FILE: LÖFGREN

Audio Log of Anders Löfgren

Chief Military Scientist

The Salus Institution, Sweden

Not to be seen by anyone without authorisation of the Salus Institution. Intellectual property of the Salus Institution. Possession or access to this file is expressly forbidden. Unauthorised access is to be immediately reported to a superior officer for court martial.

TRANSCRIPTION PROVIDED FROM AUDIO.

Log 224

The war continues. This day marks a year of my tenancy as Chief Military Scientist for the Salus Institution. I had thought the war would have ended by now. But it will be within a year. That I can guarantee.

Log 225

Reports from outside continue to mention a form of pathological aggression sweeping across the front lines. I am not surprised. This is war, what do they expect? Pathological passivity? The tests continue. Recent results show only a 40% increase in weapon lethality. We must work harder. The war will only be won with the newest technology. The Riksdag continue to have doubts as to the effectiveness of our weapons, but we shall have our Stormaktstiden again.

Log 226

Experiments are to continue, despite recent reports. If the ferocity of the Enemy’s forces is truly what they say, we must only develop our scientific theories faster and devise new technology. We can only achieve peace through superior firepower. Jag älskar dig Sverige!

Log 227

Anna-Lina Ek from Biological Research drew me to one side today. She is concerned about SÄPO’s recent reports. I asked her why: our munitions continue to perform well on the front line of battle and are as effective as predicted against the Enemy’s new Kevlar. But she said that she didn’t mean that report: she meant the behavioural abnormalities. For the common man, I replied, war is an abnormality - but it is not so for us, in our line of work, and the fresh troops are clearly lacking patriotic spirit. It shall be beaten out of them by their superiors. I ordered her back to work on the latest bullets. The SÄPO may be the military intelligence network, but in my experience, ‘military’ and ‘intelligence’ is something of an oxymoron. It is our scientific work that fuels the war and will win us the war. The Försvarsmakten will prevail, if only they put our technology to use.

Log 228

Whatever this is, it’s not us. But it’s affecting our soldiers all the same. Today footage came in of a soldier - a soldier doing….terrible things. And not because of any weapon we have given them. It was both sides - the footage was shaky, but we could make out uniforms all the same, under the…blood. In all my years I have never seen anything like it, not even in the last war. The ferocity - the brutality…is it a cocktail of high-performance drugs? An enhanced form of adrenaline? But why give it to our soldiers too? The footage was only recovered thanks to external storage, as the original soldier whose bodycam caught what happened is…unlikely to have survived.

Log 229

We have been taken off munitions duties for the time being. The SÄPO sent drones over the nearest battlefield and the soldiers are still there, but it’s impossible to tell which side they’re from. They just wander, uselessly, like what we saw in the footage just hadn’t happened. But there are bodies, still….lots of bodies. None of them have bullet holes. They brought up a man from Pathology who only stated that death would not have been instant.

Log 230

I checked the data - I checked all of it! No drugs could do that, so I started looking at novichok, V-series nerve-agents, even mustard gas - I scanned for everything. Granted, the samples are nowhere near sterile. The men we could get outside of the compound, even in hazard suits, didn’t dare stay out too long - not with an unknown chemical out there somewhere. Anna-Lina suggested rabies. Rabies! Like anything survives out there to even spread rabies! There is no drooling, no incubation time, they just stand around with their heads in their hands like they’re crying…I can’t sleep, not with the footage in my mind’s eye, replaying constantly….

Log 231

One of the lead generals in the Försvarsmakten gave us a garbled message about weapons before all communication signals went dead. We would never usually be privy to this sort of military communication, but my superior was told to show us. The reasoning became quickly apparent. In the background there were noises of rending, tearing, screaming, like in the footage…they are apparently still sending messages to the regiment, but so far, nothing. The general was in a secure bunker, like the Institute. How did whatever it was get there? Anna-Lina has been testing my patience about something she saw in the drone footage, but she should get back to work. We don’t have time.

Log 232

Samples are revealing something - just something. But we can’t get a handle on its genetic signature, on any markers to identify it. It moves almost feverishly quickly in the samples, but it does not have the morphology of any known pathogen. We will find out what this is. We have to. Science will shine a light on this darkness. We are the most highly developed nation in the world. Maybe it’s a new disease developing on the casualties of war - there’s been enough bodies to act as hosts.

Log 233

One place, then another. Whatever it is, it’s spreading - spreading fast, impossibly fast. More reports are coming in, and they are getting more and more fragmented. All the same - screaming, bloodshed, even among our own troops. This isn’t a riot or a mutiny - this is something else. We are running it through every simulation the computer can generate, but it keeps drawing blanks. I don’t understand - we give them chemical resistant suits and masks, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Our drones can go further and further without being shot down, too. The enemy seems to have scattered. Are they waiting for the infection to spread? There’s no need to fight if the disease wipes us out. Are they waiting for us to die? But their soldiers seemed to have it too? Why infect their own with this - this thing?

