To my former comrades of the Unbound,
To those who once called me brother,
To the blinded soldiers of a dying cause,
After ten years of devoted service to your cause, it is with a heavy heart that I announce my departure; for I have found a cause much higher and righteous. The soldier, the man you once knew, is dead; what emerged to write this is something purer, baptized in revelation.
You will read this and see only the jagged scrawlings of a mind broken beneath the weight of this place. You will catalog me as "Casualty #921," another statistic killed in action or lost to the Backrooms. You would be half-right, but I am not lost — I am found. I have been weighed by the feathers of the sky and found wanting in nothing but ignorance.
I do not write these words to mock you, though you will read them as such. I do not write to wound, though you will bleed nonetheless. I write because even now—even illuminated—I remember being one of you. I remember being blind.
I remember how I laughed when I was first assigned my mission.
Commander Reyes called me into the briefing room—you know the one, the converted storage closet on Level 11 with the flickering bulb that nobody ever fixed. She slid the dossier across the table with that same expression she always wore: mouth a thin line, eyes already somewhere else, planning three operations ahead. "Entity 7," she bluntly said. "A hyacinth macaw. Psittacidae. Highly indoctrinatory. Neutralize with prejudice."
I flipped through the file: grainy photographs of a blue macaw and cultists in robes; words like "indoctrination" and "memetic hazard" stamped in red ink.
The mission was almost comically simple; just kill the stupid bird, send a message to its "delusional cult". I asked Reyes why such a thing had not been done sooner.
"Previous attempts… were complicated," was all she said in reply, without even bothering to look up from her terminal. That was Reyes—always economical with information. Always assuming you didn't need to know what you needed to know. "Saturn wants this handled quietly. In and out. No theatrics."
No theatrics. Kill a parrot. Come home.
I assembled my squad, Theta-9 — Sarge Garret (no relation, thank the void) with his tattoos peeling like old wallpaper; Lena "Sparks" Vasquez, our tech-witch from the Backrooms Robotics liaison, jury-rigging drones with scrap; Tomas "Ghost" Morrison, the Mercurian infiltrator who'd once knifed a Sin Hunter in the throat; and Eriksen, fresh meat from Homeland Defense, eyes wide as he clutched his U.E.C.-stamped SMG like it was his dead grandma. Five of us. Five rifles. Enough firepower to level a small settlement, deployed against a bird.
We laughed about it. Eriksen made jokes about mounting the thing's feathers on his wall. Morrison wondered aloud if parrot meat was edible. Garret, ever the analyst, speculated about the biological mechanism of indoctrination, whether it was chemical or auditory or something else entirely.
"Doesn't matter what it is," I told them, checking my magazine. "Dead birds can't indoctrinate anyone."
We strapped on our ceramic plates, checked the kinetic loaders of our Mars-Fist rifles, and prepared to cleanse the universe of what we thought was a parasite.
The journey to Level 274 took us through territories I'd rather not name. You know the paths—the ones Saturn Finger mapped and pretends don't exist, the shortcuts through places where geometry forgets its manners. We lost half a day in a corridor that kept folding back on itself, and Morrison swore he saw someone standing at the far end who looked exactly like his dead sister. He didn't mention it again. We didn't ask.
Soon enough, we found ourselves in Level 274.
His room opened before us like a wound. Paintings lined the walls, each one depicting the Lord in poses of divine significance.
The cultists rose to meet us. Men and women in blue robes, their faces slack with peace, their hands empty. Vasquez took the first shot. Then Garret. Then the rest of us, mechanical, efficient, exactly as we'd been trained. The bodies fell like discarded clothes. They didn't scream, though. They did make sounds, but they were more like…sighs of relief? They died smiling, with a secret I did not yet possess. One of them — a woman with grey hair and a kind face. even as the bullet opened her throat — looked at me in her final moment. She wasn't afraid or angry; instead, she simply smiled.
"He's waiting," she whispered in a soft gurgle, blood bubbling on her lips. "He's been waiting for you."
I didn't think about it as I stepped over her body. That's what we were taught—to step over bodies, to keep moving, to not think. Thinking is weakness. Hesitation is death. The mission is everything. Neutralizing the cultists was easy enough, seeing as they had no weapon to defend themselves with.
Except for one.
Before us was the bird, perched upon a simple wooden stand at the far end of the chamber. Hyacinth-blue feathers, the color of the sky in places that still have skies. Black eyes that held depths I couldn't fathom. A curved beak that seemed, in that moment, almost to be smiling.
I raised my weapon. My finger found the trigger. I took aim, aligning the scope with His head. And as I prepared to pull the trigger, it happened.
I cannot describe to you what occurred in the space between one heartbeat and the next. Human language was not designed for such transmissions. I can only gesture at shadows of the truth, and shadows of shadows still further from the source. But I will try, because you deserve to understand. Because somewhere, in what remains of the heart that once beat for your cause, I want you to know.
