Among the encrypted files had been several folders of videos, each video was labelled with a mix of letters and numbers. Indi hadn’t yet found anything that clarified what the different numbers and letters meant. She clicked one labeled EX12HS03.
A video started playing. The film was shaky and dark. The camera appeared to be held or attached to someone or something. It bounced along through darkened corridors that looked familiar. The concrete walls, occasionally lit up by a small bouncing light, looked very much like the ones that she’d seen back in the facility a little over a week ago.
In the silence of her own house she could clearly hear someone breathing over the audio. They were panting, like they had been walking for some time.
She watched as whoever it was paused to rest. As their breathing slowed slightly a new sound could be heard in the background. The sound of a baby crying. For a moment the breathing stopped and the baby was all that Indi could hear. Then the breathing started up again and the camera continued moving forward, waving about, bobbing in time with the walker’s pace.
The camera moved slowly toward the sound of the crying baby. It grew in volume, louder and louder, more urgent. Indi’s own breathing quickened in pace. She wanted to see it saved.
Three minutes into the video the small light that was behind the camera suddenly went out. The crying sound of the baby morphed into that of a laughing child. There were growls and a clatter, then a yelp. That was where the video ended.
She clicked another, one labelled EX12HS15, but this time she did not watch it all the way through. Instead she skipped ahead to various points. It was much the same except no crying baby. There was talking, a muttering sound. She leaned in close to the speakers and could just make out what was being said.
A male voice murmured, “Just keep going. Gotta be a way out. There will be a way out. As long as I keep going, just gotta keep going.”
This video was several minutes longer. At one point the person found a well lit room. The walls were covered with artwork, all the same scenic painting. There was a click and a strange hissing sound. Indi watched as a white fog was pumped into the lower portion of the room. Slowly it seemed to be rising. It reminded her of the water room that she and Cat had been temporarily trapped in. A puzzle. Indeed, as she watched, the man studied but did not touch the paintings. They all looked the same to Indi but the man could obviously see something she couldn’t. After 30 seconds of looking he picked one out.
“This one, this one,” he muttered.
He lifted the painting to reveal a hole in the wall. The man sighed and reached a hand inside. On his forearm she could just make out a tattoo, a shield of some kind with what looked like a lion walking along the top of it.
There was a click as the man turned something inside the hole. Indi held her breath.
A grinding sounded and then the camera fixed on an opening door. The rising white fog started to fade.
Indi took in a deep breath. So did the man.
He put the painting back on the wall and then he left the room, glancing back only briefly.
Indi frowned. Had that been a figure there, back in the room? The camera had only shown the image for a second. The subject had obviously caught a glance of something too for he turned to look again. This time the camera showed nothing.
Indi paused the recording and dragged the timestamp back. It was a blur but it was obvious. A person shaped shadow stared back at her from the screen. The figure was dark from head to foot, no indication of clothing and the eyes seemed to be glowing, like there was a fire in them. Indi skipped ahead to watch the end. It finished much the same way as the other one had. The light cut out and then the video ended a moment later.
The third file Indi clicked on was labelled EX12WS62. This subject had slender hands and long manicured nails, painted a clear pink and tipped white. There was another puzzle room. This one contained ropes, weights and scales. Indi watched as the person shifted pulleys around and used telekinesis to hold some of the weights in place.
Indi clicked thorough several more videos. Altogether there were hundreds of them. Some ended quickly, some went on for hours. Some of them met their end at the jaws of the mimics, others died in the puzzles. One of the longest ones found his way to an underground natural pool of water. It was lit by sunlight coming through a hole in the ceiling but there was obviously no way to reach it. The subject stayed there for hours and then suddenly the video just ended. Indi wasn’t sure what happened to him. The average run time seemed to be about 3 minutes but when each video started from appeared to be completely random.
