T-006 Growth

Threshold Institute · Case file T-006

Number

T-006 in the catalogue

Kind

Creature

Class

Class II: dangerous, and held in a cell

Found

Year 7, month 6, day 9

Where found

The floor of the containment chamber, at the foot of T-001

Status

Spreading

Now

At the lab and in the rift

Part

Part I: The tear

Containment procedures

T-006 is not moved and cannot be; it is rooted at the foot of T-001. It is held by the burn: a crew of four with torches and blades goes into the chamber once a month and takes T-006 back to the floor, while the response team stands guard at the door. No one goes within reach of its edge alone or unarmed. Pouring over it is forbidden by the Director's order, since no one knows what that would do to T-001. The burn crew keeps a log of how fast it comes back.

Description

A dark, rooted mass that spreads over floors and walls like a root ball and grabs what comes near with tendrils. It can be cut back and it can be burnt, and neither kills it: what is cut grows back within weeks, and what is burnt comes back from the root. It does not come through T-001; it grows from where T-001 meets the floor, and it spreads the way roots do, along cracks and seams first, then over the open face of a wall. Its tendrils pull what they hold toward the mass, slowly, and do not let go while the mass is whole.

Discovery

The chamber had been inspected every week since year 1 (see T-001). On the ninth day of the sixth month of year 7 the inspection found a dark mat a metre across on the chamber floor, spread out from the foot of T-001. By the next week it had climbed the south wall to the height of a man. When the technician Lisbet Krantz cut a sample from its edge, tendrils rose from the mass and closed on her arm, and her shift had to cut her loose. It was the first threshold the Institute could not take out of the chamber and put in a cell, and the first sign that T-001 changed what lay around it.

Addenda

Addendum T-006-A

from the burn log (extracts)

Year 7, month 7. First burn. Mass 4 square metres. Back to the floor in forty minutes. Krantz on the torch, at her request.

Year 8, month 7. Regrowth to the wall line in 26 days.

Year 12, month 7. Regrowth in 19 days. Tendrils reach the door frame. Guard Holt pulled in to the knee, freed with blades.

Year 17, month 7. Regrowth in 11 days. Two burns a month from now on, by the Director's order.

Year 18, month 12. Regrowth slow this winter. Dr Kader asks for the dates of the cold in the biology lab (see T-013).

Addendum T-006-B

note, Dr S. Kader, Year 14

The burn crews' log, set against the readings in the gravity room (see T-009), shows that T-006 comes back fastest on the days T-001 pulls hardest on the building. T-006 is not a creature that came through; it is what T-001 does to the ground it touches. The chamber's walls were the start. The observation wing above it was next (see T-007).

Previous fileT-005 EchoPart I: The tear Next fileT-007 MirrorPart I: The tear

In the file

• People: Dr Selma Kader, Lisbet Krantz and Guard Holt.
• Places: The Institute’s site, The containment chamber, The cells and The observation wing.

In the game

The note you find in the game:

Year 7, month 6, day 9. Found by the weekly inspection as a dark mat a metre across on the containment chamber's floor, spread out from the foot of T-001; by the next week it had climbed the south wall. When the technician Lisbet Krantz cut a sample from its edge, tendrils rose and closed on her arm, and her shift had to cut her loose.

That scraping was kept under glass in the dark, fed nothing. It grew anyway.

It roots where it lands and spreads a few tiles at a time, toward the way out. Its tendrils hold whatever stands on it. Cut it back and it withers where it is cut off; kill the root and all of it dies.

The glass did not hold. Status: spreading.

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

It goes down after losing 1800 ml of its 6000 ml of blood. How it hunts and where it turns up: see the zombies page.

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