The Society Below; Classified: Academic-Military — DO NOT FILE

Chapter 1: The Root of Silence

Dane’s breath fogged the frigid air, each exhale a warning siren in the night. His boots skidded over loose gravel as he and Mercer tore through skeletal woods. Behind them, the Society’s hunters thundered like vengeful ghosts wielding unseen hammers. The trees devoured the echo of their flight, but not the terror.

“You sure it’s here?” Mercer hissed, chest heaving.

Dane didn’t answer. He felt it—an electric wrongness ahead, the place Dorian had whispered of before they left him bleeding in the chapel’s shadow. Ahead, the earth sagged like a fresh grave.

They burst through brambles and halted.

A concrete hatch lay crooked, half-swallowed by rotting leaves, like a forgotten tombstone.

Dane crouched, fingers brushing the rusted metal. “This is it.”

Mercer knelt, face pale. “Hell reeks worse than this.”

With a screech of corroded steel, the hatch gave way. A wave of rancid rot and ozone swept out, a stench of decay and charged electricity that clawed at their lungs. Mercer retched. Dane only tightened his grip on the gun.

The flashlight beam sliced the black, revealing stone stairs vanishing into an abyss. Water dripped in steady, mocking cadence. Beneath their feet, the floor thrummed with a metallic heartbeat.

“You first,” Mercer muttered.

“Try to keep up.”

They descended. The stairwell spat them into a narrow corridor ringed with exposed pipes weeping dark fluid. A sickly green glow pulsed along the ceiling—emergency lights that should have died years ago.

A rasp crawled behind the walls.

Then movement—wet claws scraping metal.

Mercer spun, torch sweeping the gloom. “Hear that?”

Dane’s jaw clenched. “We’re not alone.”

They pressed on, passing shattered glass tanks—some empty, others brimming with cloudy fluid. Within floated grotesque shapes: spindly limbs, bulging eyes, jaws unhinged in silent agony.

One tank held a face pressed to the glass. Pale. Lifeless. Until it blinked.

Mercer stumbled back, cursing. “Jesus.”

“Genetics. Weaponization. Things even the Society feared.”

A bestial roar split the corridor, layered, inhuman.

They ran.

The passage opened into a lab. Overhead fluorescents flickered to life as they entered, sensors jolting systems awake. The door slammed behind them with a thunderous clang. Dane spun, gun raised.

Nothing. Not yet.

“Lock it down!” he barked.

Mercer shoved a filing cabinet against the door as monitors sputtered on. One displayed vat schematics, DNA helices looping like nooses. Another showed live feeds: in one, a creature crawled inverted on the ceiling—ribs like jagged wires, eyes gleaming in the gloom.

“We download everything,” Dane said.

Mercer ripped open a panel, jamming in his portable drive. “Sixty seconds.”

Shrieks erupted down the hallway, shadows flickering across the screens.

“Make it thirty,” Dane snarled.

Metal groaned as claws gouged at the door.

“I GOT IT!” Mercer hissed, sealing the drive.

The monitors spark-showered and died. Darkness swallowed the lab, and thunder thundered on the other side of the door.

A taloned hand burst through, black claws slick with filth, tearing at steel.

Dane fired. The creature’s scream was pure agony.

Lights flickered, alarms stuttered out. The door bent under relentless assault.

“They’re in!” Mercer whispered.

They bolted back into the corridor, now a suffocating tunnel of strobing green light. Every shadow seemed to twitch and hunt. A beast lunged from a side alcove—limbs folding wrong, mouth foaming with luminous green ichor.

Mercer hurled himself into Dane’s path. The creature slammed into them, claws shredding air. Dane raised the gun and fired twice into its skull. The body convulsed, then slumped, twitching.

“Go!” Dane roared.

The exit ladder loomed. They scrambled up, boots slipping on rusted rungs. At the top, Dane ripped the hatch open; the cold night air struck them like a blow.

Mercer launched the drive-up, then scrambled after it. Dane followed last, just as a claw shot from below and scraped his boot.

He kicked it away and slammed the hatch shut.

Silence.

They lay on the frozen grass, hearts hammering, eyes fixed on the indifferent stars.

“That wasn’t a lab,” Mercer whispered, voice shaking.

“No,” Dane breathed. “That was a feeding ground.”

In Mercer’s hand, the drive pulsed faintly, like a dark heartbeat echoing from the earth beneath them.

Chapter Two: Chaos

The silence shattered like glass. From the dense treeline emerged the crunch of boots—precise, deliberate. Red laser sights flickered into the darkness—half a dozen, cutting through the night. Dane's arm lashed out, forcing Mercer violently against the frozen earth.

