Chapter 1: Through the Looking Glass
Iris hated churches.
The soaring, gold-plated cross suspended behind the reception desk at Rosary Medical Institute gave her a deep, personal chill. Everything about this place screamed sanctified laundering: the silent nuns at the terminals, the clinically clean, unscented air, the blurry abstract paintings of doves. Five people were reported missing, all under the Institute’s so-called ‘Recovery Baptism’ program for the wealthy and wayward. The last and only one tied to her was Jacob Porter. It had been eleven months and six days. He’d been a prick, a terminally flirtatious gemini with a cocaine problem, but he hadn't deserved to vanish off the grid after checking in here for "contemporary peace therapy."
Her editor had shrugged. "Fluff piece, Iris. See the shiny new MRI machine the church bought. Mention the generous backing from Resneck Pharmaceutical. See if you smell anything in the air."
She was smelling cheap floral room spray over the faint metallic undertone of antiseptic. A lie. A cover scent.
“Ms. Campbell?” a voice, soft as beeswax, said behind her.
She turned, a practiced, mild-mannered smile already in place. “Father Silas?” she asked, extending a hand. The man before her was younger than she’d expected, maybe mid-forties, with a gaunt handsomeness. His handshake was cool and precise.
“Indeed. And this is Dr. Annabel Reed, our lead clinician for the Northstar Serenity Program.” Dr. Reed stood at his shoulder, a woman carved from ice and surgical steel. Her smile was a brief twitch of calibrated warmth.
“A pleasure,” Dr. Reed said. “We appreciate Redline taking an interest in our holistic approach. Most media outlets just want to talk about the faith aspect.”
“Well, the connection is fascinating,” Iris chirped, her voice a full octave higher than normal. She clutched her slim leather notebook to her chest like a talisman, the hidden camera pen clipped inside its spine. “Church-funded science. Treating the whole soul. That sort of thing.”
“Exactly,” Father Silas said, his gaze lingering on her face just a beat too long. “We heal more than the body. We offer true peace. A forgetting of worldly wounds. Follow us, please.”
The public tour was a monument to sterile hope. He led her through sun-drenched atriums with fountains, past hushed group therapy rooms where people in linen tracksuits knitted. He showed her the Water Sanctum—a tiled hydrotherapy pool glowing aquamarine, empty.
“Incredible,” Iris murmured, scribbling nonsense in her pad. Her skin itched. It was all too clean, too quiet. Her eyes kept straying to the locked double doors at the far end of each corridor. Security panels glowed red.
“This is our east wing,” Dr. Reed announced, approaching one such set of doors. She swiped a keycard. A green light, a soft click. “Our private treatment suites. More intensive care.”
The hallway beyond was longer, whiter, colder. The windows here were frosted glass, turning the afternoon sun into a diffuse, milky glow. Nurses in crisp whites nodded as they passed silent doors.
“And what sort of treatments happen here?” Iris asked, trying to peer through a small round window in one door.
“Custom pharmacotherapy,” Dr. Reed said smoothly, stepping subtly to block her view. “In conjunction with deep meditation techniques. We tailor every molecule of care. Now, this way to the research library, our real pride—”
Iris’s phone buzzed in her pocket, a sudden, violent rattle against her thigh. She fumbled, her heart hammering.
“I’m so sorry, that’s my editor, probably about the word count,” she said with an exaggerated eye-roll. “Do you mind if I take this? I’ll catch right up.”
Father Silas’s smile was patient. “Of course. We’ll be just ahead.”
She waited until they rounded the corner, the whisper of their sensible shoes fading. She did not answer the phone. She stood still, listening to the deeper silence of the place. A hum, like a massive refrigerator. And beneath it, another sound. A low, rhythmic groan, like something shifting in pain. It seemed to come from a vent above her head. It came again, accompanied by the wet, glottal sound of a cough stifled behind plastic.
Turning, she saw a plain, unmarked door ajar just behind her. A maintenance closet. But through the crack, a faint glow pulsed, not the white fluorescence of the hall, but a soft, clinical green. The groaning was clearer. It was coming from there.
