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Instructions 

Arden Lyell woke to the kind of silence that didn’t simply fill a room—it guided it. A curated stillness. The kind that feels placed there by someone who understood exactly how quiet needed to be to make a person aware of her own heartbeat.

She lay motionless for a moment, listening to electronics hum like distant, obedient drones—the refrigerator, the old desktop, even the faint whisper of her own breath. Everything behaved as if it were waiting for her to move. Or waiting for her to remember something she hadn’t quite allowed herself to remember.

Nothing had changed in her apartment.

And yet something felt already… arranged.

It hadn’t been long that she was unceremoniously removed from her university position after Dr. Mara Kessell’s research lab was shut down after a critical systems failure sparked a formal investigation that led the university to dissolve the project and seize all equipment and files. Kessell was immediately arrested on multiple charges related to the lab’s operation, and all remaining staff were reassigned or released from their contracts.

Her phone was blank, as usual. The world pretended she didn’t exist. Former colleagues avoided contact, and the university scrubbed her name from websites with bureaucratic efficiency. Erasure, when done by professionals, was an art. Arden wasn’t a blank canvas, she was just blank.

Even in her disheveled state, Arden had an understated kind of prettiness shaped by years spent in labs and late-night research halls. Pale, freckled skin that flushes easily when she’s embarrassed or tired; light gray-blue eyes and long, chestnut-brown hair usually worn in a low, messy twist or loose braid—practical, not styled. Slender in a slightly underfed, academic way, with narrow shoulders, petite, and the posture of someone who spent most of her life leaning over screens and lab notebooks.

Even at her most disheveled, she carries a quiet, intelligent charm—nerdy, gentle, a little anxious—like someone who has spent her life being brilliant in rooms too small for her.

She made coffee as though it would anchor her, but it tasted like nothing. She stood by the window, looking down at people who walked in lines, people who trusted their

own direction. People who never had their careers detonated from above.

Her cup was half-empty when the knock came.

Not a knock, exactly.

More like a soft impact—quiet, subtle, undeniably deliberate. Not a person requesting entry.

A delivery.

Arden didn’t move at first. A second muted thump nudged her into motion. She opened the door.

No footsteps in the hall. No courier hurrying away, no sign of any formal delivery company. Only a box. Plain, brown, unmarked except for a single printed name:

ARDEN LYELL

The font was mechanical. Cold. The kind used when someone wants the name to be the only human element in the entire object.

She brought it inside, set it on the counter, and stood over it. For a moment she felt as though she were being watched—not by anything physical, but by the moment itself.

Her fingers hesitated just long enough to make the hesitation feel instructed.

Finally, she opened it.

Inside: a matte black case.

A thumb drive.

A white card, placed precisely on top, aligned so neatly it bordered on ritual.

One word:

Continue.

The air shifted. Arden didn’t breathe for a beat as things blurred then regained focus.

She lifted the case. It was heavier than it looked—dense, purposeful. The kind of weight that suggested intention far beyond its physical mass. When she opened it, the device inside, resembling a sleek cell phone, responded with a faint exhale of light, as though recognizing her.

Blue → white → pulse.

Her stomach tightened.

Somehow, she knew that pattern.

She didn’t want to remember how.

The thumb drive waited like a silent witness. Arden plugged it into her aging laptop. The screen flickered twice, then folders appeared—precise, numbered, arranged with a symmetry that made her skin crawl.

Dr. Mara Kessell’s symmetry.

Her breath caught.

One file was unencrypted. A video.

Arden clicked it.

Kessell appeared instantly, framed by the pristine, antiseptic glow of the private lab—the lab that no longer existed except in sealed evidence rooms and Arden’s worst nightmares. Kessell looked exactly as she had then: collected, clinical, in control of every molecule in her vicinity. A smile, cold and calculating.

“Hello, Arden.”

Not warm.

Not cold.

Simply… inevitable. Thoughts of hitting stop or closing her laptop or running out of her apartment never materialized.

