The Forgotten Experiment

0:00President Barack Obama. Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years. But you can stop them by voting yes by April 21st. Help put our elections back on a level playing field and let voters decide not politicians. Vote yes by April 21st. Paid for by Virginians for fair elections. Most people would rather remove a nest of irate hornets than search for auto and home insurance. That's why the zebra searches for you comparing over 100 insurance companies to find savings no one else can compare today at the zebra.com. I think I'll wait inside. Hello, I'm Wilkins' stories all the time. The lad you are here. Let's get into it. The monitor flicked. It graced me a slidpuss the sealed lab doorway and a feed jumped like a hiccup.

1:00I leaned forward and the hairs on the back of my neck tightened with suspicion. The same hard not that had nudged me back into the school that night. Did you see that? I said for slow letting the world land. There was no time for slow thinking. The concrete stairwell behind me hummed with the building's old pipes. The problem was immediate. The school sub-level was supposed to be empty and sealed. The camera showed something moving inside it. I pulled the camera strap tighter across my chest so it wouldn't slap against me when I stood. My breath came in half, second pulse between sentences. I had been working the perimeter for the last two weeks, watching archives chasing every faded memo anyone would hand me. My name is Alex Mercer. I teach occasional night classes at community college and I keep odd iris. That night I was in the storage room behind the old gym with three analog monitors on a metal card, a spool of coax cable and a contractor named Ellie who could patch feeds the district it ceased to touch again Ellie. He kept his fingers in the patch bay like a pianist. We played the feed from Camp 9. Ellie's voice was flat, careful. He had been the only

2:00person I trusted to wrote live footage without sending the system into her he muttered numbers and targled knobs. The gross gal mosaic on the largest monitor slid interview. At the far edge of frame just passed a rust ring bolted into the wall. The blur stopped and it tilted its head. It wasn't too fully human in shape. It didn't too have to be. It looked directly toward the camera and caught its head like someone listening. My suspicions shifted into curiosity before I realized it. Curiosity made me take risks. Curiosity made me colon mass lying that evening. I found her in the teacher lounge under a light that stood over 15 years of wiring. She kept her hands wrapped around a chip muggers if it anchored her. You shouldn't be in there, Alex, she said before I sent anything. She pushed a faded roster across the table. The paper smelled of nicotine and old glue. This was locked after 93, she said, but there were notices. People were taken off roster's odd notes. They closed the lab and moved the equipment. Principles like to clean problems under locks her words would direct. She slid her redacted memo toward me. Large black bars, eight precise lines. The memo had an official stump and a phone

3:05number with the last digits obscured. Who closed it? I asked names are gone. They shipped a contractor in. Nobody in the will talk about it now, MS, Lang, tapped the roster. You know where the four plates are. Kastodian rise kept the keys for decades. He still comes in our dios. He owes a lot to maintenance. Her voice made the problem clearer. His school staff were being told to forget then the sealed sub-level was an act of cover-up. That knowledge pushed me past curiosity into a different state obligation. I needed proof. I found rise in the boiler room, keys juggling heavy on his belt, breath smelling of oil. He was broad-shouldered in a faded work jacket, and he moved like someone who had spent years hauling steel again. He said when I asked about the four plates. His hands were thick with calluses. He shrugged and pointed to a stack pile of broken lockers. There is a closet they never used. Lucky for you, they never replace the screws. He followed the motion of my flashlight as I shoved up the walk punk and prided a four plate with the crewber. We worked in a rhythm. I lifted, he pried, we both held the hat-toil-a-dry metal-ci-escaped. Under the plate, a ring of rusted bolts circled a hat to the size of a grave lid.

4:10A ring of old brass keys sat in the dust, each stamped with the numbered inventory plate. I wiped a finger across one tag. The stunt number matched a small tag we'd seen in mice. Lines were roster notes you sure about this, Alex Rays. His voice was flat but tense. I don't want to be sure. I said I want to know. I toned the key. It refused to move at first. The lock russisted like it remembered Dean latched. Then the tumbo's cave and the hat chauvined with the light-dulling against the sudden chill that rose out of the sub-level. We carried a battery lantern down the nearest doors. The air smelled of old chlorine and machine oil. There was nothing dramatic at first. Strip metal tables empty beds welded to the floor, cabinets with padlocks cutaway. Broken wiring lay in loops. A bank of dead cameras hung like barnacles from the ceiling. A poster in the far wall showed lap safety with his bright colors dulled and corners culled. I lay arrived with a troll loaded with analogue monitors and other adapters. He clicked on the first screen and the top feed burst into life in hurried grey lines. We patched in power where we could have watched the screens grow into grainy rooms. I kept my hand in the old handheld camera strapped

5:15across my chest. My finger tapped the side until the clicks eddled me. Principal Holloway called while we were setting up. His voice was short. Stop what you're redoing. Leave the building to night. And over anything you be recorded. Do you understand? The line hissed with official pressure. I could feel raised different in Ellie's jaw tighten. Holloway you can tea just. At the start you can hear him Alex raise under his breath. He won't he come down here. He likes paperwork clean and forgotten the line cut up with a soft mechanical chip. That confrontation shifted me from obligation into caution. Holloway's call meant the district was watching actions as much as it had watched the lap. The fauna put a boundary on what we could do but the monitor in front of me kept showing the sub-level cameras and one fee was not static. At first the movement was small. A camera feed near the central corridor had a shadow where there should have been a wall. Then something thinned into a liberate cross between two metal trolleys. It paused at the edge of frame and cocked it head as if listening to the hum of fluorescent lights. When Ellie pointed it out he used three short words. That's not supposed to be there.

