Subject 1A
Part 1: The DM With the Spiral
You’re halfway up a washed-out mountain road in northern Maine, the van’s suspension creaking with every dip. Beside you, your sound tech is scrolling through weather data. Behind you, two more crewmates argue over whether the old radar dome will even still be standing.
You were hired to film a documentary about Cold War surveillance architecture. Nothing paranormal. Just decaying towers, conspiracy leftovers, and maybe a few throwaway lines about MKUltra for flavor.
Shortly after you were hired, you received a DM on Instagram.
This person had no followers. And a stamped symbol that looked like a V intersecting a spiral as their profile image.
“It didn’t die when they shut it down. They just stopped looking.”
You didn’t respond.
And at the time, you didn’t think much of it.
You’ve learned not to pay attention to DMs like that.
Partly because you’ve seen enough conspiracy accounts to recognize the tone, but also because you’re not exactly above it yourself.
You run a faceless profile.
One of those quiet, locked-down accounts that posts about declassified programs, surveillance infrastructure, and you have actually gained a little following from it.
Still. There’s nothing public about it.
No real name. No location tags. No cross-linked accounts.
You don’t post from home, or phone for that matter.
You use a burner laptop, clean browser sessions, private routing.
So, when the message came in, you filed it where you file most things like that…
interesting, but irrelevant.
But now as you find yourself bouncing around in this old van you start thinking about it.
And now, here you are. Pine trees packed so tightly they seem to lean in over the gravel. The air is strangely still. Your equipment has been glitching since sunrise… batteries draining too fast, recorders picking up static where there should be silence.
The radar site finally comes into view.
What’s left of it, anyway.
The giant parabolic dish is rusted and cracked, its support structure half-eaten by time and wind. You step out of the van and feel a deep pressure in your ears, like the altitude just changed.
You turn to the crew. “We’ll set up here. Quick sweep. Just B-roll.”
Your cam op nods. “Should we get drone shots now or wait?”
Before you can answer, your EMF reader chirps in your bag… loud and high-pitched. Not a location-based spike. A surge.
You look concerned. “That’s not supposed to happen.”
Suddenly, your comms headset crackles to life. Completely unprompted.
A voice. Garbled. Distant. Female.
“Beacon… it opened the…”
Silence.
The air shifts cold. Your breath clouds.
You glance toward the treeline.
And you swear that just for a second you see something watching.
As if waiting…
***
Part 2: The Hatch in the Treeline
(You chose: Check the treeline.)
You nod to the others. “Start setting up around the dome. I’ll get some footage along the ridge.”
They don’t argue, just scatter with gear in hand. You love the cadence of this team. They work hard and take their jobs seriously.
You make your way toward the tree line. It’s silent in that unnatural way, like the sound’s been drained out. Come to think of it, you hear no insects, no animals, nothing. You had a job in Sweden once that gave you a similar experience, but at least they had mosquitos. You actually found yourself missing them in this moment. Blood suckers.
Then you see it.
A rusted access hatch, half-swallowed by moss and needles. You clear the edge with your boot. No markings, except one etched crudely into the metal:
A V intersecting a spiral.
The same symbol from the DM.
You call out over comms, “I found something. Some kind of sealed hatch. Not on the blueprints.”
The walkie crackles. One of your crewmates responds, tense:
“Up here’s weird too. There’s power in the dome. Console lit up on its own.”
“What? That’s impossible. On my way.”
You jog back.
Inside, one of the old terminals is glowing. You find your crew already there. Staring at a nearby screen with pulsing static.
You go to say something, but before you can get the words out a file starts playing automatically.
Video log. Grainy. Time-stamped 1987.
A man in fatigues stares at the camera. Panicked. Blood on his collar.
“If anyone finds this… the experiment failed. It escaped. We tried to shut it down. We tried to jam the airwaves. But it followed the signal. It feeds on it.”
He looks over his shoulder.
“It can mimic… voices, even people. Don’t trust what you hear out there.”
Then, just before the log ends, a sound in the background.
Low. Wet. Growling. Horrible screams unlike anything you’ve ever heard.
One of your crewmates swears. Another backs away from the screen muttering “this is a joke, right?”
You just stare.
The facility wasn’t decommissioned.
It was abandoned.
***
Part 3: NOT ALONE UNDER THE PINES
(You chose: Search the Dome)
The air is heavier now as you push open the rusted steel door.
No one argues. Just quiet nods as everyone grabs gear. After watching the distressing tape, no one wants to split up. It’s probably best you stick together at this point.
The inside of the dome is a shell of its former self: collapsed ceiling panels, broken terminals, cables like veins strung across the floor. It smells of mildew and rusted circuits. Old graffiti tags mix with fading stenciled warnings in red.
One tag, hastily scrawled in charcoal, catches your eye:
“NOT ALONE UNDER THE PINES.”
You don’t say it out loud. Just take a photo. Just in case.
