Havoc: The Rise of Ɖavo

By Adrian Lee Baker

Step into the haunting world of Havoc: The Rise of Ɖavo, where the brutal war that gripped Croatia in 1991 is just the beginning of a genocidal wave that threatens humanity’s very existence. But one man has been planning for this all along. To him, the Battle of Vukovar and the spread of violence symbolize an imperfect world that needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. He sees himself as a hero, a psychopath, an invincible death machine, and the next messiah prophesized by religion.

Havoc is the continuing saga of Ɖavo, a man bound by addiction and taboo, and his journey through the darkest depths of the human psyche. It is a rollercoaster ride through nightmares and twilight dimensions, where demons and monsters lurk around every corner. As Ɖavo’s plan unfolds, he travels deeper into the horrors of his own mind and unleashes Hell on Earth.

This thought-provoking and exhilarating tour de force explores humanity’s failings and the path that leads us towards oblivion. It delves into one man’s journey and the heinous acts he embraces to put things right, with a mantra that dictates ‘no prisoners, death to all, spare no one.’ But as the demons grow restless and impatient, the plan risks spiraling out of control.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781035807079

Adrian Lee Baker

Adrian Lee Baker lives in a small village in north-west Leicestershire. He is married to Angela, and has two daughters, Phoebe and Milly, and a crazy but lovely dachshund, Poppy. He works as a lecturer in further education and has a Second Dan black-belt in kick-boxing. He is an avid fan of both books and films, especially the sci-fi and horror genres. Hence his writing style reflects the darker side of humanity. Favourite books include Nineteen Eighty-Four, A Clockwork Orange, House of Leaves, Heart of Darkness, Dracula, Naked Lunch, and Fear and Loathing of Las Vegas. As for his favourite films, they will always be the pioneering horrors, thrillers and sci-fi chillers, right from The Forbidden Planet and Psycho to Ichi the Killer, Audition and Ring, and the likes of Cloverfield and The Walking Dead.

Book preview

Havoc

The Rise of Ɖavo

Adrian Lee Baker

Austin Macauley Publishers

Havoc

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Acknowledgement

Spellbound

Chapter 1 The Day After

Chapter 2 My Friend Johnny

Chapter 3 The Incident

Chapter 4 The Woman in White

Chapter 5 The Devil

Darkness

Chapter 6 Sheer Bliss

Chapter 7 Event Horizon

Chapter 8 The Awakening

Chapter 9 Frustrated Memories

Chapter 10 The Room

Chapter 11 The Beautiful Blonde

Chapter 12 Walther

Chapter 13 The Thing

Chapter 14 Re-Entering Addiction

The Descent

Chapter 15 Transition

Chapter 16 Fake Soldier

Chapter 17 Retreat!

Chapter 18 The Madness

Chapter 19 Hell’s Ruin

Chapter 20 An Endless White

Chapter 21 Eureka!

Chapter 22 Mr Mosquito

Chapter 23 A Darker White

Chapter 24 The Legend

About the Author

Adrian Lee Baker lives in a small village in north-west Leicestershire. He is married to Angela, and has two daughters, Phoebe and Milly, and a crazy but lovely dachshund, Poppy. He works as a lecturer in further education and has a Second Dan black-belt in kick-boxing. He is an avid fan of both books and films, especially the sci-fi and horror genres. Hence his writing style reflects the darker side of humanity. Favourite books include Nineteen Eighty-Four, A Clockwork Orange, House of Leaves, Heart of Darkness, Dracula, Naked Lunch, and Fear and Loathing of Las Vegas. As for his favourite films, they will always be the pioneering horrors, thrillers and sci-fi chillers, right from The Forbidden Planet and Psycho to Ichi the Killer, Audition and Ring, and the likes of Cloverfield and The Walking Dead.

Dedication

To my wife for her enduring support.

Copyright Information ©

Adrian Lee Baker 2023

The right of Adrian Lee Baker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035807062 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035807079 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

To all the lovers of horror and fantasy, I couldn’t do it without you.

You’re the greatest.

Havoc

/ˈhavək/ n. & v.

n. widespread destruction; great confusion and disorder.

v.tr (havocked, havocking) to lay waste; devastate.

