The low hum of the engine was the only sound accompanying Dr. Ben Carter’s mounting irritation. He gripped the steering wheel of his sedan, knuckles white, as the landscape dissolved into an endless scroll of monotonous pine and asphalt.
The facility was deliberately remote, a fact that had always struck him as a theatrical flourish on Aris Thorne’s part—a monument to her self-imposed isolation and intellectual superiority. Now, that isolation felt less like a choice and more like a cage.
He hadn’t heard from her in three days. Not a single email, not a text.
Calls went straight to a generic university voicemail. For anyone else, it might be a weekend off the grid.
For Aris Thorne, a woman who cataloged her life in timed, documented intervals, it was a screaming anomaly.
Then there was the tip. Anonymous, of course.
A single, cryptic email sent from a proton account, landing in his inbox like a lit match.
Thorne’s data isn’t clean. Subject Zero is a fabrication. She’s building a narrative, not observing one.
Professional jealousy was an ugly, acidic thing, and Ben was honest enough with himself to admit he felt it. Aris was his direct rival, the yardstick against which the department measured his own progress.
Her study on obsessive love was poised to be groundbreaking, while his work felt plodding and incremental by comparison. He’d attacked her methods, her ethics, her clinical coldness—but he had never, not for a moment, believed she was a fraud.
Meticulous to a fault, ruthlessly ambitious, yes. But a fabricator? It didn’t fit her psychological profile.
And yet, the silence gnawed at him. The tip, combined with the radio silence, painted a picture he didn’t like.
A cornered researcher, perhaps, discovering her thesis was flawed and taking desperate measures to salvage years of work. It was a plausible, if disappointing, scenario.
But a deeper, less logical anxiety coiled in his gut. The silence from a place so meticulously wired for communication felt… wrong.
It felt absolute.
He turned onto the final access road, a private, two-mile stretch of gravel that crunched ominously under his tires. The facility rose from the trees ahead, a stark white-and-glass cube of modern architecture dropped into the wilderness.
It was less a research center and more a fortress. A perimeter fence, ten feet high and topped with coiled wire, glinted in the overcast afternoon light.
As he pulled up to the main gate, a solid slab of reinforced steel, a single security camera swiveled to fix on his license plate.
A moment later, a man emerged from the small guardhouse. He was older, with a soft paunch beneath his crisp, grey uniform and a face that seemed predisposed to a weary sort of kindness.
Ben recognized him from a few university briefings: Miles, the facility’s overnight man.
Ben rolled down his window, arranging his features into a mask of professional concern.
“Dr. Ben Carter,” he said, holding up his university ID. “I’m here to see Dr. Thorne.”
Miles approached the car, his expression polite but unyielding. He didn’t even glance at the ID.
“Good afternoon, Dr. Carter. I’m afraid Dr. Thorne isn’t seeing any visitors.”
“It’s not a social call,” Ben countered, his tone sharper than he intended.
“I’m a colleague. We have an urgent matter to discuss regarding the integrity of her research.”
He intentionally used the loaded phrase, hoping it might trigger some protocol.
Miles’s friendly demeanor tightened almost imperceptibly at the edges. His gaze hardened.
“Dr. Thorne left very specific instructions, sir. She’s entered a critical phase of her work. A self-imposed immersion protocol.”
Ben frowned. “An immersion protocol? What the hell does that mean?”
“It means,” Miles said, his voice slow and deliberate, as if explaining something to a child, “that to protect the purity of the data, she has requested zero outside contact for a seventy-two-hour period. No calls, no emails, no visitors. Especially not from colleagues who might contaminate the control environment.”
The words were spoken with a guard’s rote recitation, but the subtext was clear. Miles had been briefed.
He wasn’t just following a rule; he was enforcing a specific boundary against a specific threat. And right now, that threat was Ben.
“That’s absurd,” Ben said, a flush of anger rising in his neck.
“She would have had to clear a communication blackout of that length with the department head. There’s nothing on record. I checked before I drove all the way out here.”
