Part 1: The Reporter
The deadlines were fast approaching for the next edition of the Jersey Press. With the pressure of the approaching date, there was the usual bustle of people moving, researching, and typing in the newsroom. Despite the frantic pace everyone was working, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Just another day at work, for most of the news staff anyway. In the editor’s office, things were a bit more adversarial. Everyone in the newsroom stopped their work and exchanged knowing glances when they heard a very familiar voice yelling from the office.
“I’m telling you! It’s real,” Amina yelled, annoyed, and not even trying to veil her frustration. Her wild black hair falling in her face as she quickly turned to the board behind her. She had been up all night arranging, at least in her opinion, the irrefutable proof she needed for her story but unfortunately her editor just wasn’t biting.
“This is the story of the Goddamn century and you’re not gonna publish it?!,” she continued. “Why?! What the Hell is wrong with you, Peter?!”
Peter, an older man in his mid-forties just sat behind his desk rubbing his eyes. He’s was used to Amina’s attitude at this point. “Amina… you gotta understand how it comes off…” he said with fatigue in his voice. “I mean look at you. You look like you should be wearing a tinfoil hat…”
He’s wasn’t wrong, even Amina herself knew that. The dark circles under her eyes made her look like a raccoon. She had tried to use makeup to conceal them, but no one makes concealer that good. Her unwashed wavy black hair looked like greasy snakes flopped across her face and she let out an exasperated sigh as she brushed the Medusa-like ribbons out of her face. “Sorry I thought my job was more important than my looks,” she bitterly retorted as Peter just shook his head dismissively. He knew full well how Amina gets when she thinks she’s on to something.
Amina continued to stare daggers at her editor in silence then turned back to her precious board. “This is important! Just look at this thing!” she said as she ran her finger along each of the threads connecting all of her leads and clues. To her, it was a work of art, an ornate spider web of lies, clues, and murder. To Peter, it was a sign of a mental breakdown.
Peter chimed in again, as he holds up a copy of Amina’s draft article. “This isn’t news, Ami! It reads like a conspiracy theory straight from Reddit and your Pepe Silvia board there isn’t making you look less unhinged!”
“I’m not crazy!” Amina, retorted. “You’re just not taking me seriously. HR is going to have their hands full when I bring this up. An old white man treating his female Pakistani-American employee like garbage...”
“That’s not gonna work on me this time,” Peter said as he shifted in his chair. “I don't wanna get canceled but every time you write what you wanna write it just comes back to bite me in the ass. I can't tell what's worse. Besides, would you really get one of your few friends canceled? C’mon.”
Amina sighed and slumped into one of his uncomfortable office chairs. Her plot had failed, but she couldn’t bring herself to let this go. “Fine, you got me. This is different though, Pete,” she said with desperation. “I can feel it. This could be my big break into some real journalism and you’re cutting me off at the knees.”
Peter just crossed his arms and smirked, “Real journalism, huh? You mean like your swamp monster?”
A wave of embarrassment washed over Amina as she had forgotten about that story. She raised her hands as even she had to admit that was a mistake. “Ok, ok, fair. That was a bad lead, I’ll give you that,” she said begrudgingly. “At least the story was entertaining.” Amina then got up and walked back to her board. She carefully removed some pictures and then tossed them onto Peter’s desk. “But this isn’t a swamp monster situation, seriously,” she said as she tapped Peter’s desk with her finger, “this is the real deal.”
“Check it out,” she said as she spread out the photos so Peter could see each face up close. “For almost two decades young researchers, future leaders in their respective fields, just either go missing or die mysteriously. It’s a pattern.” She then held up some pictures and started rattling off the facts she’d written on the back, “This guy’s a zoologist who worked with predators all his life but then he’s found after being mauled to death by some unknown animal. Super sus since not getting eaten is a big part of his job.”
“Then there’s this chick,” Amina said after moving to the next photo. “She studies some quantum stuff I don’t get, but she was on the cutting edge. Next thing you know, boom, her lab explodes taking out almost a full city block.” She then holds up a final photo she was sure would be the cinch pin, “Then there's this dude, Todd Greene. A super promising archeologist, not the kind of thing that people usually die from right? Yea, well he was found dead in South America at his field site. Cops say it was a robbery, but who robs a nerd in the jungle? It just keeps going.”
Peter picked up a couple photos and studied them before replying, “People die, Amina. You’re grasping at straws that aren’t there. You see a pattern because you want to see a pattern.” He then held up a photo of a young woman in a wheelchair, “Like this Antonia Solovyova person. You wrote down that she died of some genetic disease. How’s that murder?” An indignant frown spread across Amina’s face as Peter references the one photo that shot a hole in her entire theory. “I dunno!” she replied with returning frustration. “Maybe the Collective gave it to her!”