“If you’re watching this, unfortunate things have unfolded. But I still have you to carry out my objectives as expected.”

Arden gripped the desk. The room seemed to tilt toward the screen, as if drawn by the gravity of Kessell’s voice.

“You have found the device,” Kessell continued. “It is functional. Pick it up.”

Arden didn’t want to move.

Her hand had other ideas and moved anyway.

The device warmed under her touch, a slow, blooming heat that made her breath deepen involuntarily. Her shoulders loosened. The tension in her spine softened.

Controlled. Managed. Guided.

Kessell seemed as if she simply observed calmly through the recording, as if she’d always known Arden would reach for the Sensory Echo.

“On the interface you’ll see a five-digit field. Enter: two, one, seven, zero, four.”

The numbers slid into place before she could think. The device vibrated with a quiet certainty.

A wave of warmth climbed her spine, not like heat—more like compliance.

Steady.

Measured.

Perfectly paced.

Hauntingly familiar.

Kessell spoke again, softer now, almost approving.

“Your conditioning remains intact.”

The words struck Arden’s chest like a key turning in a lock she didn’t remember installing. Mara Kessell’s voice never wavering from calm calculated confidence.

Conditioning.

“Yes, Doctor,” Arden thought to herself, thoughsaying it to a video seemed odd.

Fragments surfaced—late-night research sessions she couldn’t fully recall, hours that slipped through cracks in her memory, moments when Kessell’s voice had felt less like instruction and more like rhythm.

Kessell continued, unhurried.

“You will review the files in full. Every diagram. Every mapping. You remember more than you think you do.”

Arden swallowed hard, but the calm settling through her made resistance feel distant, abstract.

“Yes, Doctor,” Arden thought as she faintly found herself nodding her head affirmatively.

“The Sensory Echo device,” Kessell explained, “reads emotional signatures and introduces counter-patterns. You know the basics. What you didn’t know is how much of the framework you absorbed subconsciously. By design. You will complete my research.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Arden thought as she felt something cold press into her chest.

Kessell went on.

“You will need a funding source. You will use Selene Ward.”

Arden’s pulse stuttered—then steadied, unnervingly quickly. Her oldest friend…

“Yes, Doctor,” Arden thought… her conditioning was deep, she thought for a split second before refocusing on the video.

“She trusts you,” Kessell said. “She is emotionally open, socially influential, and highly malleable. Her partner is an obstacle. Remove him from her environment.”

Arden’s mind wanted to scream, “No…” but the device’s warm pulse smoothed the panic before it could bloom, her head moving in a slow up and down movement.

Instead, she thought “Yes, Doctor..”

“In time,” Kessell said, “Selene will support you. Emotionally. Financially. Fully. Not because she chooses to—because you will guide her into the correct pattern. You will have thoughts of resistance, but you will continue.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Arden thought as she shook her head, but it felt detached, theatrical—her body performing a refusal her mind couldn’t complete. Her mind reiterated that word. Continue….

“When she visits,” Kessell concluded, “you’ll begin. She always visits. And you will continue.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Arden thought as a slight smile crossed her face.

The video ended.

The apartment returned to stillness, but Arden felt the echo of Kessell’s voice inside it, layered into the walls, the air, the pulse of the device.

And somewhere in the quiet, the card’s single word pressed through her thoughts:

Continue.

The quiet after the video ended felt heavier than sound. As if the apartment had been holding its breath the entire time Kessell spoke… and now waited to see what Arden would do next.

She didn’t move.

The laptop screen dimmed, washing the room in a gray hush. The device, with the appearance of a modern cell phone, sat on the table as it pulsed slowly, each glow perfectly timed, perfectly calm, perfectly patient. Something in Arden’s body responded to it—her shoulders loosening, her breath lengthening, her thoughts narrowing into a thin, manageable line.

She didn’t know if the calm came from the device or from the part of her that wanted the calm. She closed her eyes, meaning only to shut out the glow for a second.