6:18Who is it? Raise. There was no phase to name. The figure moved in jigs like a mario net with knots in its strings. It had long narrow arms and a hospital band on its risk-glinted pale in a feed. Someone had labeled a band with a number that read seven in chunks of one type. I felt my stomach tighten and a muscle in my jaw bounce. This was no trisper. This was containment lost. We debated in the stairwell about calling the police. Ellie argued against involving outside authorities they'll take everything and bury it. Inside the mess and the district will spin a story. If this weeb they'll erase the footage. We need to document not hand it over. He spoke quickly clipped. Raise rubbed his temple. I don't want to be dragged into a fight with the district. Holloway can make trouble. He got people to sign things once already. I got a grand kid in college. Alex, his hands were suddenly anxious. The ethical pressure I had felt all along condensed into a choice. Hand over the feed and let them close the door or push further and risk a direct confrontation. I chose confrontation. I told them so. We stay until we get something real on record.

7:21We patch everything weekend and we done tea hand footage to anyone who isn't tea writing a log copy. The decision carried a weight I could feel in my lens. The emotion changed again. My suspicion had curved into a kind of guarded resolve. We moved fast. Several minutes later the monitor bank showed a corridor I recognised from their original blueprints. One camera feed numbered cam 9 had a new angle. The blow we had first watched was at the far end of the camera and it tilted its head in imitation of the camera itself. I said nothing for a second longer than I meant to. It knows the camera is here early. It started to exploit them. The static lens on one feed would jerk and when the image snapped back, the subject had shifted closer. If first it was peripheral. A sleeve cross in the edge, a length of limb bending in a way a human limb would not. Then a mount camera on the corridor outside the sub-of a gait a sharp thud. Feed went to snow as if the camera had been struck. We all spun toward the sound in the gym's long echo. Alice wore. Race wore. I inhaled and the motion of my hands tightened on the camera strap. It came up, raised voice then. It came up through the stairwell. He had a sound

8:25between warning and accusation. That moment when the subject beeched into the space of itself became a new pressure in the room. Hallways call, but redacted memos, the brass key we had forced. All those things stacked into one direction. The school had done something and then tried to freeze it. The subject was not frozen. We argued in quick halting sentences about protocol. We should seal it again, lock the hatch L here, seal it without knowing one T, solve it, I shot back. If it moves through the building, sealing the hatch only traps one route. It could already be elsewhere, I felt fear then. Not the atrical but the concrete clamp in my hands made breathing shortened. Fear made my fingers fumble to flashlight that then bounced a narrow beam across the concrete and landed on a set of footprints that had not been there an eye before. Wet, small and dragging those R and T mine raised not from tonight. He crouched and ran a glove finger along the drag mark. The prince munched a docks mirror across the cement. They took somebody down here once, he said. People got moved out. I helped carry beds to the truck. They put up the boards in the forms. After that I didn't ask. He looked at me with the kind of lip that makes you understand

9:30why someone keeps a key to hold a secret rather than to open one. We had off-rest real confrontation when Ellie went to secure the outside corridor and found a camera knot from its mount. He called out and I heard a sound from the darkness that was not a shout-out or a groan. It was a mimic of a syllable and attempt a human sound that came out wet and wrong, who asked there. Ali demanded. The sun came again, a shallow attempt at a vowel, a laxie yelled, back here. He was moving fast now, feet slapping concrete. I followed. The stairwell had a single strip like that bust like a trapped insects. The lab tore you on to slab of black. I shoved the hatch open and started to go down. At the bottom the room smelled of antiseptic constale and metal left to rust. The tables were overturned and the tiled floor had a pattern of dried spots and scuff mucks. A wall of monitors hung on a steel shelf, one glass cracked in a starburst pattern. There was no chance of slow thinking now. The feed from Cam9 had gun-dark and then flashed back to life a new angle. The subject was in frame closer than before. It moved with a series of quick, jerking steps, then it froze and

10:31tilted its head again. Stopped, I said aloud. My voice came out strained and cheeky. The subject turned its head in a movement I recognized as imitation. It fished in an empty tray and produced a small faded band. It held the band up as if showing a surprise and the number of seven was clear. It clicked the band against a metal table and the sound rang through the room like a nail. The subject's head cocked, then it matched my breath by breathing in a thin white sound that echoed ire's. I stepped backward. My foot caught cable and I fell against an overturned cart. Pain flasks across my ribs were malbid into me. The subject moved. Its gate became faster, not with a steady run but with a series of convulsive animal bursts. It closed distance with motion that made my eyes water. Every muscle in my shoulders tensed. I reached for the handheld camera and a click of its dot will shut her echoed like a second voice. Rees was there, arm extended, trying to block. He took a swing with a wrench. The subject flinch, then married the motion, jicking its own arm in imitation and then dropping into a crutch. It made no clear attack.

