Title: Borrowed Voices
Author: Kassfinol
Genre: Survival horror – Dark science fiction
All rights reserved
I shouldn’t have come to the forest alone, but that’s the kind of shit you think when it’s already too late, when you’ve already spent three days camping in the middle of nowhere because you needed space to process or some new-age stupidity like that. Three days trying not to think about the editor’s face when he told me an algorithm wrote better than me, that it was faster, cheaper, more consistent.
The first day it did work, it silenced the mental chatter that had been eating away at me since the firing. The second day too, more or less. By the third I had already read the same article on my phone like twenty times: “GPT-6 revolutionizes print journalism.” I had no signal, but I had downloaded it before leaving because I’m a certified digital masochist.
It was seven in the evening when I decided to check the voice notes I’d been ignoring, those that piled up on my phone like reminders of a life I no longer had. The first was from my mother, recorded two days before I came to the forest.
—Isaac, sweetie, we’re worried about you. Your dad says you don’t answer his messages and I… well, we just want to know you’re okay. You don’t have to explain anything, just call us, okay? We love you very much.
Her voice broke at the end, that maternal tone that made me feel like a son of a bitch for worrying her. I moved to the next one. Antonio, my former editor, a note he’d sent me the day of the firing.
—Look, Isaac, I know this is hard, but I want you to understand it’s not personal. Just business, you understand? You were good, you really were, but AI is better and more consistent. The newspaper needs to survive and… shit, this sounds horrible. I just wanted you to hear it directly from me.
I closed the app and threw the phone onto the sleeping bag, feeling the bile rise in my throat. Digital masochism, confirmed.
The tent smelled of damp canvas and mosquito repellent when I got into the sleeping bag, trying to fall asleep in a way I knew wouldn’t come easy. Outside, the forest made its usual night noises: crickets, wind in the treetops, an owl in the distance that never shut up.
And something else.
A low, pitiful moan, like someone in intense pain trying not to scream so as not to alert whatever was causing that suffering. I stayed still in the sleeping bag while the moan repeated, closer now, coming from the eastern grove where the density of pines made everything black even before night had fully fallen.
—Is there anyone there?
My voice sounded stupid and weak in the dark, and the moan cut off abruptly, as if whoever made it had decided it was better to keep silent.
Great —I thought, because this was exactly what I needed: a probably injured person in the middle of the forest with no cell signal and two hours from the nearest civilization.
I came out of the tent with the flashlight in hand, and the beam lit up trees, underbrush, moss-covered stones, but nothing out of place. The air smelled of wet earth and pine resin, that smell that relaxed me, but now felt dense and threatening.
—Do you need help?
Absolute silence, not even the owl dared interrupt that oppressive emptiness that had settled between the trees. I walked toward where I had heard the moan with the flashlight sweeping side to side while my boots crunched against dry leaves, and then I heard it again, but now it wasn’t a moan but my own voice asking with the same hesitant intonation I had just used.
—Do you need help?
The same words, the same inflection, as if someone had recorded my question and was playing it back from the trees with disturbing fidelity. I froze while the flashlight trembled in my hand, and the fear I’d been keeping at bay since I heard the first moan settled like molten lead in my stomach.
—Who the hell is out there?
Nothing except the wind and that damn owl that had now decided to return to its night routine, completely oblivious to the fact that something in this forest was terribly wrong. I backed toward the tent counting the steps — three, five, seven — when the flashlight lit something on the ground that took my brain several seconds to process. Claw marks, I thought at first, but not like a bear or a puma, rather something with three long fingers and a fourth opposable one, like deformed hands that had left their print in the soft earth. There were several forming a circular pattern around my camp, as if something had been circling, studying my territory while I slept unaware of its presence.
A stale smell hit me then, metallic and unpleasant like when you open vacuum-packed meat that spent too long in the fridge slowly rotting without anyone noticing.
—Do you need help?
My voice again, but now it came from behind me with that same mechanical, repetitive quality. I turned so fast I almost fell, and the flashlight revealed only darkness between the trees, but there was something there, I felt it with that primitive certainty that tells you when you’re being watched by something that is definitely not friendly.
