Twelfth expedition

“Our expedition was the first to enter Area X for more than two years, and much of our predecessors' equipment had rusted, their tents and sheds little more than husks. Looking out over that untroubled landscape, I do not believe we could yet see the threat.”
—The Biologist in Annihilation.

The Twelfth expedition was one of the many missions coordinated by the Southern Reach to explore Area X via a team of human researchers. It is fully narrated by the Biologist in her journal, which spans the entirety of Annihilation, the first novel in the series. Taking place roughly 30 years after the Event and led by the Psychologist, the expedition was carried out by a team of five women, referred to simply as their professional roles.

The team was provided six months of supplies, with two additional years' worth stored at base camp. Additionally, they were issued a personal "measuring device" (a black box with a glowing dot to indicate imminent danger of unspecified nature), film cameras, knives, antique handguns, one assault rifle, and one journal per member. Modern technology was not authorized, as were watches or compasses.

Members

• The Psychologist (leader)
• The Biologist
• The Surveyor
• The Anthropologist
• The Linguist (quit before the expedition started)

Timeline

Initiation

As told by the Biologist, the expedition started with the Surveyor, the Anthropologist and her being placed under hypnosis by the Psychologist, who then placed herself under self-hypnosis to safely cross Area X's border. As revealed by the Psychologist, the Linguist had a change of heart and dropped out of the team before crossing.

The four women endured a four day hike, briefly interrupted by a boar, until reaching base camp, then spent four more days setting up tents, recording their experiences and thoughts onto their journals, and surveying surrounding locations, including a forest near base camp, a bogland, the outskirts of the Moaning Creature's reeds and the Abandoned Village, before discovering the Tower, which wasn't marked in their maps. After returning to base camp for the night, the team decided on exploring the mysterious structure.

The day after discovering it, the four women set out to explore the Tower, with the Surveyor descending first and the Psychologist staying behind, guarding the entrance. There, the team first encountered the Tower's incantation, a message written on the outer wall of the staircase with a luminescent, spore-producing species of moss or fungi. After stepping too close to the organism and being contaminated with spores, the Biologist proposed exiting the structure, and suffered a brief hallucination of the stone walls becoming flesh-like, although she didn't disclose her contamination to the rest of the group.

After reuniting with the Psychologist, the four women returned to base camp and continued surveying the surrounding area, point at which the Biologist realized the Psychologist's pre-programmed hypnosis trigger phrases were losing effect on her, likely as a side effect of her contamination. Before going to sleep, the Psychologist put the other two women under hypnosis to convince them of following her lead to the Tower the following day, staying cooperative and calm, and "continue seeing the structure as made of stone". The Biologist mimicked their reactions, faking being hypnotized. The Biologist then reminisced about seeing interview tapes of the members of the Eleventh Expedition after their return from Area X, the interviewees seeming dazed and calm, and having no knowledge of how they returned.

Integration

The team woke up to find a missing Anthropologist and a seemingly shaken Psychologist, who explained that she had wished to return to the border after seeing the Tower, and so had left her gear behind and left with a report of their progress to await extraction. Meanwhile, the Biologist woke up with her senses heightened, likely to be another effect of her contamination, which she described as a "brightness" inside of her and didn't disclose to her teammates. The three remaining women decided to go back to the Tower for a second exploration, this time wearing breathing masks to prevent further contamination.

There, the Psychologist stayed guarding the entrance once again, while the Surveyor descended with the Biologist, who suffered another "hallucination", seeing the Tower as one huge organism and themselves as being swallowed by it, briefly prompting the Surveyor to feel the walls and listen to the Tower's pulse. Seeing no reaction except confusion and hostility from the Surveyor, the Biologist dropped the conversation and the two of them continued down the stairs. As they descended, the Biologist briefly reminisced about her childhood.

They continued downward, recording the Tower's incantation and the surrounding latticework and faded words, taking pictures and writing them down, and noticing that the words lower down seemed to become increasingly recent along with a trail of viscous, partially dried slime, covering the steps; they also saw footprints left on the slime, pointing to another person having explored the Tower very recently. Indeed, they descended more to find the body of the Anthropologist, slumped on the wall, her skin burned and her jaw broken, a trail of green ash spilling from her mouth onto her body, her legs partially fused together, with sample tubes strewn around her body and her black box crushed beside her, all seemingly caused by a confrontation with the Crawler.

The two women also noticed a second set of footprints, pointing to the Psychologist having led their colleague there, and the Biologist revealed to the Surveyor the use of hypnosis and her recent immunity to its effects, confession that was met with skepticism. They took the samples collected by the Anthropologist before her death and ascended back to the surface, finding that the Psychologist wasn't there. Briefly arguing, the team of two returned to base camp, where they analyzed the samples collected inside the Tower, finding the Crawler sample to be seemingly composed of strangely modified, human brain tissue. They found the photographs of the incantation to be out of focus and practically useless, and so went to sleep, alternating guards in case the Psychologist lurked nearby.

