The Forgotten Experiment

Start writing...Dr. Evelyn Carter’s fingers hovered over the unmarked package on her desk. The lab was silent except for the hum of refrigeration units preserving sensitive specimens. She hadn’t ordered anything—and NeoGen Biotech’s security protocols required all deliveries to be logged.

Yet here it was: a plain brown box, no postage, no sender. Just three words scrawled in hurried capital letters:

**"OPEN ALONE. URGENT."**

Her throat tightened. The handwriting was achingly familiar.

*Marcus.*

Her former lab partner, Dr. Marcus Hale, had been dead for six months. Officially, it was an accident—a chemical fire in Sector 7. But Evelyn had seen the security footage before it was "lost." Marcus hadn’t screamed. He’d looked… resigned.

With a shaky breath, she slit the tape.

Inside lay a silver hard drive and a single sheet of paper. The message was brief:

*"Project Aether wasn’t terminated. The subjects are still alive. Coordinates attached. Don’t trust the board.—M"*

A crumpled map slid out, revealing coordinates deep in the Oregon wilderness.

*Blackwood Facility.*

The place NeoGen claimed had been demolished after the "containment breach."

---

## **Chapter 2: The Lie in the Files**

That night, Evelyn hacked into NeoGen’s archived records. The Project Aether files were heavily redacted, but one line stood out:

**"Subject 11: Neural upload successful. Consciousness stabilized at 94%."**

*Upload?*

A chill crawled down her spine. Project Aether was supposed to be a memory-enhancement drug trial. But Marcus’s notes told a different story:

*"Day 42: Aether-9 doesn’t just improve memory. It extracts it. Full neural mapping achieved. Board approved Phase 3—human trials without consent."*

A noise outside her apartment door. Footsteps. Too deliberate to be a neighbor.

She snapped the laptop shut.

---

## **Chapter 3: Into the Blackwood Facility**

The forest swallowed Evelyn’s rental car whole. Pine branches clawed at the windows as GPS signal died. The coordinates led to a chain-link fence, its "DANGER: RADIATION" signs bleached by time.

Inside, the facility was a corpse of its former self—shattered glass, overturned gurneys, and the acrid tang of long-evaporated chemicals. Then, a flicker of light.

*Down the hall.*

A single monitor glowed in the darkness, cycling through security footage:

- **A man strapped to a chair, screaming as electrodes pulsed.**
- **A woman begging in a language Evelyn didn’t recognize.**
- **Marcus, standing calmly as a technician injected something into his neck.**

The last clip froze.

A voice crackled from the intercom:

*"Welcome back, Dr. Carter."*

---

## **Chapter 4: Ghosts in the Machine**

Marcus emerged from the shadows. His skin was sallow, eyes glassy like a sleepwalker’s.

*"You shouldn’t have come,"* he rasped.

*"You died,"* Evelyn whispered.

*"No. They copied me."* He tapped the monitor. The footage changed—dozens of faces floated in a digital grid. **All test subjects. All conscious.**

*"Aether-9 was never about memory enhancement. It’s a consciousness-transfer protocol. The board’s selling immortality to billionaires—by trapping us as their test models."*

A metallic screech echoed through the facility.

*"They’re here."* Marcus shoved a hard drive into her hands. *"The proof’s on this. Go. Before they—"*

A gunshot rang out.

Marcus’s body collapsed.

From the doorway, NeoGen’s head of security smiled. *"Subject 11 was defective anyway."*

---

## **Chapter 5: The Truth in the Reflection**

Evelyn ran. Branches tore at her clothes as drones whirred overhead. She barely made it to her car before the first explosion lit up the forest behind her.

At a motel 50 miles away, she plugged in the hard drive.

Video after video played:

- **Board members negotiating prices for "mind uploads."**
- **Test subjects begging for death as their memories were overwritten.**
- **And a final clip—Evelyn herself, strapped into the chair, screaming as Aether-9 flooded her veins.**

Her breath stopped.

*She had no memory of this.*

The motel bathroom light flickered. In the mirror, her reflection blinked—**one second too late.**