Chapter 1

She knew what she had been getting into when she signed up, she thought. They'd needed a software engineer, and she needed the money. It was supposed to be a temporary thing; the usual going in to fix a few flaws in the system, get paid, and then go back to watching file servers in musty corporate basements. But it had turned out that not many programmers of her level wanted to work at the ill-reputed asylum in the middle of nowhere in Colorado, so they had renewed her contract…Several times now, actually, they had renewed her contract. And each time, she had been given increased wages and had been moved deeper into the facilities.
Now she was Lisa Park: Contract Employee 1466, Clearance Level 3. And Clearance Level 3 had taken her deep, deep into Mount Massive's underground. She had signed a veritable mountain of paperwork and NDAs, scribbled her initials next to promises that she was not actually an agent of corporate espionage, and had even agreed to be moved, temporarily, to the dorm units in the subterranean chambers that apparently dug far into the earth beneath the asylum proper.

And it had gotten weird.

Airlocked gates at every turn. Armed guards. Shifty-eyed doctors. Morphogenic Engines. Shrieking madmen objecting to the tests aimed to aid their failing sanity. And other employees just like her, that lowered their gaze and went from one day to the next thinking of their families and their next paycheck.
But they needed the paycheck. Waylon worked odd jobs on occasion, but nothing that really payed well, and he had always preferred to be a stay-at-home dad to take care of their two young boys. Lisa had always been the main breadwinner of the family, and she wasn't a stranger to a little adversity. Her family had always teased her about that. Waylon was tall and lanky, fair haired and blue-eyed, soft-spoken and nurturing and always a bit shy even during their wild days in college. Lisa was short with dark hair and dark eyes, aloof and logical and at times almost combative; unwilling to be intimidated despite her mostly male-dominated field.
In fact, that was one of the first things she had noticed at Mount Massive, was the lack of other women. Not just programmers, but an utter lack of women at all. The female inmates had been moved to other facilities years ago, and there were no female nurses, no cafeteria workers, no secretaries, not even a customary chirpy-voiced receptionist at the front door. And the corporate bigwigs at Murkoff who oversaw the place had been very clear that as soon as her contract was over, she was out as well. They had been very oddly firm on that. Normally she would have chafed at such a thing; maybe confronted them with their own sexism, or presented them with a -more- than impressive resume of her skills compared to her coworkers. But if she was being honest, she wanted out of this place. She wanted to be back with Waylon and her family. She wanted to be away from the stares and mutterings of sex-starved men who had been kept too long from their wives, away from the inmates who spat profanities and threats when she passed by, away from the disturbing experiments and wailing of the poor wretches that Murkoff had been keeping here…
It didn't help that her boss was an asshole. Jeremy Blaire turned up like a bad penny almost every time she ventured outside her lonely dorm room, asking her how she was feeling or telling her that she needed to fix the engine control's broken coding for the fourth time that week. Blaire's presence always set her ill at ease. He was never truly hostile and she had dealt with smarmy corporate jerks more than once in her career, but there was something strangely off-putting about this particular man; he was always watching her like a hawk, and she disliked how genuinely nervous it made her feel.