11:32It copied, tested, it proded the edges of human actions like an animal learning to open a latch. Rees shouted, get up. Now, and the command carried the weight of a given in a whole way where discipline still mattered. We ran. The stairs felt steep. My lungs burned. I could hear metal scraping in a wet sound behind us. At the landing, I looked back once. The subject stood in the doorway of the lab and cocked its head one more time. It held a length of torrent-loved smoke like a ragged banner. Then it stepped back into shadow and the hatch closed with a dull fud. When we reached a gym and the staging area, Principal Holloway was waiting with a small vanilla folder and a face that had learned to make trouble disappear. He did not run toward the lap. He did not ask if we were hurt. He spread the folder on a table as if we were discussing a budget. Give me the footage, he said. His voice was soft but absolute. No, wellie. He had a hand on a monitor. We recorded this. People should see it. You can see just you done to understand, proceed your Holloway. He folded his hands. This goes to the

12:33district. They will handle it. Handed over, he named the proper channels like a priest reciting a liturgy. Rees put a hand in the folder as if weighing it. He had a smear of dried blood along his knuckle from the wrench wing. My grandson needs that scholarship, he said slowly. They'll close it if we hand this over. They'll settle and it'll go away. I can't risk that for for what. His voice broke and he looked at me. That looked carried a choice for all of us. Rees opted for silence and compliance. He slid the footage drive across the table. The motion was mechanical. I noticed how his fingers trembled. Holloway took the drive without looking at it and tucked it into the folder. He nodded to Elias if to say the matter was handled. Eli's jaw clenched. He did not move. That was the twist. Holloway's karma moved any hope of official transparency. The principles intervention changed our plan. What we intended to be a public exposure bent into a private transfer. The unexpected reveal here was not the subject but the school's willingness to control the narrative. It forced us to decide whether to trust the

13:34institution that had buried the lab where to find another route. President Barack Obama. Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years. But you can stop them by voting yes by April 21st. Help put our elections back on a level playing field and let voters decide not politicians. Vote yes by April 21st. Paid for by Virginians for fair elections. Access to affordable credit helps me pay my employees that I don't really need it. Infliction is killing me. What who cares? Big retailers and making record profits. That's why we support the Durban Marshall credit card bill. See, things in credit unions help small businesses make payroll. This bill would cut the vital resources they need. While increasing Megastore profits. They deserve it. Don't they? Tell Congress stop the Durban Marshall money grab for corporate Megastores.

14:36Paid for by the Electronic Payments Coalition. I chose another route. In my pocket before dawn I sat with my laptop bounced on my knees while the school shrank behind the chain link fence. Ellie was in the passenger seat, eyes read from lack of sleep. We edit what we have he said. We remove anything that will identify the staff or the district. We upload to a hidden archive with logs. At least it will exist outside their file system. He worked the keys. His fingers were efficient and blunderbuck fiend. I compressed the clips until they lost detail and left the motion that mattered. The head tilt, the lab band 7, the angle where the subject came close to the camera. Ray's had been taken to the emergency room with a gash on his forearm and his brain. Holloway had been back inside carrying the drive like a tell usman. The district would call. People would sign forums. The official record would not match what we had recorded. At the last minute I looked at one monitor left running in his case. He tapped the screen Alex. Look, one remaining feet in the hidden archive still linked back to the school's internal system. A small rectangle showed a gray field with a single almost invisible trimmer,

15:40no more than the tilt of a curtain. Ellie enlarged it until the motion became clear. The subject in a camera angle we'd a thought static had shifted at shoulder and then straightened. It was not hiding anymore. It had learned routes and camera blind spots. It was not confined beneath the school. I hit upload. The file name was deliberately bland. The progress bar crawled in a way that felt like waiting for a gate to lower. I typed a short note into the upload log. Proof redacted do not distribute widely. My hands did not stop shaking until the confirmation pinged. The clip existed outside the control now in a place meant for anomalies to be archived and cataloged by people who still remember protocols. Ellie closed the laptop and folded his hands. He did not look at me. We did what we could, he said. He sounded tired and hollowed out. Don't scrape the horizon with a gray line. I drove home with a radio off and my camera still strapped across my chest. Somewhere under the school, in rooms with scuffed tile and stripped lighting, something named only by a number moved in practice being human. My decision that night had shifted emotions from suspicion

16:42to curiosity to fear and then to a hard resolve to project a record. Though shifts shaped each choice I made. In the morning the official notices began to circulate. Maintenance scheduled, contractor audit, power interruption. Hollowways emails were precise. The district thanked Stodil for cooperation. No mention of the suboval remained. Race texted me a single line. Don't he come back to the school for a while? They asked questions you can to answer. He included a thumbprint of the wrench we had used in the hatch, smudged and quickly taken like a curative sign. Ellie sent one more message with a link to the archive clip on a note. Keep a copy. If they ask, we don't have it. The file hung in my hard drive like a small heavy stone. I kept thinking about how the subject had imitated us. How it had learned to tilt its head at a camera. How it had shown the hospital bound like a child's roofie. The twist at the end of the chapter was not that the subject had escaped. It was that the system meant to hide it was still active and willing to exchange silence for ease. I am writing this now to document what we saw and what we chose. My slang gave me the roster and the redactive memory. Race kept his keep

