Night Shift 2
880 Words
She had seen it many times before. It always sat there, a little out of reach, like a “Do Not Touch” sign in physical form.
Phase III. They were still officially in Phase II. No one had said what Phase III would be. No one had explained who “Subject-0” was, what “special class subject” meant, or why some of the internal emails switched from English to Latin halfway through.
Elif had never opened the folder.
She had also never worked in the lab alone at three in the morning with something outside watching the building.
Her fingers brushed the edge of the cardboard.
Just the first page, she thought. If it’s something huge, I’ll close it. If it’s nothing, I’ll sleep better.
She lifted the cover a few centimeters.
The first page was full of dense text — project codes, ethics committee references, funding numbers. Her eyes moved quickly, trained by months of reading similar documents.
One line in the middle of the page looked different:
SUBJECT-0 CODE NAME: NARAM
Naram.
The name rolled around in her mind. It didn’t feel like a drug code. It felt old. Heavy. Like something from a language that deserved dust and stone, not plastic and glass.
Her eyes dropped to the next line.
Category: SPECIAL – ORIGIN MODEL (see Appendix 3: Historical Pattern Hypothesis)
Her brain immediately tried to build questions, but another sound cut through her thoughts.
bip
The card reader again.
This time, Elif slammed the folder shut and stepped away from the bench as if it had burned her.
“Okay, that’s enough,” she whispered. “I’m going home.”
The security cameras. The glitch. The shadow. The stupid beeping door. The strange name “Naram.” It all started to feel less like science and more like a bad horror movie.
She grabbed her bag, pulled off her lab gloves, and headed for the door.
Before she could touch the handle, the door moved.
Just a little. Just a few millimeters.
As if someone on the other side had rested a hand on it.
Elif froze.
“Murat?” she tried again. “Dr. Cem?”
Silence.
She carefully pressed the handle down and opened the door.
The corridor stared back at her. Silent, white, still.
But something was different.
Right next to the door frame, at about knee height, four shallow scratches ran through the paint. The lines were parallel, a few centimeters long, and fresh enough that tiny curls of white plaster still clung to the edges.
Elif knelt without thinking, inspecting them. They could have been made by a key, a tool… or a hand with nails that didn’t belong in any normal office.
She lifted her fingers, then stopped herself from touching the wall.
Don’t contaminate. Don’t be ridiculous.
The emergency exit sign at the end of the corridor flickered once, then steadied.
Behind her, inside the lab, the computer screen woke from power-save mode. Nobody stood at the keyboard. Nobody touched the mouse.
On the monitor, a new window appeared for a second, then shrank to the taskbar.
If she had seen it, Elif would have read:
NEW REMOTE LOGIN: ADMIN – nc_aksoy
She didn’t see it.
She was still staring at the scratches on the wall, trying to decide if she was overreacting or not, when a calm, familiar voice spoke behind her.
“You’re still here, Elif?”
She turned so fast she almost lost her balance.
Dr. Cem Aksoy — her supervisor — stood in the open lab doorway. His dark hair was slightly damp, his shirt collar open, his lab coat unbuttoned. He didn’t look like someone who had just arrived from outside. He looked like someone who had been here all along.
His eyes slid over the corridor, the wall, the scratches — too quickly.
Then he smiled. Warm. Professional. Harmless.
“Long night,” he said gently. “Let me guess: the cells refused to die?”
Elif swallowed. Her heart was still beating too fast.
“Yes,” she said. “They’re… tougher than they should be.”
Cem’s gaze moved to the shut gray folder on the bench behind her, then back to her face.
For a moment, Elif had the strange feeling that she was the one under the microscope now.
“Good,” he said softly. “That’s exactly what we want.”
He stepped past her into the corridor, his shoulder almost brushing hers. As he did, a faint scent of rain and something metallic reached her nose.
Cem glanced once more at the scratches near the door. This time his smile changed — not wider, not smaller, just… deeper.
“Don’t worry about the cameras, or the door,” he added, turning away. “Buildings make noises at night. And some things only move in the dark.”
He walked down the corridor without looking back, his footsteps quiet on the floor.
Elif stood there, caught between the empty hallway and the open lab, feeling for the first time that she was not just working in a dangerous project —
She was already inside it.
And somewhere outside, in the rain beyond the fence, something that was not quite human lifted its head and listened.
- Writer