Log 234

We had a meeting today with our superiors and other departments, but it just reduced to shouting. Everyone has a theory. No one has any answers. Communication with the outside world is getting more and more sporadic.

Log 235

Anna-Lina got hold of me today and I just couldn’t get rid of her. It’s not the soldiers, she kept saying, with a feverish look in her eyes that made me think she was developing the disease too. It’s not the soldiers - not just the soldiers - something else - she stuffed me into a chair and all but forced me to watch that first drone footage. There have been so many that they’re all beginning to fade into one long nightmare. But she kept circling a bit of blurry footage - one of the K9 units, I think. It just stood there. What was the bloody point of that, I asked. That’s just it, she argued. It just stands there. It doesn’t run, it doesn’t join in and attack. It stands there, and it watches. We’re all going mad, I snapped back. The world’s gone mad and you’re looking at dogs?

Log 236

We got a call from MI6 today. We had no idea they still existed: they had fought on our side of course, but we haven’t heard anything from them for months. Some Engelska was on the phone gabbling in very bad Swedish about weapons - big weapons, like nothing they had ever seen before, and warning us - don’t let it in, she kept saying, don’t let any of them in. Logically I wanted to call that warning fundamentally unhelpful, but it shook me all the same. If the United Kingdom has this problem too, where does it stop? Is this across Europe?

Log 237

There was scratching on the large perimeter gate today. Some suggested just firing - if it’s more of those soldiers, we don’t want any contact. But then someone heard a bark, and in comes a mangy - German Shepherd, I think? I don’t care for dogs. It is barking and leaping back and forth and its side was covered in an ominous red stain. Maybe it did have rabies, I suggested, and a soldier aimed for its head. But then Anna-Lina burst in like a mad thing and got in the way. It’s a bloody dog, I snapped. Yes, she said - a dog! A dog like in the footage!

And then she did something utterly stupid and bent down, checking it over. The dog, oddly, calmed down the second it saw her. It wagged its tail, but it looked at her like I’ve never seen a dog look at anyone before - straight on, without blinking. And what does she do but ask it to follow her, and it does. The stress is getting to that woman.

Log 238

I had nearly had it with Anna-Lina when she came into the sterile lab with that flea-bitten dog of hers. It’s been several days and I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of her. But this time she has brought one of my superiors, and I can’t just send her away. I sat there reluctantly as she explained some rubbish about a pictogram keyboard - the things with little pictures on them. She said she’d adapted it for dog eyes or some rubbish. I have no idea where she even got that bloody thing. And then she put the keyboard down and told the dog to press buttons.

I nearly threw her out there, even with my superior watching. But that’s before the dog began to type.

Not in any spelling type way. It was a pictogram keyboard, so all it could enter were pictures. I’d have been tempted to call it random - I want to call it random - but it wasn’t. It pressed a button for a stick, and at that point I was about to say of course it wants a stick - all dogs want sticks - before it pressed another button with a human. Stick, human, it kept pressing. Stick, human. And then, nose, human, tooth. Nose, human, tooth, dog, angry. Then it looked up and seemed to impossibly shake its head to itself. Human, dog, nose, angry. Tooth dog. And then Anna-Lina made it turn around and you could see a nasty bite on its back, covered in surgical gauze. “It’s a human bite,” she said, and showed us pictures of the injury before it had been bandaged. The dog pressed more buttons. Angry human tooth nose dog.

What?

Log 239

We got it to answer basic questions at first. What is that? Chair. What is that? Food. Granted that last one was a bone but it’s viewing things through its perspective, Anna-Lina said. Well, she said her perspective. Fine, it’s a ‘she’. Canine designation L440, apparently. I asked Anna-Lina if we had any programmes running on canine intelligence, and we looked through the files. One of our rank-and-file K9 units that had been present during that first skirmish with - whatever it was. Her handler presumably died. She was trained to bite, defend, chase, that sort of thing. But not type.

Anna-Lina made some more rudimentary buttons out of paper with symbols drawn in marker. She even got a soldier in with a gun, let L440 sniff it and then drew it on paper. That was a gun. When we showed it to the dog again and asked what it was, the bloody thing tapped the picture with a paw.

I would be amazed, but we have a war to fight - so I said, before Anna-Lina mentioned this dog, however she got intelligent, is a witness. The only witness we have to whatever happened.

I got my inferiors to work on the dog’s…’testimony’. And I confess I got a few odd looks similar to those I had given Lina, but we looked at the samples we had, and the buttons the dog had pressed. Nose, I kept thinking. Nose. What did that mean?

Log 240

L440 never got any treats, nor did she ask for any. She looked us all in the eye, all the time. It was slightly unnerving.

When L440 curled up in a corner after a long day’s interrogation (‘nose,’ she kept typing, ‘nose tooth human…’) I sat up, thinking. Soon enough Anna-Lina came in too. She couldn’t sleep either. We talked. She had a brother in Uppsala University. I studied there too, I said. It was good, but the -

- The library never had enough seating, she said. She’d been there too. We compared dates. We’d have been there at the same time. We even knew the same cafe, the one with the amazing Jordgubbstårta in the summer when the strawberries were in season. We’d never talked before, not like this.