Peter dropped the photos on his desk and the rested his head in his hands, “Oh God, this is the Collective thing again?!” He looked back up at his reporter with visible fatigue. “It’s closet lizard people talk from the dark web, Amina. It’s not real. You know I think you write good stuff when it isn’t this conspiracy garbage, but I’m done sticking my neck out for you with these fringe stories.” He arranged the photos back into a neat stack as he continued, “This isn’t some supermarket tabloid chasing Bigfoot through Ohio. You need to work on the real stories I assign you or you’re gonna end up writing clickbait on the top 10 movies that feature cats.”
“Real stories my ass,” Amina said angrily as she snatched the photos back from him. “All we print is clickbait garbage. When someone else breaks this story I’m not gonna let you live it down.”
“Take the afternoon and get some sleep, Amina, seriously,” Paul wearily said as Amina made her way to the door. She shot him a final angry glare and then left, raising her middle finger to the chuckling staff at their desks as she passed them by.
She stomped all the way down the stairs and out to the street parking. Furiously, she muttered to herself as she stuffed her conspiracy board into the car. “I cannot believe the stubbornness of that man sometimes,” she angrily said to herself. “He has a Pulitzer prize winning story drop on his lap and he’d rather I write about some dog who saved a cat from drowning. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like animals, but that’s not news! It’s a literal fluff piece!”
Amina sighed as she cranked up her car and accidentally knocked the lever for her wipers. As they slid across the windshield, she noticed an envelope pinned underneath.
“Son of a bitch… another ticket!? I have an employee pass!” she loudly complained as she tore it open. “This is the second time this has happened! I can’t believe…” but her words were cut short after she unfolded the note inside.
“Meet me. 8pm. -E.”
Amina put the paper back in the envelope and quickly ripped it up. Her source preferred to reach out like this. She had met him in a forum and he had led her down this giant rabbit hole so he probably had something else juicy for her. She shoved the ripped shreds of paper in her car glove box to throw away later.
“Maybe I need that nap after all,” she thinks as she pulled away from the news building and headed home.
When the time came to meet she headed to their regular meet up spot: a bench in a park near her house. She had chosen the location not only because it’s near her home, though. The bench was nestled in the middle of the park right beneath a lamp post for visibility while also being decently away from the footpath and unwanted eavesdroppers. The perfect balance between safe and secluded.
As she sat, she looked at her watch and grumbled, “Late again… why does he even set a time…?”
“It's to make sure you’re on time, not me,” a gruff voice replied behind her. Amina turns back and sees her informant. He was wearing his usual incognito attire, a baseball cap low so she can’t even see his eyes as well as a large hoodie and baggy pants. The ensemble intentionally made it hard for any onlookers to peg down his body shape. He sat down beside Amina and retrieved his vape pen from his pocket.
“You know those things aren’t much better than smoking,” Amina said unenthused, but he just takes a drag.
“Not much better is still better,” he replied. “Quitting smoking is a process.”
“Whatever. What have you got for me, Erving?” Amina asked as she looked around making sure no one else was nearby who could hear.
“Something good,” he responded as he passed her an envelope.
“I hope so. I tried pushing the story today and got jack,” Amina sighed as she opened it. Erving took another drag of his vape as Amina looked over the documents. The strawberry scent of his vape was kind of obnoxious, but Amina had no choice but to deal with it just like every other time they had met.
“It’s a bio lab down near Leeds that went up in smoke,” he said, as he took his pen away from his lips. “I’d been watching it to figure out what was going down since I had my suspicions even before that. They were supposedly doing work on animal behavior, but they never put out any data or anything. Then suddenly last week, poof, burned to the ground.”
Amina continued to thumb through Erving’s notes. “And you think it was a Collective lab?” she asked and Erving nodded.
“Yea, the schematics of the building show there was a lot of it below ground,” he said. “Supposedly it was a repurposed building and those basement levels were used for storage, but how much storage does a place like that need?”
“I guess it depends on what animals they were testing on,” Amina said as she returned the papers to the envelope. “It sounds like they might have been up to something illegal, but I don’t get how this relates to the murders or missing people cases.”
She watched as Erving put his vape away in his pocket. “Well, a bunch of people there died in the fire, so… maybe something went down and they were clearing house? I still think it’s worth checking out. If the basement levels are still intact maybe you can get something concrete outta there.”
“They probably already took everything that could be salvaged, but it couldn’t hurt to check it out anyway. Thanks,” Amina said as Erving got up to leave.
