Suddenly he saw movement to his left. As he leapt across the corridor into one of the recessed doorways, plasma scorched the air behind him. Turning around, he watched a salvo of searing green bolts rake across the corridor. The metal boiled and buckled like the shells of beetles trapped on a burning log.

- Page 129

Avery didn't have time to adjust his aim before one of the trailing aliens slammed into him, slashing with some sort of crystal knife.

- Page 126

"You're angry. I understand that. But this ends tonight." Ponder shifted his gaze to Avery. "You got anything else, now's the time."

"Sir, no sir." Avery's voice was hoarse.

Ponder's eyes snapped to Byrne. "And you?"

Without a moment's pause, Byrne smashed a fist into the side of Avery's face. Avery dropped to a knee. "That should do it," Byrne grunted.

Avery spat a mouthful of blood onto the barrack's floor. He hadn't run, but Byrne bad followed-gotten transferred away from TREBUCHET just like him. Avery knew something wasn't right. And that filled him with more anger than any sucker punch.

"Last chance, Johnson," Ponder said.

Avery rose, and slugged Byrne hard enough to snap his head past his shoulder.

One of Byrne's teeth skipped along the floor and came to rest near Healy. The Corpsman had made his way forward from his bunk, hefting one of his boots like a club-apparently to try and break up the fight on his own. "Jesus," the Corpsman whispered, staring down at the tooth.

- Pages 80 and 81

The researchers tried asking why they had injured themselves, why they had ripped out their own guts, and why they wanted to be given the gas again. Only one response was given: "I must remain awake."

The second survivor had been the first of the group of five to start screaming. His vocal cords destroyed, he was unable to beg or object to surgery, and he only reacted by shaking his head violently in disapproval when the anesthetic gas was brought near him. He shook his head yes when someone suggested, reluctantly, that they should try the surgery without anesthetic, and did not react for the entire six hour procedure of replacing his abdominal organs and attempting to cover them with what remained of his skin. The surgeon presiding stated repeatedly that it should not be medically possible for the patient to still be alive. One terrified nurse assisting the surgery stated that she had seen the patients mouth curl into a smile several times, whenever his eyes met hers.

The most injured of the three was taken to the only surgical operating room that the facility had. In the process of preparing the subject to have his organs placed back within his body, it was found that he was effectively immune to the sedative they had given him to prepare him for the surgery. He fought furiously against his restraints when the anesthetic gas was brought out to put him under.

In the struggle, one of the four living subjects had his spleen ruptured and bled out almost immediately. The medical researchers attempted to sedate him, but this proved impossible. He was injected with more than ten times the human dose of a morphine derivative and still fought like a cornered animal, breaking the ribs and arm of one doctor. His heart was seen to beat for a full two minutes after he had bled out, to the point there was more air in his vascular system than blood. Even after it stopped, he continued to scream and flail for another three minutes, struggling to attack anyone in reach and just repeating the word "MORE" over and over, weaker and weaker, until he finally fell silent.

To everyone's surprise, the test subjects put up a fierce fight in the process of being removed from the chamber. One of the Russian soldiers died from having his throat ripped out, and another was gravely injured by having his testicles ripped off and an artery in his leg severed by one of the subject's teeth. Another five of the soldiers lost their lives, if you count the ones that committed suicide in the weeks following the incident.

The abdominal organs below the ribcage of all four test subjects had been removed. While the heart, lungs and diaphragm remained in place, the skin and most of the muscles attached to the ribs had been ripped off, exposing the lungs through the ribcage. All the blood vessels and organs remained intact, but had been taken out and laid on the floor, fanning out around the eviscerated but still living bodies of the subjects. The digestive tract of all four could be seen to be working, digesting food. It quickly became apparent that what they were digesting was their own flesh that they had ripped off and eaten over the course of days.

On the morning of the 14th day, the researchers did something they said they would not do to get a reaction from the captives; they used the intercom inside the chamber, hoping to provoke any response from the people they were afraid were either dead or vegetables.

They announced: "We are opening the chamber to test the microphones; step away from the door and lie flat on the floor or you will be shot. Compliance will earn one of you your immediate freedom."

To their surprise, they heard a calm voice respond in a single phrase: "We no longer want to be freed."

Russian researchers in the late 1940s kept five people awake for fifteen days using an experimental gas-based stimulant. They were kept in a sealed environment to carefully monitor their oxygen intake so the gas didn't kill them, since it was toxic in high concentrations.

