Entry Log One: Encryption Key Required. Foxtrot-Sierra one-zero-seven-seven-two-seven-six. Please input encryption key now.

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I’m sorry, the encryption key you entered is incorrect. Please input encryption key now, or all data on this recording will be erased.

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Encryption key accepted. Beginning playback of recorded holotape message:

This is Catja Stelzner, junior reporter for the Charleston Herald. Or, at least, I was. And if I’m discovered with any of the information I’m about to send you, I don’t think anyone will ever see me again. I think I’m already dead, in fact, and unless you’re fast enough to report this, you probably are too. They’ll bury anyone with this information so deep, they’ll even bury the backhoe just to make sure there’s no evidence.

Okay, details, details… The whole reason this thing started was an announcement from the lead editors to search for information about any business or company that seemed shady enough to do business under the table, weed out corruption. Maybe find financial records in the government archives that didn’t quite match the type of work they performed. Simple enough, right?

I spent five months in the basement of the capitol building, sifting through paper record after paper record, electronic entry after electronic entry, trying to do research on one company in particular:

West-Tek.

I know, I know, you’re probably thinking: what the hell is a junior reporter doing, performing research on the nation’s largest defense contractor? If I even mentioned what I was doing, everyone would call me a communist sympathizer, I’d lose my job, and I’d never find work in Columbia again. I used every excuse at work to continue my research. But West-Tek could do no wrong. All the numbers matched up. All the signatures signed. All the ‘I’s dotted and the ‘T’s crossed.

But this was personal to me. My husband, Deeter, died of the New Plague in 2068.

Supposedly.

I was away in Canada on a reporting job about the proposed annexation when I heard the news. They didn’t even let me see the body. There was no funeral. I couldn’t afford it. His parents lived in Germany, and mine in Sweden, and there was no use trying to get any of them on a plane with the government travel restrictions. I tried to send a message back there about his death, but I’m not sure they ever got it. Knowing what I know now, they probably intercepted any message with his name.

I exhausted every lead I could think to search in the archives. This meant I had two choices: move on to something considerably less dangerous, or follow the only real lead I had: Deeter.

I knew something was wrong from the very moment I called AVR Medical. When I said Deeter’s name, the nurse on the other line went silent. The doctor I spoke with skirted my questions and said Deeter had died of external hemorrhaging and suffocation. I demanded to see his medical records, demanded to know where his body had gone. But the only thing he could say was that it had been sent to a biomedical center for research into a cure for the Plague. They didn’t need to specify which “center” he’d been sent to, because I’d been there several times covering news reports of medical revolutions discovered there.

The West-Tek Research Facility, just north of Huntersville.

Two months ago, just before the sun went down, I got in my car and drove. I don’t know what I intended to do when I got to the facility, as there was no doubt the highest security imaginable: cameras, electronic turrets, guards, probably even dogs for all I knew. All I had was the ProSnap camera in my shoulder bag. I didn’t even bring my reporter’s badge because I knew if I were detained, the Herald would face serious consequences for my actions. The road to West-Tek through Huntersville was closed due to quarantine, so I drove around Whitesprings to get there.

I arrived just before the front office’s closing time. I would have preferred to face a firing line of Chinese soldiers than walk into this place, if only for the fact that the Chinese would end me swiftly. But the only thing driving me was my beloved Deeter. Whether he was alive or dead, I would find him.

There were guards outside the office, and they eyed me with suspicion. I was right about the dogs. But my camera was hidden in my bag, and I kept my head upright and continued walking. Confidence. That was the key. The automatic doors opened, and I strode right up to the reception desk, where I saw a young woman standing, filing papers.

“Welcome to West-Tek!” she said cheerfully. “How can I help you?”

I stammered, and said something stupid about performing inspections of the emergency sprinkler systems.

“May I check your bag? It’s just routine, to make sure you don’t bring in anything that could contaminate the labs!”

My heart sank, but I handed her my bag. She dug into it, no doubt saw my camera, and her eyes widened. I knew in that moment I was as good as dead. But then her expression returned to sugary and cheerful.

“Ah, Doctor Forsythe!” she said, returning my bag to me. “Doctor Landis will be so pleased to see you’ve come a day early. Here’s your electronic pass. Now, be sure to wear it everywhere you go in the building! Wouldn’t want any accidents to happen, now, would we?”

She then hustled me towards the door beside the desk.

“If you head straight down this hallway, take a left, then a right, you’ll find yourself in the hydroponics lab. From there, take a right and you’ll be exactly where you should be. Most of the staff have gone home for the day, so you shouldn’t have any interruptions at all.”

