They had signed consent forms thicker than textbooks. They had undergone baseline scans, psychological profiling, and weeks of preparation. Every step had been monitored—brain mapping, hormone panels, and neurological imaging.
At first, it had worked. One had reported sleeping through the night for the first time since returning home from that mission. The other two, who were experiencing violent flashbacks, had diminished drastically.
But those positive results began to unravel at a terrifying speed.
All three men began deteriorating neurologically. Severe headaches. Erratic behavior. Sudden rage. Brain bleeds that no one had predicted. Imaging lit up with anomalies Doug had never seen in pre-trial simulations.
It took several days, but Dr. Marwood had stabilized all three men, though most of the time they were sedated.
Then, about two weeks later, one night, all three men mysteriously disappeared from the facility. The two guards inside the facility saw nothing, and security footage provided no leads. It was like they had just vanished into thin air.
After an extensive, but under-the-radar, months-long search to find them, the team finally gave up. It was apparent that the trio didn’t want to be found. And knowing their background in Special Forces, they had the resources to stay hidden. Doug’s only hope was that they were still alive.
After that, the project was shut down immediately. Non-disclosure agreements were reinforced with threats of prosecution. In other words, EchoFall ceased to exist, and nobody dared to speak about it.
The failed trials had been enough to gut him, but his downfall hadn’t stopped there. Just one week after the project was shut down, his wife had been killed in a car accident on a rain-slick stretch of highway outside the city, leaving Doug to drown in the wreckage of both his professional life and everything he’d thought was still holding his personal one together. In the span of days, his life had collapsed in on itself so completely he’d barely been able to catch his breath.
He’d been so devastated by both that he resigned from his position at the hospital and moved to San Francisco.
Doug’s gaze dropped to the paper again.
It had to be one of the three. But what exactly did the message mean?
He took a slow sip of bourbon, the burn doing nothing to ease the chill creeping up his spine.
If one of them had resurfaced, EchoFall could be exposed. Doug wanted to help however he could, but first, he needed to alert the man who had led the project.
???
Colonel Neal Reed sat at the head of the secured conference table with a closed folder in front of him. The room itself was one of the smaller briefing spaces tucked inside an administrative wing at Camp Pendleton. It was windowless and sealed tight, with soundproofed walls, a humming vent overhead, and a keypad entry.
His assistant, a civil employee with top clearance, sat to his right. Across from them sat the three others who had been summoned with almost no explanation—Major Scott Vance, Captain William Kester, and Sergeant Major Owen Rickard. All three were physicians who had been assisting Dr. Marwood during the EchoFall trial phase.
The tension in the room was thick. Everyone present, except the Colonel, wore a mask of curiosity about why this specific group had been summoned.
Colonel Reed finally broke the silence as he placed his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together.
“Thank you all for coming on short notice. Earlier today, I was made aware that we could have a situation concerning Project EchoFall.”
Colonel Reed looked from face to face and saw the same surprised reaction in every one of them. He couldn’t blame them. EchoFall had never been revisited since it was shut down.
But now, with Dr. Doug Marwood’s call still echoing in the back of his head, Neal had the unwelcome feeling that the lid on a box that had been closed for years had just shifted.
He cleared his throat, hating that the sound came out rougher than he intended. “Earlier this morning,” he said, keeping his tone level, “I received a call from Dr. Marwood. He received a note in the mail.”
For a beat, no one said anything. Then Major Vance leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “What kind of note?”
“It was short, but enough to make him think the sender could be tied to EchoFall. There was no signature, and no return address.”
“Postmark?” Captain Kester asked.
“San Diego,” the colonel replied.
Vance’s expression hardened. “One of the three?”
Colonel Reed exhaled slowly. “I can’t say for certain.” He hated that answer. “But we have to consider it a strong possibility.”
“What did the note state?” Sergeant Major Rickard asked.