Spellbound

Chapter 1

The Day After

…Apok has been unleashed. Is humankind ready for such a concept: no prisoners—death to all—spare no one?

God, I have come so far and in such a short space of time. It’s like I have shed one skin and stepped into another, from one life to the next. I’ve evolved.

On the Sunday morning after the ritual, I awoke in my own bed, the sheets blood stained through to the mattress, my body ravaged with superficial cuts and hideous bruising, the signs of a well-fought battle and one in which I had prevailed, proving to the gods that I, Andrew Brown, like Apok, have got what it takes to satisfy the dark’s voracious appetite and all that dwells within.

I earned the right after that, and fuck anyone who says otherwise.

I should’ve been torn limb from limb, killed many times over, but I wasn’t.

The miracle I’d prayed for had happened.

My body hurt just lying on the bedsheets. Every muscle, every sinew and tendon, every blood vessel, every organ ached with triumphant pain. Even my eyes stung at the dull light filtered by the curtains.

Mum and Dad were beside themselves. I said I’d gotten caught in the mêlée on my way home, some bullshit about my taxi being boxed in by a raucous mob that first dragged out the driver, then me. They insisted on me going to hospital, but I refused, much to their protests and indignation. One of the advantages of my new skin, I found, was that I healed fast, though the pain was real enough. That’s one thing that didn’t change. But it was nothing a couple of codeine pills couldn’t dull. Yet in my parents’ eyes, I looked like death warmed up that had been dragged through hell backwards. I suppose if they’d known the incredible feat of bravery and skill my injuries represented, they would’ve seen it differently. But alas, that never happened, nor could they ever know what happened. All they knew was what they saw and what I told them, their son, their little boy hurt and bloody, a victim of mindless thuggery, the trauma, to them, as raw and close-up as it could ever be. Whereas, in fact, my body was a celebration, host to a violent resistance, covered in all manner of scrapes, grazes, cuts and bruises, a live trophy of scars and an underlying pain that I wore with pride. To me, my injuries were like tattoos, a reminder of every person I had fought and what it had taken to put them down. But reliving the excitement of that night paled in comparison to the rest of my thoughts. For in my head, the revolution had started. It was no ordinary Sunday. It was my very own Sunday Bloody Sunday, the rhythm of the drum beating its signature intro, the guitar picking up the anticipation, the mood leading into that fateful opening lyric: I can’t believe the news today…

And boy, was that one incredible understatement.

To my parents, it felt like the world was ending.

But to me, it felt like a new beginning, the dawn of something special.

It felt real—more real than anything that had come before it, for it was the realisation of my dreams finally being unveiled. Yes, that morning marked a definite change. The revolution was here.

I woke to the news of the riot, which had raged on throughout the night long after I’d left. Like one of those Californian brush fires, it had spread to the surrounding suburb, the demons’ wanton bloodlust ravenous for human souls. Pictures on every news bulletin on every channel from dawn till the early hours the following morning graphically portrayed scenes of wholesale damage, of cars burning and smoke swirling, houses and businesses ransacked as the walking wounded wandered aimlessly amongst bodies that still lay where they had fallen. It was a manic scene of flashing blue lights, paramedics administering triage, fire crews hosing down buildings, and the police trying to contain a hopeless situation. It was a world apart from the safety those watching on their TVs were used to, a world apart from the humdrum life Terence and Paula Childs led, but one that gave the briefest insight into what was about to come.

The whole country had borne witness to the same god-awful scenes, just as the Childs had and I had with my parents, both households watching the same chaotic events unfold as they were reported. But the Childs weren’t to know that in that same week they would meet the architect of those events, that they would be abducted, and that masked men would break into their house, hold them at gunpoint and gas them into unconsciousness only for them to wake hours later in a dank prison cell of a room, naked and bound to a chair.

Even now the thought of Dan, the girls he raped, killed and in some cases mutilated, hangs like a millstone around my neck. Damn him and his family, even though the debt his crimes incurred has now been settled. I’m glad I killed Dan the way I did and that his family suffered their fate too. After abducting Mr and Mrs Childs, I never did go back into that room where I left them with the fathers of two of Dan’s victims. That was their business to conclude, not mine. My part was serving them up like two racks of prime rib to be sliced and diced accordingly—that and killing and dismembering the Childs’ two remaining children, Tracey, nineteen, and Stuart, fifteen, both as hapless as the rest of Dan’s victims and perhaps the most poignant reminders of a long line of poor choices on the Blood Red Road to Boz.

