Context: In the second-to-last book of the A.T.X.D. Legacy - A.T.X.D. Storm Seeker - Richard, Ashley, Dave, and extraterrestrial operative Rister Arshian (first introduced in Book 3) are investigating an abandoned military base in Siberia, which some of their allies were investigating earlier. The latter team had all been attacked by something in the facility and all but one of them were K.I.A. and turned into revenants or Anti-Operatives. It has something to do with this facility in Siberia, and our operatives are about to uncover it and then some.
On the next floor, Richard and Rister were surprised to see Dave and Ashley in what looked like a small library, with two bookcases lined up along the wall and covering the full height from the floor to the low ceiling. There were a few desks encircling the room as well, but the center area remained open.
“What did you guys find?” Richard asked once he got a chance to catch his breath.
“Just some old research books and relevant materials,” Dave dryly commented, clearly not satisfied with their find. “And the problem is, they’re all in Russian. Can’t make any fucking sense out of them.”
“Well, Rister seems to know a little bit of Russian,” Richard replied. “He helped me partially decipher a file we found downstairs in the research lab.”
When Ashley and Dave turned to look with surprise at this, Rister verified Richard's statement with, “Truth is, Russian and Vipros characters bear some vague similarities in design, so I could at least figure out certain words or phrases. But that’s about it.”
“Well, do you mind helping Dave and I read some of this then?” Ashley asked, pointing to the bookcase. “We just need a basic idea of what’s in some of these books just in case it’s relevant.”
“Ma’am, I’m not sure that I…” Rister began, but Richard politely interjected with, “I think it’s best that we give it a try. Just in case.”
With a reluctant shrug and a gentle sweep over his helmet, Rister followed Dave over to a section of the bookcase and started probing the middle-third row from the center. The two operatives had gotten just five books to either side before Dave pulled at a thick, black book only to find it wouldn’t fully come out. Giving it a firmer tug, Dave and the others were surprised when they heard a click and the middle of the shelf quietly opened inward, revealing this part of the bookcase to be a cover for a pair of doors.
“The old book on a string trick,” Richard commented with a monotoned fascination as he and Ashley approached. Taking point and probing the inside while the others assumed covering positions, Ashley flipped on a couple switches to turn on some dusty incandescent lights before waving her teammates into the room. Inside was a moderately large box-like room with smooth concrete walls but some additional research desks and filing cabinets neatly lined around the perimeter. To be safe, Rister checked the bookcase doors to make sure that they didn’t lock from the outside only and was relieved when he found two working handles on both doors. At the very least, their exit was clear and they could shut the door if they needed to hide themselves from unexpected company.
“What is this place?” Ashley wondered aloud, dropping her rifle to her side and looking around with mild shock.
“Maybe a records room for sensitive material, ma’am,” Rister surmised. “I mean, why else would you hide a room behind a bookcase and make it look like a dull and miserable place to do your research?”
“You’ve got a point, Mantis,” Dave agreed as he did his own wary scan of the room.
Richard then noticed a couple more folders like the one he had found in the research lab sitting on a nearby table. Taking one of these folders up and opening it, Richard widened his eyes when he saw a black and white image of a seal he was quite familiar with: it had a triangle in the center with a pair of rings encircling it on opposite diagonal sides and a small star icon in the middle of the triangle itself - The Luminara Society.
“Hey, Blue Lynx...I think you should see this,” Richard slowly piped up when he saw the symbol, then handed the file to Ashley when she approached.
“My God, this is a Luminara research facility,” Ashley presumed.
Rister, however, contradicted her with, “Actually, ma’am, according to what Richard and I found, this facility belongs to somebody called the K.S.V.: translated from Russian, it stands for Coalition of the Secret Revival.”
Ashley was quick to recognize this as the K.S.V.’s own emblem was on the cover page file as well. As she turned a page and started reading, Rister asked about the Luminara, as he had personally never heard of them before.
“Think of them as a quasi military cell of vast psychotic intelligence,” Richard put simply with a mocking shake of the hand. “Named after the Lunar-based humanoid species they come from. They’ve been a pretty formidable rival of the A.T.X.D. since the 90s or thereabouts, but we haven’t heard anything regarding them for more than four years.”
“But what was this K.S.V. organization you guys are talking about?” Dave asked.
“Apparently, it was a top-secret scientific or military endeavor at the height of the Cold War,” Richard filled in. “A coalition between Soviet and American personnel acting as a countermeasure or safeguard to protect humanity in the event the world went to nuclear war, or so it seems.”
“Well, that would explain why some of the files in this folder are in English as well as Russian,” Ashley replied, having finished the first folder and putting it down to retrieve the second one. “But how exactly were they planning to do that? Arbitration? A world peace exposition event?”
“According to the file Richard saw at least,” Rister recalled, “it looked like they were trying to engineer genetic improvements to human beings, or create some new species that would replace them, if nuclear war ensued.”
“...the hell…,” Ashley replied warily, not taking her eyes off the second folder’s contents.
“Yeah, I’m definitely going to sleep well tonight,” Richard sarcastically replied in supposed concurrence.
“No, I mean...what the hell is this?” Ashley rephrased, and handed some of the files she was looking at to Richard and Dave.
The pages were revealed to be research diagrams and data sheets, with all text explanations in English. Each one was labeled as “Experiment” with a simple coded number and a picture of a human or, in Dave’s possession, an extraterrestrial subject. It appeared they had just stumbled onto the true nature of the K.S.V. and Luminara’s experiments at this abandoned site. Given the dates, however, as well as the condition of the photos, these were old experiments performed decades before any of those in the room were alive: the oldest experiment in Richard’s hand had data logged as far back as “Oct. 6th, 1966.”