There was one thing she was starting to notice though. Very consistently, all of the videos labelled with a W in the name appeared to be magic users, witches. She took a quick itinerary of the other options. All the videos in this folder began with EX12, followed by the letters H, W, V, D, B, and one or two labelled C, then an S and another number. The folder itself was labelled ‘12-SpIn’. Others were labelled things such as ‘03-InBe’, ‘09-SoRe’, ‘04-NuPh’, ‘01-EnHa’. One was simply labelled ‘XX’.
Indi clicked on ‘09-SoRe’ and played a couple of the videos. In one a victim lay in a chair while figures dressed in white overalls placed a cloth on his face and poured water over him while he thrashed and struggled against restraints. In another, a scruffy looking man got his fingers chopped off with a machete. Indi jumped as the blade came down and closed the video before anyone could scream. She quickly clicked out of that folder.
‘03-InBe’ appeared to be experiments involving multiple subjects. In ‘01-EnHa’ the subjects were used as sacrifices in spells. One video Indi opened labelled ‘EX04VS07’, consisted of a camera pointing down at an empty room. There was a bed, a chair, a bucket, and a plate of biscuits, but nothing else and no one that Indi could see.
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She leaned in closer trying to see if there was anything weird about the room or if maybe someone was hiding under the bed.
Suddenly a face thrust itself right in front of the camera. A sunken, fanged face, with greying skin. Indi jerked back from her screen and nearly fell off her chair.
The lights above her flickered and she froze. Her heart beat fast. Then the lights settled, the face on the screen continued to growl at the screen but it didn’t jump out of the screen or anything.
Indi relaxed. Power fluctuations in Little Rock were not unusual. Up here on the cliffs they rarely ever lost power but occasionally the lights might dim or flicker. Now that she was calm she studied the face closer. She could make out violet eyes, much like her own. These ones were tinged with flecks of red.
The vampire dropped down from the camera and walked into the centre of the room. Indi could see now that it was a woman. She sat herself down at the table and rested her head on her arms. Indi felt sorry for her now for she could recognise the obvious effects of blood starvation.
She clicked back out of that folder. She eyed the one labelled ‘XX’. She clicked it.
Nothing happened.
She tried moving her mouse.
Nothing happened. Her mouse was frozen. Her computer whirred. “Dammit,” she mumbled. She sat back and waited. A moment later a pop up appeared, one she’d made herself.
‘Enemy Program Detected. Initiating Cleanup. Commencing Full Reboot.’
“Full reboot!?” Indi stared. She’d opened that in a sandbox. It shouldn’t need a full reboot, not unless there was some kooky technopathic shit going on. That was probably the case. She sighed and waited. She had planned for this possibility even if she hadn’t expected it.
Once her pc rebooted she checked the decrypted folder. All the files were gone. It was no matter, she’d made several copies after all. It just meant that this was probably going to take longer than she thought. She started up a logger and clicked the ‘XX’ file again.
There would be more hidden trojans like that one, she was certain. Not for the first time in her life, she wished she’d been born with a different set of powers. If she’d been born a technopath, this sweep would take far less time.
While her main computer ran a sweeping program, Indi booted up a second laptop. On that one she continued reading. She avoided the videos now, just opening text files. Finally she came across a folder titled ‘Amelie’s Notes’ which seemed to give more information on the experiments in addition to some personal musings. Written in one file, and dated almost a year ago, she read:
The effects of the splice hole appear to vary greatly dependent on the individual in question, however no overall trend could be found across different species. Furthermore, binding or restricting power usage had little impact on the survival rate of the subject. Human subjects appear to have a slightly easier time of it than a bound witch but the difference is non-significant. The challenges of the splice, appear uniquely tailored to the individual, however the manner of the tailoring is difficult to predict. Subjects with known mental problems appear no more or less presented with mental challenges than other subjects. Challenges can be largely grouped into mental, physical, magical, or psychological. Although the latter is rare and makes observation of the subject difficult. Observation of the subject is further impeded as the subject enters deeper into the Splice. To date, we have lost contact with three subjects and the exit to this hole has yet to be located. The bulk of the surviving subjects seem to loop back around to the centre. Attempts to measure distance and direction within the Splice have thus far proven interesting. Likewise, none of us yet understand the exact nature of the old spells which are in operation here but once we figure it out, who knows what we could accomplish.
