I’m not sure my heart can take it if this project continues to progress at its current rate. Less than three months in and the amount of inexplicable phenomena I have personally observed is staggering, and what I’ve heard from the other departments sounds even more phantasmagorical. There’s an intoxicating atmosphere throughout the entire facility. It’s like a ghost floating down from the ceiling and whispering in all of our ears that we’re on the cusp of a breakthrough greater than penicillin, the turing machine, and nuclear fission combined. At the same time, no one except the director, our funders, and potentially our eponymous test subject actually understand the true purpose of this research. There are a number of theories bandied about, each more ominous than the last, but I know better than to commit them to text here.
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The vast majority of my contribution so far has been performing a series of tests on blood samples, though that alone could provide an entire career’s worth of papers and then some. We have to keep the samples at a temperature of -14°C to -18°C in order to decrease their metabolic rates, and we are required to wear full hazmat gear and undergo multiple chemical showers in order to avoid any contamination. Contact between the RQ-samples and any opening on the body, whether a cut or a mucus membrane, results in immediate infection. Luckily, I have not heard of anyone yet being fully contaminated, but there has been a rumor afoot that someone in animal testing was not wearing the proper equipment and accidentally spilled some on their hand. They paid with their entire arm for that mistake.
The second generation samples are not as dangerous because they are, for lack of a better term, “infertile” once removed from the body of the test subject. In fact, they’re probably safer than normal blood samples based on the incredible amount and fortitude of their white blood cells, rendering them practically impervious to any disease beyond the one they have already been infected with. You might imagine that this would cause discomfort in the test subjects, considering how our bodies react to the high production of white blood cells, but apparently they show no feverish symptoms past the initial stages of infection. If we could find a way to isolate this aspect of the infection, or to at least keep it in a manageable state, we’d have the best treatment for any disease short of a cure. And that’s only the most obvious application.
Beyond introducing diseases to the test samples, I have also been involved in more fantastical procedures involving every known “weakness” from vampiric folklore. Perhaps the most obvious is UV radiation, which surprisingly has different effects on the RQ and second generation samples. At low levels there is little-to-no reaction in either type, but increased to levels of 4-7, the RQ samples fizzled but remained largely intact while the second generation samples were fully vaporized in under a minute. It was only when we managed to expose the RQ sample to a beam of direct sunlight that it was similarly vaporized. No one is certain why natural sunlight would have different effects from artificially produced radiation, but it has most definitely made testing more complicated. We have found that days with particularly low UV indexes, such as when the sky is overcast, do not cause vaporization in the RQ samples, which may explain the preference for rainy rather than tropical environments. Alongside that, it seems that the process of vaporization can be abated with multiple panels of UV protection glass, but the amount needed appears to increase exponentially with each UV level.
Another series of tests that have produced interesting results involve introducing materials made of silver to the samples. For one, the material has to have a high concentration of pure silver in order to have any meaningful effect, sterling silver and anything with less than 95.5% silver concentration are about as effective as the steel rods we used for the control. Pure silver had a caustic effect on the samples, producing temperatures from the chemical reaction up to 60°C. In the RQ samples I have been able to cut lines through to the bottom of the petri dishes that slowly reconverge, like parting the red sea. The reaction in second generation samples was not so contained, simmering in the spots where the silver was introduced and then slowly spreading outward until the entire container was filled with a viscous black substance. We’ve taken to labeling this substance 2GR and plan on running further tests to study its specific properties. As for why these samples react the way they do to silver, the running theory is that the antimicrobial qualities of silver kills off the bacteria within the blood in such a way that the RQ samples can slowly reconstitute while the second generation samples cannot. The next round of tests will involve introducing other antimicrobials and observing whether or not they produce similar reactions.