She didn’t seem perturbed that I said nothing in return. Her cheery disposition melted when she handed the pass to me. She turned back to her papers at the reception desk, filed them, grabbed her purse, and practically booked it out the front doors. I couldn’t believe it. She was just waiting for someone with a camera to come striding into the building. I never caught her name, and I don’t know what happened to her. I can only hope she escaped safely. If I see her again, I’m going to throw her a champagne party.

I followed the directions she’d given me, and what I saw amazed me; I’d never seen any of the crops they were growing inside that lab. The corn looked rotten, gourds of all sizes and colors grew in planters. And frankly, I didn’t want to know what the disgusting tomato-looking plants were.

I took a right from the lab, walked up a ramp, and stepped into a vast room that smelled of ammonia and sulfur. It was then I saw the tanks. The liquid inside the uncovered tanks glowed a sickly green color as if made of radiation. Making sure no one was around, I took several shots of the tanks and moved on. Most of the facility was a maze of machinery, and I didn’t quite know where to go next. I descended another ramp and stepped through an automatic door that led to a stairwell. Cautious for any sounds or movement, I found myself on the second floor in front of two large doors with a terminal beside it.

I know nothing about working with computers. Besides word processors, of course. But I knew how to turn a terminal on, so I did. It called for a password, and I thought I didn’t have one. But then I remembered the badge. On the back was a long string of letters and numbers. I knew that if this was wrong, the entire facility would go on alert and know exactly where I was. My fingers were trembling as I typed the keys, and I had to backspace a few times. But it worked. The doors opened.

What I saw then I’ve only imagined in my most horrible nightmares. Inside glowing green tanks floated giant abominations that looked human but misshapen, with green skin and muscles like a twisted professional bodybuilder. I took as many pictures as I could.

I snuck further into the labs (avoiding the tanks) and found myself in a hallway lined with experiment rooms complete with what I assumed were one-way windows. Inside most of them were dead monstrosities. I couldn’t tell if they were actively rotting or if they simply looked that way. The terminal beside the door gave me a name: Sheila Dauber from Huntersville. I crossed the hallway and looked at another terminal: Thomas McDevitt from Huntersville. There was practically no difference between female and male, if they were indeed the test subjects.

I knew the New Plague had struck that town pretty hard, and that West-Tek and the feds had been sent to give aid. I never could have imagined what West-Tek was actually doing to them.

I looked through one of the rooms and saw a holotape sitting on the table. I grabbed it. The audio on that tape is, well… It’s graphic. I can’t imagine anyone willingly performing tests like these on other human beings, other Americans. It’s included for you to review. I’d say destroy it after you’ve dictated it, but you might need some kind of proof besides a sheet of paper. I can’t advise you either way.

I continued further, hearing nothing but the sound of electronics and bubbling tanks. That is, until I happened upon a larger experimentation room. I peered through the glass and saw something incomprehensibly terrible. A formless blob, limbs coming out in all directions, no head that I could see. It rolled around on the floor aimlessly, and I could hear its rasping breath over the room’s intercom.

I took a picture, but I think it saw the flash through the one-way window. If it even had eyes to see. It made gurgling sounds as if its mouth were pressed flat upon the ground, and it rolled over until a disturbing orifice appeared.

I then heard a sound I’ll never forget for the rest of my life, an echo that I will take to my grave.

The thing said my name.

And it had Deeter’s voice. 

Although the experimentation room had a terminal beside the door, I didn’t dare turn it on to read the name. A choice that will forever haunt me.

I regret that my investigation ended there. I panicked, retracing my steps as I began to hyperventilate. I saw one staff member in hydroponics working late, and I’m pretty sure he got a look at me as I strode past him. He didn’t say anything, though, and I managed to maintain my nerves long enough to give the guards my “Doctor Forsythe” pass and walk to my car.

I didn’t know where to go after that. I couldn’t return home; they had my face on camera. I couldn’t go to the Herald with my camera and that holotape; they were too close to the government, too close to West-Tek. And who’s going to believe a junior reporter with fuzzy images and a doctored holotape? 

Look, I know the group you belong to. It doesn’t matter to me. I can only hope that you’ll believe me and spread the word about West-Tek’s evil. Those tanks of green glowing liquid created those creatures and turned my husband into something utterly inhuman. Huntersville is being harvested to create these monsters. And who knows what else they have in store for us? For all we know, they might have even created the New Plague in the first place as an excuse to kidnap people and experiment on them.

Please tell America about West-Tek. Don’t let the world forget about Deeter Stelzner. I can’t tell you my location, but I will try to contact you again soon. There are others like me in hiding with more evidence of West-Tek’s horrors. But I’m sure you know that already.

This is real. It’s happening now. And America is too blinded by war and patriotism to see it.