⚠️ The following are a collection of media files from Lazarus Manufacturing Research Facility Delta.
The contents of these files and the events described herein are classified. ⚠️
[The video opens in an operating room, dozens of scientists are crowded in and around the space dressed in protective gear.
There is a window on the far wall, the camera zooms in to show the gawking faces of more Facility staff pressed up against the glass trying to get a good look at what's going on inside.
Mara is glimpsed amongst the horde of onlookers for just a moment. She is a lithe Black woman with lighter skin and long hair in intricate Locs dyed a myriad of different colors. She is dressed in the standard issue white slacks and matching shirt befitting her station as a Keeper within the Facility. She looks pale and uncomfortable, like she might puke.
The second Mara notices the camera is pointed at her, she melts into the crowd and vanishes.
Doors can be heard opening in the operating room.
The camera swings around to face the sound.
A huge creature is wheeled into the room strapped to a makeshift gurney.
The footage starts to warp and deteriorate as the creature is brought closer to the camera. It's just chromatic aberration at first, but it quickly gets worse.
Multichromatic distortion starts to cover the creature, slowly spreading outwards from its body until the entire video is lost beneath seething static and pulsating colors.
All sounds become a harsh, garbled whine and wide glaring eyes roll within the bitcrushed mess.
The video feed stops suddenly.]
A tape recorder whirrs to life, the voice of a scientist can be heard.
Dr. Extravaganza "Anza" Ramirez: "October ██ 21██, at approximately fifteen-hundred hours today I was alerted to a… disturbance in the stasis chamber on floor fourteen. Specimen 7886, a cybernetically modified child estimated between eight or nine years of age, had awoken several weeks ahead of schedule."
Anza sighs in exasperation, fabric rustles in a way that implies she's rubbing her temples or dragging a hand down her face.
Anza: "According to what footage we have left of the incident, Specimen 37 (a hold over from another series of experiments done by a colleague of mine) fed Specimen 7886 a sample of its blood while under the supervision of the soon-to-be fired Mara Jones.
Specimen 7886's altered form seems to have a universally negative effect on digital media files and recorders, attempts to document its vivisection using a digital camera have failed multiple times so the procedure is being postponed until a film camera can be located."
Anza (aside/to the room): "I'm certain someone on site has one, like ninety percent of us are autistic so there's a nonzero chance somebody on staff has a hyperfixation on analog media; and if they don't we're supposed to be stocked with analog gear in case of emergencies."
A door squeaks open, fabric rustles and the wheels of a desk chair can be heard rattling across the floor away from the recorder.
Anza: "Did you--"
???: "Yeah! Almost immediately. Looks like Jimmy in radiology is really into vintage tech, he talked my ear off for almost an hour explaining why you're not supposed to shake Polaroid pictures."
Anza: "...go back and grab those cameras, we might need them."
Fabric rustles again and the heels of shoes clap together, like the unnamed person is giving Anza a military salute.
???: "On it boss!"
Anza snorts, there is the sound of retreating footsteps marching away in exaggerated rhythm.
The door squeals shut.
Anza: "Apologies for the intrusion, we're spread thin today." She clears her throat and continues. "If all goes well we'll be able to properly document the proceedings, if not… we'll figure something out."
[Another video, this time grainy and nostalgic. The telltale aesthetics of a video shot on a film camera versus one done in a digital format is apparent.
Whatever camera this was shot on was well loved and well maintained.
The science team has cleared out a space on the operating room floor and covered it heavily with tarps in lieu of an operating table big enough to hold their current specimen.
The video focuses on the creature from before, easily the length of a city bus, unconscious and stretched out on its side. All 6 of its legs are bound and its massive tail, easily half its total body length, has been pinned down and tacked to the floor as a precaution.
There is a tube forced into its open mouth, shoved down its throat, supplying a mix of heavy anesthetics and oxygen.
It looks like a child's idea of a chimera.
The feline head of a cheetah fixed haphazardly onto a thick neck blending into a long body with six gangly legs and a fat gecko tail, each leg ending in a paw with 5 fingerlike digits tipped with wicked retractable claws.