In her guard, the Biologist spotted a light flickering inside the Lighthouse, before reminiscing again about her husband after his return from his expedition, remembering a moment where he became intensely fixated on his old boat, as if trying to remember his connection to it, before being drawn away by the Biologist, and then remembering one of their conversations before his departure. When the next day came, the Surveyor and the Biologist argued about whether or not to abandon the mission, ending in the Biologist unsuccessfully attempting to use an hypnotic trigger on her companion, deepening their mutual distrust. In the end, the Surveyor stayed at base camp while the Biologist left to explore the flicker of light she saw on the Lighthouse the night before.

Immolation

On her way to the Lighthouse, the Biologist reminisced about her and the Surveyor's experience in the Tower, first theorizing about the Crawler, its writing cycle, and the role of both within Area X as a whole, and then remembering the recorded interviews of members of the First expedition, before reaching the midpoint of her journey, marked by the Abandoned Village. While briefly exploring it, she took samples of "moss eruptions", described as vaguely human-shaped clumps of lichen and moss, along with samples of a dead fox and a dead rat.

Continuing her trip to the lighthouse, she had an encounter with a pod of dolphins, one of which peeked out of a canal to reveal a "painfully human, almost familiar" eye. Shaken, she continued toward the Lighthouse, reaching it near noon. There, she examined the outside and first floor of the building before climbing up to the landing, which sits halfway up the structure, where she found a picture showing the lighthouse keeper, another man, and a little girl, which she put in her pocket.

She climbed up to the top of the lighthouse, where she took advantage of her position to take a look at the surrounding landscape before examining the rest of the room. After moving a table and pulling back a big square rug, she found a compartment under a trapdoor where much of the Psychologist gear sat, as well as a collection of hundreds of journals from previous expeditions, revealing that the Twelfth expedition was not actually the twelfth, but the last in a much longer list of missions. It's likely that the known order (first to twelfth) of expeditions was just the latest program of the Southern Reach's attempts at exploring Area X.

After this reveal, the Biologist remembered her time in a college-required field assignment in Rock Bay, as well as another of her conversations with her husband, in which her nickname "Ghost bird" is brought up. Back at the Lighthouse, the Biologist climbed down to the compartment to sort through the journals, of which she read some of the older ones, dating back to before the Event, hinting at the existence of some sort of "proto-Area X", the earliest of which consisted of recordings, cassettes or photographs rather than journals.

Some of the journals described "unspeakable acts" and "periods of remission and cessation followed by flare-ups and horrible manifestations". Others were focused completely on the flora and fauna of Area X, making no mention of any other events within their expedition. One journal, set before the First expedition but after the Event, described its members fortifying the Lighthouse to repel some sort of attack that originated from the sea. Some journals contained mentions of the Tower or its incantation. Overwhelmed by the amount of information, the Biologist decided to look at the most recent journals, find her husband's, put it in her pocket, and climbed out of the compartment. At the top of the Lighthouse, she looked down to find the Psychologist's body, motionless, laying on the beach.

Immersion

After a brief flashback of one of her pre-expedition interviews with the Psychologist, in which the Biologist was purposefully vague and non-cooperative as her companion tried to learn more about her early life, her relationship with her parents and grandparents, her relationship with her husband, and her previous jobs, the Biologist climbed back down the Lighthouse. Kneeling besides her bloody, dying figure, she threw away the Psychologist's gun before touching her shoulder, which caused her to violently recoil while yelling "Annihilation!" repeatedly.

After the hypnotic command didn't have the intended effect of inducing the Biologist to commit suicide, the two of them struck up a conversation. The Psychologist described seeing her companion as "a floating flame" while she was atop the Lighthouse, wanting to shoot the Biologist but not being able to pull the trigger, and hallucinating something coming up the Lighthouse stairs, prompting her to jump over the railing in fear. She admitted she had brought the Anthropologist down to the Tower to gather information, where she stepped too close to the Crawler, who killed her and wounded the Psychologist. The Biologist and her continued back and forth, blaming each other for the failure of the expedition, conversation in which the Psychologist ominously asked if the Biologist really trusted her memories before the expedition, implying they could've been implanted.

The Biologist asked about the black boxes, to which the Psychologist admitted they were nothing but a fake device meant to reassure them into continuing the expedition. Likewise, she revealed that Area X's border was advancing, and that nobody had fully returned from an expedition in "a long time". After the Psychologist's death, the Biologist found her journal inside her jacket's pocket, and a fibrous, luminescent, moss-like infection over her collarbone and down to her elbow, of which she took a sample. The journal had another passage of the Tower's incantation, the annotations "lighthouse keeper", "North?" and "island", and a letter addressed to somebody who's name started with an S (Saul Evans). She also found a piece of paper with a list of hypnotic suggestions and notes on every crew member.

The Biologist briefly reminisced of her husband before he left for the eleventh expedition, then left toward Base camp to reunite with the Surveyor. Past the Abandoned Village and into the reeds, she encountered one of the moltings shed by the Moaning Creature: a translucent shell resembling a human face, which she later identifies as the Eleventh expedition's psychologist. The creature tried to cut her off, but the Biologist managed to run, escaping the reeds unharmed. After sleeping on a tree, the Biologist discovered her "brightness" had developed further, giving her skin a faint glow. Continuing toward Base camp, she was shot at twice by the Surveyor, who had been waiting for her return. The Biologist narrowly avoided both shots, being struck in the shoulder and side, and dropping to the ground.

