The silence in the cell block was broken by Jake's uncertain voice. "So this is not aliens?" He looked from Lila to Samuel, searching for answers. The stranger in the shadows let out a sharp, genuine laugh that echoed off the concrete.
"No, who told you this is aliens?" the man said, his voice tinged with dark amusement. "This is completely human and in a rogue situation. Aliens would probably be kinder."
Jake felt a flush of embarrassment. "But… I saw things. When I was driving with Dirty Joy, I swear I saw something not human. Miya said the same......she saw them too."
The stranger's eyes glinted. "You saw what they wanted you to see. Hallucinations, memory tricks, fear. That's all part of the program."
Samuel pressed closer to the glass. "Then what is this really? Who are you?"
The stranger stepped into the pale light, revealing a face lined with years of exhaustion and knowledge. "I was a scientist here. Joined as a trainee, back when this place was still run by the government. I've seen every phase of this experiment, every escalation, every cover-up."
He settled onto the edge of his cot, voice low but steady. "This facility was founded in the early 1970s, right at the height of the Cold War. But the mine's history goes back further. In the 1940s, there was a disaster ,workers vanished, the company went bankrupt. In the '50s and '60s, the government used it as a dumping ground for radioactive waste from the uranium enrichment plant up the road. But the bad luck never stopped. Employees kept disappearing. Some were found wandering, unable to speak. Others vanished for good."
Lila's eyes widened. "So the government knew something was wrong?"
He nodded. "The Energy Commission sent a survey team in the late '60s. That's when they found the anomaly - a distortion in space and time, deep in the mine. Something that shouldn't have been there. They built a machine to study it, to amplify and focus it. The core of the anomaly is still down there, bigger than a football field. By controlling its power, you can travel into the past. At least, that's the theory."
Jake tried to process it all. "You're saying this place is a time machine?"
"Not in the way you're thinking. It's not a DeLorean or a phone booth. It's a field, a distortion. At first, only volunteers from the army went in. Some came back… changed. Some never came back at all. The government realized they were playing with something they couldn't control. But by then, it was too late. The machine itself started resetting,reverting to a certain point in the past, no matter what they did. They tried to shut it down, but it kept coming back. Eventually, it became a liability, so they handed it off to a private company."
Samuel frowned. "And the ear devices?"
The scientist's expression darkened. "That's new. The private company developed them. Each device contains a tiny dose of neurotoxin. It's enough to make you hallucinate, to lose short-term memory. It's easier to control people who don't remember why they're here, or who they are. The hallucinations- aliens, monsters, whatever frightens you most -are all part of the chemical cocktail and the environmental cues we feed you."
Jake shook his head, still struggling to make sense of it. "But we entered and exited the Settlement in a truck. How is that possible if the Settlement is just a room in this mine?"
The scientist smiled, a tired, knowing smile. "That's part of the experiment too. The entire experience is orchestrated. The truck, the roads, the guards, the sky,every detail is controlled by us. We use a combination of environmental manipulation, drugs, and psychological triggers to create the illusion of a journey. You never leave the facility. Your mind fills in the gaps. Then, when you 'exit,' we study how you behave, how you remember,or forget ,what happened inside. It's all about control, about learning how to shape human behavior after exposure to the anomaly."
Lila's voice trembled. "But why? Why do all this?"
The scientist's gaze turned distant. "It started as an attempt to harness the anomaly for national security. But over the years, it became something else.....a test of how far you can push the human mind before it breaks. Now, it's just a rogue experiment, running itself, with people like Dirty Joy keeping the cycle going for profit and power."
Jake felt a chill run through him. "So we're just lab rats."
The scientist nodded. "Lab rats who remember too much. That's why you're here, and why they're so afraid of you."