Chapter 1 : The Interview
It was a cold morning when the package arrived.
The man who delivered it didn’t ring the bell, didn’t knock – he simply left it on the doorstep. I know, because I watched him from the upstairs window. No van. No uniform. Just a pale blue jacket and a hood pulled low. He moved like someone trying not to be remembered.
I waited a full minute before going downstairs. Something about the way he walked – mechanical, almost – put my nerves on edge. When I opened the door, the street was empty.
I crouched down and picked up the box. It was small, nondescript – brown cardboard, the kind you use when you want to send something without sending a message. No label. No return address. Just a piece of black tape sealing the top like a wound that didn’t want to open.
Inside was a cassette tape, wrapped tightly in old wax paper, and a few handwritten notes on yellowed, curled pages. The ink had bled in places, like they’d been written in a hurry or in a room that breathed moisture. There was no sender, no header – just a single name scrawled on the top of the first page:
Lacerta
The moment I read it, something clicked in the back of my brain. Not memory – recognition. Like I was being reminded of something I’d never known.
The tape looked old – worn and brittle, like it had survived a fire. The reels inside were warped, slightly off-center, as if they’d been exposed to heat or pressure. Dust clung to the edges, but not in a normal way. It wasn’t household. It was age, clinging like residue from a previous century.
Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had waited for someone. That it had waited for me.
I sat at my desk. The city hummed outside, indifferent, but my apartment felt like it had drifted a few inches outside of time. The cassette sat in front of me like an artifact – something stolen from a timeline that never finished loading.
I checked the machine twice. It was a cheap second-hand player I’d picked up at a flea market three years ago and had never used. The kind with manual clunky buttons that made a satisfying mechanical click when pressed.
My hand hovered over it.
This was stupid. I knew that. But my heart was racing anyway.
It wasn’t fear. It was anticipation – the way the air feels just before a thunderstorm when your body knows something’s coming before your mind does.
I pressed play.
Click.
Pause.
Then static.
High-pitched at first, then modulating into a low hum. The tape warbled, the hiss ebbing and flowing like something trying to find its footing.
Then a voice, low and tight with tension.
“This is… this is an unscheduled recording. December 27th, 1999. The subject… the subject is present. Test one. Audio clarity, check.”
The voice sounded nervous. Male. Late 30s or 40s. Too calm to be calm. He was clearly trained – someone who had spoken in formal interviews before – but you could hear it. That tremble in his throat. The awareness that he was crossing into something no one had prepared him for.
He called himself Dr. Samuel Price.
Chair creaks. Papers shuffle. A breath is held and released.
Then another voice. Female. Measured. Not robotic – but not quite human, either. It had cadence. Clarity. A strange musicality, like it was being translated from thought to speech in real time.
“The device is functioning. Continue.”
She didn’t identify herself.
But this was the voice from the name on the page.
Lacerta.
I leaned forward in my seat. My hands were already cold, but now they felt clammy, like the blood had stopped flowing.
DR. PRICE:
“Right. Okay. And, uh, how long has your species been here?”
LACERTA:
“Longer than you. Much, much longer. Before your kind fashioned tools from bone, before your ancestors learned to stand upright. Before your ‘history’ began.”
There was a pause.
A click in the background, like someone adjusting an old reel or activating a switch. The sound warped slightly, as if her voice caused feedback in the tape itself.
DR. PRICE:
“You’re saying your people have been on Earth for… millions of years?”
LACERTA:
“Yes. Before the landmasses formed as you know them. Before your oceans stabilized. Before your first myths were whispered in dream.”
The tone wasn’t arrogant. It wasn’t condescending.
It was simply true.
She wasn’t convincing him. She was stating fact.
And that’s what made it feel real.
The static changed pitch again, and I felt a pressure build in the room. The kind you feel on airplanes when your ears try to pop.
DR. PRICE:
“But why now? Why make contact?”
LACERTA:
“We did not initiate this contact.”
DR. PRICE:
(nervous) “You mean… someone else did?”
LACERTA:
“You initiated it. Through thought. Through resonance.”
The tape clicked again. Another shift. She continued.
“We do not force communication. We respond to frequencies. You reached out first.”
I paused the tape.
Sat back.
Looked at the player.
What the hell did that mean?
I rewound a few seconds and played it again.
“You reached out first.”
I let the tape run.
It warped again.
Then a sound – not voice, not static – something below frequency. Like metal grinding through concrete under water. It didn’t last long, but it left a ringing in my teeth.
Then the voice of Lacerta again.
This time quieter.
“There are others who monitor these transmissions. They do not like deviation.”
I paused the tape again.
Suddenly aware of the silence in the room.
Too silent.
No cars outside. No radiator clicks. No hallway noise.
Like the whole world had leaned in to listen.
I reached into the box and pulled out the remaining pages.
Most were unintelligible – symbols, smudged lines, a few cryptic diagrams. But the last sheet had a note scribbled across the back.
“Play only if you’re prepared. There is no halfway.”
Underneath that was a set of numbers.
Not a date.
Not coordinates.
But a time.
3:33 a.m.
I checked the clock.
It was 3:17.
I hit play again.
The tape whirred. A new segment began.
Dr. Price’s voice returned, quieter now. More fragmented.
“We lost… control of the containment. Something… it wasn’t her anymore.”
Then, another voice. This one was warped beyond recognition. Not male. Not female.
Something else.
It spoke for only one second.
A whisper.
But I felt it in my bones.
“You opened it.”
I slammed stop.
And the tape kept playing.
That’s when I heard the knock.
Not at the door.
Inside the wall.
Three soft knocks, spaced perfectly apart.
Then silence.
Real silence.
I finally managed to power off the tape deck.
The reels slowed to a stop.
But I could still hear the voice, echoing somewhere far behind the edges of my thoughts.
“If you listen… they will come.”
I didn’t sleep that night.
And I didn’t tell anyone.
Because somehow, deep down, I already knew—
They were already here.
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