Her reporter's instinct, the one that sounded like every mistake she’d ever made yelling at once, screamed to follow the sounds.
She nudged the door open. Shelves of cleaning supplies, a mop bucket. But the back wall of the closet wasn't a wall. Another door, heavy and industrial, stood slightly ajar. The green light leaked from within, and with it, the sounds intensified: wet sighs, the mechanical drip of fluid, the squeak of rubber on linoleum.
She slipped through.
The air changed instantly. It was warmer, thicker, tasting of synthetic rubber and an overwhelming chemical sweetness that coated the back of her throat. Antiseptic rot.
The corridor here was different. The walls were lined not with doors, but with latex-sheathed cubicles, each containing a transparent, sealed pod. Inside each pod lay a person, utterly motionless. They were encased from neck to toe in a second skin of pale beige rubber. Tubes snaked into ports on their suits, and clear, viscous fluid dripped rhythmically from suspended bags into their bodies. Their faces were obscured by respirator masks, only their closed eyes visible. The greenish light came from the pods themselves, illuminating their still forms like insects in amber.
A moan echoed through one of the masks, a sound of profound, medicated suffering. A shudder ran through Iris’s entire body, a primal rejection of what she was seeing. This wasn't medicine. This was an exhibit.
She fumbled for her notebook, her fingers clumsy. She turned the spine toward the nearest pod, clicking the hidden camera button. Click.Whirr. The sound was devastatingly loud in the humid quiet.
"Jacob," she breathed, her eyes scanning the masked faces for a sign of him. None were recognizable. They were just bodies in bags.
Footsteps. Deliberate, squeaking rubber on the polished floor.
From around a corner, a figure appeared. A nurse, but not like upstairs. This one was clad from head to toe in a gleaming black rubber suit, form-fitting and seamless. A blank, oval faceplate reflected the dim green light, featureless. In one gloved hand, they carried a tray of pre-filled syringes, the liquid inside a pale, luminescent yellow.
The orderly stopped. The blank face tilted, fixing on her.
Iris froze. The monstrous, mirror-like visage showed her own reflection: her face pale, her fiery red hair a shock of color in the monochrome hell, her green eyes wide with a terror she couldn't hide. She was an alien here.A spy.
The orderly didn't speak. They didn't need to. They took a single, smooth step toward her, a syringe held up like a dart.
Iris turned and ran.
Her heels skidded on the slick floor. She slammed back through the heavy door into the maintenance closet, stumbling into the mop bucket. Water sloshed over her ankles. She scrambled out into the pristine east wing corridor, the door swinging shut behind her with a heavy thud that felt like a verdict.
Forcing her breath to slow, she walked, then almost ran toward the sound of distant, civilized voices.
Father Silas and Dr. Reed were at the end of the hall, waiting by an open elevator.
“There you are, Ms. Campbell,” Father Silas said. His gentle smile was still in place, but his eyes had changed. They held a new, assessing weight. “All settled with your editor?”
“Oh, yes,” Iris gasped, trying to laugh. It came out as a thin wheeze. “Just… a deadline thing. Always a crisis.” She could feel the ghost of the rubber-clad orderly's gaze on her back. She could smell the chemical sweetness clinging to her clothes.Dr. Reed’s frosty eyes scanned her, from her damp shoes to her fever-bright eyes. “You look a little flushed, my dear. This environment can be overwhelming for some. The peace we cultivate here is… potent. Perhaps, before you go, you’d like to experience a small sample of our introductory clarity treatment? A complimentary session. Just to… settle your nerves.”
The offer hung in the sterile air. It was a trap. It had to be.
But the memory of Jacob in one of those pods—if it was him—flashed behind her eyes. She hadn't gotten a clear shot. She needed more. To get more, she had to get closer.
She met Dr. Reed’s gaze. Her own smile felt stiff, a crack in her composure.
“You know,” Iris said, her voice suddenly steady, “I have been having terrible tension headaches lately. A free sample sounds… wonderful.”