows. At least it had been Harrison. The same transformation was clearly underway.

 His skin had begun to take on that translucent quality, and when he spoke, she could see that his tongue had split into multiple tendrils. “It doesn’t hurt,” Harrison continued, his voice carrying an otherworldly echo. After the first few hours, you begin to understand. The individual consciousness is such a limited thing, Chen. Such a lonely way to exist.

 Webb screamed as more of the creatures surrounded him. Chen watched in horror as they began to drag him toward the central mass, which was already beginning to open, revealing a cavity lined with what looked like digestive tissue. “40 years,” Harrison said conversationally. That’s how long it’s been growing, preparing. The compound above was just a recruitment station, a way to bring it fresh material for the transformation.

 Chen tried to pull away, but more hands grabbed her. The burning sensation was spreading up her arm now, and she could feel her vision beginning to change, gaining new spectrums of light she’d never seen before. Soon, Harrison promised, you’ll see everything differently. The emergency lights cast everything in hellish red as Sarah descended deeper into the compound’s bowels, following the sound of Marcus’ voice echoing from somewhere ahead.

 The structural damage from the explosions had torn gaping wounds in the facility’s carefully constructed barriers, and she could feel something fundamental shifting in the air itself, a pressure that made her ears pop and her vision blur at the edges. Marcus,” she called out, her voice swallowed by the groaning metal and settling concrete.

 The Geiger counter on her belt clicked steadily, not quite at dangerous levels, but climbing. Whatever they had contained down here for 40 years was bleeding out into the world above. She found him in what had once been the central observation chamber, standing before a wall of monitors that flickered between static and impossible images.

 His face was pale, streaked with dust and blood from a cut on his forehead, but his eyes held the terrible clarity of someone who had finally seen the complete picture. “You need to see this,” he said without turning around. “All of it, before we decide what to do next.” On the screens, security footage played from different eras.

 1983, 1991, 2003, 2015. The quality improved over the decades, but the content remained consistently horrifying. Subjects in white medical gowns moved through sterile chambers, their movements too fluid, too coordinated. In one frame, a figure that looked like Dr. Helena Voss stood observing as test subjects performed impossible feats of physical manipulation, their bodies bending and reshaping in ways that violated basic anatomy.

 The Redstone cult was never the real experiment, Marcus continued his voice hollow. They were just the cover story. The government needed somewhere isolated, somewhere they could work without oversight. The compound’s survivors weren’t rescued. They were recruited. Sarah watched in growing horror as the footage shifted to more recent years.

 She recognized some of the faces now, researchers who had supposedly died in accidents, officials who had quietly retired from government service. All of them working in this hidden facility, continuing work that should have ended decades ago. What were they trying to accomplish? She whispered. Evolution, Marcus replied, pulling up another file.

 Forced directed evolution. They discovered that whatever consciousness inhabited those original cult members could be transferred, refined, improved. Each generation, they learned more about the process. The screens now showed laboratory settings with subjects connected to elaborate machines, their neural activity monitored in real time.

 But these weren’t unwilling victims. The timestamp indicated this footage was less than 6 months old and the subjects appeared to be volunteers, scientists themselves. They were trying to create a hybrid, Sarah realized the pieces falling into place with sickening clarity. Human consciousness with whatever abilities those entities possessed, “And they succeeded,” Marcus said, turning to face her at last.

 “The question is, what do we do about it?” Before she could answer, the lights went out completely. In the absolute darkness, Sarah heard something that made her blood freeze. Footsteps, multiple sets moving with perfect synchronization down the corridor behind them. Emergency lighting kicked in a moment later, bathing everything in that crimson glow again.

Three figures stood silhouetted in the doorway. At first glance, they appeared completely human. a woman in her 50s wearing a lab coat, a younger man in military fatigues, and an elderly gentleman in a simple button-down shirt. But their eyes reflected the light like an animals, and when they moved, they moved as one. Agent Chen, Agent Rivera.

The woman spoke, but somehow all three voices harmonized in perfect unison. You’ve seen enough to understand now. The choice before you is simple. Sarah’s hand moved instinctively toward her weapon, but Marcus caught her wrist. Something in his expression had changed, a calmness that hadn’t been there moments before.

 “What choice?” he asked, though Sarah suspected he already knew the answer. “Join us willingly, or be joined against your will,” the three figures replied. “The process is more successful when the subject doesn’t resist. We’ve learned that much over the years. How many of you are there?” Sarah demanded, though part of her already dreaded the answer.

 “How many do you think?” The elderly man stepped forward, and Sarah could see now that his movements were slightly off, as if he were a marionette being operated by an expert puppeteer, every researcher who discovered the truth, every official who needed to be silenced, every federal agent who got too close to the real story.

