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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/rephlexi0n on 2023-07-01 22:47:35+00:00.
Life row was the last home I had on dry land. Now, I’m locked in a cell equally as grey and bare. The only difference is I’m below the surface of the Pacific in a lonely steel capsule.
They lured me in with a chance at reducing my sentence by volunteering as a test subject for the “Hadal Anomaly Project”. Cryptic, right? I won’t detail the reasons for my imprisonment, because from what I’ve been seeing and hearing, it doesn’t matter anymore. The rest of the world may as well not exist.
We disembarked, what, best part of a month ago? It’s guesswork, but I think we’re somewhere off the coast of Mexico. Near the Galapagos islands, maybe. What I do know is we’re now deep enough for the words ‘day’ and ‘night’ to lose all meaning.
There’s not much to look at through the dinnerplate porthole in my cell. Seems like a pointless investment, if you ask me. The things I’ve made out from eavesdropping through the tiny gap in the doorframe are far more… interesting.
From muted fragments of conversation, here’s what I know:
The Hadal Anomaly, this project’s namesake, is a vacuum close to the Pacific seabed. It’s spherical, just under a kilometre wide, with no rational justification for its existence. No water, air, sand. An empty region of space and nothing more.
Feels like we’re still moving, still descending. I don’t know how long it’ll be until we arrive. Hopefully a while.
Still, I’m noticing some changes. There’s a low hum coming from somewhere, and it’s only gotten louder as time goes on. Thank God I have a notepad - if I didn’t have an outlet for my thoughts right now I might lose it.
Okay, what the hell. I thought this manner of dark was basically impenetrable, but now there’s a light.
It’s not part of the sub, no… a bright spot, like a lone star suspended in the night sky. It’s pink, a sort of rose colour, and motionless - aside from the way it’s pulsing, seemingly at random. I think it’s what’s making the humming. When it swells, so does the humming.
I can see the border of this ‘vacuum’ too. It’s like looking into a glass sphere, the inside perfect and unblemished.
I’m starting to regret taking them up on this offer. Something’s telling me life in jail would be a paradise over whatever they plan to do with me.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!! A few minutes ago I watched a test subject get sent out in some kind of pressure suit, straight towards the light.
When they passed into the vacuum the suit just… disintegrated. As if dipped into some obscenely powerful acid. Corroded away into nothing.
Yet, whichever poor soul was chosen for this test run is somehow unharmed.
I mean, she’s floating, naked, but I don’t think she’s dead. Her skin looks alive and she’ll twitch and convulse at random. Sometimes it even looks like she’s trying to speak. Scream, maybe, but no one can hear her. Any comms equipment they loaded her with is gone, rotted away into less than dust.
A few minutes was all I could stand watching her float toward the light, before slumping down beneath the porthole. I don’t know how long I sat like that.
At some point I’d dozed off, but the sub’s shuddering brought me back with a missed-the-last-step kind of feeling. A pale-pink circle projecting from the porthole onto the bulwark door told me enough. No need to look outside.
I think that was her passing into the light, for better or worse. Probably worse.
There’s gotta be an escape to this. Can a pen do lethal damage to your carotid artery? Maybe I’ll find out.
Subject-006 is the next labrat they’re picking.
Subject-006 is me.
The urge to end it right now is tempting. Before they can send me into something they haven’t the first fucking clue about. I can’t bring myself to do it though. If going into that thing puts you asleep then maybe it’d be a better death.
But I don’t know that. The researchers don’t know that. How could they? Or perhaps they do, and think it’s a mercy to leave me questioning.
It isn’t a mercy. It’s torment.
The keypad outside my door is beeping. There’s no time left.
Then again, what worth is there to anything I write in this journal? Maybe a part of me’s hoping someone reads this, stranger or otherwise, so at least they know a living person wrote this.
Or I’m just writing my thoughts. Not everything needs a purpose, a deep meaning, or anything like that. Some things can just… be.
It’s time. I’m up. Later, no one.
It’s obvious past this point I couldn’t continue my journal. Even if I somehow brought it along, it would’ve disintegrated inside the anomaly.