17:46but said he was sleep at his sister's that week. Ellie cleared his desk and refused to tell the district how he had patched the feeds. Hollow away filed the drive away. I uploaded the redacted clip and watched one remaining feed register a tiny deliberate motion in the dark. When I closed my laptop that morning, the last concrete thing I did was set the handheld camera on the passenger seat. It clicked once as if in reply. I did not sleep well. At 5.30am, I heard the neighbor's dog start in a single soft breath in the house next door. I looked out the window and watched like move across the street. My chest was tight. I slid the camera strap over my shoulder and felt its weight. The chapter ends with me leaving the car, keys in hand, and a message on my phone from Ellie. There's a feed still live. Done to go back alone. The monitor bank snapped to life and a hunch chip slipped past the sealed loud doorway while the latch clicked itself open. I say the words are special now because it pushed every choice at night. Suspicion made me grab the brass keys and go back downstairs. Marcus froze with the phone in his hand and said, you saw that, right?

18:46The feed jumped, then bliped, then a frame showed a pale, bent shoulder vanish into the lab. That scene was the problem I had to solve. Cameras recording motion that should not exist in a school that had buried proof. It did not introduce myself formally then. I moved. I should describe where I stood. A cramped security alcove offered sub-over corridor, monitors stacked on a metal cart, power stripped taped in three places. My old hand held camera hanging from its strap against my chest. I wore a worn denim jacket. I always wore under the jacket the night we went back. The school line nodged with the faded, it still swung against my ribs. The smell was concrete and old, cleaning detergent. The monitor feed was black and white, the glass cold under my fingers. I tapped the screen to freeze the frame and the figures shoulder blood into noise. Alex, we can leave this. Marcus. He had the teculite in his palm, the small blue leaves slicing his knuckles. This is bigger than us. Cops will lock it down. His voice climbed into a whisper that tried to sound reasonable. Marcus is careful. He wearers things for a living. He does not like risk unless it is payoff. Off. I kept watching.

19:52Suspicion tightened my hands around the camastrap. I had seen that grace mere before, the monitor flicking chapter one. The memory sat in my chest like an unfinished motion. The monitor flicked a grace mere slid past the sealed lab doorway at the feed hiccup. That earlier moment sent me back through the school doors at night. Now it was plain again, I said, we go down. Now my voice had one breath before and one after the sentence a pattern that showed us in the recordings. We grabbed the brass keys from the glove compartment, the satir taken from the maintenance locker months back. Marcus walked his jaw. If free chose, we tell him nothing. We take footage and go. He kept his sentence clipped. His hands moved in the keys with practice motions. Outside the alcove, the fluorescent bulbs hummed. A corridor light flicked twice and stayed for a second. There was nothing but the low room tone in our breathing. Then one of the monitors showed a luch flicking. We found the hidden door by feel. The concrete stairwell was narrow. I put my palm to the metal edge where the paint had been worn away and felt a notch. The brass keys fit a maintenance lock deeper than the student wing locks. Marcus pried and I pushed. The hidden door gave with a sound

20:56like old hinges and a small cascade of concrete dust. That sound was the next event. The stairwell descended in a single tight run to a lab door with a small inspection port at head height. Inside, the lab was stripped. Tables lay overturned. Files lay scattered with red action bars black across names. A maintenance recorder sat on a metal shelf and flicked on when Marcus bumped it. A clipped voice began to have us and protocol compromise moved to containment data to not the lion cut. I pressed a recorder closer to the camera. Trista Havoson's clip phrased and gave context and pulled me from suspicion toward a different fear. That these were instructions someone had followed in the hidden, Jure. Havoson, Marcus, and his voice at an edge I hadn't heard before, that name shows in the old docks. He crouched and rifled through a stack of files. He found a sheet with a redactive photograph and a strap of paper with a stump number. Settlin, he held it up. This ties to subject 7. The tag matches our feed. Marcus Fingers trembled slightly. He hid it behind his president Barack Obama.

