Date: January 14th, 2024, 02:36
Location: Black Creek Park, Earth-1
POV: Y/N Stark,
"Someone's here — I can feel them,"
My body freezes. It takes a couple of seconds to come back to my senses. Immediately I frantically look around me. The entire cabin was empty, right? We cleared everything, well except the bed in the bedroom, it looked like it was moved, but I hadn't taken the time yet to examine it further. I force myself to let go of Wanda's hand and start to move towards the bedroom. I grab my falchion from my belt and ready it.
"What do you mean with you can still feel someone? Could it be Edon?" I twist my head to look at Wanda again. Her breaths are quick and shallow, her eyes glowing red, "I — I don't know. I can feel them, but not completely, it's faint, they have to be close. I don't think it's Edon though."
I take a look at Edon again and walk up to his body. With the non-sharp edge of my sword, I poke his body. No reaction. I release a breath that I didn't realize I was holding. "Seriously Y/N... Did you really think he was just gonna get up?"
"Hey, leave me be. We have both watched too many horror movies to not get at least the thought of him waking up as a zombie."
I turn around to the bedroom again and walk inside. The bed still stands in the middle of the room. Ever since we walked in, the cabin looked like it has been lived in for quite some time, from the living room couch to the kitchen sink, it was used. However this bed, and to be frank most of the bedroom, just looks out of place. Like it has never been used before.
I walk up to the bed again, but before I can investigate it I hear a buzzing sound coming from Wanda's pocket. I turn around, Wanda's eyes now returned to their natural green color. She grabs her phone, "It's a message from Bucky. RIVA analyzed the picture of the cabin."
"Call him, ask for backup. This entire situation is messed up," I grab my phone as well, we have service again? How is it possible that we have service here, we're even deeper into the woods than back at the car. "Edon must have had a really good cell phone repeater around here, for people to be able to reach us. I didn't notice any type of antenna near here tho" I say as I put away my phone again.
"Baby, I have absolutely no clue what that is supposed to mean, you should know that by now"
I see Wanda typing in something on her phone. She puts the call on speaker and lays her phone on the table. Luckily, after just a few rings Bucky picks up, "Thank god, Bucket, listen, we're in a cabin in the Black Creek Reserve. We found Edon, he's dead. Someone else — "
"Hold on Y/N, calm down — Edon's dead?", Bucky interrupts. I take a look at Edon's body on the floor again. His body bloodied, eyes empty. I rub my hand through my hair, "Yeah, Edon's gone. It's really bad Buck, he was tortured"
"Also Bucky, someone is still here, I can feel them. We searched the entire cabin but we can't find anything", Wanda adds while I'm still struggling to find words to explain the situation.
"Alright I'm sending the team up there," I hear him typing something before speaks again, "I passed on your location to the rest of the group, don't do anything stupid Y/N."
"HEY! Why just me Wanda's here as well —"
Beep. Beep. Beep.
"What the —", but before I can finish, loud crashing sounds echo through the room as all the light-bulbs in the room implode. Shatter. Immediately I spin around to cover Wanda, protecting her from the glass shards.
However, I didn't feel anything impact on me. I carefully look over my shoulders, only to see all the shards float in the air, a red glow around them. "No need to cover me, I got this", Wanda smirks at me while she maneuvers the shards away from us.
I grab Wanda's phone off the table and notice that the call was disconnected
"Looks like we lost service... Can you make some light or something?". Wanda creates two red glowing orbs in her hands. It's not really enough to properly see, but hey at least it's better than nothing.
I grab my phone and activate the flashlight for some additional 'visual support'. I look around the room once more to look if something happened next to the light-bulbs randomly imploding. Why even did they shatter? Just shutting off the power shouldn't have done anything like that as far as I know...
"Oh—," Wanda says, "so my light wasn't enough for you? I see how it is,"
Suddenly I hear a faint vibrating sound. Listening closely, I can make out a pattern of an alarm or something like that in it. The wooden floorboards that we're standing on start to tremble. I point my phone flashlight towards the open bedroom door, where the sound seems to be coming from, and sneak towards it.
I approach the bed and gently push it to the side. In its spot remain some carton boxes. I dig through them and underneath I notice that some of the floorboards are loose. With a knife, I wiggle the floorboard out of its spot and lift it out of its place, revealing a metal hatch underneath it. The floor stops trembling and I can no longer hear the low pitch sound.
"Found something!" Wanda runs up behind me and sees the hatch, "I got this". Red wisps glow around the hatch. The metal creaks and the hatch snaps open under the pressure.
