T-004 Shade

Threshold Institute · Case file T-004

Number

T-004 in the catalogue

Kind

Creature

Class

Class II: dangerous, and held in a cell

Found

Year 4, month 2, day 11

Where found

The unlit service tunnels under the sealed level

Status

Escaped when the power failed

Now

At the lab and in the rift

Part

Part I: The tear

Containment procedures

T-004 is held in a cell lit from every side, day and night, by lamps on three separate lines. The cell is never dark, and no staff enter it with a lamp that could fail. The Institute's second rule comes from T-004: light everywhere. No room, tunnel or cell on the sealed level is left dark, and every guard carries a lamp, on duty or not. A dark room is never taken as empty (see T-008).

Description

A creature that exists only in the dark. Under a lamp, a torch beam, a fire or a muzzle flash it is plainly there, and it pulls back from the light as from a burn, and the light burns it a little. It waits where the light ends, still, facing its prey, and comes when the light goes out or turns away. In the dark its tell is a soft whisper close by, and now and then a glimpse of its shape. Night-vision gear does not show it; only real light does.

Discovery

The service tunnels were dug after T-003 to carry the sealed level's new lines, and had not yet been wired. On the eleventh day of the second month of year 4 a maintenance crew of four went in with hand lamps to lay cable and did not come up. Their lamps were found the next morning, still lit, set in a row on the tunnel floor where the cable ended. Nothing else of them was found. A second crew went in to search eight days later, with more lamps. Three came out; the fourth had stepped past the last lamp to look down a side passage and was gone before the others turned. The shift engineer, Halvard Nyqvist, had the tunnels flooded with work light from end to end, and under it T-004 was plainly there. It was driven into a cell by lamps alone.

Addenda

Addendum T-004-A

interview with maintenance worker Gunnel Ahl, survivor of the second crew, Year 4, month 2, day 20. Interviewer: H. Nyqvist

Nyqvist: You said there was nothing in the beam.

Ahl: Nothing. Benny swung his lamp down the side passage and it was empty, bare rock, and then he swung it back to us to say so, and when the beam was off the passage I heard it. Like someone whispering in the next room. Then Benny wasn't there.

Nyqvist: Did you see it?

Ahl: For a moment. When I put my lamp on the passage, it was standing right at the edge of it. Just past where the light went. It didn't come in. It waited. I think it was waiting for my lamp to go out.

Addendum T-004-B

memorandum, Director I. Varga, Year 4, month 3, day 1

"The crews died because we had let the dark stand in our own building. From today: light everywhere." The rule held for decades, and it is why the lab's lamps were never let go out by choice. T-004 escaped when the power failed (see T-055). The rule made the Institute see better; it did not make it hear better (see T-005).

Previous fileT-003 Rift brutePart I: The tear Next fileT-005 EchoPart I: The tear

In the file

• People: Director Ilse Varga, Gunnel Ahl, Halvard Nyqvist and Benny.
• Places: The Institute’s site, The sealed level, The cells and The service tunnels.

In the game

The note you find in the game:

Year 4, month 2, day 11. Recovered from the unlit service tunnels under the sealed level, dug after the brute to carry the level's new lines and not yet wired, after two maintenance crews went in with lamps and only their lamps came out. The shift engineer Halvard Nyqvist had the tunnels flooded with work light from end to end, and under it the thing was plainly there.

It exists only in the dark. Under a lamp or a torch beam it is plainly there, and it pulls back from the light as from a burn. It waits where the light ends and comes when the light goes out.

Driven into a cell by lamps alone; our rule of light everywhere starts with it. Held in a cell lit from every side, day and night. Status: escaped when the power failed.

Today it is found at the lab and in the rift.

It goes down after losing 1200 ml of its 3400 ml of blood. How it hunts and where it turns up: see the zombies page.