21:57Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years. But you can stop them by voting yes by April 21st. Help put our elections back on a level playing field and let voters decide not politicians. Vote yes by April 21st. Paid for by Virginians for fair elections. Hi, this is Alex Cantrowitts. I'm the host of Big Technology podcast, a longtime reporter and an on-air contributor to CNBC. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it. Asking where this is all going, they come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, and meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology podcast

22:58wherever you get your podcasts. Palmas, if the trimmer were a private thing. Officer Rita arrived before dawn and moved more like an official dispatch than a neighbor concerned with a skull breaking. He wore a simple uniform in a hard expression. He backed orders and smelled thinly of cigarette smoke and coffee. Seal it. Step back. Officer Rita put the authority between us and the lab and expected compliance. I held the recorder in my hand and the brass keys burned under my fingers. Rita's arrival created a pressure to react to Rita. Watch the monitors. Don't touch my camera. I stepped in front of the car quickly. There's footage. Someone's been down here. My word tried to shape the legal problem. A recorded trespass into a reason to stay. Rita shoved his chin toward the feed. He did not look at me when he said, you too should get out of here. Go property is for his hardened and away the told me he had been told this job before. He did not want to see lab anymore than we wanted to be in it. His hands moved for his radio. As Rita reached, I'm honored to show to new frame. Subjects have been stood just beyond the lab threshold and mimic read posture in the feed. The creature's head tilted and imitation of the exact angle Rita had taken. Marcus caught the movement first and

24:00said, read look, Marcus pointed in the lines on his face when taught. For a second, returned away from the radio and the feed showed a mere reduction. The sound and the recorder walked and a short cut played back that resembled Rita's voice saying, seal it. Step back, the pitchbent and the syllables came out wet and rum. Doubt became fear when Rita and slow. He glanced toward the door as if hearing the mimicry in the room for the first eye. His mouth tightened. What the hell is that? Read demanded and his radio fell silent against his chest. He took one step closer to the lab door. Don Tee opened it, I said. Marcus grabbed my elbow. Alex, Don Tee, Marcus's voice snaps. We had been arguing about footage in safety since we found the recorder and now we had to decide in the corner of a concrete stairwell whether to follow the motion on a screen or a bay uniform. The choice was not abstract. It was gear in our hands at a person pacing in front of a door that should be empty. A frame on the monitor changed. Subject 7 had a loan to move in a way that matched human hesitation. It copied Reid's posture

25:01down to the arm angle and the tilt of his head. That mimicry made me see Reid differently, no longer just an officer, but someone the thing could imitate. I stepped in front of Reid and said, you can teab you to want to open that door. My hands were open. My voice did not shake, but my fingers scraped the denim seam where I habitually trace it when thinking. Rees jaw worked. Marcus whispered, we can record from inside. Get proof then, he did not finish. The wire is on the recorder belt. The monitor bank gave a low mechanical wine, Reid put his palm on the door handle and then drew it back. For a second it looked like he would follow us. For a second it felt a small relief that someone official might do the right thing. Then Subject 7 moved in the frame. It stepped where Reid did the last motion. The flawed imitation played in the monitor and a wet, rasping noise from the lab-matchery's clipped instruction. Reid inhaled once too fast and his hand left a smear of sweat and the painted metal. I saw the same sweat on his brow as he looked at us. Lock it down. Rees snapped, the 30 returning like a reflex. Lock the door. Tape it. Call the station. He barked to a deska

26:03had not seen him touch. He meant to impose control by procedure. Marcus looked at me then at Reid. I could see the conflict in his face. Preserve footage or preserve Reid's badge. We argued then, directly and fast. We take the footage. Marcus, we dent he hand it over. They will bury it. We hand it over and follow procedure. Reid counted. You hand it to me now and I will log it. Reid, you log it and they seal it forever. Marcus shot back. Reid, Marcus stopped. I said, I felt the instinct to protect Reid into distrust any official sequence that derives the truth. I told Reid if he take it they take everything. They want to tell us what they do with Reid's face tightened. Alex, you don't know that. I do, I said. I thought of the stamp paper the have orson clip cut mid sentenced the redacted names three to six lines of back and forth followed. Reid's words were controlled in procedural. Marcus was short and urgent. I've had my name in at least twice. Alex, give me the footage. Reid demanded.

27:04No, Marcus. Marcus, you can teepot if it and set risk. Reid shot back. Reid. You won't teepot the truth before, I said. Marcus pushed past Reid toward the monitor cut to grab the recorder. He fumbled for the USB dongle and the camera's battery pack. The cut Tito does he lifted it. In that moment, Subject 7 stood in the lab doorway in the feed and then in a movement too fast for the framerate, the real lab doors weren't emmered. The metal hinge shrieked. The cut tipped. Reid went for the handle. Containment failed at the threshold. Subject 7 came for an emotion like a broken human trying to match a gate. It lunged with jerking animal movements that did not obey joint rules. Reid slammed the door and his hands land into the frame. He caressed. Marcus dropped the recorder. I dove for the camera battery and shoved it into my pocket. The lab door rattled and then tore open again. Subject, seven shoulder forced a crack that let an air colder than a nistero we had been in earlier. Everything turned physical in three counts. Reid pushed back against the door. Marcus tried to wedge a metal table across it.