I knew Mr and Mrs Childs’ remains would never be found, like their children’s remains, disposed of discreetly, fed to pigs, or burned to ash then scattered. Not like Dan’s, whose body I crucified and whose tongue I cut out and left pinned to a wall beside the message I daubed using his tongue. To the Croats it was a private affair of honour and family and settling a score so they could draw a line in order to move on. Despite the surrounding heartache, it was their culture—how they coped and reconciled themselves with the loss. But to me it was another step on the Blood Red Road, another step closer to realising my dream.

It was a crazy fucking week, but one that saw the unveiling of a new era.

Apok had been unleashed.

The revolution had begun.

Is humankind ready for such a concept: no prisoners—death to all—spare no one?

Am I ready for what the gods have in store?

To be honest, I don’t know. But what I do know is that we’re going to find out…and pretty soon. Ain’t no one this won’t touch…and I mean, no one.

Chapter 2

My Friend Johnny

…He has that aura of belonging, even in a war zone. I suppose that’s why I haven’t killed him yet. I suppose that’s why I call him my friend…

The war has been going for some weeks now, closely fought like the deadliest game of chess that ever was. Via a sniper’s scope, its players can be seen skulking from building to building and street to street, avoiding detection and the arbitrary sting between the shoulder blades of a marksman’s bullet or blown apart by a mortar or an artillery salvo called in on their position. Death has become so random and routine, it’s like a day isn’t normal without it. No one knows who or when, but come each sunset, someone you know has helped to fill the day’s quota of casualties. I don’t mind; it’s how it is. You get used to it. But the stop-start tactics make way for a lot of downtime, with no one daring to move unless the higher-ups give the command. I’m not one to complain. I’m in no rush. I’m exactly where I want to be. In the earlier days and weeks of the battle, I enjoyed the steadier pace; it gave me time to think, to contemplate the journey I’d started so unwittingly back in 1988 and the one person, unsung in his influence, who’s been in the background throughout—my friend Johnny.

Johnny is what you’d expect a post-grad Oxbridge whiz-kid with a first in journalism to be: six-foot, medium build, sandy brown hair with matching eyes, a healthily tanned complexion and lightly chiselled features that are not too macho but frame his cheekbones and jaw line beautifully. He’s what every parent wishes for and most women slaver over: ambitious, intelligent, suave, a mood and air of grace to suit each occasion underpinned by a worldly outlook and good humour. What’s not to like? He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t look out of place anywhere. He has that aura of belonging, even in a war zone. I suppose that’s why I haven’t killed him yet. I suppose that’s why I call him my friend.

Our first encounters didn’t include us meeting. They were nothing more than fleeting moments where we caught one another’s eye and a faint note of familiarity, the kind that pricks the brain’s synapses into a snap memory recall, made the connection—you again!

In the spring of ’88, with nothing better to do, I signed up for a university experiment: a series of questionnaires and interviews conducted over two weeks in the salubrious surroundings of a laboratory complex in the heart of the Oxfordshire Cotswolds. I remember the advert being eye-catching, glossy and futuristic-looking with the military-styled slogan—We need the best! And only the best! For the ultimate experience, apply now. It hailed opportunities I could only dream about, and if you made the effort to read the small print, it said anyone could apply, implying the more diverse the cohort, the better. Plus, it paid well. But first, there was an application and enrolment process to complete. A mere formality, the lady said on the phone. I was given an address in the business district just off Colmore Row in Birmingham. That’s when I first noticed Johnny. I’d just picked up my visitor’s pass as he walked in behind me, and as I took my seat in the one and only chair at the far end of a minimalist box-like foyer, I watched him try to charm the receptionist. She was middle-aged and pretty but incredibly hard-faced. I knew the type. She had that austere German look about her, like she’d seen and heard it all, her thin yet measured smile a barrier to all the Johnnies that come calling. Judging by the way he leaned towards her, I thought he was making some headway. But when his persistence grew, from a side door, a security man in uniform appeared to escort him out, politely herding him back through the glass entrance. The next time I saw him was in the Cotswolds from my window as he stalked the laboratory complex. Then, when I was in the Welsh Black Mountains, I heard that a journalist had been seen around the area asking questions—the kind of questions that get you noticed, the kind that can get you in trouble.