In another file she read:
We have a week left of testing and then we have been told to cease our experiments, and hand operational control of the facility over to the army folks. We have not been told who will be in charge or the nature of their planned activities but we have been given the opportunity to stay on and aid them with whatever it is they will be doing. I have talked it over with my sister and I think we will both accept. Although I do not think these newcomers fully appreciate the nature of what this place is, it will be interesting to see how it interacts with them and I am sure they will find our skills useful.
There were other folders like that but with different names; ‘George’s Notes’, ‘Lea’s notes’. One folder was simply labelled ‘Trevor’.
Indi clicked it.
It was filled with news articles, depositions, legal files, and several mugshots, most of them dated over seven years ago. One of the newspaper articles was titled, ‘The Summertime Slicer Slapped Into Stripes!’ Another, ‘How the Summertime Slicer Slipped Up!’. Indi read through a very detailed account of how Trevor aka the Summertime Slicer, had murdered his way across Mercy for several years before being caught.
Trevor Ramone used his materiokinesis to entrap one victim without the walls of her own home so upon later investigation it appeared she had simply starved to death. For days he sat and through a manipulated wall he listened to screams no one else could hear.
Another victim, Sophie Stevens, was a 23 year old waitress who disappeared one morning on her way to work. Several months of interrogations revealed that Trevor, using the recorded cries of a kitten he had earlier maimed, lured her into an abandoned building rigged with wire traps. Like many of Trevor’s later victims, Sophie was found severely dismembered, likely while still alive.
Indi read deeper into the rabbit hole, not wanting to know, but finding it impossible to look away. The guy had been a maniac whose crimes had grown exponentially more sophisticated and daring until he’d finally been captured. All up, he’d killed 23 known victims, but was suspected of over 20 more unsolved murders. He’d been magically bound and locked away for the last several years in a prison in Mercy. Evidently someone had sprung him free.
Each murder was only more and more disturbing.
Mallory and Cal O’Maverick were owners of an apple orchard just east of Mercy. One day Cal heard a noise coming from the attic-
CLICK! THUMP!
Indi had become so engrossed in the history of the serial killer that she hadn’t even heard the door open and Falco come in.
“Gods, you nearly gave me a heart attack,” she remarked with relief.
Falco hung up his jacket and then glanced at his watch. “You should have been asleep hours ago.”
“And you said you’d be home hours ago.” Indi wrapped him in a tight hug.
He hugged her back. “I know, I’m sorry. I got caught up. What have you been doing? Working?”
Indi shook her head. “I finally managed to decrypt that data we took from the facility. They were up to some kooky stuff, just give me a few days to sort through it and then I can summarise. Also that guy Trevor was a serial killer.”
“What?”
“I know. And a whole bunch more stuff. Like, he had a seer working with him who was also a scientist and doing really horrific experiments long before the whole necromancy thing. Come see.”
Falco groaned and reached for her before she could get back to her computer. “Can it wait until tomorrow?” He yawned, rubbed her arms gently and pulled her back into a loose hug.
“Yeah sure.” There was a note of disappointment in her tone. “Just let me shut my computer down.”
“Okay, then come tell me some of what you’ve learned while we get ready for bed.”
Indi nodded and returned to her computer. A moment later she glanced back up. “Oh, Sly’s here by the way. Just for a few nights. I put him in the guest room.”
Falco gave a tired nod and then headed off towards their room.
Indi shut all the computers down, even the one doing a sweep and log. She’d restart it tomorrow. Given that she now suspected that the data she’d taken had very conveniently probably belonged to the IT guy who was also probably a technopath, she decided it was a good idea to play everything safe. She even unplugged the power cable, just in case.