Researchers and sub operators crowded me, chattering in a crucible of voice. I didn’t care to hear anything they had to say - why should I? If I was going to be released out into the hadal zone towards some undefinable fault in reality, insider info would be as useful as a paper oar.
The pressure suit was more like a cage than anything. Rigid joints prevented any movement, only serving to transport a fragile bag of meat through an inhospitable environment. It had a tether latched onto the back - yet another pointless addition to the whole thing.
There was a cold rush as I hurtled out of the sub. Not from the water around me, but dread. A dread nothing on earth, nothing natural, could instil.
An endless thought loop cycled in my head, attempted rationalisations for what was about to happen. None of them were sufficient or even close to the truth.
Slowly, I drifted toward the vacuum. The gradual inching closer… it was agonising.
Then, the instant I passed the border, everything went black.
But only for a moment.
My eyes opened, and what I saw was not the deep sea, nor was it a bright light.
The rapture incarnate, in every town, city, and village.
I saw burning skyscrapers lighting up a starless night, underlined by the collective wail of humanity as they fled in absolute hysteria.
A shape crested the city skyline cloaked in an oily pall. Something utterly massive, a shell splitting into nine spirals.
The military tried their best, but their bullets did nothing and their missiles were whipped out of the sky by vast, mismatched limbs.
Any ill-conceived providence was brushed aside as the shelled colossus swiped up men, women, and children alike, shovelling countless people into its pulsating, toothed sphincter.
Every crushed bone, snapped joint, torn limb, I heard. Screams and wails snuffed out.
Violent creatures spewed from its fleshy openings, galloping and squirming through the streets, eviscerating anyone and everyone. Some pluming smoke from vestigial jaws, others spraying caustic fluids to liquefy flesh.
Again my eyes opened to full awareness. I tried to howl in the horror and disgust of what I’d seen - silence. It was only me, the emptiness, and the beaming light.
Quickly as I’d awakened, I was plunged into another vision.
This time, an underwater landscape greeted me. It was calm, rich in all manner of life. Some big, some small, some hard and some soft. The only violence was necessary predation.
But what caught my mind’s eye were a group of oddly humanoid creatures with coiling limbs tightened into familiar shapes, darting around with spear-like weapons, some carrying skewered fish down to a sprawling structure in the seabed.
There was no time for peace or comfort. Once more the dream fell into oblivion and I was mere feet away from the blinding light.
It shone with colours that shouldn’t be, dancing across my vision, drawing me into its gravity.
One last time, I blacked out.
There was nothing to see. Only a soft and distant voice.
"Enter the source. The Zenith.”
A deep, rattling horn sounded from every conceivable direction, and then I was falling. Upon opening my clenched eyelids, I saw that place.
Words can never do it justice, but I’ll try my best.
Encircling me, arcs of black fog on a galactic scale fed down to something beneath.
I looked down, and the only thing I could think was every single star in the universe squeezed together into one immense mass of light and heat. It beamed with those same impossible colours, spinning around me in coronas the size of Saturn’s rings.
Soon, the light was all I could see. A perfect anti-void. I couldn’t see, but I felt it. My body felt like it was expanding, stretching, tearing, mending… changing.
And then, finally, it was dark again. Cold.
I looked around. Darkness punctuated by a single rose light, glinting off a curved metal object I recognised.
As I approached, my arms came into view, lit up in violet hues. Well, they weren’t arms. Not really. Two long bundles of wiry tentacles pushed me forward, yet when I stopped to look at them they twisted and coiled into shapes I recognised.
Arms and hands.
Effortlessly, I soared through the brine to the submarine’s bow, stopping at its glass dome and staring in.
The very same scientists and crewmates who’d shoved me into the unknown milled around inside. One by one, they noticed me, freezing in a sort of horrified awe.
I think I smiled, but I don’t know what my face looks like now.
Before leaving, I circled the sub and found the porthole to my holding cell. Inside, a grey square sat skewed on a sterile table.
My new appendages slithered across the glass, smothering it in seconds, and pulling with tiny suction cups. With little effort on my part the window cracked and shattered, and I had to brace to avoid being sucked through jagged glass teeth.
Foot-thick reinforcements slammed down around the bulwark door while red lights strobed and ...
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