"Don't move," he hissed, barely audible.

Figures stormed forward, clad in tactical gear, their matte black helmets casting ominous shadows, devoid of insignia. Weapons raised, poised to strike.

"They tracked us," Mercer spat through clenched teeth.

"Or never abandoned their post."

A blinding spotlight pinned them mercilessly. "Hands where we can see them!" a voice commanded, sharp and authoritative, a woman's voice, unyielding and unperturbed by their presence.

Dane slowly raised his hands, defiance simmering beneath the surface. "We're not your enemy."

"You breached protocol. Trespassed on a restricted site."

"Your site was a massacre."

The leader advanced, lowering her rifle ever so slightly, her eyes locking onto the drive in Dane's grip. "That doesn’t leave here."

Dane tightened his hold defiantly. "Over my dead body."

The soldiers tensed as a deep rumble resonated beneath their feet, reverberating through the ground.

Everyone froze, paralyzed.

Then, it struck the hatch with ferocious force from below.

Concrete splintered, cracks branching like lightning.

The leader cursed. "Retreat! RETREAT!"

Dane and Mercer didn’t hesitate. They bolted toward the woods, the night erupting with gunfire as the hatch burst open and an ear-splitting shriek ripped through the air.

Monstrous creatures erupted from the gaping maw.

Pandemonium.

Terrified screams.

Dane didn't dare glance back. He just ran, heart pounding mercilessly in his chest.

Behind him, the drive pulsed ominously in his pocket.

And beneath their feet, the earth awakened with a

vengeance

Chapter Three: The Drive

The trees didn’t part—they reached with skeletal fingers. Branches snapped against Dane’s face, carving fresh bruises as he and Mercer tore through the ink-dark woods, hearts pounding like war drums, lungs burning to ash.

Behind them, chaos roared.

Bullets shrieked. Inhuman screams shredded the air. Concrete shattered, and the wind trembled with something twisted—unnatural. Dane stared straight ahead; no need to look back. The drive in his pocket throbbed like a wounded heart, crying out.

Mercer’s leg gave way.

Dane yanked him upright by the collar. “You hit?”

“Thigh,” Mercer hissed through clenched teeth. “Straight through—they nicked bone.”

Dane’s fingers came away slick with hot blood.

“No time. Two clicks east—old recon site. Off-grid. Maybe supplies.”

Mercer draped an arm over Dane’s shoulder. “Lead on, soldier.”

They stumbled through underbrush, every step flirting with death. The distant gunfire faded into a low, guttural howl—a predator born from nightmares.

Ten minutes later, a rotting shed emerged, vines strangling its rotten timbers. Mercer kicked a panel; it splintered, revealing a grime-coated keypad. He hammered in the code.

The earth groaned; a steel hatch slid open. A ladder yawned into pitch black below.

“After you,” Dane growled, ducking in.

Inside, stale dust and acrid mildew smothered them. Dim yellow lights flickered like dying eyes, casting the bunker in jittery shadows. The air was heavy but safe, for now.

Dane half-dragged Mercer to a rusted cot.

“Med kit?” Mercer croaked.

Dane produced gauze, antiseptic, and an electric cautery. “Brace yourself.”

Mercer’s nod was a white-knuckled grimace.

The wound gaped—a clean entry, ragged exit. Dane dabbed antiseptic; Mercer’s scream cracked the silence. The cautery hissed as it seared flesh. Halfway through, Mercer went limp, slipping into darkness.

Dane wiped blood from his hands, chest tightening with every beat. He fished the drive from his pocket and shoved it into a battered terminal. The machine whined awake, fans spinning, lights strobing.

Data spilled across the screen: lab schematics, subject logs drenched in suffering, covert shipment routes—every file branded with the Society’s black sigil.

Dane leaned closer—and froze.

One video feed still flickered: the shattered hatch they’d escaped, gaping like a wound. Something slithered out.

Not a tank beast. This was once human.

Pale skin stretched over too-sharp bones. Eyes empty and ravenous. It turned its head with grotesque calm and grinned—a smile devoid of warmth.

Dane’s stomach lurched. He slammed the terminal shut.

Mercer groaned behind him, eyes fluttering open. “We…make it?”

“By a thread.”

“You see what’s next?”

Dane’s throat tightened. “They’ll hunt us until we’re dust.”

Mercer hauled himself upright, jaw locked and face ashen. “Then we bury them in our wake.”

Above, wind tore through dead branches like a banshee’s cry.

Below, the ground pulsed—alive with secrets drenched in blood.