The Surveyor asked about the Psychologist, accused the Biologist of not being human anymore, then asked what her real name was. The Biologist told her about the Psychologist's leap off the Lighthouse, but otherwise maintained that nothing would change whether the Surveyor knew her name or not. Creeping around the overgrown hill, the Biologist managed to sneak aside and shoot the Surveyor in the head. She dumped her body in the black water near the camp, then suffered a seizure and a series of hallucinations, including the rest of her team looking at her through the water like she was a tadpole, herself speaking in a strange language to the Moaning Creature, and a map of Area X featuring its expanding border. Eventually she recovered and made her way to Base camp, where the Surveyor had destroyed their tents, equipment, and food, and burned the data previous expeditions had gathered, aside from a note that read "the anthropologist tried to come back, but I took care of her", pointing to an encounter with her doppelgänger. The Biologist then gathered what little food and water remained, along with the microscope she brought to the Lighthouse.

Dissolution

After remembering her life before the expedition, the Biologist awoke to find her "brightness" further developed, manifesting into the Tower "calling to her", a low rumbling like a heartbeat emanating from it, prompting a series of reflections about the seemingly cyclical nature of phenomena like the Crawler's writing within the inevitable expanse of Area X itself. The Biologist then analyzed the samples she took on her journey to the Lighthouse, finding the cells form the Psychologist's infection to be normal human cells, and the samples taken in the Abandoned Village to also be human cells, though somehow modified. Worn down by the uncertainty of her findings since the expedition started, she decided to read her husband's journal, which informed her about the eleventh expedition, ending on her husband leaving by boat toward an island off the coast, presumably The Island

The Biologist then gathered a gun, water, and a face mask and left for the Tower, deciding to leave behind her camera and flashlight, given her skin's green luminescence had grown even brighter. She descended past the Anthropologist's body, now covered in a carpet of the same hand-shaped organisms that form the Incantation, and continued downward, following the Crawler's slimy track and the Tower's heartbeat becoming unbearably loud. After two hours of descent, farther down than any of the twelfth expedition's members had ever been, she found a mysterious golden light emanating past the next corner of the staircase and, knowing she had no choice but to satisfy her deep-seated curiosity, she descended into the light.

Upon meeting the Crawler, she compared it to another of her experiences in Rock Bay, after she was told her investigation wouldn't get renewed; drunk and angry, she had gone to the tidal pools she had been tasked with studying, where she found a "destroyer of worlds" starfish, likely Acanthaster planci, which she found disorientingly fascinating, not able to look away until she couldn't tell sky and sea apart. The Biologist described the Crawler's light as "blinding and bleeding and thick and layered and absorbing", and its sound as a "rhythmic, melodic crescendo of ice crystals shattering". The Crawler then appeared to her as an ever-changing organism: a collection of reflective glass panes, a layered archway, a slug-like monster, a wall of light surrounded by tadpole-like creatures, and amidst the shifting, an "echo" of an arm writing on the wall, and a head above it. Overwhelmed, the Biologist turned her back on the creature.

Suddenly pinned in place, the Biologist suffered another series of brief hallucinations while the Crawler seemed to "probe" her mind, causing her to black out and regain consciousness several times. Then, jaded and in pain, she was tossed further down by the Crawler, losing sight of it. After a brief break, she continued downward for at least 30 more minutes, after which she saw a white light emanating from far below, in the form of a door that resembled the one she saw at the start of the expedition, when she glanced back toward the Border. Becoming more and more agitated as she continued and barely six or seven hundred steps above the door, she couldn't go on, and decided to turn around. Ascending now, she arrived to the Crawler, expecting another excruciating scan, but the Crawler simply continued its writing, ignoring her. Giving a glance back as she climbed past it, she saw the Lighthouse keeper's face inside.

Remembering her husband once again, the Biologist reached the top of the Tower and, too exhausted to return to Base camp, started speculating about the Event, seeing it as a long thorn buried in the earth with the need to "assimilate and mimic", interacting with its environments through a string of words (the Incantation). Whether Area X's changing mechanism is a sort of parasite, a mere machine, or a form of alien intelligence, it repurposed the Lighthouse keeper, as well as however many expeditions were sent over the years through the Border, its entrance possibly mirrored in the depths of the Tower. She also speculated that the doppelgängers could be "emissaries" of Area X, proof of its awakening, though ultimately realized her speculation was a product of untrustworthy information, instruments and methods, and thus was likely useless.

The Biologist left her and her husband's journal back at the Lighthouse, leaving the trapdoor uncovered for the next expedition to find. She detailed her belief that another cycle inside Area X was ending, manifested in a "growing cone of energy" emanating from the Tower and strange figures emerging from the Abandoned Village toward the Tower. Planning on following her husband's steps and warning any possible readers not to follow her, the Biologist's journal, along with the twelfth expedition, ended with the words "I am not returning home".