The road ended in weeds and silence.A rust-coloured sign leaned against a
chain-link fence, its letters almost gone beneath the dust.NEUROMECH
THERAPEUTICS — AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.The last word
was half-erased by a long smear of something that looked like mud but wasn't.
The survivor—though he no longer called himself that—pushed through a
gap in the fence.Gravel crunched beneath his boots; wind slid through the
holes in the steel,making a low, constant moan.
The glass doors at the entrance were cracked but intact, one corner held
together by an old safety sticker.Inside, the air smelled of coolant, paper, and
time.A poster drooped on the wall beside the elevator.
WASH HANDS. DO NOT TOUCH YOUR FACE.The ink had bled until
the letters looked like veins.He stood staring at it for a while, trying to
imagine the people who had needed that reminder.Then he moved on.Down
the corridor, every surface shimmered faintly beneath the beam of his
flashlight.He passed a reception desk littered with ID badges and coffee
mugs turned to dust.The silence wasn't just the absence of sound—it was
something thicker, a pressure.Somewhere deep in the building, a metal panel
rattled once and stopped.He found the stairwell door half-open and followed
the concrete steps down.
The deeper levels were colder, the air heavier.Emergency lights blinked
1HAIR RAISER
in slow intervals like an old heartbeat.Halfway down the second flight, he
noticed the stains: brown, circular, the shape of a hand dragged along the
wall.He didn't look too closely.At the bottom, a sign read BIOCONTAIN-
MENT — LEVEL B.The door groaned when he pushed it.Beyond it, rows of
lab benches waited under a film of dust.
Papers lay scattered like fallen leaves.
He moved carefully, scanning labels, reading the faded text on cracked
screens.
One workstation still glowed faintly, a ghost of power trapped in its circuits.
Under a tipped chair near the far wall he saw it—a dark leather book, the
cover warped but unbroken.A yellowed label clung to the front:PROJECT
HOPE — CASE 18-1-2-9-5-19 He hesitated before touching it.The strap had
stuck to the cover with age, but it came loose with a dry crack.Inside, the first
page bore neat handwriting, black ink that had bled slightly into the paper.He
brushed away a layer of dust and began to read.
[Excerpt — Doctor's Journal — 10 May 2032 – Initial Entry]
The elevator hummed all the way down. No music, just the mechanical
rhythm of a machine that never slept. The air was cold enough to taste
like metal. My badge blinked green when the doors opened, and the word
AUTHORIZED glowed against my chest as if it needed to remind me
that I was finally allowed.somewhere again.It has been eight months since
my son's last scan and six since the funeral.When the recruiter from
Neuromech Therapeutics called, I almost hung up. But they spoke of
neural regeneration—of repairing the cells that forget how to live. They
spoke the way I used to before grief rewired my brain.My therapist, Carver,
told me to write again."Document the process," she said. "Otherwise, the
work will eat you."So I bought a new notebook—hard leather, thick paper
that smells faintly of disinfectant—and wrote the date on the first line 10
May 2032 — First day at Project Hope.
The facility lies beneath thirty meters of limestone outside
a converted missile silo breeding medicine instead of warheads. The
corridors are polished and quiet, lined with cameras that blink red in the
rhythm of a pulse.Inside the main lab: stainless steel benches, containment
hoods, the faint perfume of ozone. Everything feels new but already used,
like someone has been rehearsing this future for a long time.Orientation
lasted ten minutes. No introductions, no applause—just NDAs and a
retinal scan. The security officer said we were working on "cellular
reprogramming through viral interface." The scientists call it Project
Hope; the investors call it return on miracle capital.I call it a chance to
stop feeling useless.Carver would ask how I feel writing this.I feel like I'm
cheating on grief with science.If I can learn to fix one body, maybe I can
forgive myself for the one I couldn't.
They gave me a small office between cryo-storage and sequencing. The
desk
drawer held a sealed envelope labeled HRV-13. Inside: project
summary,objectives, viral backbone. The words lyssavirus vector caught
my eye. Rabies—of course. A virus that already knows the nervous system
better than we do.
Journal Entry — 18:02 hrs
I am beginning at the end of something. The team before me failed or
vanished;the records don't say which. My task is to refine a vector designed
to teach damaged tissue how to live again without touching the genome.
Direct cellular reprogramming—make the cell remember what it used to
be. I should be scared. I'm not. I'm curious, and that frightens me more
than fear would.I took this job because I needed to believe that death isn't
final.I took this job because I couldn't save him.I took this job because
maybe, if we make the body remember how to live, I can forget how it
feels to lose.
The survivor closed the journal gently.The pages stuck to his gloves with
moisture from the air.Somewhere behind him, a pipe popped and echoed
down the hall.He waited, counted to five, then slipped the book into his
pack.Dust rose where he'd been standing, curling like breath."Project Hope,"
he whispered.The words sounded heavy in the empty room.He switched off
his light and walked deeper into the dark.
Containment revised again. Class-3 suits, full respirator seal, negative
pressure chambers for any exposure beyond serum. The viral substrate is
stable at -80 C. Under microscope, HRV-13 particles fluoresce faintly blue
when bound to neural tissue. I watched them climb an axon today,slow and
deliberate, following the electrical gradient. For a moment I forgot to breathe.
Carver would remind me: beauty is not the same as goodness.