I point my flashlight down the hatch, revealing a small room with stairs leading further down. I take a look at Wanda, "Only one way to find out what that was".
"Hold on your seriously thinking of going down there right now!?" She looks at me like I'm crazy. "Yeah, otherwise we'll never find out who killed Edon"
"Y/N STARK, you have to be fucking kidding me," before she can fully answer I jump down the hatch, phone with flashlight in hand.
Above me I hear Wanda sigh, I look up and see her looking behind her, into the living room area before she also jumps down.
"I swear Y/N if that hatch closes on us, I will kill you myself", she hisses at me.
"We'll be fine Wands — come on let's go", I say as I move towards the concrete stairs. Once we reach the bottom, we find ourselves in a tight circular corridor. Metal sheets cover the entire walls. Old rusty pipes and electrical wires going deeper into the hallway.
The smell down here is musky, damp. We sneak further down the tight corridor. Eventually, we reach a large metal bulkhead, that's slightly ajar. Wanda takes a couple of large steps towards the door, readying two glowing red orbs in her hands. She gently pushes the door open and steps inside, me right behind her.
Once we're inside, the first thing I notice is how large the room is. It looks like a gigantic cave, the walls reinforced with concrete panels. In the middle of the room is a large rusty elevator shaft, no elevator in sight, however.
I approach the side of the shaft, and look down, pointing my flashlight down as well. "Jeez, this goes down deep". I pick up a small rock that lies next to the giant hole in the ground and throws it down. Only after something like 15 seconds, I'm able to hear the sound of the stone landing on something hard, "This must go at least 1000 meters further down— What is this place..."
I go around the shaft to see if I can find anything to tell me where it goes. On the ground is a plastic box. Inside are helmets and flashlights. I swipe a flashlight from the box and turn it on. I turn off my phone and look through the box further.
On the bottom, I find 2 pieces of paper,
UTILIZATION OF PARANATURAL ELEMENTS; BLACK ROCK PRISMS
SUMMARY
Black Rock Prisms are unique formations of Black Rock, distinct in both their shape and potency. While the density of Black Rock dampens paranatural forces, the unique [REDACTED] structure of Prisms retain frequencies in the range [REDACTED] to [REDACTED] Hz with perfect [REDACTED] harmonization.
This report analyzes the results of focusing a [REDACTED] through a harmonized Prism on to a [REDACTED]. Method for the imprinting of non-physical fields onto [REDACTED], imbuing them with the properties of the harmonized resonance [REDACTED] in the Prism will be explored and explained.
Refer to file [REDACTED] for full report.
INCIDENT REPORT; QUARRY OPERATIONS
SUMMARY
During my weekly safety inspection to the Quarry Threshold, I discovered the entire crew in a state of [REDACTED]. The whole team was [REDACTED] aligned and staring in a uniform direction; the City in the distance. Despite my most vocal efforts to gain their attention, they remained [REDACTED] for more than [REDACTED] minutes until I had to resort to literally [REDACTED]. Afterward, they were dazed and could not provide any rationale for their behavior or any specific memories of engaging in it.
My official recommendation for any crew working in a Threshold area is to either shorten the length of their shifts or to carry out mandatory psychological evaluations on a weekly basis – or preferably both. And maybe we should order another expedition to the City.
Refer to file 5-58-3096 for full report.
Alright, back the fuck up. Paranatrual Elements? Black Rock Prisms?
Paranatrual is a term used to refer to elements that violate our known laws of nature and reality. They are a fairy tale to scare kids. Is this some kind of sick joke?
Behind me I notice Wanda walking closer to one of the walls. With her powers, she dusts off a sign that hangs on the wall, revealing the word; "ATRIUM".
"Seems to me like we're in the central hall of some kind of underground bunker", Wanda says as she continues to use her magic to clean some areas of the wall, looking for more clues.
I walk over to Wanda and hand her the paper about the Black Rock Prisms. I see her eyes lit up when she reads,
"Pietro was always joking around that there is a connection between our minds and the unknown, often forces intruding on our world. And that these forces gravitate toward ordinary objects – like a phone, a television, a house with a reputation of being "haunted." So somehow, we affect these events." She shifts her feet while telling about Pietro. I never got to meet him before he died.
"He told me that we're holding some kind of key, but that we don't have a clue on how to use it. I never really understood what he was talking about and always assumed he was just saying random shit to get me riled up. What if there was a sense of truth in it?"
On the other side of the room, from where we entered, I notice an open corridor. I nudge Wanda and make my way over there. As I approach I notice an arrow on the wall, alongside with some text. I wipe the dust off revealing the tags: "Executive Sector; Research Sector; Containment Sector"
"Let's go to the Executive Sector, we might be able to figure out where we are and what this place is". I look around me and see Wanda close behind me, so I start to make my way into the hallway.