Chapter 4: Revelations

The bunker’s stale air pressed in as Mercer's chest rose and fell in slow, ragged gasps. Crimson pooled beneath him, its dark sheen laughing at the promise of life. Dane prowled in tight, nervous loops, eyes darting between the flickering terminal and the riveted hatch overhead.

“They’ll come,” Mercer rasped, throat dry as bone. His voice wavered on the edge of collapse—and clarity.

Dane’s jaw clenched. “Exactly why we leave now. Just needed you upright enough to run.”

Mercer pushed himself up on one elbow, every muscle screaming. “What the hell is this about, really?”

Dane halted, fingers digging into his hair as if twisting out a confession. He slid into the empty chair across from Mercer, eyes wild. “Ten years ago, I was green—fresh out of training, slotted into logistics under some military-academic gig. A so-called university project.” He laughed bitterly. “Total bullshit. They weren’t making cures. They were engineering monsters.”

Mercer’s glare could have burned steel. “You knew?”

“At first, I thought it was sealed biotech—vaccines, gene therapy. Then shipments vanished. Interns, lab techs—they evaporated overnight. And one night…” Dane’s lips curled. “I saw Professor Vasquez’s corpse. Ripped open like a rodent. Her ID badge still clipped to her collar, sloshing in her blood.”

Mercer’s stomach turned. “What did you do?”

Dane’s eyes were cold fire. “I watched. Took notes. Stole files whenever I could. Then they figured me out—locked me out. When my contract expired, they left me a bullet in the shoulder and a promise of silence.”

He leaned forward, voice a growl. “But I kept the data. And I found help.”

“Weller,” Mercer breathed.

Dane nodded. “My old unit. Now a journalist with a death wish. He’s been tracing the carcasses we uncovered, stitching the truth together. The files we grabbed? They’re the masterpiece—proof of what they’ve unleashed.”

Silence crushed them until Mercer whispered, “Why keep me in the dark?”

“Because once you know the full nightmare, you’re target practice.” Dane’s stare pierced him. “They kill anyone who can connect the dots. Or worse—turn them.”

Outside, wind rattled the hatch. A low thrum vibrated through the steel walls.

“They’re digging,” Dane said, voice taut.

Mercer’s fists clenched. “Then we move. Now.”

Dane rose, urgency humming through him. “Weller’s twelve miles east, up the ridge. There’s an old comms shack—one shot to broadcast everything.”

Mercer’s eyes flicked to the hatch. “And if they cut us off?”

Dane’s grin was edged with madness. “Then we make certain the world hears our screams.”

He extended a blood-slick hand. Mercer shook it hard, the pact sealed in desperation.

“Let’s finish what we started.”

Chapter 5: Broadcast and Blood

The comms shack crouched against the mountainside like a wounded beast half-swallowed by drifts and pines. Its corrugated steel walls—rusted, unbowed—quivered with a pale, jittering light behind narrow slits. Dane rapped twice on the door, each thud a coded warning only Weller would recognize.

The door screeched open. Inside, a lean silhouette braced an assault rifle on his shoulder, frost clinging to his beard in shards. Weller’s ice-blue eyes snapped to Mercer’s blood-soaked leg and the data drive clenched in Dane’s fist—and widened.

“You look like hell,” he growled. “Get in.”

The door slammed. Low voices and the electric hiss of aging tech filled the cramped space. Five operatives moved in a blur—calibrating cameras, decrypting files, fine-tuning frequencies. Outside, a massive satellite dish groaned to life, tilting skyward.

Mercer collapsed onto a bench, sweat and blood melding on his jeans. Dane pressed the drive into Weller’s waiting hand.

Without a word, Weller slid it into a port. Folders bloomed across the monitor—blueprints of secret labs, genetic splice logs, toxic payload schematics. Live feeds flickered: cages, mutants thrashing in tanks.

A tech whispered, voice shaking, “This is…monstrous.”

Weller’s expression hardened. He faced a tripod-mounted camera, its red tally light pulsing like a heartbeat. “Time to burn their empire down.”

He hit “Broadcast.” Static shot through satellite relays, web servers, emergency forums. Grainy, horrific footage filled a split screen: razor claws shredding steel, twitching test subjects.

Weller narrated, voice cold and precise: “Human experimentation. Genetic splicing. Biological weapons forged in darkness. The Society has thrived on hidden atrocities…”

“Until now.”

A thunderous crash rattled the walls. Dane yanked his rifle free. “Contact!”

Snow pelted the window. Mercer lurched forward. “Black vans…snowmobiles…they’re here!”

Weller’s gaze stayed locked on the camera. “Ninety seconds. Hold them.”