At first glance the creature is solid black, an awkwardly shaped shadow come to life, until the light hits it at just the right angle and brings out the swirling deep blue and purple iridescence within its scaly skin. A scientist swaddled in PPE timidly lifts one of the creature's paws and compares it to their own hand, chortling with unease when the creature's digits attempt to curl around their own reflexively.
Someone yelps and the camera quickly darts in that direction, falling on another scientist. The measuring tape in the scientist's hands trembles slightly, an eye the size of a grown man's fist glares at them accusingly from its spot in the creature's haunch. The eye follows them as they move around, closing in one spot only to open in another one elsewhere.
"It's sedated right? Like we gave it enough tranquilizers to put down a whale, how is it still moving?" Someone says, their voice partially muffled by their PPE.
"No it totally is, I've heard of crocodilians sleeping with one eye open, maybe this is like that?" answers somebody else, as they measure the eye's diameter and take a sample of its tears with a swab.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
The eye blinks in discomfort, closes completely, and reopens at the opposite end of the creature's body, as far away from the probing swab as possible.
The amassed onlookers chuckle.
The creature is measured and weighed, its resting heart rate and respiration monitored and logged.
"...I feel like we should get Jimmy down here--" says Anza from the head of the creature, she's examining its eyeless face with practiced ease.
The person behind the camera speaks up, "I'm right here actually."
"Oh! Not sure how I missed that, but there's no way this thing is gonna fit in the radiology department so we've gotta figure something out, any ideas?" Anza continues.
"Let the other departments have their turn in the meantime, I'll figure something out if I have enough time to think." Jimmy replies. An eye opens fairly close to the camera. It stares at him for a long while before blinking closed and disappearing.
"...how does it keep doing that without any fixed eye sockets?" Says Doug's voice from somewhere in the room. "Jim zoom in on that eye for me?"
The camera zooms in on an open eye on the creature's neck. The eye rolls slowly to glare at Jimmy as if daring him to try something.
The eye has white sclera webbed with blue veins, there is no distinction between pupil and iris; it's just a black disk gazing at the camera. It's a little unnerving actually, the way the eye blinks and moves, bobbing beneath the flesh as the lids close; like a ball dipping beneath the surface of a pool.
"Can someone grab a sample of that?" Says Doug.
"A sample of the eye?" Asks a different voice.
"No a sample of your mom, yes a sample of the fucking eye! What are you, an intern?" Doug growls.
The voice from before sounds meek and embarrassed now, "Yes?"
"Oh…" Doug says and clears his throat awkwardly into the sudden uncomfortable silence.
What comes next is several minutes of the unnamed intern chasing the single eye around the creature's body until it seems to disappear entirely, only reappearing when the intern has their back turned. The eye squints as if amused, Anza sighs in exasperation from off screen and darts into frame holding something sharp. The eye widens in panic but Anza is upon it before it can blink itself away.
Jimmy flinches hard and the camera jolts to one side sharply, his hand covering the lens, but whether it's a conscious action on his part or a reflex is unclear. The sounds of cutting flesh overtake the stunned silence that descends like a theater curtain.
"Jar!" Calls Anza, followed by frantic footsteps and the wet PLUNK of an eyeball dropping into a container full of liquid.
The camera pans upwards towards Anza, her gloves wet with blue blood. The empty hole sinks back into the creature's body with a slurping, sucking noise. Two new eyes bob to the surface, they share the same socket and set of eyelids like some sort of fucked up ocular hydra.
"...fascinating." Anza coos. She shines a small light into one eye and then the other, making the entire thing squint in discomfort. The double eye struggles to close completely and just sits there, staring at nothing in particular, glassy and disoriented.
The next few minutes are uneventful with the different research departments gathering samples and measurements as Jimmy follows behind them with his camera. A few people take Polaroid pictures of the creature and their samples.
Jimmy has to restrain himself whenever the pictures are shaken.
The entire ordeal seems to be stressing Jimmy out but he doesn't complain, ever the steady handed cameraman, though he does wander off towards the head of the beast in an attempt to distance himself from those deplorable picture shakers.