But Johnny didn’t care. He likes trouble. It’s why he’s here in Vukovar, an adrenaline junkie following his heart’s desire, albeit under the pretext of freelancing for the broadsheets. We bumped into each other earlier this year at a bar in Zagreb, and then later around April, at a well-known officer’s hangout in Osijek. On each occasion, he tentatively tapped me on the arm. Don’t I know you from somewhere? he’d say, offering to buy me a beer. No. I don’t think so, I’d reply before leaving. But it was that knowing look he gave, the way he nodded his head as he did so, confident that one day I would accept his offer of a beer and a chat. It was a look that said, No worries. I can wait. We’re going to be best friends forever. And in that one look, like minds connected; he knew our fates were intertwined, destined to converge at some point, that there was nothing random about our paths crossing. I could see him putting the pieces together, tenuous links, jumps in time that formed the weakest of dot-to-dot trails, a trail he’d been following since our eyes first clocked one another in Birmingham.

It was inevitable that we would meet again.

You see, for him, like me, war holds a dreadful fascination. In his mind, it didn’t matter how incoherent or questionable the links were, he was always going to wind up here. It’s that macabre draw that preys on addictive personalities, similar to how our youth lap up the latest shoot-em-ups, Call of Duty, Doom and the like. But I’ve never been one for computer games—couldn’t afford it as a kid. As a young man in my day, if you craved that kind of hardcore action, you either sought battle on the football terraces or signed up to serve Queen and country.

I spent a total of nearly three months at the laboratory complex, though not as Andrew Brown. The doctors gave me a new name—Candidate 29A. After the initial two-week period, they invited me back and kept on inviting me and kept on paying me. Who was I to refuse? My dad said he had never seen me so happy. And he was right. I had found a semblance of happiness talking to the doctors and lab technicians. It was something I found interesting. I felt a sense of purpose, perhaps for the very first time, and what’s more, it was something at which I excelled. The staff at the complex loved me. I felt valued. But Dad only saw it from his generation’s view, constantly harping on about how good an opportunity it was and that it would be a shame if I let it slip through my grasp. There’ll be something at the end of it, you’ll see. They’re just getting you ready. Anyway, what’ve you got to lose? he’d preach, his message relentless yet subliminally motivating. Again, he was right. I did have exactly that—nothing to lose bar my newfound wages from the lab people. But how long would they have lasted? And he was also right about them getting me ready.

At that stage in my life, you could have sold me a one-way ticket to the moon and I would have bitten off your hand in my eagerness to escape. I was twenty, disillusioned, and desperate for anything new that had the potential to set my world alight.

I was picked up from my parents’ house by a driver. The people from the lab insisted on that. The solid-looking man in a dark suit, black leather gloves and dark glasses took my bags and put them in the boot of a plush saloon—a BMW, I think—opening the car door for me and everything. I was that overawed, I can’t even remember saying goodbye to Mum and Dad. However, I do remember arriving at a place they called ‘the hospital’, which looked more like a spa resort, the reception buzzing with a welcoming committee of attentive staff. I had never felt so special, a pseudo-king in a king’s paradise. I was on cloud nine. Though, like the laboratory complex, the air of secrecy remained; personal names, even surnames, were never used, the staff were called by generic job titles, and my coded reference stuck with me as if I’d been baptised 29A.

After a further two weeks of what they called diagnostic testing, a man in a white coat, not much older than myself, gave me an exuberant pat on the back and told me I had qualified for Stage Two: Physical Induction.

Pleased that I was still doing well, I thought nothing of it. I just continued to follow their instructions. I mean, I was happy, the staff was happy, there were no obvious alarm bells, and the way Physical Induction was put forward, it sounded mysterious and full of adventure, exciting and thought-provoking, a training course, they said, that had been specially designed for me, bespoke to my needs and development. I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for, but the white coats gift-wrapped it like a five-star luxury holiday.

What can you do but say yes?