I ran to the tent and jumped in, closing the zipper with clumsy fingers while breathing as if I’d run a full kilometer, feeling my heart hammer my ribs with painful insistence. Wait, I told myself, think clearly. It could be a prankster, someone who saw my camp and decided to mess with the lonely guy who walked away from civilization to process his existential crisis, or maybe an auditory hallucination because I’d spent three days with too much silence and too many dark thoughts.
A slow scratch ran down the tent canvas from top to bottom, like nails, not claws, testing the material’s resistance with an almost scientific curiosity. Shit, I thought as I grabbed the camp knife, completely aware it was useless against whatever was out there, but at least it made me feel less helpless in this nightmare situation.
—Do you need help?
Now it sounded from the other side of the tent, then from behind, then from the right, and my own voice surrounded me overlapping in a deformed chorus that repeated the same question over and over until it became a disturbing mantra.
—Do you need help? Do you need help? Do you need—
—Shut up!
The voices stopped abruptly, and the silence that followed was worse than the chorus of imitations because now I had no idea where that thing was or what it was planning to do. Seconds that felt like minutes, minutes that could have been hours, I had no way of knowing while I sat there with the knife gripped in one hand and the flashlight in the other, waiting for the next move in this macabre game.
A shriek pierced the night with an intensity that drilled my eardrums, sharp and prolonged like rusty metal twisting under extreme pressure. I covered my ears, but the sound pierced through anyway, vibrating inside my skull, and when it finally ended something hit the tent with brutal force that shook the whole structure. Once, twice, three times, each impact stronger than the last as if it were testing how much it could take before collapsing.
I shot out through the front opening without thinking twice, because nothing about bravery motivated me at that moment but pure survival instinct when your shelter is being attacked by something that clearly wants to get in. I didn’t run toward the car because it was parked on the other side of whatever was destroying my camp, so I ran into the woods with no plan at all, only the urgent need to put distance between me and that thing.
Branches whipped my face as I tripped over roots that seemed designed to make me fall, and the flashlight lit barely two meters ahead before there was only absolute blackness swallowing the forest. My lungs burned with each breath while the knife slipped in my sweaty hand, and behind me something big moved between the trees with a speed that shouldn’t be possible for something its size. The crack of breaking branches and the rhythmic pounding of something running on four legs chased me like a nightmare come true.
—Shut up!
My own voice shouted from behind with the same hysterical tone I had just used, and the confirmation that it was actively hunting me made my legs find a reserve of energy I didn’t know I had. A clearing appeared ahead lit by the full moon, a circular space surrounded by very tall pines, and in the center there was a concrete construction half buried in the earth like an old bunker or a weather station abandoned decades ago.
I had no time to think about the implications or wonder what that structure was doing in the middle of nowhere, I just went in through the rusty door hanging from a single hinge while the smell hit me immediately. Rot mixed with industrial chemicals, something sweet and sickly that made me gag instantly. I covered my nose with my forearm, but the smell stuck to everything, soaking my clothes and my skin with its nauseating presence.
The flashlight revealed a concrete corridor with walls stained with something dark I preferred not to identify, and at the end there was a half-open metal door that promised at least a room where I could lock myself in. Outside, the crack of branches and footsteps stopped abruptly, and then there was only silence followed by slow, deliberate steps, claws scratching the concrete with an almost obscene patience.
I went through the door at the back and slammed it shut, grateful there was a rusty lock I turned with trembling hands until the mechanism clicked. The room was small and claustrophobic, full of rusty scientific equipment remains against the walls, overturned tables, yellowed papers scattered on the floor like macabre confetti, and cages, dozens of empty cages with some bars bent outward as if what was inside had decided it no longer wanted to be there.
One of the papers was near my foot, and I picked it up with morbid curiosity while the smeared ink barely let me read fragments of what looked like a scientific report: “SCP-939 Instance D-12 shows improved vocal mimicry capability. Tests confirm it can reproduce not only words but specific distress patterns of victims, including emotional inflections and—” The rest was illegible from dampness and time.
SCP —I thought while my brain tried to connect the dots. I had heard that acronym before in articles I edited years ago when the newspaper still published rare investigative pieces about classified projects, illegal bioengineering, clandestine laboratories operating in the shadows of the government or unscrupulous corporations.