This time he hadn't even waited until she had shut the door to her room. One moment she had been about to close and lock it, the next there was a bony-knuckled hand decorated with expensive-looking rings holding it open as he leaned upon it just a little too nonchalantly.
"Liiiii-saaaaa Park!" his voice rose and fell in a sing-song, just like it did every time he greeted her. "On your way out? You sleeping all right? Feeling well today? I know the mattresses aren't the best, but…hey, looks like you've making yourself at home all right!"
Lisa glanced back to the carefully-made bed with its plain white sheets and dreary gray blankets. She had plastered the wall with pictures; photos of her and Waylon on their honeymoon, her kids posing with a zebra at the local zoo, formal family portraits with her children in adorable little sweaters, and pictures her sons had drawn that she had sniped from the kitchen fridge. Other than those photos, she considered the little room as unwelcoming as could be. She carefully managed her smile, trying to make it as cheerful but simultaneously impatient as she could. "Mr. Blaire. I was just heading to the-"
"To the engine room, I'm afraid," he finished, still smiling in what she could have mistaken as an apologetic way, if she didn't know him better.
"Again?"
"Again. Camera connection, this time. And we're going to need you on that ASAP. If you'll just follow me…"
She sighed and fell into step behind him obediently, busily trying to keep up with him as both hands worked to pin her hair up in her favorite no-nonsense bun. The engine had been breaking down more and more lately…and neither she nor the other engineers could figure out why. Snippets of code would vanish or be replaced with nonsense letters and numbers. Sometimes the screens would start flashing off and on at random. One time, a backlog documentation had shown up as HELPHELPHELPHELPHELPHELPHELP for pages and pages, which she had attributed to one of her coworkers trying to spook 'the new girl'. Just before she had gone to report it, the file had vanished.
"That was your husband, yes? On your wall? Waylon, I think you said it was?" Blaire asked airily, pausing to swipe his card through one of the many locks.
The door hissed open and she stepped through with him. "Hm? Ah, yes. Waylon. And my kids."
"He looks…nice."
"He is-nice."
"You must be looking forward to seeing them again, yeah?"
"I…yes…we were going to hold a birthday party for my youngest, he's turning-"
"Mmmhmmmm, I think we'd better step a little more lightly. We already have the patient prepped and let's just say that there's going to be all kinds of hell to pay if we don't get him in the machine, again, ASAP."
She paused in shock, then had to scramble back to her spot behind him. "You already have someone waiting?!"
"Gluskin, I think. Yes, I think it's Gluskin up for this one. You ever read his file?"
"I…didn't think I was supposed to read-"
"Don't worry about it," he said briskly, cutting her off yet again. "Just, be aware Gluskin always puts up a damn fuss when it's his turn. So, he might be a little noisier than Billy or the others. I assure you the doctors have everything under control, we just need you to get the camera control program up and running and…heeeeeeere we go!"

The last door opened and Lisa pushed past him, moving to the familiar console at the front of the enormous glass viewing room. She had only ever been allowed on one or two of the consoles, out of the line of them, and any questions about the Morphogenic Engine's purpose or capabilities had been met with silence or outright hostility. The message had been clear. Keep your head down. Fix the code. Get your paycheck. Then, you can leave.
She was dimly aware of Blaire lurking behind her again, watching her as she hunted through files and flagged errors. "Liiii-saaa Park, we're really going to need that camera up and running, one minute past now."
"On it. Just need to update a few things and put in the ticket-"
"Update faster."
"But the documentation ticket-"
"The ticket can wait. We need it going NOW. Ah, shit."

Blaire's usual smarmy exterior was starting to show cracks, and as she glanced up she saw why. The patient was already being led into the main room down below, flanked by two orderlies. She man was built like a brick shithouse, as the saying went. He must have stood nearly seven feet tall and did not have the withered physique she saw in most of the inmates, but was fairly rippling with muscle and sinew as he stood shivering in nothing but a pair of briefs, digging his heels in against the cold floors and putting up more than a valiant effort against his keepers. His thrashing nearly lifted both orderlies off the ground at once as they struggled to maintain control.
He was bellowing in that bloodcurdling desperate tone that made Lisa's heart seize.
"HELP! I knew it was coming. You filthy fucking machines! You fucking machines! No! No, not again. No! No! Jack booted fucks! I know what you've been doing to me! I know what you've been doing!"
Blaire was looming over her again, speaking into the microphone. "Fuck's sake, get him under control!"
Lisa tried to put her mind back to the task at hand, tidy red-painted nails tapping rapidly over the keyboard, even as her gaze kept drifting above the monitor to watch as the man…what was his name? Glaskin? Gluskin?…she watched as Gluskin was dragged, still kicking and shouting, over towards one of the strange glass spheres in the middle of the floor. The two orderlies were struggling to make him duck his head down when he managed to finally overpower one of them, flinging him roughly to the floor before turning to the other man…who promptly went flying across the room as the alarmingly strong patient flung him away with both hands.
And just like that he was off, even with nowhere to go. The wretched man ran, finding nothing but closed doors and cold glass, his panicked and bloodshot eyes scanning the impassive figures within…and to Lisa's horror, his gaze flickered upon her and stayed there. His eyes settled on the dark haired woman and even as Blaire snarled threats and orders into the microphone just over her shoulder, Gluskin headed towards her.
"Help! Help me! Help me, they're going to rape me! Rape! Raaaape!"
He was up against the glass, pounding both fists against the barrier just in front of her, eyes wide with primal fear as he pleaded for her aid.
"Help me! Don't let them do this! Don't let them! You! I know you can stop this! You have to help me! You have t-"
The orderlies were up and back on him, wrenching him away from the window. Lisa instinctively recoiled, standing from her chair and starting to back away. A hand landed on her shoulder, and she flinched, turning to face to the smiling face of Jeremy Blaire.
"Liiiii-saaaa Park! MISS Lisa Park, sit back down and get that camera running!"

