Clear Water, Hidden Danger

Chapter 32 – Second Deep Dive

WH27 felt different the second time I walked in.

Not haunted.
Not mystical.
Just… mechanical.

Like a machine that had been running for too many years without anyone servicing it.

Pipes groaned under the concrete.
The old turbines clicked in slow, uneven ticks.
Dust shifted every time the ventilation system stuttered.

No fog this time.
No visions.
No bleed-throughs.

Just the truth sitting exactly where they left it.

Hawk waited at the top of the stairs, giving me the space I asked for. He wasn’t happy about it, but he understood. Alex didn’t, but she respected the decision. Everyone else stayed upstairs because they knew this wasn’t a team assignment.

This was mine.

I stepped into the chamber and shut the door behind me.

The silence was total.

My boots echoed once across the floor as I approached the workstation — the same metal console where Neal had almost broken her hand trying to pry open the panel. The same console Mercer’s team had used years before everything burned.

It lit up the moment my hand touched the frame.

Not because of anything supernatural.

Because the biometric lock was still tied to Subject 27.

To me.

The monitor blinked awake, showing the same folders I had seen upstairs — only this time, the restricted ones weren’t grayed out. The encryption recognized me. Hawk would have seen nothing but static.

Breadcrumb confirmed.

I opened the first restricted directory.

PERSONNEL – PROJECT ECHO CORE STAFF

Most of it was redacted. Names blacked out. Photos blurred. But two lines survived the purge:

LEAD NEUROENGINEER – DR. ETHAN MERCER
DIRECTOR OF SUBJECT RETENTION – DR. M. LOCKRIDGE

I swallowed hard.

Mercer I expected.

Lockridge I feared.

My hand hovered over her file, but I forced myself to stay focused. One obsession at a time.

Next folder:

SUBJECT – PAIRING TRIALS

Three entries.

SUBJECT 27 – STATUS: TRANSFERRED
SUBJECT 28 – STATUS: INCOMPLETE
PAIRING LOG – ENCRYPTED

I opened the transfer file.

A single sentence sat in the middle of the screen:

REASSIGNMENT AUTHORIZED BY LOCKRIDGE. SUBJECT 27 CLEARED FOR CIVILIAN INTEGRATION.

That was me.

Thrown into a normal life with no memory. A test rat dressed as a man.

I opened Subject 28’s file.

INCOMPLETE
LAST RECORDED PULSE RESPONSE: 3.12%
NEURAL CLEANSE UNSTABLE
PATTERN UNAVAILABLE

Below that, one more line:

LAST KNOWN LOCATION: STAFFORD – SUBLEVEL 3
STATUS: UNKNOWN

Breadcrumb number two.

I leaned back against the workstation. The metal was ice-cold. The truth wasn’t mystical. It wasn’t cinematic. It wasn’t a prophecy.

It was a bureaucratic checklist of erasing people.

Of erasing me.

I moved on.

The encrypted pairing log demanded a passcode. I tried my ID string. Nothing. I tried the only other pattern that mattered — the timestamp burned into my blackout from the vision.

0107:13.

The file opened.

Inside was a short video. No sound. Just a lab cam from above.

Two tables.
Two restraints.
A body on each.

One was me.

The other… blurred. Deliberately. Not corrupted. Redacted.

But smaller. Thinner. Shorter.

Someone not built like me.

Someone younger.

Someone they paired with me.

Someone who didn’t survive the cleanse.

Or someone they didn’t want me to recognize.

I watched the video twice.

On the third loop, something flickered in the top right corner — a reflection in a stainless cabinet.

Not a face.

A badge.

STAFFORD – GEN ENGINEERING
TIER 3 ACCESS
LOCKRIDGE CLEARANCE REQUIRED

I paused it.

There it was.
The first real proof.
Not a vision.
Not a glitch.
Actual physical evidence.

Dr. Lockridge signed off on the pairing.
She signed off on the wipe.
She signed off on sending me into civilian life.
She signed off on erasing the second subject.

She was the architect of this entire thing.

Not Mercer.

Mercer was the engineer.

She was the hand that decided what happened next.

My chest tightened — not from panic, but from clarity.

I closed the files.

There wasn’t anything else I needed down here.

I turned off the console and headed back up the stairs.

Halfway up, Hawk stepped into view. His silhouette filled the doorway like a wall of quiet judgment.

“Well?” he asked.

I met his eyes.

“I know where she is,” I said. “And I know where I have to go next.”

Hawk didn’t ask who “she” was.

He already knew.

“Stafford,” he said.

I nodded.

“And this time,” I told him, “I’m not going there for answers.”

He studied me for a long moment.

“You going there for revenge?”

“No,” I said. “For the truth.”

Because the only way to fix what they made…

…was to face the person who made it.


ANONYMOUS FIELD LOG — ENTRY A
CLASSIFIED — PROJECT ECHO CLEARANCE REQUIRED

Anchor entered WH27 alone. Restricted files auto-unlocked via latent biometric clearance. Discovery of pairing trials confirmed presence of secondary subject. Emotional signature stabilized once Anchor identified Lockridge as primary architect. Intent trajectory now trending toward Stafford infiltration. Support network remained at upper levels; no group fracture observed. Monitoring continues.

ANONYMOUS FIELD LOG — ENTRY B
CLASSIFIED — PROJECT ECHO CLEARANCE REQUIRED

NLC sensors recorded elevated activity below CWP’s southern conduit concurrent with Anchor accessing encrypted logs. Mercer expressed visible distress upon hearing reference to “Pairing Trials.” Captain Bilew-Jackson recommended lockdown of NLC sublevels; Jackson refused pending clarity. Internal concern growing regarding Anchor’s trajectory toward Stafford. Infiltration status remains uncompromised.