The digital recorder’s light glowed, a single, unblinking red eye in the sterile observation room.
For Dr. Aris Thorne, it was a beacon of objectivity, a silent promise that everything transpiring within these soundproofed walls could be distilled into pure, irrefutable data.
Across the brushed steel table, Subject Zero—Cain—was a wellspring of it.
He spoke with a calm, almost academic fluency, dissecting his past obsessions as if presenting a case study on a stranger. Every word was a perfect specimen for her research.
He detailed the classic stages with unnerving precision: the initial, consuming idealization of the object of his affection; the escalating patterns of surveillance disguised as care; the profound terror of abandonment that fueled increasingly desperate acts of control.
“The need to know wasn’t just a desire,” Cain explained, his hands resting placidly on the table.
“It was a physiological imperative. Like breathing.
Her schedule, her coffee order, the brand of shampoo she used… each piece of information was a brick in a wall I was building around her. Not to keep her in, you understand.
But to keep the rest of the world out.”
Aris’s pen moved across her datapad in a steady, controlled script.
Subject demonstrates high self-awareness of pathological cognitions but lacks affective remorse. Describes obsessive behaviors with marked detachment.
Textbook manifestation of Cluster B traits, particularly narcissistic and antisocial.
He was perfect. Almost too perfect.
Her thesis, which argued that obsessive love was a quantifiable behavioral addiction rooted in a pathological need for control, was being proven line by line. She could already see the charts, the graphs, the triumphant conclusion of her dissertation.
The email from Ben Carter, still festering in the back of her mind, felt like the whining of a gnat.
“Your methodology is a lawsuit waiting to happen, Aris. This ‘Subject Zero’ is a person, not a lab rat.”
Ben’s jealousy was pathetic. He saw a person; she saw a pattern. Science required distance.
“The feedback loop is fascinating, isn’t it?” Cain continued, his voice pulling her from her thoughts.
“The more I learned, the more I needed to learn. The more I controlled, the more I feared losing control. It’s a snake eating its own tail.”
“And this cycle,” Aris prompted, her voice crisp and professional, “did you ever attempt to break it?”
Cain smiled, a slow, charismatic curve of his lips that didn’t quite reach his eyes. His gaze, a piercing shade of grey, shifted from the wall behind her to her face, then down to her hands.
“You do that with your pen,” he said, his voice dropping slightly, becoming more intimate.
Aris froze. Her fingers had been tracing the edge of her stylus, a subconscious habit.
“I’m not the subject of this study, Cain.”
“Of course not, Doctor. It’s merely an observation.”
He leaned forward, the sterile lighting catching the sharp planes of his face.
“When a data point confirms a core assumption, you give the pen a tiny, almost imperceptible spin. Like just now, when I mentioned the feedback loop.
The satisfaction of being right. You crave it. It’s your own feedback loop, isn’t it?”
A cold shock, sharp and electric, shot up Aris’s spine. It wasn’t an accusation; it was a diagnosis.
She felt a flush of heat crawl up her neck, a visceral, unprofessional reaction she immediately suppressed. She stared at him, her clinical mask firmly in place, but her mind was reeling.
It was one thing for him to be perceptive; it was another for him to see a tell she hadn’t even been aware of herself.
She forced her fingers to tighten on the stylus, stilling it. Her training kicked in, providing a label, a box to put the uncomfortable feeling in.
Subject exhibits classic manipulative tactics. Attempts to shift focus onto the researcher to destabilize the power dynamic and establish a false sense of intimacy.
A common deflection among intelligent, antisocial personalities.
She made the note on her datapad, her script a little too sharp. “Let’s return to your behavioral patterns leading up to the restraining order in 2019.”
Cain leaned back, the placid smile returning. “Of course, Doctor.”
The session continued for another hour, and Cain provided everything she asked for. He was compliant, articulate, and utterly compelling.
But the equilibrium had shifted. Aris was no longer just the observer.
She was aware of his eyes on her, cataloging her every micro-expression, just as she was cataloging his. That unnerving flicker of connection—not of empathy, but of mutual, predatory analysis—ignited between them.
