Do you ever wonder exactly what it is that goes on in the dark corners and hidden cracks of our world, what it is that lies behind the curtain? We have a strange disposition not to try and peek behind the veil don't we? Somehow we've been convinced that there's nothing going on behind the scenes and we scoff at the imbercils who even suggest that there is a curtain. I suppose that's what they mean when they say 'the devil's greatest trick was convincing the world he does not exist'. Apholith is an arm of the government, one that most certainly does not exist.
I suppose I don't exist either, scrubbed from the records. I died in 2007, not that anyone noticed. My parents, my friends, loves, all gone by then. I was commemorated by a diminutive obituary squeezed between an advert for tomato soup and a ninety seven year old man with fifteen grand kids. I was mourned only by a civil celebrant at a funeral no one attended, and my coffin was quietly lowered into the dirt at the foot of a rock that read only 'Malcolm Delaway, 1978 - 2007.
Apholith specialises in human experimentation and weaponization, the brutal deconstruction and reassembly of unwilling human participants into monsters. They are far from the only shadow organisation acting under the government, though you'd find very little evidence to prove the connection. They are however, the one I joined on a rainy evening in 2007 while halfway across the state no one cared that I had died. Eleven years later and I still don't exist, and before long I'll most likely be dead again, permanently this time. It's been four months since I left Apholith, managed to escape after they decided I was no longer needed and tried to have me killed.
There are numerous projects being carried out all across the world under their label, shit that would make you pale and dizzy if you really knew what was out there. I was employed for protection, not research. I'm no scientist, but Apholith took an interest in me for the 'top secret' covert ops I had run in my military career. I made sure none of the grotesqueries we developed got out, and you know what? Sometimes we fucked up. There's stuff that got out and through a series of circumstances we never managed to recapture or put them down. Now I'm just like those that escaped. Hiding out, the company that made us breathing down our backs, you may have walked right past us and you'd never have any idea. We're out here all by ourselves. Just me and the monsters.
I've seen first hand a test of project: Hooper. Hooper had been a comatose patient following a critical stroke. He was taken for testing purposes, his family informed that he had died. They grieved over his loss while Apholith stripped away his skin to mimic project: Vincent. Vincent was a test of what they referred to as 'full corporeal astral projection', that went out of control and had to be shut away in a hidden bunker. Hooper is now a mindless weapon, Apholith deploy it with an area and a radius and it kills until there is nothing left to kill. I was part of the 'clean-up crew' that were sent in to ensure there were no survivors once Hooper had finished being tested. I've done some terrible things. The things I saw at the test sites I've tried my best to repress, but shredded corpses and the stench of fresh blood is something you never forget.
I've been to a place known as 'the city' to Apholith and Hereco (another shadow organisation, specialising in understanding and opening gates to other dimensions). It was only a handful of times when Hereco required our help, but I'll never shake the eerie feeling of that place. It's clearly man made, closely resembling the skyscrapers and latticed streets of New York, but it's absolutely deserted, save for the so-called 'lost souls'. The buildings disappear at their highest heights into a black fog, and the streets between them have canals instead of roads. The water that fills them is red as blood, and occasionally you might see a body (or body part) floating by. I watched a man touch the surface and simply be sucked into the depths.
I was there when project: Homogeny broke free of its constraints and terrorised a town way out in the mountains for four days straight. Homogeny is one of the only projects not named for the individual it's built from, as Homogeny was not an individual but a group of individuals bound into one grotesque mass. I can't quite describe it, they had taken their subjects and stripped away the flesh and muscle until they had only the building blocks that made up bodies. Tissues, muscles, organs, grey matter, skin, separated out, and then put back together into an enormous frankenstein's monstrosity. It's arms and legs had so many joints across them they were more resemblant of tentacles than limbs, and it had no head, just tens of eyes set into its pudgy, unshaped torso.
I'll level with you, I'm pretty wasted right now. It's the first time I have been in a very, very long time. I'm gulping at some awful gas station wine because my partner and only friend died this morning. I was forced to kill him, three shots in the chest. His name was Tyler Rycliff and no one will ever know he existed. He was a defector himself, having left one month ago to help me, saved my life doing so. Tyler had been a member of a small group under my command at one point, young, but the only person I could rely on anymore. Now he's gone just like everything else, everything fucking else even remotely good in my life, and if he hadn't been helping me he'd probably still be alive.
So now I'm just a guy with no one, no employer, an enemy of my country, hunted my monsters and men each and every one designed to be even better than the last at finding and killing me. Some guy on the Internet most likely screaming my feelings into a void, a story that will be drowned in everything else because, well what the fuck else can I do anymore? If they're so afraid I'm going to spill all their secrets then I suppose I may as well spill them, what the hell, right?