The creature's mouth has been propped open and the breathing tube removed so that its maw may be properly inspected. Up close its many rows of teeth are translucent daggers around thin white filaments that provide their glow, its tongue is a long black rope that forks at the end. The team tasked with studying the creature's mouth are heavily suited, carrying metal tongs and canisters. They gather saliva samples and teeth of various sizes, marveling when the teeth grow back almost immediately.
After a bit of prodding, the acid glands make themselves known, wedged between teeth and nestled beneath the creature's slithering tongue.
At first nothing happens. A gland is gingerly expressed into a heavy-duty container for future study, and that seems to be the end of it. Until a few stray drops make their way into the growing puddle of drool gathering in the creature's lower jaw.
The droplets start to glow on contact with the saliva and the metal pole holding the creature's mouth open starts to sizzle and steam.
The scientists all glance at each other. Nobody speaks or breathes and the only sound for what feels like a long while is the sizzling of acid slowly dissolving a support pole.
One scientist takes a glass stirring rod and dips it into the container of what was previously thought to be acid.
Nothing happens.
"...inert?" She wonders out loud, grabbing a fresh rod and dipping that in a saliva sample.
Again, nothing happens.
A solitary "Huh…" is the only word spoken for several tense minutes.
The video cuts forward an indeterminate length of time. The group of scientists from before are setting up a spur of the moment experiment that involves beakers and tongs.
"Ok so… it looks like the acid is a complex chemical compound, an enzyme activated when the fluid in the glands comes in contact with the specimen's saliva." The scientist sounds excited, holding a beaker gingerly at the end of a pair of tongs as far away from herself as she can get it.
The beaker contains several milliliters of saliva, blue tinged and thick. A colleague slowly pours a vial of the gland secretions into the beaker and the result is instantaneous.
The newborn enzyme glows violently blue and starts to MELT the glass beaker, making it stretch and balloon like hot plastic until gravity gets the best of it and the enzyme makes its way to the floor. The liquid sizzles and hisses, eating a hole through the protective layers of tarp and plastic and eventually the floor beyond.
"That's so cool… horrifically dangerous and probably a carcinogen but IT'S STILL SO COOL!" Chirps the scientist from before, doing a barely contained happy dance in place.
The sizzling, hissing sound gets louder.
Naturally everyone starts looking at the hole in the floor first before the teams behind them start to shout.
The creature is steaming.
Blue-white wisps of steam billow from every available orifice, natural or not. Several hundred eyes open wide and worried, more steam pouring from them like some incomprehensible expression of grief.
The creature's body begins to sag, shrinking like a balloon losing air. Its skeleton is visible for only a moment as stark hard shapes that hold its skin up. Until those too collapse; like a house of sticks in the wind. The creature's flattened form starts to move, undulating like thousands of hands stretching pizza dough into shape.
And then it starts to fold up, into itself in ways that defy logic. Skin bunches like fabric, pulling on itself until it coalesces into a singular point that just keeps folding and folding to an impossible density. Sharp shards of metal poke their way from the folding flesh and curl around each other to form limbs.
A hand here, a paw there.
Long gray ears and sharp white teeth behind a cleft lip.
Exposed nerves become wires twisting like snakes into familiar configurations. A single pair of dark eyes opens in a child's face, glazed and unseeing. The child struggles to take a step forward, slipping on a puddle of moisture and falling into the arms of a shocked intern who buckles under the sudden weight.
The child is barely conscious and extremely delirious, trying to keep himself upright and moving but failing every time.
The child is quickly inspected and verified to be specimen 7886, back in his original form.
He looks…
Perfectly normal?
Or at least how he did before ending up in stasis.
Every scratch, dent and chip in his cybernetics is completely identical to his original set, the one Nettie had destroyed with the dodgeball.
The set that was removed before he went into stasis.
The wild chatter of speculating scientists is deafening, each one of them vying for their chance to further examine this anomalous child. Greedy gloved hands grip expensive equipment or jot down observations, the noise quickly rising to a roar.
Jimmy doesn't seem to notice or care as he slowly zooms in on something that wasn't there before.
A long articulated tail grew from the base of the specimen's spine, ending in a puff of soft blonde fur that ruffled in some unseen breeze.