The evening at the small town animal shelter was unusually still. The snow outside muffled every sound, and the fluorescent lights flickered softly over rows of empty cages. Olga, the manager, was finishing the paperwork when she heard the old truck grind to a halt outside the gate.
A man stumbled out—pale, frightened, holding his coat tightly around him.
“I found her… near the highway,” he stammered, his voice trembling. “She’s… she’s pregnant.”
In the back of the truck, on a torn blanket, lay a German Shepherd—muddy, thin, shaking. Her eyes were full of pain and something else—fear.
“Bring her inside, now!” Olga shouted, waving to the others. “And call Dr. Kravchenko!”
They carried the dog carefully into the sterile light of the treatment room. Her breath came in short gasps. The smell of disinfectant filled the air.
“You’re a brave girl,” whispered Dr. Kravchenko, stroking her head. “Hold on, girl… just a little longer.”
The exam was quick but grim. “She’s completely exhausted,” he said, tightening his gloves. “If she survives the birth—it’ll be a miracle.”
Olga touched the Shepherd’s paw gently. “Then let’s give her a name,” she said softly. “We’ll call her… Lada.”
By morning, the snow outside had stopped, but inside the shelter, tension rose like a storm. Lada started to whimper under the blanket, her paws twitching. Her breathing quickened. Olga rushed to the vet’s office.
“Doctor—it’s time!”
Kravchenko ran in. Lada lay on her side, panting hard. Minutes turned into an hour before the first newborn appeared—a small, damp bundle that barely moved.
But when Kravchenko leaned closer, his face went pale.
“This… this isn’t a puppy,” he whispered.
Olga froze. The air in the room grew heavier, colder. The tiny creature looked… wrong. Its body was smooth, not covered in fur. The shape of its limbs was distorted—almost human. Tiny fingers, not paws, curled weakly in the air.
“What… what is that?” one of the assistants muttered, stepping back.
Before anyone could answer, Lada whimpered again. Another contraction. Another birth. And another—each one stranger than the last. Five in total.
None of them looked like puppies.
Kravchenko’s hands trembled as he examined them. “This… this can’t be real,” he muttered. “They have vertebral structure unlike any canine… the proportions…”
Olga’s voice broke. “Doctor, what are they?”
Kravchenko looked up, his face white as paper. “Hybrids,” he said quietly. “Something between a dog… and something else.”
The room was silent except for the faint whimpers from Lada. She licked the strange newborns tenderly, as if nothing was wrong.
One of them opened its eyes—large, dark, almost intelligent. It made no sound, only stared at the people around it.
Olga backed away, whispering, “This can’t be happening…”
The lights flickered once.
Then again.
When they came back on, Lada was gone.
Her cage door stood open. The blanket was soaked with fluid, but there were no footprints—only a trail leading to the open back door.
The newborns were gone too.
The authorities came the next morning, sealed off the shelter, and took the security recordings. But when they played them back, the moment of the disappearance was blank—white static for twelve full seconds.
Twelve seconds no one could explain.
Olga still works at the shelter. Every night, when she locks the doors, she hears faint scratching from the forest behind the building.
Sometimes, when the moon is full, she swears she sees shadows—small, swift, running on all fours but… not quite.
And in the snow, near the fence, she once found a single print—
a paw, with five long fingers.
The Return of Lada (Part 2)
Two weeks passed since the night Lada vanished. The shelter tried to move on—cleaning the rooms, tending to new arrivals—but the air never felt the same. Everyone spoke in whispers now, avoiding the empty cage at the end of the hall.
Olga couldn’t forget. Every night, when the wind howled against the windows, she heard it—that faint scratching at the back fence. Once she even followed it, flashlight trembling in her hand, but the beam caught only falling snow and silence.
Until one night.
It was nearly midnight when the motion sensor near the kennels went off. The red light blinked, then died. Olga grabbed her coat and the flashlight again, heart pounding. As she stepped into the cold, she noticed the door of the old storage shed… slightly open.
“Hello?” she called. “Is anyone there?”
No answer. Only breathing.
She slowly pushed the door wider.
Inside, under the pale glow of the moon, Lada stood. Her fur was darker now—almost black—and her eyes glowed with a faint yellow hue. She didn’t growl, didn’t bark. She just stared at Olga, calm and unblinking.
And around her feet, half-hidden in straw, moved five shapes.
At first Olga thought they were dogs. But when they turned toward her, she stumbled back. Their faces were stretched, their movements too precise, too aware. Their paws were longer, jointed strangely—as if trying to stand upright.
One of them stepped closer. Its eyes were humanlike. It whispered something—soft, garbled—but Olga understood one word.
“Mother.”