“I thought you said the Luminara were from the Earth’s 1990s, Tiger,” Rister questioned when he got a look at some of the data.
“That’s how long A.T.X.D.’s had them on the radar as a threat, to say the least,” Ashley replied. “But from what I know, their origins here on Earth date back to I think the 1950s.”
“And it was only because of some schism and an attempted apocalyptic mutiny in the American Midwest that the Luminara and the A.T.X.D. became bitter enemies,” Richard added. “The subsequent details of which are going to take too long for me to explain.”
“Jesus, these guys really were pushing the bounds of sanity,” Dave muttered, now looking at some similar experiment files he’d recovered from the drawer of a nearby cabinet.
“Looks like they were abducting or coercing human rejects and extraterrestrial low-lifes to use as test subjects. Listen to this: Subject double-o-eight; a human who arrived May 10th, 1978. Prior history as a violent offender with a rap sheet of five murders and...and four instances of rape. Skipping the technical B.S., it looks like the subject whose name isn’t listed here soon developed rampant behavior after ten days of experimentation and killed a fellow subject. He later died of an aneurysm induced by abnormally-high stress levels.”
“Mother fucker...what did they do to him?” Richard drawled with horror, to which Dave rather miserably replied, “No idea. The file doesn’t say.”
“This test subject, number 165,” Richard then read from his file, “A Kylo...Kylonian immigrant with a history of illegal trespassing through UN checkpoints in China. Arrived on September 12, 1982. Subject to some kind of a genetic extraction - whatever the hell that is - and then killed himself after learning that his DNA was used to create an animalistic organism of some kind that was later put down.”
“And this subject, number 129,” Ashley read from a third file. “A former pornstar who arrived in July in the late 80s from the United States, and was engaged in behavioral and physical trials of some kind. She was later...fuck...she later grew to almost thirty-six-times her height and became aggressive due to a genetic malfunction. Subject was later…uhh...later lured outside the facility and drowned after falling through the ice.”
“All this….to preserve the human race?” Richard stated with dumbfounded horror, tossing the file onto a nearby desk with utter disgust.
“But something doesn’t add up here,” Ashley quickly pointed out, trying to think of something else to dismiss the horrific stuff they’d just read. “Some of these experiments are from the 1960s and involved extraterrestrials in addition to humans. So why the hell wasn’t A.T.X.D. or some other division of the U.N. deployed to stop it? I thought the International Code forbade this kind of heinous activity.”
“The law may have been around, Ashley, but perhaps the force wasn’t,” Dave presumed. “However, if the Luminara’s shady activities run this far back, then I’ll wager our force’s rivalry with them is a lot older than we thought it was.”
“There’s still the fact that we have no idea what our teammates found here meanwhile,” Richard then pointed out. “The fact that the cryotubes downstairs are empty and we haven’t run into any kind of monstrosity cooked up in this lab yet still doesn’t give us a lead.”
Rister then noticed another one of the photos in the files: it showed a middle-aged woman with extraterrestrial markings on her skin and clothed in unearthly, almost magical garments. A closer examination of the symbols on her clothing and gauntlets provoked the Vipros’ warrior senses and, after reading the associated file, he discovered the reason for this reaction.
“A Viurian sorceress,” Rister repeated with a slow and venomously wary voice from the file.
“Sorry, what?” Richard questioned.
“Viurians,” Rister replied, holding the file up, “They’re a powerful and mystical human species from a star system adjacent to the one which Viek’ Taurusa is a part of. I haven’t faced them before, but they’re known for wielding incredible magic. Normally regarded as peacekeepers in mythology, but they’ve had their share of rogue souls who want to use their magic and knowledge for more sadistic purposes. And looking at this woman - Devila Shiriinika Coro - I’d say she’s one of them given that look and what some of the data says.” As Richard looked at the data himself, Rister continued with, “It appears she was a ‘voluntary donor’ in these experiments and lent her DNA to be used for an empowered human subject. Also, there’s no record here that the subject was terminated, so I’d guess that Devila was one of those in the cryotubes.”
“If she’s still alive, and she’s as powerful as it says here,” Richard continued, “then Devila could be the cause of our comrades’ revenant symptoms.”
“Hang on, look at this,” Dave replied, “Subject 101, and there’s a name here: Ethan McKanus. Looks like he was a former...goddammit, he was a former guerilla commander from the Vietnam War. Dishonorably discharged following unauthorized actions in a village that resulted in pillaging and a few civilian deaths.”
Richard cringed angrily upon hearing this: he always had a fiery loathing for soldiers and high-ranked officers who, in his mind, dishonored the American flag and the uniform by committing atrocities on the battlefield or behind the scenes, attempted to cover their tracks by any means necessary, and did not receive the most severe punishment for their actions. Upon Ashley asking for relevance, Dave continued with, “It looks like he too was coerced into becoming a voluntary participant. Says here he was subject to behavioral and physical trials that included...wait, what the hell...a genetic implant, from Subject 293.”
Rister immediately perked his head up in shock and quickly retrieved Devila’s file. His sharp-toothed jaw dropped like a loose hinge when he saw that the Viurian sorceress’ subject number was also 293.
“So this McKanus bastard was infused with extraterrestrial sorcery genetics?” Richard repeated with disbelief. “I don’t fucking believe it. What happened to him?”
“That’s the problem,” Dave replied again with clear misery or distaste, “it doesn’t say.”
“If a termination record or date of death isn’t provided,” Rister replied, and Ashley finished with shaky horror, “Then he too was one of the successful tests. But whether he’s a slave to this Devila or her new master still remains a mystery.”
“Nonetheless, I think we’re finally on track to solving this lethal paradox,” Richard concluded more confidently now. “And we might hopefully be one step closer to altering what comes next.”
Rister was about to concur with his own optimism, but then sensed movement nearby.