I'm presently in an abandoned building, floors flooded from the rain below a rotted, dilapidated ceiling. It's always the same smell with places like this, damp mildew and piss swirling into a stomach churning cocktail that brings tears to your eyes. The rumble of car engines whizzing past across the adjacent road fills the air, loud enough to keep most people from falling asleep, but the without them there I can't sleep anymore.
This place looks like it may once have been a residence, small and forgotten. Exactly the kind of hole we move from and to each day. Littered around me, the usual array of pringles cans, chip packets, pre-cooked party food, and water bottles, my backpack is hanging open at me displaying an assault rifle, stock folded to fit. I'm so sick and tired of this routine, driving any vehicle we can get our hands on to the next hole in the ground where we can hide out. Sometimes we'll stop off and stuff some convenience store garbage into our bags, if we're lucky grabbing some cash while the clerk is busy.
Across from me there's some meth head off his face on some low quality crap, probably cut with rat shit and weedkiller. I think I envy him, he's got enough time to be addicted to something, lying there, a crumpled mess in the corner without a care in the world, or whatever world he thinks he's in anymore. I'd give anything to go back to to a needle hanging out of my vein and pockmarks up and down my arms without anything that mattered to me, before any of it with Apholith ever happened. He probably won't even notice tomorrow morning when the 'weird purple canister' I've set up on the floor starts wildly beeping and flashing. It's like a small garbage can with a metal mushroom cap on top, and makes a low whirring at all times. I'm not sure how it really works, as I said I'm no scientist, but it detects the psychic waves Apholith uses to keep track of their projects once they've been let out on the field. It's how I know when they're near, my morning cue to get up more often than not.
It'll be the Halseys most likely. Knocking at the door with that slow and steady impending beat. I'll have to be more careful now, without Tyler. We'd gotten our routine perfect, how to deal with the Halseys when they arrived. First I'd go to the door while Tyler went around the back. The good thing with Halseys is that they're not very intelligent, sure they can pass for human and they're damn good trackers but that's about all they've got going on upstairs, so it's pretty easy to guide them into a trap, even one we've pulled before. I open the door to their wide grinning faces with tinted glasses mounted above. I stall them with the crackhead routine I've carefully developed by observing the guests we share accommodation with. It's all about rubbing and scratching at myself, licking my gums and avoiding eye contact like I'm craving a fix or rendered autistic from withdrawal, all the while babbling on tangents around their questions. They'll ask whether I've seen two people with a description of how we looked last they saw us. They'll have figured out it's me they're talking to, but they love playing with their prey, so they'll fall for my stalling.
If Tyler's slow they'll get tired of the charade, push their way in and take off those sunglasses to reveal their eyes. The black interdimensional pits that lie in their pupils will spread like oily tentacles across their visage until they're encased in the evershifting black shadow that protects them, forming sharpened talons on their hands to eviscerate me with the ease of an Eagle snatching a mouse.
Project: Halsey was a collaboration between Apholith and Hereco to combine their developments, interdimensional and human altering. I don't know all the details but they put something into her eyes, an opening to a dimension composed of this stuff, the weird tar. From what I've gathered in passing conversation it's something like light, half a wave half a particle, some combination of matter and energy. It moves like nothing I've ever seen, as though it were alive projecting arteries of the substance that spread out and around the bodies of Halseys. It becomes an armor, almost entirely bulletproof save for a massive stopping power at point blank. From the overwhelming success that was Project: Halsey Apholith replicated their work to create a new breed of foot soldier. On top of this armored skin they have heightened senses, strength, reflexes and so on, the regular Apholith upgrades. And of course sporting a brain tinkered until they can barely think for themselves, only take orders and track. Can't have a product going rogue. They've become so ubiquitous as Apholith's front line weapon because of their relative cheapness, meaning they cost only millions and not billions. Halsey is the nickname that got thrown around rather than remembering each projects title.
And in just the moment before they leap on me Tyler would make an entrance yelling me to get clear before spraying down the room with flame. We managed to cobble together a form of flamethrower with some metal tanks and makeshift hydraulics. That's the major weakness of the Halseys, the coating is diamond solid but goes up in flame like a Styrofoam factory. We'd rapidly pack and sprint out the back door with our heads down and make our way out to our stashed car about a mile away or so, we managed to keep hold of this banged up pickup truck for a while. I'd lay in the back with a rifle beneath a tarp and wait for them to come run us off the road or to hit a traffic stop looking for us. We'd only encountered a traffic stop once and managed to floor it past with a hail of suppression fire but it was fucking close I'll tell you that.
I don't even have the flamer anymore. I guess I'm back to snatching a handful of hours to sleep and moving out in the early hours. Hopefully I can siphon some petrol somewhere for petrol bombs, best I can get for now. Of course if it's not the Halseys and instead they send some other genetic bastardisation then I'll have to hope I can improvise my way out of it.
I should sleep, I'm only going to get three hours anyway. If there's anyone at all out there who wants to know more about what I've seen in my years, then now is the time to ask. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to answer.