28:07A guard to length of Rabelini against a service shelf. Reid held a radio like a shield. I shouted on the ground because in moments of motion I fall back to orders that work. Marcus yelled, Alex now. He shoved his shoulder into the table. The table shifted and caught on a cold pipe. The creature slid a limb through the gap in its fingers, long and raw, found metal. There was a sound like wet paper tearing when Subject 7 hooked the table and pulled. Reid let out a raw grunt and reached for the creature with something like professional training. He tried to lock an arm around the subject's torso. The subject imitated his move for the knock or translation and Reid's face changed. Reid's mouth opened and the sound he made was part pain, part command. Marcus saw Reid's shoulder give and shouted for me to get the cameras. I did what I had come for. I turned the hand held camera on and focus on the doorway. My fingers did a familiar click when it records. The camera caught Reid grappling with a grey, models hand and Marcus jamming a metal table against the frame. The creatures had tilted as it mimicked Reid's hold. It bent its neck in a way that cracked a dry sound. Reid's radio fell

29:10on the channel blood static Marcus slipped. I launched to pull him behind the toppled love bench. A rope of decisions followed. Reid drove a shoulder forward in the door slammed. The lab interior came apart in a tangle of over 10 chairs and scattered papers. Marcus clamped the recorder into his jacket and came up with duck watches across his knuckles. We get up Marcus. We get out with at least the files in the recorder. Reid pushed a breeze into the threshold and had it. We shut it. Now the three of us heaved at the door and finally wedged a rusted table like in the frame. It sat there like a primitive lock. Then Marcus was not where I expected him to be. He had been beside me at the table. I turned and the bench was empty. A sound from the stairwell made me look down and the metal door that led to a surface call was open to crack. My mouth would dry. I called Marcus. No answer. I lost the strap of my camera across my chest and ran the corridor. Marcus, Marcus's answer. Reid followed. We moved with purpose. The cold concrete pressed against my palms as I pushed open a side door and found no feet, no jacket, only a scuff mark on the floor

30:15in a smear of black dust. President Barack Obama. Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years. But you can stop them by voting yes by April 21st. Help put our elections back on a level playing field and let voters decide not politicians. Vote yes by April 21st. Paid for by Virginians for fair elections. Hi, this is Alex Cantrowitz. I'm the host of Big Technology podcast, a longtime reporter and an on air contributor to CNBC. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it. Asking where this is all going. They come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices,

31:15and meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology podcast wherever you get your podcasts. That moment was the mid-chap to mini cliffinger. For three sentences, nothing explained Marcus sudden absence. Then the recorder on the court played a one second clip. A wet rasp in a sound that could have been a footstep or a chair scraping. The monitor featured a glide of something in the corridor out of frame. I felt my breath shortened, doubt flipped intact of fear. I shouted Marcus's name into the empty stairwell. External events kept coming. Reed went to the stairwell and found the tape we had tried to wedge-spilt across the floor. He crouched, felt the static on the recorder, and said, this does he look like force. It looks like someone followed the path, he wiped his hand over the scuff. Reed's face went blank in a way that told me he was holding thoughts back. I wanted to ask what he knew about the cover-ups, but every question felt like giving away where we hid the footage. We retreated to the mechanics hallway and took stock. The lab had been breached. Reed shulled a blood beneath his shirt. Marcus was unaccounted for. The recorder's battery was half

32:17feeding by whatever interference had glitched the feed. I set up my mixture for workstation in my car that morning, not because I wanted to run, but because I had to piece what we had into something publishable. Evidence that could not be sealed with a single signature. Over the next hours I watched recovered footage frame by frame. I found a clip that changed everything. The archival feed from an older camera labelled with a date two years prior, showed a young man with a hospital wristband asleep on a cot in a reinforced room. The whiteboard behind him had lines of tests and a single directive stenciled across it. Did not emit subjects into public record. The camera cut, a dare. A voice and clip followed that recorded voice. Subject exhibits mimicry of authority. Avoid interaction that places staff in direct focal contact. The tape ended with the line redacted. Twist struck me in the chest. Marcus had found the redacted tag and the number of seven in the lab. The archival footage identified Subject 7 as someone they had explicitly hidden. That revealed motive. The skull sublifel was not random. Someone had decided to seal an experiment

33:17and buried the identity of who had been turned into Subject 7. That changed how I saw Reed. Reed's insistence on sealing the scene no longer looked like bureaucratic reflex. It looked like trained avoidance. I called Reed on his direct line and left the terse message. Reed, we have footage. We will release it if you force a lock. Do your duty or we'll go public. I did not know whether sending that message was a bluff or threat. Reed answered my call in person and his face was grey, Alex. You don't understand the legal side if you post it you break laws. The skull will press charges. He kept one hand at his side where his shoulder bled into his shirt if you post it people will get hurt. Reed used short words. He chose him like a man picking a single tool. I made decisions then that resolved the main conflict. I prepared a partial upload to a public archive and encrypted raw files to three separate dead drop locations. Marcus disappearance had shifted my goal from proving to cover up to getting evidence into public hands in case we were stopped. The choice was concrete. Click to compress upload. I used the record as corrupted clips as bait and then set a mirrored upload to

34:18a journalist I trusted. The plan was simple and practice and complicated and moral fallout. The next morning the skulls press profits released a statement. Maintenance issue in Sub-Oval, no threat to staff incident contained. Reed's name was in a neutral position. The skulls lawyer called for any footage to be turned over. I refused. A man from the district office someone I had only seen in blacked out lines and redacted memos texted that I should step away. He used polite words and the space between them felt like a trap. I worked in my car with the recorder on my lap. I watched the frames where Marcus wifled the files where he pressed a damp thumb to a redacted strip and his face folded. The archival footage in one file showed a note that Reed and clear type subject origin student data set Alpha. Someone had taken a child and used them. My hands tightened on the steering wheel. The emotion that guided me now was not mere suspicion. It had become a need to expose that misuse. The shift happened through actions uploading, copying, sending, not through speech. Three days passed with fragments. Marcus phoned pinged once with a gobbled location that mapped to an abandoned storage lot.