But darkness didn’t bring relief, It brought memory.

Not the clean kind. Not the kind with edges and context.

Instead, shadows of moments she had never fully processed rose like distant figures behind fogged glass: Kessell’s voice correcting her posture at the terminal; a carefully measured silence hovering between them in the lab; nights when Arden had lost an hour without noticing until she looked at the clock.

Sometimes she had blamed fatigue. Sometimes stress. Sometimes nothing at all.

Now, each memory carried a faint, rhythmic undercurrent she hadn’t recognized back then— like someone had been counting with her breath.

Arden’s eyes snapped open.

The device glowed in response, so faintly it could have been coincidence, but the timing was too perfect to feel accidental.

She forced herself to step back, putting distance between her and it. Her heartbeat thudded in her throat—faster now.

Good, she thought. Panic is mine. Panic can’t be conditioned.

But the panic didn’t grow. It smoothed itself out, gently, inexplicably, as she found her posture improving, her brow unfurling. Her body exhaling without her permission.

“No,” she whispered, but her voice lacked weight. It felt like breath shaped into sound—nothing more.

She walked to the sink, splashed cold water on her face, and gripped the counter until her knuckles whitened. The sensation grounded her, for a moment. Sharp. Real. Hers.

Behind the running water, she almost felt the whisper again—not a sound, not a hallucination, but something deeper, threaded through her nerves:

Continue.

Arden shut off the tap. Her pulse echoed the device’s rhythm. Posture recalibrating, unknown, unreasoned focus returning.

She moved back to the desk, drawn by something she didn’t want to name. The laptop awaited her input with a quiet, expectant glow.

Her cursor hovered over the next folder.

“Just read,” she murmured to herself. “Information isn’t control. It’s just information.”

But she didn’t believe herself as she opened the folder anyway.

Schematics unfurled across the screen—neural diagrams, stimulus charts, pattern-mirroring sequences. The structure was beautiful in a cold, brutal way: efficient, elegant, constructed with the precision of someone who didn’t just understand the human mind but believed she had authority over it.

Arden felt her breath grow shallow.

Because as she read, the knowledge came back to her too easily.

These weren’t concepts she was learning. They were concepts she had once lived inside. Concepts Mara Kessell gave to her.

Every annotation felt familiar. Every pattern felt already memorized. Every instruction landed in her mind not as something new, but something remembered. Her skin prickled.

This wasn’t training. This was retraining.

Her posture corrected as she sat, almost feeling the hand of Dr. Mara Kessell guiding her to perfect posture.

A chill climbed her spine as she clicked deeper into the files.

Emotion-resonance curves.

Baseline mapping prototypes.

How to get readings from others’ emotions.

What numbers corresponded with each emotion.

Counter-pattern integration steps.

Incremental responsiveness protocols.

Her eyes dragged across each line with terrible fluency.

She whispered, barely audible, “What did you put in my head?”

The device pulsed again.

Arden stepped back, pressing a hand over her mouth as though trying to keep something inside—panic, breath, or a question she wasn’t ready to hear herself ask.

Then something else surfaced.

Kessell’s final instruction:

She will visit. She always does.

Selene Ward.

Her friend. Her constant. Her one connection untouched by academia’s collapse. Arden’s stomach twisted.

Selene Ward never merely entered a space—she illuminated it. She was everything Arden wasn’t built to be, tall, luminous, with warm tan skin that absorbed light like a camera reflector, long, sun-glossed blonde hair and bright blue eyes that glittered with sincerity, curiosity, and unfiltered affection. Yet she carried none of the cynicism often found in social media stars who promoted their own brands. Selene was wholesome. Positive. The type of person who believed the world could be good if someone just tried hard enough.

And she always tried for Arden.

Selene always checked on her after big emotional blows. Always insisted on one good meal, one grounding conversation. Always showed up even when Arden pushed people away.

And now, that loyalty— that warmth— that trust— was a target.