We reach a T-split at the end of the corridor. We follow the arrow to the left, which should lead us to the "Executive Sector". After we turn the corner of the hallway, I notice a door on our right side. Next to the door is a small sign; "Administration".
Alright here we go, I take a look at Wanda who nods to me to proceed. Please don't be something that attacks, just this once, please. I open up the door and step inside.
Inside I see a large open room with several cubicles inside. On both sides of the room are glass panels that cover several different offices. On the far end of the room is a large door with "File Room" on it. We need to get in there, maybe we can find more of the files that I found earlier.
I glance around the room to see if anything suspicious is close, but it all looks empty and deserted. No trance of someone being here in the last decade. Everything is completely covered in dust.
I go over to one of the cubicles in the middle of the room. On the desks I notice a picture frame of a family of 3, a man towering over what looks like his wife and son, they seem happy. The rest of the desk was quite messy, with papers laying around the desk. I pick up one of them, seems to me like they're just administration forms, nothing interesting really. I dig through the drawers, in one of them I find a red keycard; "Level 1 Access Card". So far we haven't really encountered anything that required any type of scanning stuff, but this might come in handy. I swipe it and place it in my pocket. An idea pops up in my mind,
I move over to the File Room and try to open the door. Locked. Next to the door is a small inconspicuous black rectangle. I grab the keycard out of my pocket and try it. Around the rectangle, a red glow appears. I try the door again. Still locked. Looks like we're gonna need a higher-level access card to get in here.
I go over to Wanda who is going through one of the offices. "Have you found anything yet?"
"Just this keycard, but I can't open the file room with it, you?" I move closer to Wanda and look over her shoulder while she reads some of the papers laying on the table.
"Nothing. Seems like everything in here is just standard administration forms. But I don't understand why you would have to do that from inside a bunker"
"Well I tried this "Level 1" access card on the file room and that doesn't open it. So you would need a higher level one for that. I found it in one of the cubicles, so assuming it wasn't a fluke or anything, no one from the cubicle area would have access. Thus maybe the important stuff is in that room," I ramble while I theorize about the situation.
"We can try to find a higher level access card in one of these offices," Wanda goes over to the next office and tries to open the door. Locked. She forms 2 glowing orbs in her hands and blasts the door out of its hinges and casually walks in.
I go over to one of the other office doors and grab the handle. Ha! This one is not locked. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but let's just take the win for now. The office is clean. Almost too clean. The entire back wall is covered with file cabinets and in the middle of the room stands a professional-looking wooden desk. I go over to one of the cabinets and open it up. Empty. I check another one. Also empty.
I move towards the desk. It doesn't have any drawers. More like it doesn't have anything, but I still go over the desk with my hands to see if there's anything. I continue going through all of the cabinets, but one of them contains a keycard or anything else of interest. I go back and see Wanda going through another office.
Since I'm not in the mood to go through all the offices and cubicles, I go over to the file room again and stand in front of the black rectangle scan thing. I place my flashlight in my mouth and grab my knife from my belt, shimmy-ing it under the scanner panel and carefully, rip it open. Underneath is just some basic circuit board which I think I can just bypass.
"Seriously Stark, do you have any patience—" Wanda says from behind me. I look over my shoulder and give her a wide grin. "You know me Wands, I got my patience from my father's side"
I look back over to the circuit board and grab some of the wires to see which one to cut. It's been a while since I've done this. After about a minute of trying to figure it out, I hear Wanda's laugh from behind me. "Alright, that's enough". Out of her pocket, she grabs a yellow keycard and holds it in front of the scanner. It lights up green, and a click sound erupts from the door.
My mouth goes agape and Wanda notices. She grins at me while she opens up the door and enters. I follow close behind her, "Never ever tell the team about that. Is that clear?"
"I don't know Stark, I think I might just tell Clint about this," Wanda responds, still grinning from ear to ear.
The inside of the file room is covered in shelves with boxes. I walk up to the shelf closest to me and open up one of the boxes, it's filled with files. I grab the box, place it on the ground and grab the first file that I see.
X-Ray Light Box (OOP18-PE)
CONTAINMENT PROCEDURE:
No unique procedures needed.
DESCRIPTION/PARAUTILITY:
The object is a lightbox used to examine x-ray images. The image cannot be removed from the lightbox. The information on the image belongs to a patient named [REDACTED].