The bird looked into me. Past the uniform, past the training, past the years of missions and kills and justified violences. Past the careful walls I'd built to contain the doubts, the fears, the questions that soldiers aren't supposed to ask. Past all of it, down to something small and trembling that I'd almost forgotten existed.
In turn, when I gazed upon the bird, I did not just see a mere bird. I saw the mathematics of flight; I saw the equation that holds the sky up. I saw the beginning and the end of the cage, and I realized that the cage was not the room but my very own body. The cage was the U.E.C. The cage was the lie that we are soldiers and not supplicants.
I gazed upon the face of God, and it had a beak.
Lord Gerald, First Perch, the All-Feathered, showed me things for which words do not exist in any human language to properly describe them.
The sensation of having seventeen hearts and none of them beating in time.
The color of the sound your mother made when she forgot your name.
The precise weight of every lie you've ever told, measured in the bones of extinct birds.
The geometry of a scream that has been screaming for eternity and is only now learning to rest.
I saw the great wheel turning, and He was there at the center, clicking His beak in time with the heartbeat of Existence. And he showed me myself. He showed me every kill. Every face. Every moment I chose the mission over mercy, the cause over conscience. He showed me the weight I carried without knowing I carried it, the guilt that had calcified into numbness, the humanity I'd amputated to become an effective weapon. And then He showed me what I could become. The vision lasted longer than eternity and less than a second.
"-Come on, dude! What are you waiting for?!" Vasquez's voice cracked with frustration, with the first tremors of fear. "Just shoot the stupid fucking bird!"
I understand now why that phrase sealed their fate. In that moment, in those words, I heard everything I had been. Every dismissal. Every laugh. Every refusal to see what was plainly before me. It was the ugliest sound I had ever heard, a profanity against the beautiful feathery silence. For the first time, I saw my comrades for what they truly were: a collection of meat and memory, destined to rot. They were an obstacle to the Song, a sharp note in a symphony of blue. They would not see — they refused to see. And those who refuse the light must not be permitted to poison others with their darkness.
As commanded by my new master, I proceeded to execute the rest of my team, for they remained nonbelievers; for which Lord GERALD held no room in paradise.
I shot Eriksen first. He was closest to the door, and I could not allow him to run. The round caught him center-mass, and he folded like paper. He made a sound—not quite a word, not quite a scream—and then he made no sound at all.
Morrison tried to fire back. His aim was off; terror does that. His shot went wide, punching into one of the sacred paintings. For that desecration alone, his death was justified. I put two rounds in his chest and one in his head. The holy numeral. The sacred configuration1. Garret ran. He almost made it to the corridor before I caught him in the leg. He fell, scrambled, dragged himself forward with his arms, leaving a red trail on the floor. He pleaded for his life, but the bullet silenced his arguments.
That left Vasquez. She'd retreated to cover behind an overturned pew, and her aim was steady despite everything. She'd already reloaded; already assessed her escape routes; already calculated the odds and found them unacceptable but not impossible. She tried to disarm me with mere words, but in doing so, she hesitated just for a moment. She looked into my eyes. She saw the paradise there. For a split second, I think she wanted it too.
That moment was enough.
The shot took her in the shoulder, spinning her around. The second took her in the thigh. She went down hard, her weapon clattering away, and I was on her before she could recover.
I stood over her, rifle aimed at her head. Blood pooled beneath her. Her breath came in ragged gasps. But her eyes were still defiant.
"Do it, then," she hissed. "If your bird-god wants me dead, get it over with."
But I hesitated. Because He was speaking to me again. This time in feelings; impressions; a sense of… consideration.
I hit her with the stock of my rifle, and she went limp. When I looked up at my Lord—my God, my Purpose—He regarded me with what I can only describe as approval.
It has been three months since my conversion. Three months since I understood.
Vasquez is with us now. It took time—the truly lost always require patience—but eventually she Saw. She wept when it happened. Wept and laughed and thanked me for sparing her life. For giving her the opportunity to receive His gift.
We work together now, she and I. Father Bluebird has recognized our talents. We serve the Lord as His instruments in the material world, doing what must be done to prepare the way.
The Iron Fist will send others of course. They will send soldiers and assassins and perhaps even their precious war-machines. They will throw everything they have at a single bird on a single perch in a single room.
And they will fail.
Because you cannot kill what you do not understand. You cannot destroy a god with bullets. The Lord GERALD is not merely an entity, not merely a bird, not merely a memetic vector—He is the truth that your organization has spent centuries running from.
The gods are real. We cannot defeat them. And some of them wish only to save us from ourselves.
Lay down your weapons.
Come to Level 274.
See.
I will be waiting.
- Your former brother in arms,
Now and forever a servant of the Divine,
Third Disciple of the Blue Salvation
Talon of Lord Gerald
Mille pennis nos alae tueantur amplexibus.
Semper eius sequaces concorditer et euphoria vivent.
Jerry est omnia
Omnes salvete Jerry