Rain hammered the roof like a warning that evening, but Maya Sharma barely noticed.
She was late. Again.
Her umbrella had flipped inside out earlier, thanks to a sudden gust of wind, so she’d stuffed it in her tote bag and dashed to the library before the downpour could soak her notes. After a quiet hour of studying, she packed up and hurried toward the exit, when she realized something.
Her phone. She’d left it charging near the back window.
Maya doubled back through the echoing rows of books, her footsteps soft on the polished floor. She was just about to push open the small staff-only side door (which a kind librarian always left open for students) when she heard voices.
“…she’s getting too close. We can’t risk it anymore.”
Maya stopped.
A man’s voice responded, low and firm, “Then we make sure she stops asking questions.”
Silence. Then a third voice—measured, calm.
“If she talks, we lose everything.”
Maya’s fingers slipped off the handle.
She stood frozen, back pressed against the wall, heart in her throat. Her mind raced. Who were they talking about? Who was getting too close?
Something told her she shouldn't be listening.
But she couldn’t walk away either.
She leaned in.
“I’ve warned her once already,” the first voice said. “This time we do it quietly. A simple scare. If that doesn’t work…”
They didn’t finish the sentence. But Maya didn’t need them to.
She was smart enough to put the pieces together.
The voices stopped.
A creak echoed—someone shifting their chair, maybe. Maya snapped out of her shock and tiptoed back, keeping to the shadows, before slipping quietly out through the side exit.
She ran back to her room, rain forgotten.
Her roommate Priya looked up, startled. “What happened? You look like you saw a ghost.”
Maya just shook her head. “It’s nothing. Just… too much caffeine.”
But that was a lie. She couldn’t stop replaying the voices. And the terrible thought began to grow:
Were they talking about me?
She had, just that morning, asked Professor Mukherjee in class about a room on the old campus map—a locked archive wing that no one seemed to mention anymore. He’d brushed her off with a half-smile and an even weaker excuse: “Old maps are full of errors, Maya. Focus on the syllabus.”
But that room had existed once.
And now, it seemed, asking about it had made her a target.
That night, sleep was impossible.
The next morning, she pretended nothing had happened. Went to class. Took notes. But she started noticing things.
Professor Mukherjee watched her for a second too long. Dr. Raina, the assistant dean, was suddenly walking past her table in the library three times in a row. And the head librarian, usually warm and chatty, barely met her eyes.
Something was off.
And she needed answers.
So she came up with a plan.
The library closed at 9 PM. Maya waited until midnight.
She knew how to avoid the guards—they usually smoked near the east gate and rarely checked the west wing. She slipped out of her dorm in all black, hair tied back, flashlight hidden in her sleeve.
She went straight to the library’s back entrance, then to the Rare Books section. It was silent as a tomb.
According to the map she’d found in a forgotten copy of the student handbook, there had once been a storage room behind the archive shelves. Room 103A. It wasn’t listed anymore. But the wall still had uneven grooves, as if something had been boarded up and repainted.
She ran her fingers along the paneling.
Click.
One section gave way.
Her heart leapt into her throat as a narrow door swung open into darkness.
Inside was dust and cold air. A single bulb hung from the ceiling, flickering.
There were shelves, boxes, and steel filing cabinets.
Most were labeled in faint handwriting:
“Project Trident – Phase 2”
“Subjects: 0140–0150”
“Procedure Logs: Memory Interference”
Maya opened a file and froze.
Subject 0147: Aditi Banerjee
Condition: Unstable. Transferred. Memory alteration incomplete.
Attached was a photograph of a student—no older than Maya. Brown eyes. Hair tied in a braid. Underneath it, someone had written:
“Subject shows signs of resistance. Protocol 7 required.”
She flipped through more files. Dozens. Maybe hundreds.
They were doing experiments. On students.
And then she saw the word that made her blood run cold.
“Control Through Cognitive Rewiring.”
Someone had signed the document: Dr. Raina.
Suddenly, there was a sound behind her.
A quiet click.
She turned.
Professor Mukherjee stood in the doorway, arms crossed.
“I really hoped you weren’t the curious type,” he said.
Maya backed away instinctively, one hand still gripping the file.
“What is this?” she asked, voice trembling. “What are you doing here?”
He stepped inside, his expression unreadable.
“We’re trying to create a future where chaos doesn’t exist. Where minds can be… guided. Molded.”
“You’re manipulating people,” she shot back. “Erasing them.”
“Not erasing. Improving. Think about it—no anxiety, no rebellion, no crime. A perfectly tuned generation.”
“That’s not science. That’s control.”
He looked disappointed. “You’re too smart for your own good, Maya.”
More footsteps approached.
Dr. Raina and the librarian entered, flanking the professor.
“You shouldn’t have seen this,” Raina said, almost gently. “But don’t worry. Tomorrow, you won’t remember a thing.”
They moved fast.
Before Maya could scream, a sharp sting pierced her neck.
She stumbled. The room spun. The documents in her hands slipped to the floor.
Darkness swallowed her.
She woke up in the campus infirmary.
Light streamed through the windows. Her head throbbed like a drum.
Priya sat beside her. “You fainted yesterday in the library,” she said. “They think it was stress.”
Maya blinked. “The library?”
She tried to remember—but her memories were like water slipping through her fingers. There were flashes. A hidden room. A file. A girl’s face.
But nothing stayed.
She looked around, confused. Her voice came out weak. “I… don’t remember anything.”
Priya reached for her hand. “Don’t worry. You just need rest.”
But something inside Maya whispered otherwise.
Weeks passed. Life continued.
She went back to class. Smiled. Studied. But deep down, she knew something wasn’t right. There were dreams. Vivid flashes of people she didn’t know, rooms she’d never seen.
Or had she?
Then one afternoon, while checking out a poetry book from the library, she found something strange tucked inside the back cover.
A piece of paper.
A photocopy of a file.
Subject 0147 – Project Trident
And scrawled at the bottom in rushed handwriting:
“They didn’t erase everything. Trust yourself. Keep digging.”
No name. No clue who had left it.
But Maya’s fingers tightened around the page.
She remembered enough.
One Year Later
A breaking news headline swept across national channels:
“Elite College Accused of Human Trials and Cognitive Experiments”
Leaked files. Secret recordings. Testimonies from whistleblowers.
Project Trident was shut down.
Professors arrested.
St. Jude’s faced a full investigation.
But no one ever found out who the whistleblower was.
And in a quiet café in another city, a girl named Maya Sharma sipped her coffee, opened her laptop, and typed out the first line of a book she was writing.
“It all started with a whisper behind a door.”
She smiled.
They had tried to silence her.
But she remembered.
React
