Gale flipped to the first page of the book while Rachel looked over his shoulder. Both immersed themselves in the cryptic diary….

Personal Journal of Dr. █████████

Project ██████ Research Division

Entry 1, December 12, 1991

The cold has become unbearable. Its been three months since our last supply drop, and the generator fails more often than it runs. The research team grows restless. Spotlight provides resources but demands results we cannot yet deliver. The barrier between dimensions remains theoretical, despite our calculations suggesting otherwise.

Today, something impossible occurred.

A man appeared at our shelter’s entrance. Just appeared, as if stepping through the blizzard itself, though our perimeter sensors detected no approach. His clothing seemed primitive yet complex. He wore furs and leathers adorned with markings I could not decipher.

The security team nearly shot him on sight. They had thought that walking through Arctic-like conditions without proper equipment would be suicide and categorized it as a… hostile entity, they called it. Yet he stood there, unaffected by the cold.

“I seek shelter,” he said, as if this explained everything.

Something about him disturbed me on a fundamental level. His eyes seemed to stare through us as if studying an animal. When he looked at our equipment, his expression revealed not wonder but dismissal, as though examining crude stone tools. Despite my misgivings, Petrova offered him shelter. What choice did we have? To turn him away would be murder, even if his arrival defied rational explanation.

He calls himself Hathie. No first name offered. When asked his profession, he merely smiled and said, “Observer.”

I cannot shake the feeling we have invited something terrible into our midst. The others do not seem to notice, but during the rare times he sleeps, I swear the shadows in his room move of their own accord.

Entry 7, December 24, 1991

An incident today that defies explanation and threatens everything.

Hathie broke into the restricted laboratory that housed our rudimentary portal framework. How he bypassed the biometric locks remains unclear. Two of Spotlight’s security operatives confronted him. What happened next, I witnessed through security monitors, and still cannot fully comprehend.

He killed them both without touching them. They simply… stopped. One moment standing, the next collapsing with their heads gone and blood spraying everywhere.

Most disturbing was not the deaths, but what followed. Director ████ arrived within minutes. Instead of ordering for Hathie’s arrest or termination, he apologized to him. I could not hear their exchange, but ████ body language displayed deference, perhaps even fear. The cleaning crew cleaned up soon after being yelled at by the Director.

Later, I asked ████ directly about the incident. His response chills me still: “There are forces beyond any faction. When they walk among us, we accommodate them.”

Hathie now has unrestricted access to all facilities. No one questions this arrangement.

Entry 12, January 3, 1992

I fear for ███ sanity. The young physicist began extensive conversations with Hathie three days ago regarding theoretical particle states. Initially, these seemed professional exchanges. ███ even claimed Hathie offered insights that might advance our work by decades.

Last night, the screaming began.

It started at 3:00 AM precisely. ███ quarters erupted with screams at the top of his lungs with a volume that should’ve broken his throat and voice. Security found him standing upright in bed, eyes open yet unseeing, screaming about “the absence between stars” and “eyes that consume light.”

By morning, ███ had no recollection of the episode. When questioned, he appeared genuinely confused by our concern.

Tonight, it happened again. ███ remembered nothing upon waking.

Most disturbing: during both episodes, surveillance cameras showed Hathie sitting in the common area, smiling slightly as if listening to distant music only he could hear.

When I suggested separating ███ and Hathie, Director ████ overruled me immediately. “The conversations will continue,” he said. “They’re providing valuable knowledge.”

What knowledge, and for whom, he would not specify.

Entry 18, January 17, 1992

I can no longer reconcile my scientific understanding with what I witness daily.

Yesterday, Hathie took a standard light bulb from storage. Before our eyes, he altered its molecular structure, and the glass stretched into a tube on its own. The physical impossibility of this act caused Petrova to vomit. Hathie seemed amused by our reactions.

He summoned ██████, Spotlight’s logistics personnel, and instructed him to etch specific patterns into the glass tube’s surface. When ██████ asked about tools, Hathie produced a needle-like implement from his pocket.

For six days, ██████ has worked without sleep. When his hands shake too violently to continue, Hathie touches his shoulder, and the tremors cease. No food, minimal water, yet ██████ continues. I’ve attempted to intervene twice; both times, Hathie merely looked at me, and I found myself unable to speak, my purpose forgotten.

During a rare break, I asked Hathie about the tube’s purpose. His response was both cryptic and condescending.

“Your civilisation stumbles toward doorways without understanding thresholds,” he said. “You lack even basic usage of essence. It is the minimum energy form my people employed when we defended the stars.”

Defended from what, he would not say.

Examination of the partially completed tube reveals markings consistent with our theoretical models for cross-dimensional portals, but far more refined. Hathie has, in a week, advanced our research beyond what decades might have accomplished.