From the hospital, I was driven to a separate location, a place they called ‘the farm’. I didn’t know where the hell it was, but judging by the accents of most of the staff and the time it took us to drive there, I guessed somewhere in Wales, not that far across the border. I had to wear a blindfold with super-tight blacked-out ski goggles that dug into my forehead. But when we finally stopped and I was told to take them off, I remember that the special feeling I’d had had gone. It was explained to me on my arrival, walking into the place, that the staff there were from the military and that I was to trust their judgement at all times. From then on, a dizzy whirlwind of the adventure I’d been promised by the white coats swept me along. Again, I excelled where I’d thought I would fail. It was like there were no wrong answers. I cruised along, drunk on praise and a peculiar sense of belonging. Food, water and even the air tasted different—smelt different. While I never saw the lab or the hospital as being work, the farm was hard graft in comparison, its staff ready to pounce on the slightest infringement, where blood, sweat and tears were the only currency traded to gain their approval. It was during that first week on the farm that I lost my virginity to the ambience of success, with each and every achievement adding value to my newfound significance. I was no longer the person I used to be. For the first time, I felt important and empowered and strong, my former skin shed so the boy could be fast-tracked into manhood.

The training course, bespoke as it may have been, and as tough as it was, worked.

Pats on the back came and went—You’re clear for Stage Three, they said. The stages, too, appeared to come thick and fast, Stages Four and Five lost in the sleep-deprived haze of compounded fatigue and reduced rations. Days and weeks blurred into light and darkness, exercise and respite, pain and less pain. And from Stage Six onwards…I simply have no clear recollection, my memories mashed to an incoherent garble, as if I had become someone else, like something inside had snapped, exposing a part of me I never thought existed, the part that had the will and know-how to survive. Because I sure as hell didn’t! How I kept going, I’ll never know. But it was a course that cruised the rapids of an ever-tightening gauntlet towards implosion.

I remember the split-blinding light on welcoming the other me, except through his eyes the gaiety of colour was never to be quite as bright again. He screamed his way into my psyche. It was the kind of scream that began with excruciating pain and ended with intense relief, like he had something to prove, as if pulling a nail, he’d trodden on from his foot while smiling. Bring this shit on, a voice inside my head growled—his voice, repeating itself, shouting, getting louder and angrier. Whatever part of my inner self this was, the one thing that was very apparent was that it didn’t give a flying fuck, period. It simply didn’t care. It was like being possessed and programmed for self-destruction simultaneously. And so, it raged, I fucking dare you. C’mon, bring it on! Fucking do it. What you waiting for? Fucking do it, as the staff prepped me once more. My arms and legs were doubly secured to a metal-framed chair using heavy-duty nylon zip-ties. The black hood, duck taped, facilitated little air as my world plunged into dark claustrophobia. In such conditions, you quickly learn to let go of fear, allowing the pain to anesthetise you when the beatings arrive and water boarding to be nothing more than welcome rehydration.

Well, that weren’t so bad, was it? The voice said. I could go another round. Whaddaya say? Up for it? But that was the other me for you, my inner voice, the ultimate psychopath, never showing weakness, always up for the challenge—the addictive half of my personality—who likes to hurt and kill and in equal measure is not afraid of being hurt or killed.

For us, the partnership worked. It had to. I wouldn’t have survived otherwise.

Now, it’s hard to imagine a world without him. But if I hadn’t gone through that training, it’s even harder to imagine what life might’ve been like if we hadn’t discovered one another.

Needless to say, my inner voice and I have been together ever since.

But I never let on that he was there.

When you are in total isolation time stands still, only to accelerate in reverse as everything you think you know unravels for others to pick over and dissect, chemicals peeling back the layers until there’s nothing left but an unusable husk ready for cremation. Your mind is not your own. They lock it away, cutting off your senses inside an airless hood still dripping wet, its baggy excess duck taped around the chin and neck, pulling the thick cloth taut, with the same blacked-out ski goggles in which I’d arrived placed over the hood, and headphones similarly duck taped in place so that they were clamped tight over my ears. I could neither see nor hear anything, left to the uneasy silence as my body and senses acclimatised. Isolated from all external influences, my mind withdrew till suddenly, from nothing to full volume, it exploded with thrash metal, crying babies and the whirring of power tools over heavy beating and blood-curdling screams that blasted through from beyond the dark, my eardrums pounding and ringing on the cusp of irreparable deafness as I embraced the monotonous high pitch of tinnitus. Blows to the legs and torso rained down like meteors to the point I forgot they were happening, where I forgot my fail-safe reminder to stop and switch off so I could keep going…and going…and going.