The object allows parautilitarians to forcefully seize an individual's [REDACTED]. The seized individual becomes [REDACTED] to the user. The effect lasts [REDACTED]. Once released, the seized [REDACTED] as a result of the psychic trauma.
The object has no current binder.
BACKGROUND:
A janitor named [REDACTED] bound the object at St. Anne's Hospital in [REDACTED]. Soon, the building's occupants were [REDACTED] by him.
The Bureau dispatched an emergency response team to [REDACTED] the perpetrator and [REDACTED] the item. Fatalities numbered in the [REDACTED]. For operational details, see case 26-HQ-452.
I pick up the next file in the box. It's another copy of the Quarry incident report.
Behind me I see Wanda lean over the table in the middle of the room, going through a box that was already on there. I leave the box on the ground and make my way to her with the OOP18-PE file. When she notices I'm next to her, she hands me a file that was on the table.
COSMIC CONTAINMENT UNIT: TESSERACT (CCU-001)
OBJECT CLASS: Apollyon
THREAT LEVEL: Black
CONTAINMENT PROCEDURE:
Object CCU-001 is to be kept in a sealed reactor vessel in room [REDACTED]. The containment unit must be shielded from the full spectrum of [REDACTED] signals. The vault must be outfitted with shock-dampeners to alleviate [REDACTED] tremors (refer to Addendum-002 for details).
Monitoring equipment inside the containment chamber is not permitted; powerful signal emissions must be avoided near CCU-001. At all times, a minimum of 5 scientists of clearance level 8 or above must be present to observe CCU-001. Level A hazmat gear is mandatory for interaction with CCU-001.
BACKGROUND:
CCU-001 is a crystalline cube-shaped containment vessel for an unknown entity. It's approximately 15cm/6inches on all its sides. CCU-001 creates [REDACTED] (see Dr. Selvig presentation 26.1 for more details). ). The only [REDACTED] to successfully produce this effect resulted in the capture of [REDACTED] (see Dr. Selvig presentation 26.3 for more details).
CCU-001 manifests the ability to exert a huge power output to any energy source it's connected to. As such, CCU-001 is capable of producing an unlimited amount of power. CCU-001 presents no apparent resistance; acting as a perfect conductor, there is no power loss while energy is traversing CCU-001. Likewise, there is no apparent limit to CCU-001's ampacity, it will match the [REDACTED] of any source connected to it, without loss or damage to itself.
It is unknown to what extent CCU-001 reacts to anomalous energy sources as experimentation of this nature is strictly prohibited (refer to Addendum-002).
CCU-001 is nearly impervious to electrical damage and heat. The threshold to damage it with electricity appears to be [DATA EXPUNGED] (refer to Experiment- [1/6/1959]). No wear is visible on CCU-001's casing demonstrates that it is incapable of sustaining damage from friction and blunt force. No loss of capabilities resulting from this deterioration has been noted by [REDACTED] since the object's retrieval.
CCU-001 appears to possess intelligence or will. when Dr. Zola was studying it, he noted that it "behaves" as though it has awareness. CCU-001 emitted low levels of Gamma Radiation, which interfered with Selvig's methods to harness its energy source.
CCU-001 has not been successfully bound. The parautility of this object does not require binding.
RECOVERY:
Discovered when the [REDACTED] responded to [REDACTED] (see AWE-24 case file for more information).
Many of the accompanying [REDACTED] were [REDACTED] (see files on P6, P7 for details). The entirety of the [REDACTED] was transported to the Power Plant for examination, to find additional [REDACTED] or other altered materials.
Initial attempts for containment failed. Scientists were unable to control the energy within the cube. Dr. Selvig and Dr. Zola designed the [REDACTED] and managed to capture the object.
EXPERIMENT LOGS:
+Experiment-[7/5/1959]
+Experiment-[1/6/1959]
+Experiment-[4/1/1960]
JOURNAL ENTRIES:
[6/5/1959] - [UNRECOVERABLE] breakthrough in the viral engineering department. Got a test batch reliably replacing core irons with [REDACTED]- and the theory's sound.
[7/5/1959] - Vector design is stalled. All test carriers degraded.
...
[5/1/1960] - Quarantine orders. Some kind of accident in the Containment Sector. Everyone that has been in contact with the cube, was found dead in their dorms.
"Where the hell are we? These files are filled with some kind of paranatural objects. Could this be some kind of research lab?" I think out loud while still browsing through the file.
I walk over to the box on the table and go through it, looking for one of the experiment logs, but I can't find them. "The experiment logs are not here," I look on the side of the box. In handwritten black lettering it says; CCU-001. The box should have all the files, "Someone must have taken it"