She found herself guided rather roughly back to her seat, and she shakily turned her attentions back to the crawl of the update progress bar, trying not to watch as she heard Gluskin being forced into one of the glass pods. And as the timer counted down and Blaire's veneer nearly came apart behind her, the update bar finally ticked to a finish with milliseconds to spare. The monitor in front of her flashed as the camera connection was made, cutting to Gluskin's terrified visage, gagging around the tubes stuffed down his throat, eyes darting frantically as he moaned in pain.
Blaire patted her on the shoulder as he finally released her, and she could practically feel his gaze boring into her. She swallowed thickly and then cleared her throat, calling upon every ounce of professionalism she had to keep her voice from cracking. "Mr. Blaire, the errors should be fixed now. I'll put in a ticket later when it's been checked. Will that be all?"
She sounded overly formal and her frayed nerves were obvious, but Blaire seemed nothing but pleased, nodding to the door with a little jerk of the head to signal she could…and should…leave. "Yeah, yeah, good job, Miss Park! Looks like everything's up and running and we won't have my bosses barging down the door. You can head on back. Hey. Hey, good job, again."
His pleasantries fell upon deaf ears. She must still have been in shock, a faint buzzing whine echoing in her skull, and the headache she had been nursing for several days returned in full force. She'd been able to stave off the stress of it all for the most part, but seeing that man, Gluskin…Seeing him like that had frazzled her. She grasped her forehead briefly, as though that would help stave off the piercing pangs of her headache, and Blaire paused abruptly.
"Are you…feeling all right, Miss Park?"
Why was he always asking her that? She coughed lightly and folded her hands primly atop her skirt. "Ah…Yes, pardon. I'll be on my way back to my room…"
"Not to worry, we have everything under control here, it looks like. You look a little peaked, Miss Park. Why don't you take a break and then get a quick glance over in the infirmary? Better safe than sorry, yeah?"
She didn't really have a rebuttal, so she merely nodded and quietly backed out of the room, the doors slamming with an insulting bang as she made her exit. She scuttled back to her room quickly, swiping her employee card and cloistering herself back in the comforting familiarity of her little cell-sized domicile, placing one hand on the collection of pictures over her bed and pretending she could feel the warmth of Waylon's palm pressing back.

Jesus. What had she just witnessed? She'd never seen an experiment gone wrong like that…or…how many experiments had she even seen? How many men had she watched be forced, begging for mercy, into those pods that the doctors claimed would help them? Had they all been like this and she had just become numb to the horrors around her every day? What was happening here? What was she doing here? And what was that Gluskin man being put through even as she cowered in her Murkoff-supplied dorm room?
She frowned, pursing her painted lips as she knelt and pulled her suitcase out from under her bed. She clicked it open, retrieving her laptop and tossing herself upon the covers as she set it upon her lap. Technically, she wasn't supposed to have personal computers here, but her increased security clearance had brought with it increased leniency, at least in that area. Technically, she also wasn't supposed to be routing around their firewall and connecting to the internet either. And technically, she wasn't supposed to have any contact with the outside world, even as she opened up the window to her email.
She wasn't sure who she could even contact. There likely wasn't anyone in the company she could really trust. She might have tried to contact the police; unless the Murkoff owned the police as well, which wouldn't have surprised her. She didn't know if you even -could- email the FBI and be answered in a timely manner, and she didn't know anyone in the media who would take her seriously…
Well, she did know -someone- in the media…even if he never did necessarily take her seriously either.
Miles had gone to the same college as her and her husband. He had been a journalism student and she had rather briefly had a crush on him before she had met Waylon, but he had never really taken much notice of her. She couldn't even honestly consider him a 'friend' so much as a 'friendly acquaintance'. They had chatted idly a few times, had brought up going to get coffee together but never did, and the last time she had seen him was at random while at a software developer's conference years ago, where he had been bored out of his mind and apparently ill content with covering such small 'boring' stories.
Well, did she have a story for him…
She found his website easily enough, which included his bio. He still had that messy unkempt brown hair that he apparently hadn't bothered styling even for his profile picture, but his smile was wide and genuine, like a man who liked having his picture taken; very unlike Lisa herself, who apparently tended to look too 'severe' in her photos, or Waylon, who liked to look like a terrified deer in the headlights and usually managed to blink at the last second...
Her headache pounded in her temples once more. Best not to think of Waylon right now.
There was a list of publications that Miles had been a part of, Apparently, investigative journalism was still his thing. Perfect.
She opened up her email and began typing.

-Dear Mr. Upshur…-