The Spectre of Project Helix
The first thing he noticed wasn’t the broken monitor. It was the precision of the solder. Lab Gamma was locked in its usual state of neon-drenched gloom—dim blue light pulsing from the server racks and the distinct, metallic scent of ozone hanging in the super-cooled air. I was hunched over the Magnetic Electro-Current Amplifier (MEC), wielding a specialized soldering iron, tracing delicate gold circuits under a high-powered scope. I was just ‘Technician 7’ here, a tireless shadow, programmed not to ask questions, built to go unnoticed. That was the whole point. Be the woman who fixes the components, not the woman who knows what they really do. “Dr. Veda.” The voice cut through the hum of the cooling systems. I didn’t have to look up. Professor Thorne, Head of Project ‘Infinitas’. The ultimate authority. A man whose mind was a steel trap, whose eyes were always calculating trajectories, the kind of man who believed Science was Law, not Ethics. “Professor,” I replied, allowing the last precise solder point to cool. Silence. It stretched, taut and dangerous. Engineers know the feel of a pause: this one held a fatal charge. “Your burn mark,” he said, his voice dropping to a near whisper. “Cover it.” I frowned, glancing down at my left wrist—and my breath hitched. A static clip had slipped. The fabric of my lab coat had ridden up just enough to expose the bare skin beneath. A silver-white scar, perfectly flat and smooth, running from my wrist almost to my elbow. It formed a perfect, cold parabola, the signature curve of a comet’s trajectory.
His eyes zeroed in on it like it was a critical system failure. I slowly pulled the sleeve down. It was too late. You can’t un-see proof. “Where did you acquire that injury?” His voice was no longer professional inquiry. It was recognition layered with dread. Every sound in the lab seemed to recede—the gentle tink of the cooling metal, the beep of the frequency counter, someone laughing near the automated coffee dispenser. I could still hear them, but they were distant, like noise filtered through a thick-walled vacuum chamber. I met his eyes. “From the Core,” I said. Something in his carefully constructed control snapped. A cold sweat broke across his forehead, leaving him the colour of old parchment and filtered light. “I was on the review panel when it collapsed,” he whispered.
“They filed it as ‘The Vacuum Event.’ The Helix Task Force was… decimated. Officially.” “Yes,” I murmured, my voice flat. “That is what the classified report states.” He stared at me like I was a ghost that had just debugged his consciousness. “You are Spectre Three.” It was a realization, not a question. I didn’t confirm it. I didn’t need to. He knew. The comet scar on my skin, the preternatural steadiness of my hand, the knowledge of the MEC’s true calibration—it all clicked for a man who had dedicated his life to solving sealed equations. “If you are alive,” he said slowly, his eyes wide with horror, “then Project Core… the ‘malfunction’… that means—” “That it wasn’t a malfunction,” I finished for him. “And the man who signed the execution order for the field activation is leading the Council review video conference at 0900 tomorrow.” “Dr. Alistair,” he spat out the name like a mouthful of acid. The server lights flickered, but beneath the noise, I could hear his breathing sharpen—a man realizing the highly secure room he occupies is about to become a battleground. “You understand what that designation means,” I said, wiping my hands on a lint-free cloth that was already stained. “Officially, my team was theoretical. Officially, I am lost data. Officially, Helix was a tragic failure of untested breakthrough research.” He shook his head, a tiny, disbelieving motion. “And unofficially?” “Unofficially?” I stepped closer, low enough for the air to carry my message only to him. “It means someone sacrificed six of the world’s best minds to cover a fatal flaw in their commercial patent. It means six virtual graves are sealed by injunctions and encryption keys. And it means you just looked at the single variable they failed to account for.” His jaw clenched. “Why hide here? Why now?” I glanced at the MEC, the machine I had spent six months ‘fixing’ by simply adding a missing calibration chip. “Because tomorrow,” I said, “you are presenting ‘Infinite Thrust’ to the entire Council. And the men who locked my team inside the Core? They would love nothing more than for a ‘system anomaly’ to cause a massive electromagnetic surge that wipes your life’s work—and your memory—right off the grid.”
He recoiled, just once. “You’re saying they’ll corrupt my presentation data and pin it on you,” he stated, his voice now flat, dangerous. “On the ghost technician with the classified scar.” “I’m saying they already have a remote trigger scheduled.” I slipped a wafer-thin data chip into his hand. “You want to survive tomorrow, you follow the instructions on this exactly. And you do not let Alistair know you’ve seen me.” He looked down at the chip, then back at me, a flicker of suspicion in his gaze. “Why should I trust you?” he asked. “For all I know, you’re the one trying to sabotage my research.” I held his stare, letting the truth cut through the fear. “Because if I wanted you discredited, Professor,” I said, gesturing towards the open casing of the MEC, “I wouldn’t be standing here warning you. I’d already have reversed the polarity on the flux capacitor.” The emergency lights in the Lab blinked, a momentary power dip that felt like the entire facility shuddered. Outside, a recorded voice announced the successful link-up of the Council review feed, bringing with it the man who signed my team’s death warrant.
The Resolution
Thorne palmed the chip, shoving it deep into his lab coat pocket, and took a slow, deliberate breath. He looked down at the chip again, his eyes finally focusing on the tiny, laser-etched instructions on its surface: Activate Protocol Chimera. Pre-load Sequence B-7.
“I will comply,” he said quietly, his professional mask returning, now reinforced with cold resolve. “But if this is just a delay, if this is leading to another cover-up—”
I picked up my soldering iron, snapped the protective shield back into place, and allowed a hint of satisfaction to enter my voice.
“It leads to justice, Professor. Tomorrow, your presentation will go flawlessly. The chip contains a secondary algorithm that will override their sabotage and perfectly execute your original data while simultaneously encrypting a copy of that same data with Alistair’s personal access key—a digital footprint that will later link him directly to the attempt to compromise the system.”
His eyes narrowed in understanding. “You’re giving him the smoking gun, and making him hold it.”
“Simple,” I said, packing my tools. “Live through tomorrow, Professor. Then give your perfect, flawless presentation. Alistair will be celebrating his victory too early to notice the data copy. The security audit afterwards will flag the anomaly, and the key will point to him. The Council will ask for an internal investigation.”
Thorne gave a ghost of a nod. “And after that?”
The Lab’s self-check cycle began a loud whirring noise, drowning out the remainder of our conversation.
I wiped the last trace of flux from the comet scar, pulled my sleeve down, and turned to walk away, dissolving back into the neon-blue shadows.
“After that,” I said over my shoulder, disappearing toward the service exit, “we stop pretending that a Technical malfunction killed six scientists. We start calling it what it is: premeditated murder. And I stop pretending I’m just Technician 7.”