A blow shook the metal door, and then another, and then another, each methodical and patient as if it knew it had all the time in the world to knock down my last refuge. I desperately searched for another exit, but there was nothing except a ventilation duct in the ceiling, too small for an adult person to pass through, but big enough to give me a ridiculous hope.
—Isaac.
I froze because that was Antonio’s voice, my editor, sounding exactly like when he fired me with that mix of professional discomfort and personal guilt.
—It’s not personal, Isaac. Just business, you understand?
The door dented inward while the metal squealed in protest, and hearing those words reproduced with perfect fidelity by something that definitely wasn’t Antonio made something break inside me.
I grabbed a table and flipped it against the door. Useless, I knew, but I needed to do something. I needed—
—You were good, you really were, but AI is better.
Antonio’s voice distorted at the end like a badly reproduced recording or a corrupted audio file, and tears clouded my vision in a ridiculous way because here I was crying when I was about to be torn apart by something that imitated the exact words that had destroyed me emotionally barely a week ago.
The door gave way with a metallic crash and the frame burst, throwing pieces of rusty metal all over the room, and then the thing came in crawling with disturbing grace. The first thing I saw were the eyes… no, they weren’t eyes but light-sensitive spots running along its spiny back like Christmas lights in a biomechanical nightmare. Then the teeth, red and shiny, rows of six-centimeter fangs protruding from jaws that shouldn’t fit in any natural skull known to science.
The creature measured about two meters tall when it reared up on its hind legs, with translucent reddish skin almost luminescent that let you see shadows of internal organs throbbing underneath. Four limbs ending in three-fingered claws each, with that fourth opposable digit like a deformed thumb that gave it a grotesquely human look. Sensory organs surrounded its jaws in the form of small black pits that contracted and expanded, capturing my body heat with the precision of a military thermal tracking system.
It wasn’t an animal, that was crystal clear. It was a mistake, an experiment that should never have existed but that someone had created anyway because science sometimes doesn’t ask if it should do something but only if it can do it.
—Isaac —it said in Antonio’s perfect voice while its jaws moved out of sync, out of time with the words—. Just business.
I backed up until I hit the wall while desperately searching for the knife. Where the hell was the knife? I had dropped it when I moved the table in a pathetic attempt to block the door. The creature advanced slowly, unhurried, because it knew I had nowhere to go.
—Do you understand?
Now it was my own voice, my defeated tone when I nodded like an idiot and collected my things from the office without even trying to fight for my job. It was clear that talking out loud about everything that had happened to me hadn’t been smart these last few days.
I saw the knife then, three meters to my left under an overturned chair, completely inaccessible.
—Isaac —my mother now, and no, it couldn’t be, there was no way this thing had heard that voice note—. We’re worried about you.
The call I ignored before coming here, those three days of unanswered messages because I was too busy wallowing in my self-pity.
—Just call us, okay?
The creature jumped with an explosion of movement and muscle, and I lunged toward the knife with suicidal desperation. My fingers brushed it, I grabbed it, I turned while two hundred fifty kilos of muscle and claws hit me full on. We fell together and my head hit the concrete with a sickening crack, stars exploding in my vision like defective fireworks.
Teeth grazed dangerously close to my face while breath that smelled of rotten meat and advanced decomposition burned my nostrils, and those sensory organs throbbed centimeters from my skin reading the heat of my absolute terror with surgical precision. I stabbed the knife upward blindly, desperately, feeling the blade enter something soft and viscous.
The SCP-939 watched me with those optical spots on its back fixed on me while its dorsal spines bristled, I suppose detecting changes in my breathing or in the airflow when I moved because this thing was basically a biological tracking system designed to hunt in the dark.
—Shit —it hissed with my own voice.
It was the exact moment when I saw the claw marks around my camp, and I understood with chilling horror that… it was learning, recording every sound I made, every word, every expression of fear to build a complete catalog of my voice and use it as a lure for future victims.
—Shit. It’s not personal.
The pieces fit together with terrible clarity: the initial moans, my stupid question, my panicked screams. It wasn’t chaotic but scientific methodology applied to hunting. It collected the voices first, studied the vocal patterns, and then attacked using those recordings as bait. How many other voices would it have stored in that monster brain? How many other solitary campers had passed through this forest and never came out?