You’re taught your body can take it, but the real test is can you?

Not that my inner voice was bothered. He wanted more.

But the beatings were the least of my problems. If I had stopped and switched off, it would have meant I’d lost and given in to fear, and giving in to fear would’ve meant I’d given in to the dark.

My new guardian angel would never have let that happen.

Not even if it meant killing me. As long as he got what he wanted.

I mean, why stop? It’s just getting interesting. We can keep going for a while yet, my inner voice purred. Fucking amateurs! They ain’t got a clue. Think you’re the boss…think you’ve got the better of me…then you know nothing…I’ll show you who’s the fucking boss…me…that’s who…me…then you’ll know…then you’ll fucking know…

* * *

I was meant to have had a break in training to recuperate after days of capture simulation, but I was to have no such luck. Whoever was calling the shots had me thrown into the deepest end there was. They didn’t care if I resurfaced. It was a case of how long I could hold my breath in a world of shit. As if I hadn’t cracked enough, they wanted to see more.

The final stage was an escape and evasion exercise. Nothing more than macabre snippets remain. Random nanosecond flashbacks that queue to plague the hours I’m awake; sights and sounds that flick an immediate switch, taking me straight back to the hyped urgency of dogs barking and snapping, the gnashing of teeth and that fervid, manic noise of canine excitement, yelping and shrieking and whining, getting ever closer, the noise of the hunt filling the air like the frightening birdsong from a mythical land coming at you from all angles. I remember motorbikes revving noisily, criss-crossing the terrain in my wake as helicopters whirled and chopped the air above, the noise driving fatigued lungs to burn and muscles to cramp, sapped by thirst and ravaged by hunger. I had a complete loss of perception. Periods where I’d black-out, come round and move on only to collapse again.

Attack dogs, snarling Alsatians with bared teeth, frothing in anticipation of picking up my scent, strained the leads of their angry handlers, thick-set men clad in black with balaclavas, who glared and shouted through their masks after the ravenous hounds, keen for a quick and brutal outcome.

I was told during the debriefing after capture that an order had been given to release the dogs to scour a section of sprawling, dense woodland where it was thought I had fled—an extraordinary order considering it was meant to have been a ‘training’ exercise.

During the night, it was revealed that the soldiers searching for me had reported seeing things—weird things, unexplainable things, things that had spooked them in the woods that had made them question their individual rationales, shapes too monstrous and ungodly for a grown man to admit he saw, shapes that screeched and howled as voices reached out from the pitch black. Some refused to rejoin the search as others broke down, unable to grasp what was happening, reduced to a child’s fear of the dark.

The dogs, too, suffered. Six dogs in all entered the woods. All were adult males with years of experience working with security teams. The first was found only twenty metres in, drooling and whimpering like a lobotomised puppy, its body limp and its eyes wide and opaque, streaming with what could only be described as tears. Another had all four limbs snapped and its tongue ripped from its mouth. The tongue was never found. Three more were found sitting facing a tree that was caked in fresh blood and tiny bits of ragged flesh. The tree, a large oak, marked the exact geographical centre of the entire forested area. Forensic results later showed the blood and fur taken from the smeared bark to be canine and that of the German-Shepherd breed. Video evidence taken by one of the search team showed the moment they found the three dogs, all sitting to attention, surrounding the thick trunk at precisely 120 degrees from one another, hypnotised by the huge tree to the point where they had to be dragged away, their trance-like state unbreakable until they were out of the forest altogether.

The remaining dog, perhaps the most experienced of the lot, a seven-year-old serving veteran of the Special Operations training team, presumed dead, wasn’t discovered until over a month later by a man hiking across the Devon moors. The man, a retired accountant who was in no way connected to the training exercise or the military, found the animal, with no head, at the base of a lone tree on sloping, rocky moorland. The tree, as coincidence would have it, marked the moorland’s exact geographical centre. The head, however, was located some fifteen feet above, impaled on the tip of a precariously spiny bough. The moorland in question was steeped in dark, mystical folklore dating back centuries.