Director ████ has ordered all of Hathie’s activities documented but not interrupted. “He’s giving us exactly what we’ve sought,” Director ████ said. When I expressed concerns about unknown technology, ████ dismissed me with five words that continue to haunt me:

“We take what they offer.”

Entry 24, February 2, 1992

I question my sanity. The incident occurred three nights ago, but I’ve been unable to record it until now. My hand still shakes as I write.

I encountered Hathie alone in the eastern corridor, standing motionless, facing the wall. Assuming he was examining something, I approached. He gave no acknowledgement of my presence.

As I drew closer, I noticed his shadow. It spread across the wall not in accordance with our lighting, but as if cast by some unseen source. And within that darkness were eyes. Not one or two, but millions, blinking in irregular patterns, all focused outward.

I made some sound, a small whimper. Hathie turned. The shadow shifted normally along with his motion. The eyes vanished as well. His face showed mild surprise as if catching a child peeking at an adult conversation.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Forget what you think you saw,” he whispered.

I’ve had nightmares every night since. In each, those eyes find me again, watching from every shadow in my quarters. I wake everyday catching myself screaming.

Is this what happened to ███? Did he glimpse something human minds cannot process?

I’ve requested transfer back to the mainland facility. Director ████ denied it without explanation.

God help me.

Entry 31, February 11, 1992

I write this in haste. My perception of reality has fractured beyond repair. Logic and scientific principles no longer apply to what I see.

This morning, alarms sounded throughout the facility. External sensors detected multiple approaching signatures. Humans. Director ████ identified them as “The Baker Family,” apparently hostile forces against Spotlight in ways never explained to research personnel.

Hathie, upon hearing this, smiled for the first time I can recall. I believe it was not a smile of amusement, but more of anticipation.

He walked calmly outside into the blizzard. Through the observation windows, I watched as he raised one hand toward the attackers, still invisible in the snowstorm.

What followed defies description, yet I must try. The world… inverted. The white snow became black, the dark sky, white. Colours reversed throughout my field of vision, as if reality itself had been negated.

From Hathie’s shadow emerged tendrils of pure darkness, spreading across the snow. And the eyes. It was no longer millions but billions. They opened everywhere: in the sky, on the ground, on the facility walls. Each pupil contracted when focusing on me specifically, acknowledging my observation.

The attackers screamed.

The other researchers turned away, covering their eyes. I could not. Something compelled me to witness, even as blood began to stream from my eyes, even as my optic nerves burned with input no evolution prepared them to process.

Hathie turned back toward the facility, his face serene. He looked directly at me through the window and nodded once. Maybe it was acknowledgment, perhaps even approval. And then, in the blink of an eye, the world snapped back to normal colours.

The attackers were gone. Only piles of flesh and splats of blood scattered throughout the snow remained where they had existed.

Director ████ and the Spotlight operatives bowed to Hathie as he reentered the facility. Not from respect, I now understand, but worship.

I know now what we harboured. Not a man. Something older. Something that existed when the stars were young.

He came to the mess hall after. Sat beside me as if nothing had occurred. When I asked what he was, he merely said: “A future father, hoping to pave a better path for his future son.”

Then he placed his hand on mine, and knowledge poured into me.

Images of worlds dying, of beings like him fighting entities that devoured reality itself, of a desperate plan to seed the younger dimensions with defenders.

This will be my final entry. Tomorrow, Hathie leaves us. Leaving behind the etched glass tube.

Director ████ has ordered all records of his presence archived under the designation “Hathie.”

The director volunteered me to go into the first portal conjured by the glass tube. They know I know too much now. I suspect I was volunteered to close loose ends due to my opinions throughout the couple of months.

To whoever finds this journal: He is still out there. Watching from the in between.

Gale turned the final page of the journal and stopped. Behind the last entry, paperclipped to the back, were several photos. His hand shook as he pulled out the first image. It was a blurry shot that looked like it was taken in panic.

The figure stood in snow as wind blew against the snow covered clearing by the cabin. Despite the poor quality, Gale recognized the face right away. Same blue eyes, black hair, jaw, and cheeks.

Dad.

He forgot how long it had been since he last saw his face. The last time Gale saw his face was just a couple of years ago, but he hadn’t changed at all. Still that same young adult looking face.

The fur clothing was exactly what his dad wore when they travelled across the northern wilderness. The same pattern on the fur that Gale had touched with his small fingers when he got cold. The same hood his father put on Gale’s head during strong winds.

He flipped through the pages, finding more notes dated from the 1990s. Some of them had rough prints of the research scenery. Some with people and some with none. In another instance, one of them had dad again.

“Gale?” Rachel nudged him beside. “What’s going on with you?”