The creature took a sideways step deliberately blocking the broken door, and I looked around for something, anything I could use as a weapon or escape. Useless papers, rusty equipment that would crumble if touched, empty cages with stories I preferred not to imagine, and the ventilation duct in the ceiling that was too small for me, but impossible for something the size of this biomechanical nightmare.
I climbed onto the overturned table while the creature roared and charged with all its muscle mass, and I jumped toward the duct extending my arms in desperation. My hands grabbed the rusty edge and I pulled myself up while my shoulders scraped painfully against corroded metal. Too narrow, I thought with growing panic, I’m not going to fit.
Claws tore my leg with surgical precision and liquid fire ran through my whole calf from ankle to knee. I screamed while kicking backward with my uninjured leg, and my boot connected with something hard, I suppose one of those sensory organs on its face, and the creature let out a shriek of genuine pain.
I dragged myself inside the duct ignoring how my elbows bled against rusty rivets and how my wounded leg throbbed sending waves of agony with each movement. Blood dripped behind me forming a perfect trail, but that was a future problem because right now I only needed distance. The creature put a whole claw into the duct opening scratching insistently, reaching, almost touching my foot before giving up with a roar of frustration.
I heard it back away and its footsteps moving away down the corridor, it was looking for another way to reach me or waiting patiently outside because it knew I would eventually have to come out of there. I kept crawling while the duct rose at an upward angle toward who knows where, and my breathing echoed in the metal like a rusty bellows. My leg stopped hurting so much after several meters, which was a bad sign because it meant shock and nothing good would come of that.
Meters that became tens of meters of claustrophobic crawling until the duct ended in a rusty grate. I kicked it with the leg that still worked relatively well, once, twice, and on the third blow it gave way with a metallic squeal that echoed in the night.
I fell onto wet grass under open sky and stars that had never seemed so beautiful to me, and I dragged myself away from the bunker with my arms because my legs no longer responded.
Trees —I thought confused, I needed to reach the trees and hide among the shadows where that thing might not be able to track me so easily.
—Isaac.
I froze mid-crawl while every muscle in my body tensed with renewed terror.
—We’re worried about you.
My mother’s voice emerging from the darkness among the pines with that perfectly replicated maternal concern, and I knew with absolute certainty that the creature had left the bunker and had been waiting for me while I crawled through that duct believing I was escaping.
It’s smart, the bastard —I thought, filling with anguish.
—Just call us, okay?
I didn’t answer, I didn’t move, I barely dared to breathe while I lay in the wet grass pretending to be part of the landscape. I saw its silhouette move between the trees with that impossible height and that reddish skin that caught the moonlight as if it were made of bloodied glass.
—Do you need help? Isaac. It’s not personal. Shit. Just business, you understand?
A complete catalog of my voice and those of the important people in my life, testing each variation systematically to determine which would make me react, which would force me to scream or move or give away my position. It was scientific in its cruelty, methodical in its hunt.
I closed my eyes feeling tears roll down my cheeks mixing with dirt and sweat. I had spent three days in this forest fleeing from a voice; the algorithm that replaced me, the AI that was better than me in every measurable sense, and now I was being hunted by another voice, by something that stole words from the dead to lure the living in a perpetual cycle of predation.
What poetic shit —I thought with a hysterical laugh bubbling in my throat that I had to violently repress. The creature approached and I could hear its claws sinking into soft earth with each deliberate step, those sensory organs probably capturing the heat of my bleeding body like a beacon in the dark.
I opened my eyes and evaluated my options with the desperate clarity that comes when you know you’re going to die anyway. Stay still and hope it passed by trusting that somehow it would lose my trail, or run with a shattered leg and die tired after twenty meters. Neither guaranteed surviving until dawn, but at least running I would be doing something instead of waiting for my execution.
I stood up leaning on my good leg while the wound protested with waves of agony, and I gripped the useless knife in my trembling hand because letting go of it would be admitting complete defeat.
—Great —I murmured to myself—, because this wasn’t enough of a nightmare.
I ran.
Behind me, all my stolen voices chased me in a cacophonous chorus that echoed between the trees, the words overlapping and distorting until they became something that was no longer human but a grotesque amalgam of everything I had ever said mixed with the terror of those who came before me.
The last thing I thought was that from now on I would be another voice in its catalog, another lure to attract the next solitary camper who came to this forest looking to escape their problems only to find something infinitely worse.
The End