Then L440 woke up, and we kept asking her questions. I kept away from it: I still don’t particularly like dogs.

Log 241

We cracked it - nose! The smell - something L440 could smell, and we couldn’t!

Some of the samples were decayed beyond use for analysis but one wasn’t, and running it through some more machines revealed it did give off a scent, one that humans couldn’t detect. But L440 could. In fact, when we tried to show it to her, she took off and stood in the corner shaking.

That smell - did whatever this was give off a scent?

The following I have to report, but I don’t take any pleasure in it. We undertook experimentation. Hamsters. Cats. Then we asked for volunteers.

Then prisoners of war. We still have a few, despite being a scientific institution. If anything, especially because we are a scientific institution. Science has its costs.

Every single time, it was the same. Nothing, no sign, and then - anger. Seething, incandescent anger that drove the subjects to murderous rage. Through that, we could learn more about it - how it spread, what worked to prevent it. Seemingly, nothing. We tried everything. It didn’t eat, didn’t talk - it just raged. It’s a good thing we have strong observation glass separating us and - well, it wasn’t a him anymore. It wasn’t anything anymore. Hamsters and cats still didn’t seem affected as the days wore on, but on humans the effect was almost instant. Any exposure to whatever it was by air started the process. It was almost comparable to rabies, but they never died. They just kept living, snarling at any human they saw. If we retreated and just looked at the camera footage, though, it would settle into an odd dormancy once left alone. We even put the hamster and the cat in with it and it didn’t respond. But seeing a human would trigger the bloodlust again, with unfailing energy and ferocity.

No disease acted like that. This had to be designed. Suddenly, what the Engelska said made sense, what the general all those days ago said made sense. It wasn’t mindless babble about weapons, plural. It was about the weapon. Singular. A weapon.

Maybe this had been made deliberately. But how would you contain it once you had it in a lab?

You couldn’t.

You -

Log 242

We should’ve seen it coming. All of my degrees, my position here at Salus - it means nothing. It meant nothing. It always meant nothing. It couldn’t be contained.

If it was passed to you by a dog, the incubation period was slower. We didn’t find that out by a test subject.

We found this out via Anna-Lina.

During my last audio-log Anna-Lina came in and I knew something was wrong - I just knew it. But then she leapt at me. I was able to get help in fighting her off and we put her in containment, but I knew even before the test results came in. Her eyes - so bright, so intelligent - were dulled and flat. Her skin had a pallor it had never had before. And the gentle scientist I had known had been replaced by a screeching harpy, reaching for our throats. I went through all the treatments we’d tried. Maybe one of them would work on her - maybe she’d be the exception. After all, she’d contracted this disease in a different way to the others. This wasn’t airborne, this was by organism transmission. Maybe it was a milder strain!

But nothing worked. Nothing worked and I just sat there before the glass with her scratching and biting at the other side because I deserved to have her hatred. I deserved her anger. I had failed her.

L440 was dangerous. It wasn’t enough to keep her contained - that ship had sailed.

A bloody dog had come and taken Lina away. Out of everything that could ever have brought her down. Brilliant Lina. Uppsala Lina who liked strawberries in the summer. Lina who I’d dismissed all the way along like an idiot and she’d been bloody right and now she was gone. I could’ve shot that dog myself. Fortunately, someone did it for me. I could’ve sworn L440 knew what was coming. She didn’t even run.

All the dogs are being rounded up - all of the personal pets, K9 units, you name it. And when I look around the lab with all her things still where they were left, I wish I could just round up every bloody dog in the whole world.

Log 243

Well. It was only a matter of time. We’d all been in contact with that dog too. Even just being in the same room was enough. But Lina had been all over L440 from the beginning, giving it hugs and snuggles and probably letting it sleep on her bed and all the time it had been slowly killing her. And now it’s going to kill us too.

[Coughing]

Oh, it’s not - not going to kill us. That’s the most horrible thing about it. It doesn’t kill. It never kills. It just takes your inhibitions, your reason, your identity - you, in the most psychological sense. And the thing it leaves behind certainly does kill, but it never kills itself. It’s too cruel for that. To die would be a mercy.

I’ve done all the necessary precautions. I’ve locked us in, for good this time. We can sit here and rot for all I care, as long as we don’t give it to anyone else. I’ve contacted another scientific department at Salus and told them what this pathogen gives to dogs and takes away from humans. Maybe God has only decreed that one animal can be this intelligent at one time. Maybe our time’s up. The time of the apes coming to an end in a blaze of fire and lightning and pain.

Perhaps the Engelska thought something similar, so many miles away across the Channel. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.

[Coughing]

My name is Anders. My name is Anders. My name is Anders, and jag älskar dig Sverige….