⚠️ The following is a document from Lazarus Manufacturing Research Facility Delta.
The contents of this document and the events described herein are classified. ⚠️
Date: 06/0█/21██
Time: ██:██
Weather: Muggy, 70° F
My therapist said that keeping a journal might help with my anxiety, and even though what we're doing here is highly classified I strongly doubt that anybody will actually see any of this so…
My name is Francis Moreau, my pronouns are they/them and I am a researcher at Lazarus Manufacturing's remote Research Facility Delta, under the watchful eye of Head Geneticist Extravaganza Ramirez.
I am writing this all down because that's what you're supposed to do… isn't it? Especially with science. If you don't write anything down it's just fucking around and finding out with no set purpose.
I'm a part of Project Merlin.
I don't know if it was started by a guy named Merlin or if the people in charge were nerds for Arthurian legend, but it's got a nice ring to it.
It's an experiment, or series of experiments, started in the late 2070s concerning the mutant life found in the Uninhabitable Zones around the world and the exotic form of radiation that causes them.
Uninhabitable Zones are basically rogue nuclear exclusion zones that pop up at random as if by magic, we have no idea what causes them.
Hence the experiments I guess.
Project Merlin was originally intended just to understand the Uninhabitable Zones, where they come from and how they function as an ecosystem but due to corporate meddling, has quickly become "find and extract any valuable or useful materials from the zones."
Or more accurately "how can we monetize the fuck out of this New Thing?"
Ugh. It's deplorable.
I shouldn't complain really, we're essentially being paid to throw science at the wall and see what sticks and the budget for this endeavor seems to be completely bottomless.
We're not on any sort of schedule and nobody's found anything useful just yet, but the money just keeps coming and the investors keep breathing down our necks so we push on.
It's invigorating though, despite everything I feel like one of the scientists straight out of old science fiction movies finding something new and undiscovered just waiting to be shown to the world.
Uh… hopefully this turns out better than science fiction though, because I've seen one too many movies where this exact scenario happens and nobody gets out unscathed.
Or alive, in most cases.
Bluh.
Fuck.
This was supposed to help with my anxiety, not make it worse.
Anyway, I'm not cut out for field work but I want to see a Zone first hand.
Sure Zones are Uninhabitable because they're so volatile and unpredictable that it's safer to just shoo everybody out and put a wall around it so nobody goes in and gets hurt.
Sure the Zones are fucking dangerous, do not conform to the laws of nature or physics, and the wildlife in them tends to be too angry to die.
But I just really wanna see if they live up to the hype and all the theories. I've heard some of my colleagues say that the Zones might be tears in space that lead to other dimensions, which (I guess) accounts for the temporospatial discrepancies but not the radiation.
See, ever since the first Zones were discovered they've been permeated with this new kind of radiation that we have yet to replicate in a controlled setting. It acts like ionizing radiation almost, but it isn't deadly. We've studied the (often homeless) human populations of the Zones and found no signs of cancer or radiation poisoning, and yet there are the mutant animals.
I don't know if it's fair to call them mutants, they might just be some extant species we haven't come across yet. But I digress, Zone mutants are one reason why the Zones are so dangerous but also why they're so fascinating.
Much of what we found is plant or animal life that shares much of its DNA with regular everyday species, but looks and acts so dramatically different that there's no telling what happened to them.
For example take Specimen 37, a young girl who was found wandering around a war zone in Switzerland a few years ago towards the tail end of the █th World War. She was completely unharmed despite the carnage around her and willingly approached field agents when she spotted them.
Unfortunately she stepped on a landmine.
She was reportedly blown in half, but just kept moving like nothing happened. She regenerated the missing half of her body and was unscathed by the time field agents could physically grab her.
She's been in Conglomerate custody ever since, under the care of a Dr Hubris Willoughby Downfall.
Attempts are being made to isolate, extract, or replicate the child's abilities but nothing concrete has come of it just yet.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
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Date: 06/0█/21██
Time: ██:██
Weather: Inclement/Thunderstorm, roughly 65° F
The "sample" arrived today, along with other necessary supplies for our long stay here. Dr Ramirez expects us to live and work in this facility year round, or until we have a breakthrough.
The "sample", hereafter abbreviated to "TS" (and subsequently nicknamed "Elliot" by my colleagues) was originally discovered in an Uninhabitable Zone in █████ less than a year ago after it had reportedly injured a homeless person who was squatting in the area.
Conglomerate field agents initially struggled to contain the anomaly because it "would just change shape and wiggle its way out of any trap set for it."
