THE UNSEEN THREAD
1978 Words
CHAPTER 17
She didn’t speak for a while.
Just stared at me. Her lips were pressed into a hard, thin line, the way they got whenever she was thinking too fast to talk.
Outside, a hawker's bell rang faintly. Inside, the silence between us thickened.
“I didn’t kill him,” I said, quietly. “You think I did, don’t you?”
My mum blinked. Once. Slowly. Then she shook her head.
“No. I don’t think you killed him, Jasmine.” Her voice was low. Controlled. “I think… something else happened. Something you don't remember. Not because you're hiding it. But because someone—something—is taking those memories from you.”
I stared at her, heart hammering.
“You sound crazy,” I whispered.
“I know.”
She opened a drawer and pulled out a slim, grey folder. Not the rough case files scattered all over the floor—this one looked newer. Confidential. Tighter.
She slid it across the desk toward me.
I picked it up. Flipped it open.
The first page was a printed report, official letterhead at the top: National Bureau of Internal Affairs (Classified Division).
“Is this... federal?” I asked, eyebrows raised.
“Yes,” she said. “The Bureau handles cases we don’t put on the news. Paranormal. Experimental. Psychological anomalies. The kinds of things even I used to laugh at.”
“And now you don’t?”
“Not after Manny.”
I flipped to the next page.
A scanned photo of him. The same one from the board. Under it, notes typed in a language half-coded. I caught words like altered state, double exposure, non-linear cognition.
I looked up. “Mum, what the hell is this?”
She took a breath, then stood up, walking slowly to the board. She reached up and tapped a faded photo in the corner. A group of boys—probably Manny’s friends. One of them looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place where from.
“They were part of something,” she said. “A private research project linked to the university. I don’t have all the details yet, but it had to do with memory experiments. Sensory manipulation. Testing if human consciousness could be influenced... or fractured.”
“Like MK Ultra?”
She gave me a quick look. “Don’t watch so many American documentaries.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” Her eyes returned to the board. “They called it K-Variant. It wasn’t supposed to be dangerous. It was a university-backed behavioural study. Or at least, that’s what they claimed. But the night Manny died... something went wrong. Badly wrong.”
I swallowed. My throat was dry.
“You think I was part of it?”
“No.” She turned to face me. “I think you were the target.”
I froze.
“What?”
Her voice cracked a little when she spoke again. “Jasmine... you weren’t just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ve been tracing the names of the people involved—students, supervisors, security officers. They all have links to this project. Except you. You’re the outlier. The anomaly.”
I couldn’t breathe.
My mum walked back to the desk, picked up another file, and opened it to a blurry black-and-white scan of a logbook.
“Your name showed up here. Once. In a list of ‘variables to monitor’. You weren’t even enrolled in any psychology course. But you were being watched.”
I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“It didn’t to me either. Until I saw the CCTV footage.”
“The one where I’m alone?”
She nodded. “That was the moment it broke through.”
“What broke through?”
She hesitated. “Manny wasn’t supposed to be there. Not physically. He died earlier that evening. And yet you saw him. Touched him. Talked to him.”
My stomach turned. “No.”
“Yes,” she said. “And I think it wasn’t the first time either.”
“What do you mean?”
She pulled out a small envelope and slid it across to me.
Inside was a cassette tape.
J-3, scrawled across the label.
I stared at it. My blood ran cold.
“I didn’t put this in my pocket,” I whispered.
“I know. That’s why you need to hear it.”
My fingers trembled as I picked it up. It felt too warm. Like it had been touched only moments ago.
My mother handed me an old Sony Walkman she kept for court transcriptions. She slipped in fresh batteries and pressed PLAY.
At first, static.
Then my own voice, distorted slightly, as if recorded in a dream.
"He’s here again. I don’t know how. I can’t breathe when he looks at me. It’s like I’m being erased. Like I was never real. They told me not to remember. But I do. I always do. Until I don’t."
I hit STOP.
Silence.
My mother didn’t say anything. She just watched me.
My hands were ice.
“I said that?”
She nodded. “The same words were found on two other tapes. From two other girls. Different universities. Both now missing.”
Missing.
The air left my lungs in a rush.
“What happened to them?”
“We don’t know,” she said quietly. “But I think the same thing is happening to you. I think Manny was trying to warn you before it was too late.”
I closed my eyes.
My memories felt like puzzle pieces from a soaked box. Edges curling. Colours faded. Nothing fit.
“How do I stop it?”
She sat back down. Her face was pale, drawn, tired.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But we have to try.”