Near the back, buried in a desk drawer, you find it: a small digital recorder covered in grime.
You power it on. You can’t even believe it still works. The battery icon blinks red. One file.
You press play.
A woman’s voice. Controlled but shaky fills the silence.
“Log 42. The subject’s energy field has grown erratic. Camouflage reflex is now near-perfect. We’ve lost two outside the perimeter. I’ve advised suspension, but Dr. Langley insists it’s still contained.”
A pause.
“If this is ever recovered. Terminate the project. It was never meant to adapt. We made a mistake.”
The recorder clicks off.
Rae exhales slowly. “They created it. Created what exactly?”
Del nods. “Well, whatever they created they clearly lost control of.”
You say it out loud, the thing that’s been circling in your mind since arrival:
“This place wasn’t shut down. It was evacuated.” At lease you hope they got out.
Rae confused, “Wait, we don’t even know if anyone got out!”
Jonas almost whispering, “If no one got out, where are they? Where are the bodies?”
The room goes silent. You can feel the weight of everyone’s thoughts in the room.
And just then a soft, deliberate sound emerges behind the dome.
Something… listening.
***
Part 4: Subject 1A
(You chose: Circle around the dome, stay together.)
You gesture silently toward the back exit. Everyone follows.
The wind picks up just slightly as you round the edge of the dome. The air here is cooler. Denser. Pines creak overhead, and the tree line seems to hold its breath.
You step carefully through the debris… twisted fencing, scattered tools, and collapsed equipment crates long forgotten. Del swings the camera slowly across the tree line, keeping the lens steady. Rae’s eyes track movement - any movement. And Jonas, quiet as ever, grips the environmental/EMF device in one hand, just in case.
Behind the dome, you find what looks like a half-collapsed hatch camouflaged by brush and gravel. A faint heat shimmer pulses just above it. Not optical, but almost electromagnetic.
Jonas’ face drops. “Getting interference again. Like it’s pulsing.”
Rae crouches, brushing away debris from the rusted handle. It takes both of you to wrench it open. The interior is pitch black, but colder like something is pulling the heat down.
Del’s voice is barely a whisper. “You feel that?”
You nod. Something is off… like standing in a pressure drop before a storm.
Carved into the metal of the hatch door, you notice it - a subtle and almost invisible under the rust:
“Subject 1A - Breach Site”
No one says a word.
You scan the nearby trees. Just shadows.
And then the radio left behind in the van crackles to life in your earpiece.
Not static. Not the woman’s voice.
A man this time.
“It sees you.”
***
Part 5: Now It Hears Through You
(You chose: Return to the van and try to make contact with the voice)
You slam the door shut behind you, and the others pile in, breath ragged. Del powers up the radio equipment. Static floods the cabin.
You lean toward the mic and speak clearly:
“Who are you? We need to know what this is.”
A beat. Then…
Click.
The static cuts.
A man’s voice, weak and distorted, breaks through:
“This is Dr. Elijah Rourke. Former project lead on Subject 1A. If you’re hearing this, I don’t know how long I have.”
You glance at the others. Rae looks stunned. Jonas starts recording the audio.
“We were working on cloaking bioenergy manipulation. Cold War tech. The subject… volunteered. He didn’t stay human for long.”
“It adapted. Faster than we modeled. Could bend light, bend sound. Eventually… it learned to mimic electrical fields. Could trick our sensors. Killed half the camp before we realized it had learned the perimeter patterns.”
“We tried to send a signal, you know, some kind I of warning, but it always knew. It heard what we heard. It WAS the signal.”
“I’m the last. I got out… barely. I’ve been off-grid ever since. If you’re there… you need to leave. Burn everything.”
The radio crackles again, then silence. And then…
Another voice.
Not Rourke.
Something else.
“Too late.”
The van jolts. The lights flicker.
Outside movement. Rapid. Impossible. A shape skimming just beneath the treeline.
You don’t wait. “Go!! NOW!”
Del slams the van into gear and you tear down the gravel road, fishtailing around corners as trees blur past. Something slams against the back door once… twice…and then nothing.
Eventually… only silence.
/:: Three Months Later ::/
You’re filming a new documentary at an abandoned broadcast relay in Utah.
The team agreed no more chasing signals. You’re focusing on derelict communications architecture now. Historical. Harmless.
But something’s been… off.
The sound tech quietly tells you your gear is giving off trace EMF spikes. Your body camera battery drains twice as fast when you’re near the transmitter towers.
Last night, in the motel, your comms headset crackled while you were sleeping.
A voice whispered:
“It heard you.”
You didn’t tell anyone.
But tonight, as the crew sets up the first shot, your monitor briefly glitches.
For a moment. Just a flicker, your own image… distorts.
Just like it did back in the pines.
You step back from the screen.
Your headset buzzes, faint and clear:
“Now it hears through you.”
End of Story 4.