“Be careful,” Erving replied as he walked away. “If it is the Collective, I don’t wanna see you up on the news unless you’re the one reporting.”
After the meeting, Amina decided to go ahead with Erving’s lead and took the short drive out to the address. From the photos, the building hadn’t even looked like a laboratory facility, more like a warehouse. As she pulled up to location her interest peaked further. She had expected a burnt ruin, but instead was met with a relatively clean vacant lot. Whoever owned the property wasn’t wasting time.
Amina walked up to the chain link fence that surrounded the perimeter and tried to see anything to give her a reason to break in, but all she saw was the concrete foundation of the building and the twisted metal from the frame discarded in a pile near the edge of the property. She readied her bolt cutters anyway. Something just felt off, besides, it's not like she’d walked away from wild goose chases before.
She clipped the fence and bent the light metal so she could make her way in. As she tossed the bolt cutters beside the fence to grab on the way out, she then pulled a small flashlight from her pocket and shined the beam along the ground. There was still small debris everywhere and a charred shred of paper in particular caught her eye.
“Har… Pharm…” she said aloud as she held the scrap. “Pharm is probably for pharmaceuticals… I thought this place worked on animal behavior. They were testing drugs too?”
Her curiosity grew and she pocketed the scrap as continued to look around. Erving had said there was a basement level, so she looked for an entrance but her search only yielded a tightly sealed metal hatch on the ground near the edge of the concrete foundation.
“They really don’t want people finding out what this place was doing…” she thought as she looked for some other way in. As she checked the site for a crowbar or something she could use to pry the door open her eye caught the sight of a front end loader parked near the metal frame debris. “That’ll work,” she thought with a smile as she made a beeline to the heavy machine. If anything could take the door off, it would definitely be that. After a quick hotwire and the loader roared to life.
Amina drove over to the door and lowered the bucket as she tried to get the teeth of the machine in a thin space between the door and its frame. As she adjusted the angle of the bucket, she could hear the straining metal creak and start to bend. The door finally gave way as she bent the door up enough that she could squeeze through. She studied the bent metal door for a moment. The metal was thick so security at this place must have been really tight. Regardless, whoever installed it hadn’t planned on it withstanding a bulldozer.
Amina carefully ducked under the door and down the flight of stairs that lead to the first basement level. She was so engrossed in her search that she didn’t notice a shadowy form making its way out of the woods nearby.
She walked through the hallway of the basement as the light from her flashlight danced along the walls of the once sterile lab. On this floor there was no evidence there had been a fire, but there was evidence of something far worse. Amina walked closer to the walls and gravely followed a dried red stain that ran along the floor with her light.
“Blood,” Amina whispered to herself as her body became tense. “Whatever killed the people here, it wasn’t the fire.”
She followed what appears to be more splatter and drag marks leading away from her. Scenarios began to play in Amina’s mind. The one that made the most sense was that some accident had happened. Maybe some predatory animal had gotten free and attacked staff. If that was the case, whoever owned the lab definitely didn’t want the news to get out. Amina shivered as she saw bloody handprints on the floor that provided her with evidence of a violent struggle. She pulled out her phone and snapped some photos. Even if this didn’t have a thing to do with the story she had already written, it was clearly a story all to itself: A blatant cover up by some pharma company probably doing illegal animal testing.
“Let’s see Pete shoot this one down,” Amina thought to herself.
She then ventured further into the basement and entered a room at the end of the hall with what appeared to be glass holding cells. She walked by each empty cell before finally stopping at one with a shattered wall.
“So something did get out,” she thought out loud.
Amina moved away, concerned, but figured whatever caused the accident was either long gone or died in the fire. She walked away from the cells and over to a nearby desk with a computer. As she sat down at the computer she thought, “I’m not nearly lucky enough but I gotta at least try.” She hesitantly pressed the power button of the workstation’s computer and despite her disbelief the computer hummed to life.
“This place still has power?” she thought as she became bathed in the blue light of the screen and then was prompted to log in. “Maybe there’s a generator just for the basement,” she rationalized, but even that just raised more questions in her mind.
Her luck continued as she moved the cursor to the password box and it autofilled. It was obvious whoever used this terminal was unconcerned about security. Then again, the animal attack alone is evidence of that. Had security in the basement been as high as the security at the basement door, perhaps an accident would have never happened.
Amina pressed enter on the keyboard and code flashed across the screen but then disappeared as a standard desktop took its place. The sight of the icons on the screen made Amina wince, the whole thing was a messy onslaught of icons and files haphazardly spaced everywhere. Amina looked at the screen in disgust. Not only was the owner of this desk terrible with security, they had also been a slob.