Gale didn’t reply, leaning on her shoulder instead.

“Wanna tell me what you’re looking at?” Rachel asked.

Gale gripped the folder. “My dad.”

Rachel leaned forward to take a closer look, but Gale stopped her by leaning firmer on her shoulder. She smiled and turned her gaze at the folder by his hands. “Your dad was here? In this facility?”

“In 1991,” Gale said. “Looking exactly like he did when I was twelve.”

Rachel reached for the photo. “Are you sure it’s him? This image is pretty blurry.”

“I’d know him anywhere,” Gale said as his voice trembled.

“Didn’t you say he was a survivalist?” Rachel asked.

“Stay low, blend in, survive. What a joke. He knew what this place was. He knew what was coming. He didn’t tell me anything.” Gale gripped the folder even tighter. He continued, almost into a yell, “They dragged me all over the world ‘teaching me to survive,’ then dumped me in that shithole orphanage where Shawn and his friends used me as a punching bag. Every. Fucking. Day.“

“Gale. I’m sorry…” Rachel put a hand on her back, rubbing it.

“I really don’t know why. Maybe so I could learn how to take a hit? So I could cry myself to sleep every night wondering why I wasn’t good enough for them to stay?” Gale turned his head to Rachel. “Five years in that place… and then I see them doing this- whatever the fuck this was!”

“Calm down and let’s think this through. I know you’re upset. ” Rachel warmed up the air around them.

“Upset?” Gale yelled. “They abandoned me!”

Rachel took the journal gently. “We don’t know the whole story.”

“I know enough,” Gale whispered. “I was abandoned.”

Rachel flipped through the journal pages. “This says your father was protecting something. Maybe protecting you?”

“Bullshit.” Gale shoved the photos back into the folder.

“Gale,” Rachel said softly. “He called himself ‘a future father’ in this journal. Whatever he was doing here… it might have been for you.”

Gale saw her soft smile, her hand still rubbing his back. It was always Rachel who gave him comfort. Maybe she was right, and even if she wasn’t, she didn’t deserve him shouting at her.

“Sorry, I just…” Gale took her arm on his back and squeezed it softly. “It’s a lot.”

“I know,” Rachel said. “It’s ok.”

“Hey!” Ollie interrupted. “You two done over there? We need to move.”

Rachel’s head snapped to Ollie. “We found something personal. Is it ok to take it?”

Ollie jogged over, carrying equipment. “Take as much shit as you can. Anything you can sell. Put it into your fancy box thing.”

He gestured his head toward the other side of the dome. The twins were stuffing gadgets into duffel bags that seemed to have come out of nowhere.

“Found three more of these babies,” Ollie smirked as he held up four more identical glass tubes to the one he examined earlier. “Kyle and Clyde found some dust containment units that’ll work with our systems back home. We hit the jackpot.”

Gale pulled out his Storage Box RS28, selecting an empty slot for the folder. The interface blinked, acknowledging the new item.

[Item Added: Hathie Documents]

[Available Slots: 19/28]

“Let’s go,” Ollie said, heading to the exit. “Before any more of those disgusting rotting zombies come.”

The group moved quickly through the corridors, weapons ready. When they reached the junction where they’d split earlier, Clyde stopped.

“Hold up. Movement at three o’clock.”

A zombie stumbled from the shadows. Its lab coat was torn up, name tag still pinned to the chest: DR. PETROVA.

Kyle raised his gun, but Rachel stepped forward first. A ball of fire formed in her palm, then shot toward the zombie. The creature caught fire, turning to ash within seconds.

“Nice,” Kyle said. “Don’t need to waste a bullet.”

They continued toward the exit, killing two more zombies along the way. One jumped at Ollie from a side room, but Gale’s Weber cut through its neck before it reached him.

“Thanks,” Ollie stepped over the body.

Gale nodded.

When they finally reached the cabin’s basement, Kyle checked his watch. “Made good time. Four hours down there total.”

“Four hours?” Rachel asked. “Felt shorter than that.”

“Fun makes time short, right Kyle?” Clyde said with a grin.

“Too short. If only I had more duffle bags,” Kyle said also with a grin.

They climbed the stairs, entering the cabin. Ollie pushed open the door. Five guns immediately pointed at his face.

Gale stepped up behind him, looking at the scene. At least 10 people stood in the basement, wearing tactical gear. Each of them had a silver lion embroidered at the top of their jacket sleeves.

In the centre stood a thin east asian man with chinese facial features, wire-rimmed glasses, wearing a loose charcoal tang suit despite the weather. He had a long, thin scar running from his right eye to his chin. It looked like someone had tried to cut his face in half.

“Let me guess,” Ollie sighed, putting his hands up. “You’re Needle.”

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