35:22Officer Reed went on administrative leave. The district lawyer demanded a meeting that I declined. Press ran a minimal piece. My output spread into low waves. The blogger, then an investigative reporter, then a university researcher. Each reposs felt like a small release I heard people ask who's subject seven. I found myself answering with clips instead of explanations. Then one clip changed the public frame completely. I recovered camera, filmed months earlier, showed subjects seven on a hallway and seen by staff. In that clip the creature copied a janitor's lawn, easy stride on his hound gestures. Then the clip recorded a voice, a male voice that sounded like Reed S urging the janitor to check a cabinet. The creature imitated that voice in a wet respirator. When the reporter played the clip on air, the sound wrenched the studio host into silence. People wrote their own conclusions, but the tape made the claim concrete. Someone high up had trained staff to ignore certain signals. That revelation forced a final confrontation. The district sent two investigators to my car. They had a polite, empty firmness. One introduced to herself as investigator lane.

36:26The other called himself fielding. They spoke in procedural cadences. Lane, Alex Mercer, we need the rough aisles. Hand them over and we'll open a joint review. Her tone tried to appear neutral. She did not. Fielding avoided eye contact. I looked at their hands. Lane's nails were immaculate. Fielding snuckles bore old scars from hard work. Marcus Absence had already taught me how easily hands could be instruments of consumer. I said give me a subpoena. Then I'll cooperate. It was the most lawful thing I could offer without surrendering the footage to unknown cuddens. Lane found, fieldings Joe Lucent. They left with a promise to return. At sundown, I opened the last file Marcus had fled and found a name next to a strict infodd graph. The file labelled the subject with initials. A hospital wristband and photograph carried the same redactate Marcus had found. I ran the audio again. Drew's to have since clip voice ended with a direction. If public exposure occurs, claim an authorized access and proceed to retention protocol delta. The line was followed by recorded exhale and a stamp of a signature.

37:28The paper trail was now visible in small, precise steps, experiment, containment, production, instruction to hide. I called Reed. He answered on the second ring, his voice sounded raw. Alex, you shouldn't have done this. You said you shouldn't have put Marcus in danger. I told him. Marcus is missing Reed. He would log it. He didn't tea. He nothing for several heartbeats and then quietly I tried. Reed's voice cracked like a glove tearing. At admission changed everything about him. He had been a barrier. Now he was a witness with conviction in his chest. Reed me what he knew. However since the lab had been a contracted research unit, the district had signed off on grounds and then a higher office had insisted on redactions, Reed it without melodrama. He they me a lock and forget. I didn't think his sentences were short he ended with I tried to help when I could. I've I covered for them because I thought I was protecting kids. But I think I made it worse. The confession shifted my view of him from obstacle to a damaged ally. We formed a plan that night with concrete steps. Reed would use a channel inside

38:31his precinct to request the maintenance logs and the original grant paperwork. I would release the unadapted archival clips to a reporter on a time embargo to avoid tampering by schooler. Marcus less known pain would be passed silently to a private investigator read trusted. We were not Navi. Each step was still left in the people who had deducted names for a reason. The decisive moment came in a ruined half lit maintenance room with the original contract to stunt sheets was stored in assets free boxes. Reed led the way past a guard who believed the official line. He moved with more hasten before. When we opened the box we found a ledger stamped with a government contract as crest on a list of purd calls. Their entirety type lines were direct orders. Expedite retention do not disclose subject origin if breached and claim unauthorized access. Those orders were not in Havorson's voice. They carried the weight of a higher hand. The discovery was the final proof. I photographed the ledger with my analogue camera and bowed up the images to three different drives. As we left, Reed, this will put people in prison. He did not say who. He did not need to. The ledger connected to lab to a

39:33chain of command that extended beyond the school. I felt a clarity that replaced suspicion. The institution had decided to hide an experiment and that choice had toned people into evidence. We released the ledger the next day to the embedded reporter under the condition that they run the story with corroborating footage. The piece dropped with a headline that forced the district to respond. Within 48 hours an internal review was announced, followed by an outside panel. The timeline turned public. Names that had been redacted became topics of investigation. The reporter credited Marcus footage and my uploads. I sat in my car and watched coverage until dawn. A final confrontation arrived when the lead investigator from the outside panel came to speak with me. She precise questions and did not blink when I named the ledger and the recorder and have awesome clips. Her tone was official, but it carried a human steadiness that suggested accountability. She, we will try to find Marcus. I felt something like a release when she said the words. It was not closure, but it was a step. Two weeks later, I got a call that Marcus's phone had pinged on a maintenance word of three blocks from the sub-level denied of the breach.