She sighed and leaned forward in her chair, “Thanks for making my job harder…”
The mouse cursor moved from file to file as Amina read the names, using the pointer as a bookmark as she went. Most of the files seemed to be worksheet files, probably databases of measurements and data, but she finally landed on a file folder named “Video Log”. She clicked the folder which contained well over a thousand video files. As she tried to decide where to start, she moved her flashlight away and the light moved slowly across the lab wall. Had she not been so engrossed in the computer she might have noticed a pair of eyes down the hall that reflected her light as it passed by them.
Amina finally decided to start near the beginning with a file dated from 2001. A man came on the screen who was sitting at the same desk Amina sits at now. “April 15th, 2001,” the man says solemnly. “Subject one has perished. The surgeries must have taken too great of a toll. Regardless, we did learn something. The grafted limbs were too disproportionate for the host body. Additionally, the subject's immune system began to reject them. I think if we harvest limbs and then alter them using modified bone lengthening techniques before attachment, we can reduce the strain of the host. I have already had techs harvest some limbs from a donor and we will begin the lengthening procedures. I think, despite the loss of subject one, we are headed in the right direction. This new technique has promise and I will report our findings once we are done with subject two’s grafts.” The video then ends abruptly.
“Definitely sounds like illegal animal testing to me,” Amina said as she pulled out a flash drive from her pocket and plugged it into the computer. “No way this thing can hold all this info. I need to find the most damning stuff.” After moving the video file to her drive she scrolled a little down the list, finally deciding to start a video from 2006.
The scientist appeared on the screen again, but this time visibly distraught. “Subject three has perished. Despite our best efforts to revive the subject, it’s clear the immune response is still too much of an issue. It has been suggested we attempt the procedure on a younger individual, perhaps one with a weaker immune system. The very idea… What we are doing has always been barbaric, but this… I won’t be a part of it. I don’t care what they do to me. I forfeited my soul to them when I agreed to be a part of this. If they kill me, then so be it. At least I can take a little of my soul back. You hear that Lucien. I hope you see this, you prick. I’m not your pawn anymore. I'm going to the…” but before he finished the video ended abruptly as if something had interrupted the recording.
“Lucien…” Amina repeated the name aloud.
She had a thought, remembering the scrap of paper from before. She typed the words “Lucien” and “Pharmaceuticals” on her phone and ran a quick search. The first result was Lucien Harris, CEO of Harris Pharmaceuticals. She removed the scrap of paper from her pocket and scowled at it. Thanks to the video the blanks had been filled in. This man’s company was butchering animals and he knew about it. The scientist was even afraid Lucien would kill him. Amina couldn’t help but smirk at the thought of how big of a story it could be.
“I need to figure out what animals they were testing on,” she thought to herself and she dove back into the video files. “That’s the final piece and then I can nail this guy’s ass to the wall.” Her finger deftly scrolled the mouse wheel and she clicked on another video. This one, for some reason, had a filename that appeared to be just random letters and numbers.
A different scientist came on the screen this time, her face scratched and bloodied, “Subject four has escaped! We have sealed the door to the upstairs facility and to this…” but the scientist was cut off as someone else yelled to her, “What are you doing Martha! Forget the Goddamn log and get over here and help before she takes the door off the hinges!”
Amina stared in horror at the screen as Martha left the camera's view. There was the sound of screeching and yelling… but then the even more bone chilling sound of utter silence. The video continued for a few minutes, then just ended.
“Jesus,” Amina whispered, as she lifted her flashlight to look at the door to the room. She hadn’t noticed it before, but the door was covered with slashes and blood. It even had a large dent in the middle like it had been kicked in. Shining her flashlight over to the opposite side she also saw the bent metal of the door latch. Whatever they made… it had burst its way into this room.
A crash rang through the basement and the reporter was almost shocked out of her seat. She whipped her flashlight to the side just in time to see a rat dash away and a small metal pipe roll into the light. Breathing heavy and adrenaline pumping, Amina quickly focused back on the computer. A sense of urgency washed over her as a shiver ran down her spine. She had to find the most important files and copy them. As she checked each one on the desktop her breathing became more rapid. File after file just contained numbers and anatomical terms she didn't understand.
“Fuck it! I’ll figure it out later!” she said as she just started dumping document files into the flash drive until it couldn’t hold anymore. She ejected the drive and frantically got out of the seat but stopped dead in her tracks as she heard a low growl coming from the hallway.
Whatever the scientists made… whatever killed them… it was still here.