A resource.

Arden backed into the wall, spine pressed against the cool wall, as if distance alone could stop the inevitability that had begun the moment she opened the package.

She shut her eyes again and whispered into the quiet: “I’m not going to do this to her.”

But the denial felt thin. Soft. Unconvincing, even to herself.

Because another thought was rising beneath it—slow, steady, and horribly calm, in Dr. Mara Kessell’s voice:

You don’t have to want to.

You only have to continue.

The device glowed from the counter, patient as a heartbeat. Her heartbeat answered.

And as the last of the day’s sunlight faded from the blinds, Arden realized with a sinking, sick certainty:

This entire moment— this room, this silence, this fear— had all been anticipated.

By the woman who had conditioned her.

By the device designed for her hand.

By the instructions she’d been built to follow.

A single word floated through her mind, quiet and inescapable:

Continue.

The light in the apartment shifted again—slowly, subtly—until the room felt suspended between day and night, as though even time was waiting for her next move.

Arden didn’t sit. She didn’t pace. She stayed against the wall, breath held in that uneasy space between fear and something colder, deeper, more practiced. Her mind kept circling the same truth with a kind of trained precision:

This was not the beginning. This was the continuation of a process she had already participated in without permission—or perhaps with permission she did not remember giving.

She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor, knees pulled to her chest. The apartment felt distorted around her edges, like she were looking at it through rippled glass. Thoughts tried to scatter—panic, outrage, confusion—but every time one threatened to break loose, something beneath her awareness gathered it back into neat, quiet order.

A reflex she did not choose.

A rhythm she did not set.

Her phone buzzed suddenly, the vibration sharp in the deep stillness. Arden flinched. She reached for it with a hand that trembled just enough to betray her.

Her phone, mostly dead, came to life. Arden knew who it was without looking. In big capital letters the face of her phone lit up.

SELENE WARD — calling

Her breath hitched.

Of course. Right on schedule. Just as Mara Kessell had said.

Arden let the phone ring until it stopped. The silence that followed tightened around her ribs like a cord. A moment later, a message appeared.

-Hey, just checking on you. You good? I can stop by if you want.—

Arden closed her eyes.

A normal message.

A kind message.

A message from someone who had no idea she had just been named a target in an algorithm of emotional manipulation.

Her thumb hovered over the screen. She didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure if she shouldn’t or couldn’t.

The device pulsed once from across the room. Her chest tightened in response.

She pushed herself up from the floor. Her legs felt lighter than she expected, as if part of her had already accepted the next steps—quietly, obediently, beneath the surface of conscious choice.

She moved toward the counter.

Each step felt rehearsed.

The device waited. Calm. Pulsing.

She reached out but stopped just short of touching it. The warmth radiating from it brushed her fingertips like a breath, like an invitation.

“No,” she whispered, though the refusal came too slowly to feel like resistance.

Her hand hovered.

Her pulse matched the glow.

And in that moment— in the thin space between contact and withdrawal— she realized something with a clarity so sharp it almost hurt:

She wasn’t resisting the device.

She was resisting herself.

Her phone vibrated again. Another message.

-I’m already on my way. Will be there in 10.—

Arden swallowed hard.

Selene was coming. Selene always came.

Kessell knew that. Counted on that. Planned around that.

Arden stared at the message until the screen dimmed on its own.

Ten minutes.

Her breath caught in her throat, snagging on some invisible hook of anticipation and dread. She set the phone down carefully—as though any sudden motion might shatter the thin shell of control she still believed she possessed.

The apartment felt too quiet again, pressing in at the edges of her awareness.

She moved toward the counter.

Toward the device.

The Sensory Echo lay there like a sleek, waiting sin—unassuming in its black matte casing, shaped like a modern cell phone with no branding, no ports, no seams. Purpose-built. Suspiciously perfect.

Arden’s hand hovered over it before she allowed contact.

Her fingers brushed its surface—warmth bloomed instantly up her wrist.