I watched her from across the desk, heart in my throat. The lines on her face looked deeper now. Older. Like she hadn’t been sleeping either. She motioned for me to sit. I didn’t.
“You want answers,” she said.
“Yes.”
She sighed and opened one of the drawers. The one she always locked with that small brass key she wore around her neck. She pulled out a slim file—thinner than the others I’d seen. No label on the tab. Just a strip of black tape across the front.
“I wasn’t supposed to bring this home,” she said quietly. “It’s part of an internal investigation. Classified.”
I crossed my arms. “Classified by who?”
She hesitated. “The Ministry. But it goes deeper than that.”
She opened the file and spread out three photographs on the desk. All black-and-white. Blurry, old CCTV stills.
Each of them showed a girl.
Different faces. Same setting. Same dead eyes.
“They were students,” she said. “All from different universities. All disappeared in similar ways—one minute walking out of a lecture hall, the next... gone. No forced entry. No ransom. No trace.”
I leaned in slowly. One of the girls looked a bit like Beverly. Sharp cheekbones. Same kind of hair.
“These are connected to Manny?” I asked.
She nodded. “And to you.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Manny was one of our sources,” she said. “A volunteer. We didn’t know he’d made contact with you until the incident.”
“Incident?” I repeated. “You mean when he died?”
She gave a slow nod. Her fingers fidgeted with the edge of the photo. “The night you were with him, he sent a message. A voice note. Just four seconds long. It came through at 10:02 p.m.”
She opened a second drawer and pulled out a small recorder. Pressed play.
A burst of static, then his voice:
“She’s not the same. Something’s—”
Cut off.
I swallowed. “That could mean anything.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” She pushed the third photo closer. “That girl disappeared in February. Same campus. Same night pattern. Same location—Block C. Sound familiar?”
My mouth went dry.
“She was also linked to something called Project K-Variant.”
I frowned. “What is that?”
She looked at me hard, like she was weighing how much to say. “It’s an experimental programme. Unofficial. Meant to enhance memory recall. Speed learning. Cognitive performance. Started under the guise of a research grant for gifted students.”
“And?”
“It turned into something else.”
I sat down slowly. “You think I’m part of this… project?”
She didn’t answer directly. Just reached into the file again and pulled out a photocopy of a medical form.
My name was on it.
Date: March 2024.
Campus Health Centre.
Under ‘Procedure’ it read: Trial 19 – K-V Stimulant Dosage (low threshold).
I stared at it. “This can’t be real. I’ve never done any trial—”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
Her voice was soft. But the way she said it made me feel like the floor tilted beneath me.
“You’ve been blacking out,” she said. “For months. Your moods have shifted. You’re forgetting things. Things no normal person would forget.”
I shook my head. “I would never let anyone inject something into me—”
She cut in, “You didn’t have to. It can be delivered through touch. Even saliva.”
My stomach twisted.
I thought of the kiss.
The way he’d pressed his tongue into my mouth like it meant something. How fast I’d felt lightheaded.
“Oh God,” I whispered.
“We think Manny tried to warn you,” she said. “But someone got to him first.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But it wasn’t random. He was eliminated.”
I stared at her. “And you’re just telling me this now?”
She stood. “I was trying to protect you. If you’d known too soon, they might’ve triggered the next phase. There’s always a second phase.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She looked at me, long and hard. “Memory erasure. Identity confusion. You wouldn’t even know it was happening.”
I thought of the photo on the board. My blank expression. The hole in my memory.
And suddenly it wasn’t so far-fetched.
“Mum,” I said slowly, “how long have you known I was... involved?”
She looked away. “Longer than I should’ve.”
A long silence.
Then I asked the question that had been clawing at the back of my throat since I found that photo:
“Was I the last person to see him alive?”
She didn’t answer.
But her silence said everything.
I stood up too fast. My heart was pounding so hard it hurt. “I have to go.”
“Where?”
“I need to talk to someone. Someone who isn’t lying to me.”
“Jasmine—”
I shook my head. “Don’t.”
I left the office, the house, everything—stepping into the bright noon sun like it might burn the truth out of me.
I had no plan. No map. Just one thought looping through my mind.
Find the missing girl.
The one in the photo. The one who looked like Beverly. The one who went into the same toilet I did and never came out.
Because if I could find her—or her story—maybe I could find the rest of mine.
Maybe I could find Manny’s too.
Maybe I’d finally understand why, when I looked into the mirror last week, I didn’t recognize my own eyes.
- Writer