Needless to say, tests involving garlic, wooden crosses, rosaries, stars of david, statues of the buddha, recordings of gospels and sutras and other prayers, copies of the quran and king james bible and the torah and the talmud and the tao tse ching, grains of rice, sealing talismans, and holy water have had no notable effects on the samples. If these do have meaningful effects on the test subject, then they are not on the level of her blood chemistry. Frankly, I find the extensiveness of these tests somewhat insulting after the initial attempts failed to provide any useful data besides the very fact that they didn’t work, but I guess that matter is above my paygrade.
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Stepping away from my own work for a second, I feel the need to write down an account from a friend of mine in another department within the project. I will not reveal their name here, just to be safe, but they did agree that I could summarize their testimony after performing a live autopsy on RQ. I frankly can’t imagine agreeing to a procedure of that nature, but I suppose that just goes to show the dedication of our primary test subject. Moreover, she knew she would survive, while I would not. Regardless, there was an entire rigmarole just figuring out how to even perform the operation. Pretty early on they decided that the surgeons would have to use silver scalpels in order to make the incisions, as well as a silver bonesaw and drill bit, all of which had to be custom made. After they acquired these tools, most everyone figured that the test subject would have to be awake for the autopsy. The surgeons involved objected to that, more than likely concerned with their own safety more than the patients.
There were no available anesthetics that worked on her for more than a few seconds, but someone got the bright idea to anesthetize another person and then intubate her with their blood. For whatever reason, that method appeared to work, and it’s a phenomenon that I’m very interested in studying in my own research. Regardless, with the anesthetics sorted, they still had to find a working paralytic or suitable substitute. This time the suggestion came directly from the patient herself. They had to set up a two-tiered surgical room with the first level on an angle and constantly cycling water in order to simulate a running river, while the second level was suspended by reinforced glass above it. The result was a state of seeming rigor mortis for as long as the patient was kept within this room. It was only after all of that they could finally perform the autopsy.
My friend prefaced their description of the woman’s body by stating that it is near impossible to imagine unless you see it yourself. That said, I hope my second-hand description at least provides an idea of how bizarre it was. The first thing that jumped out at them upon cutting her from nape to neck was the black markings that dotted across her ribs. At first they suspected they might be fractures or burns in the bone, but upon closer inspection it became clear that it was actually script written in some strange black ink. Removing the ribs confirmed that it did cover the entire surface area, and while they have yet to have a linguist study the photos, it appeared that that the script is meant to be read vertically in the tight spirals it forms around the bones.
Past the ribs were the organs in her chest cavity. Each of them writhed and pulsed along with her heart, creating this mesmerizing effect that got worse the longer you stared into it. Eventually, the surgeons all had to take breaks in rounds because their incisions kept getting sloppier and sloppier, culminating in one surgeon almost slicing into another’s hand. My friend said that it started looking like all the bugs you’d find under an old log after a rainstorm, except these were bigger, fleshier, and it felt like they might leap out and bite you at a moment’s notice. They weren’t the right colors, either, or at least they didn’t stay the right colors for long. The intestines became this shade of bright, candy blue that stained your eyes, while the lungs became a sickly pale yellow, the stomach was viridescent and mottled with what looked to be little red eyes, and everything else was another sickening shade of technicolor. The worst of all, though, was her heart. It was huge, as large as Secretariat's heart, and pitch black. No matter how much light you shined on it, it just seemed to absorb it like a black hole. It pumped hard enough to constantly make audible noise that no doubt increased the nauseating effect of her entire physiology. It sounded like a great iron bell ringing over and over again, until it seemed to echo within the walls of your own skull.
They decided that during this first procedure they would extract tissue samples from each of the organs. They thought it would be smarter to come back again later when they were able to find decent eye protection. We’ll be getting those samples soon, and I can’t say if I’m more excited or terrified based on how they were described. Her blood did not display any psychedelic effects, so perhaps there is some other compound in these cells causing it? I know that my friend wouldn’t lie to me about any of this, but a part of me feels like I need to observe it myself if I’m going to understand it.
- Anastasia Anderson, Research Assistant on Project “Red Queen”