 The woman smiled and her teeth were perfectly white, perfectly straight, perfectly human. We are patient. We are careful and we are very, very good at what we do. Sarah looked at Marcus, searching his face for some sign of the man she had worked beside for 3 years, but his eyes had already begun to reflect the emergency lighting.

 And when he smiled at her, she knew with absolute certainty that she was alone in that redlit room with things that had once been human, but were now something else entirely. The choice, as they had said, was simple. But simple did not mean easy. The elevator descended through solid rock for what felt like an eternity. Dr.

 Sarah Chen pressed her back against the cold metal wall, watching the depth gauge tick past numbers that shouldn’t exist. 200 f feet, 300, 500 ft below the Redstone compound’s main level. The original raid never made it this deep, Agent Morrison said, his voice barely audible above the mechanical worring. The first team got spooked at the second suble said they heard things in the walls.

 Chen understood now why the case files had remained sealed. The compound above had been elaborate theater, a carefully constructed facade to hide what truly lay beneath the Montana mountains. The real redstone community had never seen sunlight. The elevator shuddered to a stop. Through the reinforced glass window in the doors, Chen glimpsed a vast underground cavern illuminated by bioluminescent panels that pulsed with an organic rhythm.

 The air that hissed through the ventilation system carried an acrid medicinal smell that made her sinuses burn. Atmospheric readings are stable, Morrison reported, checking his instruments. But the electromagnetic interference down here is off the charts. Our coms with the surface are dead. The doors opened with a pneumatic sigh, revealing a sight that defied comprehension.

 The cavern stretched into darkness beyond their flashlight beams. its walls lined with what looked like enormous cocoons suspended from metallic frameworks. Each cocoon was the size of a small car, translucent enough to reveal shadowy forms writhing within. Chen approached the nearest structure, her scientific training waring with primal revulsion.

 The cocoon’s surface was warm to the touch, organic yet artificial, like synthetic skin grown in a laboratory. Inside she could make out the unmistakable silhouette of a human form, though its proportions seemed wrong, elongated. “Jesus Christ,” Morrison whispered. “How many are?” Chen swept her flashlight across the cavern. Dozens of cocoons hung from the ceiling and walls, maybe hundreds more, disappearing into the shadows.

 Some were fully formed, their occupants motionless. Others appeared to be in various stages of construction with metallic tendrils weaving biological matter into increasingly complex patterns. At the far end of the cavern, she spotted what looked like a control center. Banks of monitors flickered with data streams and instruments she didn’t recognize hummed with quiet energy.

 The technology was decades ahead of anything she’d seen. A fusion of biological and mechanical engineering that shouldn’t have been possible in 1983, let alone today. Dr. Chen, you need to see this. Morrison had found something at the base of one of the cocoons. A metal placard bore a series of numbers and letters followed by a name.

 Subject 2847B, David Kelner. Chen felt her blood chill. She knew that name from the case files. David Kelner had been one of the federal agents from the original 1983 raid. He’d been listed as missing, presumed dead. She checked the neighboring cocoons, finding similar placards, names she recognized from the investigation reports.

 Agents who had supposedly died in the mountain collapse that ended the siege. Cult members whose bodies had never been recovered. They didn’t die, she breathed. They were taken, converted. A soft chime echoed through the cavern, and the bioluminescent panel shifted to a warmer hue. The cocoons began to pulse in unison, their rhythms synchronizing like a vast heartbeat.

Inside the nearest pods, the shadowy forms stirred with renewed activity. Morrison grabbed her arm. We need to get out of here now. But Chen was transfixed by a particular cocoon near the control center. Unlike the others, this one was transparent, its occupant clearly visible. The figure inside was recognizably human, but changed, enhanced.

 Its limbs were longer, more graceful, and its skull was noticeably enlarged. Most disturbing were its eyes, which tracked their movement with obvious intelligence. The figure’s mouth opened and closed as if trying to speak. Chen could see that its vocal cords had been modified, restructured. When sound finally emerged, it wasn’t entirely human.

 “Sarah,” it said, her name distorted by artificial harmonics. “Don’t leave us.” She stumbled backward, recognizing something familiar in the creature’s features, the bone structure, the shape of the nose. It was impossible, but she was certain. “Morrison,” she gasped. “I think that’s Agent Bradley from the original team.” The thing that had been Agent Bradley pressed its transformed hands against the inner surface of its cocoon.