Gunfire ripped through the door. Faceless Society troops surged in like shadows. One of Weller’s men went down with a cry. Dane shoved a filing cabinet into the breach. Sparks from a crashing drone showered glass over the transmitter as Mercer blasted it out of the air.

“Ten seconds!” Weller barked.

Bullets tore into the wall. A second body hit the floor. Weller’s voice cut through the chaos: “Five—”

Dane hauled Mercer toward a steel trapdoor. “Move!”

“But—”

“Go!” Dane roared.

“Two…one—SEND!” Weller slammed the final key.

The screen flashed green. “Transmission complete.

It’s going viral, everyone is picking it up.”

Silence—then the generator erupted in a fiery roar. The roof splintered. The front door blew off its hinges.

“They’re in!” Dane shouted, yanking open the hatch.

Three snarling snowmobiles waited in the starlit drift. Weller vaulted onto one, blood glistening on his cheek. “Split up. Three northeast, two northwest—my team goes west.”

Mercer staggered beside him, pain etched across his face. “We’re riding straight into hell.”

Weller revved the engine. “Good. They’ll know hell by sunrise.”

Engines screamed as they vanished into the frozen night. Behind them, the shack blossomed in a bloody inferno, painting the mountain with fire and retribution.

Chapter 6: Burn It Down

Snowflakes whirled in the headlights like smoldering embers as the snowmobile skidded to a jarring halt before the shattered chapel. Dane killed the engine. Silence slammed into them, thick and oppressive.

Mercer limped off behind him, rifle hanging low, his pale face alight with determination. Weller swung down last, hauling a satchel of thermite charges from the sled.

“The hatch?” Weller rasped.

“Exactly where we left hell,” Dane snapped, already striding toward the churned earth. “And whatever lives beneath.”

The steel hatch lay rent, steaming in the cold night, clawed edges scored like a savage warning. Nearby, one of the Society’s black vans lay flipped on its side—windows shattered, corpses frozen mid-fall, frozen expressions of terror. No rotting things crawled above ground now. They’d retreated, biding their time.

“They’re down there,” Mercer whispered, voice tight. “Lying in wait.”

“We’ll give them a wake-up call,” Weller growled, prying the hatch open to blackness.

One by one, they dropped into the void.

The shaft swallowed them whole, cold steel groaning like a throat learning to scream, walls slick with ice and old rust. Emergency lights flickered weakly, shadows pulsing like dying hearts. The air tasted sour, like metal and fear. The corridors groaned beneath their boots, as if the entire structure screamed its own death rattle.

Dane led, every step a blistering promise of destruction. Weller planted the first thermite charge beside row upon row of tanks. Inside, bioluminescent creatures writhed, twisted limbs drifting in viscous fluid, half-conscious nightmares blinking in green glow.

“They’re breeding,” Weller murmured, bile rising in his throat. “Spawning.”

“Not for long,” Mercer replied, sliding a charge beneath the server racks. Sparks flickered over shattered screens, looping static images of abominations too hideous to recall.

They advanced into the main chamber, hearts pounding like war drums. There, at the far end, stood the creature from the feed—its gaunt form framed by flickering fluorescents, its skin stretched so tight over a human-like skull it looked poised to snap. Black eyes fixed on them, unblinking.

It didn’t twitch. Didn’t inhale. It simply watched with merciless patience.

“Is that—” Mercer began.

“Don’t know. Don’t care.” Dane’s low growl cut him off. “We burn it all.”

They retreated, laying the final charge against the central mainframe. Weller’s finger found the trigger.

Electric arcs sparked, igniting thermite like writhing serpents of fire. The air exploded with heat.

They raced back through the corridor as orange flames roared to life, hurling echoes that shook the tunnels. Metal shrieked. The ceiling collapsed in pulses of debris and ash.

They erupted onto the snow-covered slope just as the hillside itself convulsed in a fiery roar. A towering plume of flame shot skyward, devouring the night. The lab sank beneath a cascade of molten wreckage and smoke.

Dane hit the snow, chest heaving, coughs wracked through frosty air. Mercer collapsed beside him, eyes shining with adrenaline. Weller lay on his side, breathing fast, staring into the furnace they’d unleashed.

“That's it?” Mercer gasped.

Dane spat a clod of ice from his mouth. “No.”

Weller lifted his head, snowflakes melting on his sweat-streaked face. “Now we make sure everyone knows. Loud. Permanent.”

Their breaths hung in the freezing air like white flags of victory and warning. The world had shifted on its axis, and they’d shattered any chance of turning back.

Some secrets die in silence. Others explode into history.