She ran. Slammed the door, locked it, called Dr. Kravchenko with shaking hands.
When he arrived twenty minutes later, the shed was empty again. No Lada. No creatures. Only deep claw marks carved into the wooden floor… and something else.
A tag. Lada’s old collar, ripped in half.
The doctor frowned, pale. “Olga, we need to report this. Not to the police—to the institute in Kiev. This isn’t… normal.”
She nodded silently, still trembling.
But before morning came, the institute called back.
“There is no record,” the voice on the phone said flatly. “No Dr. Kravchenko registered in your region. And no case by that name. We have no idea who you’re talking about.”
Olga froze. She hung up the phone, turned—and found his office empty. His things were gone. His car was missing.
Only his notepad remained on the table. On the last page, written in rushed, uneven handwriting, were four words:
“They were made, not born.”
That night, a storm broke over the valley. Power lines fell, and the shelter plunged into darkness.
From the forest came the howls—five voices crying in unison, echoing across the fields.
And through the snow, Olga saw them at the fence line: shadowy figures standing still, their glowing eyes fixed on her.
In the middle, Lada stood taller now, her head lifted, watching silently—protecting them.
Then, one by one, they turned and disappeared into the trees.
When spring came, hikers began reporting strange sightings—prints that were half paw, half foot. A few farmers claimed their livestock were taken in the night, but no one ever saw what did it.
And sometimes, when the shelter’s night cameras caught movement, Olga refused to look.
Because deep down, she already knew:
Lada was still out there.
And she wasn’t alone anymore.
The Forest of Echoes
(Part 3 – Final Chapter)
Spring melted into summer, but the shadow of fear still hung over the shelter.
The strange prints kept appearing — larger, deeper, more defined. Olga tried to keep the staff calm, telling them it was probably wolves. But wolves didn’t leave five-fingered tracks.
Soon, word reached the city. A small research team from Kiev arrived: two biologists, a military liaison, and a man who said little but whose eyes missed nothing. He carried no badge, only a small silver notebook. His name was Sokolov.
“We’re not here to harm the animals,” he told Olga in a voice too calm to believe.
“We just need to understand what we’re dealing with.”
Olga led them to the edge of the forest — the same place where she’d last seen Lada and her brood. The trees there grew unnaturally close, branches twisted like veins. The air was damp, heavy with the smell of rot and something metallic.
They entered at dawn.
For hours, the only sounds were the crunch of boots and the hum of insects. Then one of the biologists, a young woman named Irina, froze.
“Look at this,” she whispered.
On a moss-covered log lay bones — small ones, arranged in a circle. Not animal bones. Tiny, delicate. Human.
Before anyone could speak, a low growl echoed through the trees. The team turned their flashlights toward the sound. Eyes reflected back — several pairs, moving slowly around them.
“It’s them,” Olga whispered.
Out of the shadows stepped Lada. Her fur shimmered with streaks of silver now, her movements smooth and almost human. Behind her, the five offspring appeared — taller, stronger, their faces hidden in darkness.
Sokolov raised his hand. “Don’t move.”
But Lada didn’t attack. She simply watched him, unblinking. Then, in one slow motion, she pushed forward something from her mouth — a metal tag, covered in dirt.
It was Dr. Kravchenko’s ID badge.
Irina gasped. “Oh my God… she didn’t just escape — she’s protecting something.”
Sokolov crouched, voice low. “They’re not natural mutations. This was an experiment. A classified one. They must’ve used her for—”
Before he finished, one of the hybrids let out a scream — high-pitched, metallic, echoing through the trees. Birds exploded into the sky. The ground shook.
The team fired flares, but the lights showed only blur — figures leaping between trees faster than human sight.
When the noise stopped, Olga was alone.
They found her three days later near the riverbank, dazed, eyes blank. She said nothing for days. When she finally spoke, her voice was distant.
“They weren’t attacking,” she said quietly. “They were running. Someone else was hunting them.”
Officials dismissed it all as trauma. The forest was sealed off. The reports disappeared.
But months later, on a foggy morning, a farmer fifty miles away found his dog lying outside the barn — unharmed, yet trembling. Next to it were five small prints, pressed deep into the mud.
And on the barn door, scratched into the wood by something sharp, were two words:
“Not experiments.”
“Family.”
That winter, Olga left the shelter for good. She moved to a small village far from the forest. But sometimes, late at night, she hears it — the faint echo of howls in the distance.
Not savage. Not mournful. Almost… protective.
She steps outside, snow crunching under her feet, and whispers into the cold air:
“Good girl, Lada.”
And somewhere deep in the forest, six shadows move silently through the trees —
watching, guarding, unseen.
The End.
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