I, on the other hand, had no recollection of how I was captured, detained or even questioned. The official report stated that I was found naked by a small party of ramblers, who raised the alarm, at Moel Tŷ Uchaf stone circle some fifty miles from where I’d been dropped off. My clothes were never recovered and to this day nobody knows how I got there. The investigation, as far as I know, is still ongoing.

Photographs and amateur video taken by the ramblers show me naked and dirty, my skin daubed with symbols, hundreds of tiny triangles, as I performed a ritual of some sort, reaching out and scratching in the mud in three separate directions. The footage shows that the lines I had scratched were at 120 degrees to one another. The similarity to how the three dogs were found at the large oak was uncanny.

But out of everything, it was the triangles that stole the show. There were 1,289, to be precise. The bigger of the triangles were finger painted, whereas the smaller ones were diligently drawn using fine brushes or sharp nibs of some kind. They literally covered me from head to toe, each one inked from the same blood that covered the large oak. Both the organisers of my training and the medical team who looked after me were fascinated by them. The fact that I was found naked and so far away was irrelevant. They were more interested in who had painted them. How many were there? What methods did they use? Did you speak to them? Did they speak to you? Did they drive you to the stone circle? How long were you with them? When did they make themselves known? When did they leave? Where did they go? Did you hear any names of people or places? Would you recognise them again? Did they hurt you, threaten you? Had you seen them before? The questions were never-ending. But as one was asked, it opened up a myriad of others, which left the psych-geeks scratching their heads about the whole unfortunate escapade. What a cluster-fuck, I heard one senior staff member call it. And even though the police and ambulance service were called by the ramblers, it was the MoD that took charge, saying that I was their man and they had jurisdiction. Hence, when I returned to the farm, a specialist team was brought in to take over. They were an independent unit sent specially to handle my debriefing and evaluate my condition. The next day or so heard the unit’s own psych-geeks repeat the same questions while I remained bed-bound, hooked up to a drip. I could tell something was up. These new guys were on a whole different level, a stratosphere above everybody else’s pay grade, all overseen by someone they called the Adjudicator.

I had gone from being Candidate 29A, a valued asset, to a prized freak no one wanted to let slip through the net without at least running a few more tests. I was duly quarantined: authorised access only. Now it was all eyes on me, my every second recorded and documented and scrutinised, from what I said and how I said it to how I folded my arms or crossed my legs, to when I went to sleep and which side I slept on, to if I snored or not, right through to when I woke up again. They saw every twitch, every mannerism, heard every word, every noise, every murmur, my eating, my drinking, my ablutions, going to the toilet. Nothing escaped the cameras.

During debriefing, on the fuzzy quality of the VHS tapes, I looked blank. Showered and cleaned, dressed in white paper overalls and a pair of white towelling slippers, I was seated in a padded armchair, which was reclined electrically by an operator. My arms and legs were then secured in place by wide Velcro straps so I couldn’t move; my arms at the wrists and elbows and my legs at the ankles and just above the knees. Doctors fussed about, attaching leads via sticky patches around my chest, neck and head, which in turn were connected to a vast array of monitoring equipment. Multiple cameras zoom in, focusing and scrutinising my every inch, with a bank of TV monitors showing the slightest change of expression, every skin crease with every twitch and the minuscule rise of goose bumps with every shudder, even when the finest of hairs on my arms and neck stands on end. The last piece of kit to be rigged up was a polygraph machine: two expandable bands were attached around my upper and middle chest, sensors were taped securely to the index and fourth finger of my right hand, and a blood-pressure monitor was wrapped around my upper arm.

Wired for any and every eventuality the procedure should have run itself, and it lasted no more than an hour. The session, known as Session 1/149, a prime reciprocal magic square reference thought up by one of the psych-geeks on the test team, was, however, continually hampered by momentary blackouts, power surges, loss of signal, bizarre shadowing, and a horrible intermittent noise that can only be described as an electronic distortion of someone shrieking under extreme duress. As a direct result, the session’s duration quadrupled, spiralling into a gruelling fight against whatever ghosts were laying siege to the test team’s expensive machinery.