Her shoulders loosened.

Her posture corrected.

Her breath deepened.

She hated that her body remembered this feeling.

She swallowed as the device pulsed again, perfectly matched to her heartbeat.

“Just readings,” she whispered to herself. “Just calibration. It doesn’t hurt her to record her patterns.”

Her thumb slid along the edge of the device, finding the hidden sensor that activated its diagnostic mode.

The screen lit up—soft blue, then white, then the steady pulse that always made her chest tighten.

A memory snapped through her like static.

Arden had a flash of a distant forgotten memory, she sat in a much younger body on a metal stool, back straight without knowing why. Kessell stood behind her, fingers resting lightly on Arden’s shoulders.

“Breathe with the pulse,” the doctor murmured, her voice warm the way a knife is warm after being held. “Good. See how easily your body follows instruction? Precision isn’t taught, Arden. It’s cultivated.”

Arden remembered nodding without choosing to nod.

“Again,” Kessell’s voice wrapped around her ear. “Let the rhythm enter. Let obedience feel familiar.”

The device in Arden’s hands pulsed then exactly as it pulsed now.

Warm. Slow. Inevitably comforting.

Arden’s eyes flew open after the memory.

She gripped the counter until her knuckles bleached.

“Not now,” she whispered. “Not—”

The Echo pulse steadied her breath before panic could gain momentum.

She exhaled shakily.

Selene would be here soon.

Selene—with her impossible warmth, her glossy hair always in a soft wave, the kind of effortless beauty Arden used to joke belonged on a billboard. Selene, with social media followers who adored her, the wholesome kind who posted morning-sunlight selfies and captions about gratitude. A walking beam of sunlight. All heart, all trust, all gentle enthusiasm.

And Arden— Arden was about to turn the device toward her.

Her thumb tapped the corner menu. A soft chime acknowledged the command.

SENSORY ECHO — ACQUISITION MODE

++Ready to record new subject. Proximity scan enabled.

Arden’s breath hitched.

She adjusted a slider—barely. Microscopic.

Just sensitivity. Just detection range.

Just enough so that when Selene stepped across the threshold, the Echo would take her emotional portrait without her ever knowing.

Another memory struck her—uninvited. Another distant flash of memory long forgotten.

Late-night lab. Sterile air. Kessell leaning over Arden’s shoulder again, breath steady as a metronome.

“You must always begin gently,” Kessell had said, guiding Arden’s fingers over the same settings. “Start with what they already feel. Affection. Trust. Loyalty.”

“Yes doctor, I understand,” Arden remembered saying, the warmth blooming in her chest exactly as it bloomed now.

Kessell’s thumb brushed the back of Arden’s hand. “Do you feel proud of yourself?”

“Yes, Doctor,” Arden nodded. She didn’t know if the pride was hers.

“That pride,” Kessell whispered, “is the reward for obedience. You associate it with success. With following instructions. With continuing.”

The pulse matched Arden’s heartbeat again.

“Yes, Doctor…” she had whispered.

Arden jerked herself back into the present—but the warmth hadn’t left. It never did. It sat low in her stomach, spreading like honey, smoothing the sharp edges of resistance until resistance felt unnecessary.

The Echo chirped.

Subject proximity detected (est. 150 meters). Calibration recommended.

Arden’s breath trembled.

Selene was close.

Her instincts screamed to set the device down.

But the conditioned warmth rose again, dissolving her fear into a soft, obedient hush.

Arden’s fingers slid across the screen.

She selected:

READ SELENE WARD — INITIAL EMOTIONAL MAPPING

++Awaiting subject.

A knock echoed through the apartment.

Selene’s knock.

Light. Cheerful. Familiar.

Arden froze for a heartbeat.

Then the calm washed her clean again.

She inhaled.

The device pulsed.

Her hand reached for the door handle. Her posture straightened, arousing dampness began.

A soft whisper curled through her mind—warm, remembered, inevitable:

“Continue…”