Any video documenting this behavior has not been found intact as TS seems to project some sort of heavy distortion field similar to certain types of radiation, causing any recordings (be they audio or visual) to warp considerably.
Any personnel exposed to TS during this initial meeting were quarantined and monitored long-term in case of any potential radiation poisoning, but aside from persistent nightmares they appear to be perfectly healthy.
After another botched capture resulted in the anomaly's sudden decapitation, but not its immediate or eventual death, a solution was found.
The anomaly displayed limited regenerative abilities similar to Specimen 37, but unlike 37 it could not regenerate limbs once they were completely severed.
It could, however, reattach them and slowly reassemble itself if allowed to. Reportedly, after recovering from the initial shock of its injuries, TS picked its head up and placed it onto the stump of its neck where the wound healed seamlessly within seconds.
TS was eventually subdued and vivisected by personnel.
The various pieces of the anomaly were carefully placed into separate containers before shipping. Agents and bystanders testified that they could hear the parts "singing" to each other, something that only became louder the closer the pieces were to each other.
Each part of the anomaly retained vital signs, and noticeable brain or motor functions. Severed limbs could move on their own, the anomaly's head could still blink and bite, and so on.
Shipping each piece individually was highly recommended by the agents on site but the company is a bunch of cheap bastards this suggestion was ignored for logistical reasons.
Under Dr Downfall's recommendation, each part of TS has been quarantined on a different floor of the facility for maximum safety, with talks of sending out smaller samples to other external labs at a later date.
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Date: 06/0█/21██
Time: ██:██
Weather: Sunny I think, I didn't go outside.
The first batch of tests began today, mostly vivisecting Elliot (the nickname grew on me ok) and watching it put itself back together again.
Attempts to isolate or replicate its regenerative abilities have had mixed results. Samples of Elliot's various tissues and fluids were individually examined and rendered into serums that were administered to a small population of lab mice, rats, and rabbits who were immediately quarantined from each other and closely monitored.
Several of the animals died almost immediately, their blood had changed colors and explosively exited all available orifices.
Those that survived could heal at an accelerated rate.
Ramirez wants to move forward onto human testing as soon as possible.
She has acquired several children for this purpose.
Sometimes when I close my eyes I can see a little white mouse staring at me from its cage, calm and happy, before all the blood in its body rushes out of its eyes like the world's worst water balloon.
I can't do that to a child.
I can't see the color orange without getting sick.
I want to go home.
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Date: 06/0█/21██
Time: ██:██
Weather: Sunny again, 100° F
More tests today.
Aggressive attempts to refine the serum.
I'm having nightmares about mice exploding on a regular basis now, I can't talk about it with my therapist either so that's fun.
I can hear Elliot singing in my dreams sometimes, saying my name and stuff I can't understand.
This is common apparently, the Elliot thing not the mouse thing, the field agents who initially captured it have reported similar issues. There have been attempts to find and contact the truck driver who delivered the anomaly to us in order to interview them and offer them further compensation for any distress Elliot might have caused during the trip.
But it's like that guy just vanished off the face of the earth.
It's so fucking eerie.
Anyway the serum has started to explode fewer and fewer animals with each new batch, we're aiming for "explodes no animals" but we'll probably settle for "only explodes a few".
Ramirez still wants us to test it on humans as soon as we're physically able.
I want to test it on her just to make her shut up, but at this stage it probably wouldn't kill her out right so there's really no point.
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Date: 06/1█/21██
Time: ██:██
Weather: Cloudy/humid/rain expected 94° F
Human trials began today at the insistence of Dr. Ramirez.
The children were divided into two groups of fifty, with group A being the control group and group B getting the serum.
I don't want to write about this but it's a habit by this point, maybe it'll make me feel better about what I have done.
Like going to confession with my parents when I was younger.
There is a priest on staff, he lives here with us at the Facility. His presence is legally required by the company.
They're required to provide a nondenominational place of worship within any facility that intends to have people live in it long term, they're also required to staff that place of worship with the appropriate people depending on who's gonna be working there.
We have a catholic priest named John Ward and a rabbi I haven't met yet.
It's kind of stupid, but endearing at the same time but I'll be there asking for forgiveness shortly I think.
The serum is not perfect, I don't think we could ever perfect it with how little we know and understand but we got it to stop exploding things entirely so that's close enough.
Now the specimens experience intense flu-like symptoms, potentially dying of fever or dehydration via vomiting if not monitored closely, but the casualties are much much lower than what they originally were.
If there is a God capable of love and forgiveness, forget me and go with these children for they have done no wrong but we still have thrown them into the open arms of the devil in the name of science.
-- Francis Moreau