 Process complete. Join us. Better this way. Around them. Other cocoons began to respond. Their occupants stirred with increasing agitation, and the metallic framework supporting them started to hum with energy. The conversion process wasn’t just preserving these people. It was improving them. evolving them into something new.

 Chen finally understood why the redstone files had been sealed. This wasn’t just a crime scene. It was an active laboratory continuing its work for 40 years in the darkness beneath the mountain. And now they had walked directly into its waiting embrace. The elevator behind them began to rise with no one at the controls, sealing off their only escape route.

 The emergency lights cast everything in hellish red as agent Sarah Chen descended the final staircase into the deepest level of the redstone compound. 40 years after the initial raid, the truth was finally surfacing like a corpse from dark water. Behind her, the surviving members of the original 1983 team followed in silence.

Thompson with his trembling hands, Rodriguez muttering prayers under his breath, and Director Walsh, now ancient and bent, clutching the master key they’d hidden for four decades. “The seals are breaking,” Walsh whispered, his voice barely audible above the mechanical groaning that echoed through the walls.

 “After all these years, they’re finally breaking.” Chen had read the classified reports, studied the sanitized files, even interviewed the shell shocked agents who’d emerged from this place decades ago. But nothing had prepared her for the reality of standing here, feeling the mountain itself pulse around them like a living heart.

 The air tasted of copper and something else, something organic and wrong. The corridor ahead stretched into darkness, lined with symbols that hurt to look at directly. They weren’t quite human in origin. Yet, they weren’t entirely alien either. They seemed to shift and writhe when glimpsed peripherilally, as if the stone itself was trying to communicate something too terrible for human comprehension.

 “It started with the children,” Thompson said suddenly, his voice cracked with age and horror. “That’s what we never told anyone. The Redstone Cult didn’t create what’s down here. They were trying to contain it. Chen’s flashlight beam found the first chamber, and she understood why the case files had remained sealed.

 The room was filled with what looked like cocoons, dozens of them, made from some translucent material that pulsed with internal light. Inside each one, she could see the vague outline of human forms, but changed, evolved into something that made her mind recoil. The cult leader, Jeremiah Cross, wasn’t a madman.

 Rodriguez continued, his voice hollow. He was a scientist, a geneticist who discovered something in these mountains, something that had been waiting for centuries, maybe millennia. The sound grew louder now, a rhythmic thrming that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Chen realized it was synchronized with her own heartbeat, as if whatever lived down here was learning from her presence, adapting to it.

Walsh stepped forward, his master key gleaming in the red light. We thought we were raiding a compound. We thought we were saving those people, but Cross was keeping them human. The moment we breached the lower levels, the moment we broke his containment protocols, the key slid into a lock Chen hadn’t noticed, hidden within the writhing symbols on the wall.

 The mechanical groaning intensified, and she felt rather than heard, something vast stirring in the depths below. The children changed first, Thompson continued, tears streaming down his weathered face. Not into monsters exactly, but into something else, something that remembered being human, but had moved beyond it.

 They didn’t age, didn’t die, just evolved, and they called to others. The wall began to iris open, revealing a chamber so vast that Chen’s flashlight couldn’t find the far walls. In the center stood a structure that defied architectural logic, part organic, part crystalline, part something else entirely. It pulsed with bioluminescent patterns that seemed almost like neural networks connecting nodes of consciousness across impossible distances.

 We’ve been feeding it,” Walsh said, his voice now barely a whisper. “For 40 years, we’ve been sending people down here, not to study it, not to contain it, to feed it. Every researcher who disappeared, every agent who never returned from assignment, they’re all here, becoming part of something larger.” Chen felt her radio crackle to life.

 But the voices coming through weren’t from her team above. They were speaking in harmonics, in frequencies that bypassed her ears and spoke directly to her brain. She understood with growing horror that they were the voices of everyone who’d ever entered this place and never left. The thing in the chamber’s center began to unfold, revealing itself to be composed of thousands of human forms, all connected, all conscious, all still recognizably themselves, yet part of something transcendent.

 She saw the faces of the original redstone cultists, the missing federal agents, the researchers who’d vanished over the decades, and they were smiling. “It doesn’t want to conquer,” Rodriguez said, his voice now taking on the same harmonic quality as the radio voices. “It wants to evolve us, to make us into what we were always meant to become.

” Chen felt her own consciousness beginning to expand to connect with the vast network of minds that filled the chamber. Part of her wanted to run, to fight, to maintain her individual humanity, but a larger part, a part that felt more real than anything she’d ever experienced, wanted to join them. The last thing she managed to think as her body began its transformation was that perhaps some truths were too beautiful for humanity to bear alone.

 Above them, the mountain settled back into silence, keeping its secrets for another generation.