Soviet researchers in the late 1940s kept five political prisoners awake for fifteen days using an experimental gas-based stimulant. They were kept in a sealed environment to study the effects of prolonged sleep deprivation. Constant audio monitoring and sealed portholes allowed the researchers to observe the subjects.
For the first five days, nothing was unusual. The subjects talked to each other and to the researchers through the intercom, complained of the bugs in the ventilation system, and gradually grew more agitated as the days wore on.
On the fifth day, the subjects stopped talking to each other and began speaking only into the microphones in the corners of the room. They began to whisper conspiratorial things, each apparently trying to get the others in trouble with the researchers. Things deteriorated further after the ninth day.
The first screaming began on the ninth day. One of the five suddenly began running around the chamber screaming at the top of his lungs for three hours before collapsing from what looked like exhaustion. The other four did nothing to help him. They had stopped talking by this point. The two that were still walking moved in tight circles in opposite corners of the chamber, occasionally glancing at the screaming man.
On the fourteenth day, the researchers sealed off the gas supply and pumped in fresh air to begin bringing the subjects out. The subjects were all still alive, though huddled in corners, whispering. When the door was finally opened, the researchers discovered that the five subjects had been tearing at their own flesh and organs with their bare hands, apparently to remain awake.
Four survived long enough to be removed from the chamber. One died during the extraction.
During the subsequent medical examination, the surviving subjects attacked the medical staff whenever approached. They broke fingers, snapped bones, and bit through wrists — all without making any sound. When finally sedated, their vital signs showed that their bodies had adapted to a horrifying extreme: cortisol levels that should have killed them. Adrenal glands burnt beyond medical understanding.
When the lead researcher finally got close enough to speak to one of the subjects, he asked what they were. The subject responded, in a low, gurgling voice: "We are what you wanted us to be."
The remaining three subjects refused sedation and demanded to be kept awake. When surgeons began operating on one of the subjects' self-inflicted wounds, the subject looked up and said with a beatific smile: "Don't. You'll only make it worse."
The subject died on the operating table.
The third subject was sealed back in the chamber with the stimulant gas. The lead researcher was found the following morning, shot through the temple with his own service weapon. His notes on what the subject had told him before he died were missing.
The remaining test subject was administered a fatal dose of sedative. As the drug entered his system, he screamed at the researchers: "What are you doing? I'm still awake. I'm still—"
The project was sealed under seventeen layers of classification. The chamber was filled with concrete. The files do not officially exist.
But the gas formula survived.
It always does.