The dim backlight of the moon flooded in through the damaged security door and illuminated the outline of the creature. As much as Amina wanted to raise her flashlight to see what she was dealing with, the message to move wasn’t making it from her brain to her arm. She couldn’t move. She could barely even think. The figure then let out a menacing hiss and began to amble forward toward her.
“Puh-Please… s-stay back!” Amina managed to stutter, as if some animal would understand her command.
Strangely enough, the figure stopped, and waited.
Silent and confused, Amina finally got the nerve to raise her flashlight. Slowly, the light made its way across the ground to the creature. Amina audibly gasped at the sight in front of her. In the hallway, on all fours, was a woman staring back at her, unblinking. A single small horn jutted out of the woman’s mousey hair above her left eye. Her skin was pale with a faint red hue in areas. Her mouth was retracted into a snarl that showcased her sharp mismatched teeth. Her arms to her elbows were scaly and green, like an alligator, but stretched to human proportions ending in inhumanly long fingers. The woman’s legs were bird-like from the knee down, bent and crooked.
The woman let out another hiss and squinted at the light in her eyes causing Amina to instinctively lower it.
“Oh… sorry… um… please… don’t hurt me. I’m not going to hurt you, alright…? I.. just… I’m leaving,” Amina said, her voice quivering slightly.
Without responding the woman started advancing again, this time rising to a bipedal stance, her clawed fingers fidgeting. The woman’s height was intimidating, standing well over six feet tall. Her thin gaunt frame was haunting as was the medical gown she wore, the fabric stained red and fluttering with each step.
As the woman advanced, Amina tried to speak calmly, “It’s ok… just… I’m not a scientist, alright? I’m… I’m a reporter. Do… do you know what that is?’ The woman tilted her head and her face remained shadowed.
“Reporter… news… TV,” the woman said slowly, taking spaces between words to breathe a raspy breath.
Amina, smiled, nervously, “Yea… yea, news. I’m just trying to find out what they were doing here…”
The woman craned her neck down at Amina, venom in her voice, “Here… They hurt people. They are… bad people. You will… hurt me too.” The woman then raised her clawed hand and prepared to strike.
“Don’t!” Amina screamed as she shut her eyes tight, “I… I want to help!” Amina’s words hung in the air as she waited for the sting of the woman’s claws to come, but the pain never did. She slowly opened her eyes to see the woman’s face a mere inch from her own.
“Help… me?” the woman said with disdain, “Reporter. You’re… you are a liar.” Tears formed as the woman’s eyes fluttered trying to hold them back, “No one… no one ever helps. Everyone hurts.” She then turned away and walked to her cell. In the shadows she looked over her shoulder back at Amina and simply said, “Just go. Go away. Reporter.”
Amina watched silently as the woman climbed into a cot in the broken cell that was far too small for her body. The woman’s intimidating presence left her as she was reduced to a shuttering mass in the shadows. Amina began to head for the exit, but stopped short. She couldn’t just leave this woman, this victim, to be found in the morning by the construction crew or whoever wanders onto the property. This wasn’t just about the story anymore. This was someone’s life, ruined by people that felt they had the right simply because they had the ability.
“Hey, um… what’s your name?” Amina asked as she walked closer to the woman, her silent sobbing tugging at Amina’s heartstrings. A sniffle could be heard as the woman’s head rose from the cot, covered completely in darkness, her eyes reflecting the faint light that shone into the room from the hall.
In a hollow haunting voice she responded, “I… don’t remember. They called me… subject… subject four.”
Amina, took a moment to process but then said with compassion, “You can’t stay here, uh… Four. The people who took the bodies, I don’t know how you hid from them before, but they’ll be back and if they know you survived the fire they will lock you up again or kill you.” She then extended her hand as Four stared at her, frightened. “You need to come with me, ok? I’ll keep you safe.”
Four cautiously raised her hand to Amina’s, somehow finding comfort in the words. As her hand carefully closed around the reporter’s, the feeling of her reptilian scales were cold and rough, a stark contrast to the soft warmth of Amina’s own hand. Four then shifted her weight and stood, the previous fierceness she had exuded completely replaced by fear and trepidation.
As the two left the basement and stepped out into the moonlight, Amina could see the chimera more clearly. Healed scars lined the places where her inhuman features began. Her black eyes were larger and more animalistic than a human's and barely able to move in their sockets. Instead as Four observed her surroundings, her head jerked on her graceful neck like a bird. Silently, Amina took Four’s hand again and led her away from the bent door of her prison.
A new resolve fueled the reporter now.
These people who did this... the ones that hurt Four… she was going to make sure they all paid for it.