40:34They found beep prints and dust and a partial smear of cloth leading into a sealed cold space. They pulled a single redacted bracelet from an Havak duck. He matched the hospital tag in the archival photograph. The body was not there. There was no finality in the discovery, but we had a direction. The investigators voice over the phone ended with, we are not done. Those four words felt like a promise. Officer Reed was assigned to a witness assistance unit. He handed over the sign notebooks he had kept in secret. He admitted to give an statement under oath that described chain of command pressure to obfuscate. His admission pushed the investigation forward. Reed's actions showed that a man who had once sealed a door could still choose to open a record and let daylight onto it. Months later, the district issued an expanded audit of the sub-level and contract relationships. The school agreed to unseal certain files. The external panel published a report that used my footage as evidence of a containment breach. It did not solve every piece of the puzzle. Subject 7 was not captured in a cage and Marcus did not reappear at my door. But the ledger and the Havocyn tapes were now in the public record and the

41:36chain of command that ordered the reductions had been exposed by inquiry. I kept one copy of the original recorder and about it still frame that shows Subject 7 watching us from the first old as Reed tried to secure the door. I carried that frame like proof away a person my carrier key. Public narrative shifted from denial to accountability. People read questions he had not expected. Marcus's name was in a small careful line in the investigation notes as missing an official capacity. The report recommended further searches and an extended audit of the contractors involved. In quite the follow the visible actions and noise returned to my nights. Once while packing equipment and the packing lot, I heard a scrape like metal on paint against the side of my car. My phone flashed with a brief burst of static that wiped the screen for a split second. I sat very still and checked the rear view. Moved. The handle of the camera dug into my palm. I called investigator Elaine and left the message. Someone is looking. Be careful. I made the message short because lawn messages give time for misinterpretation. The final scene is concrete. I sat alone in my car footage uploaded to trusted journalists. The ledger published

42:39recorporating the investigator promising more searches. Marcus still missing. I closed the camera case and felt a small clean certainty from the action. I had forced a bearer thing into daylight. That action did not heal the absence of Marcus or lock Subject 7 behind concrete forever. The last line of tape I keep is a short corrupted clip. It begins with halting words from Jahavosan and ends in static. After I pressed stop, something scraped across my car in a dying burst of static flashed on my phone. I lifted the camera and looked at the parking lot. A shadow slit between the light poles and was gone. I put the recorder in my glove compartment, locked the doors and started the engine. I drew from the school lot with the ledger in the passenger seat and a list of encrypted copies on my phone. The car hummed. The radio was off. At the first red light I checked the rear view and sonar headlights behind me. That night we had resolved the institutional secrecy with evidence. We had forced an inquiry. The immediate conflict was driven to a conclusion. Fas exposed an external investigation underway, read cooperating, Marcus accounted for in paperwork and absence. The narrative had a direction from suspicion to

43:42expose her to partial resolution. But the scrape against my car and the burst of static was specific actions, not metaphors. They were present threats that suggested containment failure consequences beyond the sealed lab. I put my hand in the camera case and felt the weight of what we had taken and what we had left behind. I drove on with the registry numbers of the contractors memorized. The lab's ledger did its burn into the back of my mind and the sound of concrete in the stairwell still ringing in my ears. The last concrete moment of the chapter is simple and physical. The phone went dead for a beat and then came back on with a single and mad message that contained only a static filled image of corridor tiles. I parked under a dent street lamp and opened the message. It was corrupted, but one clear thing remained. The tile pattern matched the suboval corridor. I did not feel heroic. I felt accountable. I have forced evidence into the world and set events in motion that could not be fully controlled. I closed the phone, put the ledger back in the lock glove compartment and stepped out into the night with the camera on my shoulder. The case was not clean. Nothing about what we did was tidy. But the files were unadacted. Investigators

44:43were asking questions, and the ledger had a stamp that could not be erased by a single signature. The concrete event at Ensys chapter is not a promise of safety. It is a knock. My car alarm did not go off but somewhere, quiet on the edge of hearing, a metal scrape echoed once more against a distant service door. I looked up and recognised the sound for what it was, someone moving metal against metal in the exact rhythm that had opened the head and door under the school. I walked away from the car with the camera strap over my shoulder and the ledger pressed to my chest and I did not look back. The investigation would continue without mistanding in its front lines, but I put enough truth into motion that the cover up could no long hold on technique alone. The remainder would be a matter of law, persistence and the stubbornness of witnesses. The script faded. The phone flashed once more with static then went dark. And that is the end. Thank you for listening and I will see you in the next one.

45:47Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years, but you can stop them by voting yes by April 21st. Help put our elections back on a level playing field and let voters decide not politicians. Vote yes by April 21st. Paid for by Virginians for fair elections. Every day the world gets a little weirder and a lot more awesome. Cool stuff daily takes a look at everything from mining and space to the latest in the fight against cancer to how AI is basically changing everything. It's all the cool stuff you didn't know you need it to know. Join us for cool stuff daily as we take a quick look at science tech and the wait what stories that make you sound way smarter at dinner. Subscribe to cool stuff daily now because the future is happening fast and it's way too fun to miss.