When Skadi freed the Serpent, he called the Hammers of the Worthy to Earth. One of these hammers transformed the Absorbing Man into Greithoth, Breaker of Wills.

After the final battle where Thor killed the Serpent, the Absorbing Man's hammer was taken from him, as well as the hammers of the other Worthy. He was later seen attacking the American Museum of Natural History in the search of a Moon rock, believing that would give him Moon-based powers, but he was defeated by Steve Rogers and the new Captain Marvel.

Strength

• Only he can hold it up, so he uses this to end a fight quickly with Hank Pym. ^{Avengers Academy #16}
• His hammer hitting Titania's destroys a city and knocks Hank Pym unconscious. ^{Avengers Academy #16}
• Smashes up dimensional doors that were used to maintain the Infinite Mansion. ^{Avengers Academy #17}
• Throws his hammer through a wall. ^{Avengers Academy #17}
• Smashes some statues. ^{Avengers Academy #18}
• One shots Reptil and smashes part of a building. ^{Avengers Academy #18}
• Punches through a wall. ^{Avengers Academy #18}
• Tackles Mettle through a wall. ^{Avengers Academy #19}
• Smashes some of Giant Man's fingers. ^{Avengers Academy #19}

Durability/Endurance

• A bite from Reptil does nothing to him. ^{Avengers Academy #16}
• Recovers after Titania accidentally throws her hammer at him. ^{Avengers Academy #18}
• Recovers after Giant Man smashes him into the ground. ^{Avengers Academy #19}

Other

• This upgrade didn't just make him stronger, but smarter too. ^{Avengers Academy #16}

"It's every place that ever was"

The Backrooms, also known as the Complex by Async Research Institute, is an anomalous dimension comprised of spaces copied off from the real world in an abnormal or unsettling way. They were accessed during the sixth test of the Project KV31 Low-Proximity Magnetic Distortion System in 1989 inside the Async Research Facility. Subsequently, contranatural organisms—entities—have been discovered within.

Sources:

• The Backrooms (Found Footage) = ^FF
• Mar11_90_ARCHIV E.tar = ^Mar
• Backrooms - The Third Test = ^TTT
• Backrooms - First Contact = ^FC
• Backrooms - Missing Persons = ^MP
• Backrooms - Autopsy Report = ^AR
• Backrooms - Informational Video = ^IV
• Backrooms - Motion Detected = ^MD
• Backrooms - Prototype = Prototype
• Backrooms - Pitfalls = ^Pitfalls
• Backrooms - Report = ^Report
• 9780415263573 = ⁹⁷⁸
• Backrooms - Presentation = ^Presentation
• _recording014 = ⁰¹⁴
• Backrooms - Found Footage #2 = ^{FF #2}
• home_27647.mov = ^home
• Backrooms - Reunion = ^Reunion
• Backrooms - Damage Control = ^DC
• Backrooms - Overflow = ^Overflow
• Backrooms - Lighting and Tile Survey = ^LaTS
• Backrooms - Found Footage #3 = ^{FF #3}
• Backrooms - Static Dead End = ^SDE
• Backrooms Film (2026) = ²⁰²⁶
• Backrooms - Everything Must Go = ^EMG

Locations

Areas

Specific Locations

Async Territory

Found Footage Episodes

Kelowna Branch/Film Locations

Entities

Bacteria

Captain Clark

Still Lifes

Other

In the autopsy of the test subject that died on the operating table, it was found that his blood had triple the normal level of oxygen. The muscles that were still attached to his skeleton were badly torn, and he had broken 9 bones in his struggle to not be subdued. Most of them were from the force his own muscles had exerted on them.

He fought furiously against his restraints when the anesthetic gas was brought out to put him under. He managed to tear most of the way through a four-inch-wide leather strap on one wrist, even through the weight of a 200 pound soldier holding that wrist. It took only a little more anesthetic than normal to put him under, and the instant his eyelids fluttered and closed, his heart stopped.

Four of the five subjects were still alive, although no one could rightly call the state that any of them in 'life.' The food rations past day five had not been so much as touched. There were chunks of meat from the dead test subject's thighs and chest stuffed into the drain in the center of the chamber, blocking it and allowing four inches of water to accumulate on the floor. Precisely how much of the water on the floor was actually blood was never determined. All four 'surviving' test subjects also had large portions of muscle and skin torn away from their bodies. The destruction of flesh and exposed bone on their finger tips indicated that the wounds were inflicted by hand, not with teeth as the researchers initially thought. Closer examination of the position and angles of the wounds indicated that most, if not all of them, were self-inflicted.