Despite being logged as having lost a fifth of my bodyweight—the weight recorded when I entered the Cotswolds facility—and declared mentally unstable, someone, somewhere must have given the okay for their much-valued anomaly to continue the exercise. Though the record does state I was allowed one day in which to convalesce. This was when I met him.

The grainy white-grey video footage of the Isolation Wing shows the moment of our meeting. Dressed in black he cuts a striking figure on the screen. He was big and powerful in every sense—not an ounce of weakness or remorse about him, a masked brute of a man who wore his balaclava with pride like a badge of honour. I’m the Adjudicator, he growled, his voice low and thick and gravelly, to which I replied, your reputation precedes you. He laughed, adding, it would!

I’m heard asking him, Why? Why me? Why this? Why still put me through the process? Surely this has all gone very, very wrong?

The Adjudicator’s answer wasn’t what I expected. "It is because things are going so very wrong that we are continuing. For us, this couldn’t have worked out better. You’re everything we didn’t expect and more. Don’t you see, we can’t stop—not now!"

That was part one of the debriefing.

The subsequent second part, where a candidate is physically and mentally subjected to techniques designed to break down resistance, again should have lasted, for someone of my experience and ability, twenty-four hours max, perhaps less, considering my appalling condition. The Adjudicator can be clearly heard explaining to me that the enhanced methods used would allow me to fill in the gaps previous lines of questioning had left and that it was in my interest to fill those gaps. However, the mystery that had started with the escape and evasion exercise deepened exponentially to last nearly two weeks—An eerie 13 days, 13 hours, 13 minutes, and 13 seconds, as one of the doctors put it. Yes, it was highly improbable, perhaps absolutely impossible, yet it was true, accurate to the second. There was a digital clock running on the top right-hand corner of the tapes. I was as puzzled as everyone else when I finally came round, to the extent of believing that their impossible claims were nothing more than an elaborate ploy to disorientate and distract me from what I was really there to achieve, which I totally admit I had forgotten.

To me, it felt like I’d had a catnap, a quick forty winks to shake off the tiredness, but in reality, it had been weeks.

Chapter 3

The Incident

You want a war? —YOU WANT A WAR?—There’s a deathly pause. I’ll give you a war you won’t believe!

On the tapes in many of the interviews that followed, various staff members of the farm openly said they had never encountered anything nearly as weird and traumatic as Candidate 29A. Even the farm’s senior officer admitted that the Adjudicator and his team had sole access towards the end, and at that time he outranked anyone on site. The officer said the higher brass knew the risks, said it was a consequence they were prepared for, which in turn meant this scenario was planned for all along. I saw the same fear etched in their faces as I see in people now, their wild, erratic eyes staring vacantly into space, wondering whether monsters do actually exist.

For part two of the debriefing, I was hooded and blindfolded with the now familiar blacked-out ski goggles the entire time. CCTV footage shows me being frog-marched on Day One from the main building to a smaller block located on the complex’s periphery.

The ‘crack house’, as it is affectionately called by staff due to its reputation for breaking trainees, consists of four rooms, all equally dank and cold. But what the tapes do not show is that the concrete floors are uneven and rough to the touch, intended to be uncomfortable to the point where they inflict pressure sores within minutes of standing or sitting, and that the walls are a minefield of protruding nails and screws to cause more discomfort when you are put into standing stress positions. It also means that you cannot lean against them to rest.

On my arrival, I was immediately stripped of my paper overalls and slippers, hosed down and left seated on the floor to drip-dry naked with my hands zip-tied behind my back. The concrete soon dug into my buttocks and feet, with the cold compounding the pain into a frost-bitten mind-fuck of excruciating stabs. I must’ve lost consciousness soon afterwards, because when I awoke, I woke with a start to someone shaking me. Then the process to fill in the gaps began.

First came a list of questions, the same ones that I couldn’t answer earlier, followed by a beating with what felt like rubber hosing. After each beating, I was forced into one of many stress positions and asked the questions again. When I couldn’t answer, another beating was administered and my stress position altered. The only words I heard were those of the questions. Words were never exchanged for anything else, my stress positions always achieved by two men manhandling me roughly into position, grabbing and slapping