For a terrifying instant, she hadn’t felt like a doctor studying a patient, but like a biologist who had just realized the specimen on the other side of the glass was studying her back with equal intensity.
***
Later that evening, the lab was silent save for the low hum of the servers. Aris sat at her main console, the day’s session data laid out in neat columns on one monitor.
The patterns were undeniable, a beautiful, terrifying tapestry of a broken mind. Her thesis wasn’t just viable; it was groundbreaking.
But her thoughts kept drifting back to Cain’s observation. She picked up her stylus and spun it between her fingers. He was right. She’d never noticed.
It was the kind of detail a person who truly saw you would notice. She shook her head, annoyed at the lapse in her objectivity.
He was a manipulator. That’s what he did. He found a seam and picked at it.
To distract herself, she brought up the live security feeds. It was part of her nightly routine, a final check of the facility’s pulse.
Feed 1: Main Corridor, empty. Feed 2: Cafeteria, dark. Feed 3: Subject Zero’s cell.
Cain wasn’t pacing or sleeping. He sat on the edge of his cot, staring intently at the small, reinforced screen on his wall.
He had an hour of approved screen time a day—a privilege he could use for news articles, academic journals, or pre-approved entertainment. But he wasn’t watching a movie or reading a paper.
Aris zoomed in. He was watching the facility’s internal security feeds, the same ones she was.
His focus wasn’t on her lab or the control room. It was on the hallway cam, the one pointed at the main security station.
As she watched, Miles, the overnight guard, got up from his desk and started his 10:00 p.m. patrol. Cain’s eyes followed the uniformed figure on the screen, his expression one of cold, analytical precision.
He watched Miles walk the perimeter, noted the time it took him to circle back to the coffee machine, tracked the slight hesitation as he checked the server room door. Cain wasn’t just passing the time.
He was studying. He was gathering data.
Aris logged it. Subject utilizes approved screen time to monitor facility security protocols.
Potential paranoia or escape ideation? Or simply an extension of his obsessive information-gathering pathology.
She filed the observation, but a knot of unease tightened in her stomach. His focus was chillingly purposeful.
An hour later, shutting down her console, Aris walked toward her on-site quarters. The sterile corridors echoed with the soft scuff of her shoes.
At the main junction, Miles sat at his desk, scrolling through pictures on his phone. He looked up as she approached, his face breaking into a weary but genuine smile.
“Burning the midnight oil again, Doc?” he asked, his voice a warm, welcome intrusion into the silence.
“The data doesn’t analyze itself, Miles.” She offered a tired smile in return.
Miles was a good man, divorced, with a daughter who was the star of her soccer team. Their conversations were a small, cherished slice of normalcy in her hermetically sealed world.
“You know, I told my ex-wife about what you do here,” he said, leaning back in his chair.
“Studying the brain, figuring out why people do what they do. She said it sounds creepy.
I told her it’s important. Like mapping a hurricane, you know?
Gotta understand the storm to survive it.”
Aris felt a pang of appreciation. “That’s a good way to put it.”
“Yeah, well.” He gestured with his thumb toward the monitor showing Cain’s cell.
The feed was dark; his screen time was over.
“That guy you got in there… he gives me the shivers. The way he looks at the camera sometimes.
It’s like he’s not looking at the camera, he’s looking right at you.”
The back of Aris’s neck prickled. “He’s a complicated case.”
“You got that right. Well, you have a good night, Doc. Don’t let the ghosts in the machine bite.”
“You too, Miles.”
She continued down the hall to her apartment, the friendly, mundane conversation acting as a brief balm. But as the door hissed shut behind her, sealing her into another sterile white room, the feeling of unease returned, stronger than before.
She stood in the center of her living area, the silence pressing in. The entire facility was a monument to her ambition, a fortress of scientific control.
She had designed it to eliminate variables, to create the perfect, pure environment for her research. But tonight, for the first time, it felt less like a laboratory and more like a cage.
And she was no longer certain she was the only one holding a key. Her pen, lying on the nightstand, seemed to mock her with its silent, secret spin.
The case of Subject Zero was proceeding perfectly, yet Aris couldn’t shake the terrifying suspicion that she wasn’t the one writing the conclusions.