This, Ben thought, would be the checkmate. The appeal to a higher, bureaucratic authority. But Miles didn’t even blink.
“Her work is sensitive,” the guard said, his loyalty to Aris now palpable.
“She felt a formal declaration would invite exactly this kind of… interference. She’s a dedicated woman, Dr. Carter. The most dedicated I’ve ever seen. Wants to see it through without any distractions.”
He straightened up, his posture shifting from guard to guardian.
“She knew you, specifically, might have concerns. She asked me to assure you that everything is proceeding according to her design.”
The lie was so perfectly constructed it almost felt like the truth. It was exactly the kind of arrogant, unilateral move Aris would make—prioritizing her research over protocol, seeing colleagues as “contaminants.”
Cain had chosen his words well, painting a picture of Aris that was so believable, so rooted in her own personality, that it became a shield. Miles wasn’t just guarding a facility; he was protecting Dr. Thorne’s legacy from a jealous rival.
The thought made Ben’s teeth ache.
“Listen to me,” Ben leaned forward, trying to project sincerity.
“I have reason to believe Dr. Thorne might be in some kind of trouble. This isn’t about professional rivalry. This is about her safety.”
For the first time, a flicker of doubt crossed Miles’s face, but it was quickly extinguished. He likely remembered the feigned phone call, the sob story Cain had fed him about a family in crisis.
He had been conditioned to see the research inside as something fragile and human, something that needed protecting. He’d seen Dr. Thorne’s tireless work ethic, her passion.
He saw Ben, a man in a nice car with an accusatory tone, and made his choice.
“Dr. Thorne is perfectly safe,” Miles said, his voice now cold steel.
“She is doing important work. My job is to make sure no one jeopardizes that. Sir.”
The “sir” was an insult, a clear dismissal.
“You are not on the authorized access list. I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises.”
Ben stared at the guard, then at the impassive, monolithic building behind him. It was a sterile tomb.
Every instinct screamed at him that Aris was not okay. The immersion story was a lie, a beautifully crafted piece of misdirection, and this well-meaning, protocol-obsessed guard was its unwitting enforcer.
He was looking at a locked door, and the man with the key was convinced it was meant to be sealed.
Frustration curdled into a cold dread. He was powerless.
He could argue, he could shout, but Miles was a wall of procedure and misplaced loyalty. Breaking through that wall would require more than a university ID and a bad feeling.
It would require authority.
“Fine,” Ben snapped, slamming his palm against the steering wheel.
“Fine. You’re just doing your job. I get it.”
He threw the car into reverse, tires spitting gravel as he executed a sharp three-point turn. He didn’t look at Miles again.
He looked at the facility in his rearview mirror, a white cube shrinking against the dark backdrop of the forest. He felt like he was looking at a crime scene before the crime had been discovered.
Aris was in there. Trapped, not by a system failure, but by her own reputation.
Her ambition, her obsessive focus, her clinical detachment—the very traits that defined her career were now being used as the bars of her prison.
The anonymous tip hadn’t been a warning about fabricated data. It had been a diversion.
A clever bit of psychological warfare designed to send him here, on this exact fool’s errand, only to be turned away by the perfect lie. It was a move of stunning, cold intelligence.
As he hit the main road and accelerated, Ben’s mind was already racing, planning his next move. The department head was too slow, too mired in bureaucracy.
He needed something with teeth. He needed the ethics board.
He would file a formal petition. Cite protocol breaches, lack of contact, potential researcher distress. He would force their hand.
He would get that door open. He had to.
Behind him, at the gate, Miles watched the sedan disappear. He felt a quiet surge of satisfaction.
He had followed Dr. Thorne’s orders to the letter. He had protected her research from an arrogant academic bent on sabotage.
He made a neat, precise entry in his security log, noting the time and Dr. Carter’s unauthorized visit. Then he turned his gaze back to the silent, white building, feeling like a vital, trusted part of something important.
He was the gatekeeper, ensuring the purity of the experiment within. He had no idea he was the jailer.