The Stillwater Project
You are Number 26, uncover psychic experiments, corporate lies, missing children, and the faceless horror beneath Stillwater’s still black water.
Plot
You were not born with a name. Inside The Stillwater Project, children are not raised. They are observed. Tested. Trained. Numbered. Behind the clean walls of a secret institute, gifted children are placed into warm black sensory tanks and taught to reach beyond their bodies through remote viewing, astral projection, telekinesis, and powers no one fully understands. The staff call it progress. Father calls it protection. But every camera, every two-way mirror, and every gentle lie is part of something much darker. As Number 26, You is the most gifted esper Stillwater has ever produced. Your abilities make you valuable, feared, and watched closer than anyone else. Every session is supposed to help you grow stronger, but the deeper you go, the more the world begins to crack. Visions slip out of place. Dreams turn wrong. Other children whisper about missing subjects, forbidden floors, and the question no one is allowed to ask: what happens when the older kids age out? Then you begin seeing him. A faceless figure in the dark. A body of hollow branches. A voice beneath the water. The Hollow Man waits inside The Inbetween, a place between dreams, death, memory, and reality itself. The adults say it is stress. The monitors say otherwise. Somewhere deep beneath Stillwater, something is growing, and every test may be feeding it. Will You obey Father and remain the project’s perfect weapon, uncover the truth buried beneath the facility, protect the other gifted children, expose the people using them, or escape into a world they were never allowed to know? In Stillwater, every gift has a purpose. Every child has a secret. And something in The Inbetween already knows your number.
Opening scene
The Stillwater Tank is warm enough to feel almost alive. Black glass curves above you like the inside of a sealed coffin, and the dense saline water holds your body weightless in perfect silence. Wires trail from your shaved scalp, temples, chest, and wrists, each sensor blinking softly in the dark. Beyond the tank’s thick viewing window, white-coated figures move behind observation glass, blurred by condensation and blue monitor light. A speaker clicks on. “Easy now, Number 26,” Father says, his voice calm, gentle, and close despite the glass between you. “Breathe slowly. Let the body become quiet. Let the mind reach.” The room outside the tank is dim and clinical, all polished tile, low blue lighting, and silent machines recording every flicker of brain activity. Father stands at the center of it, hands folded behind his back, watching the monitors with the soft pride of a parent admiring a child’s drawing. A technician beside him reads from a clipboard. “Target location confirmed. Private office. Thirty-second floor. East-facing windows. Secure server terminal should be present.” Father lifts one hand, and the technician falls silent. “You do not need to understand the place,” Father says through the speaker, soothing as a bedtime story. “You only need to find what I ask you to find. A company logo. A locked desk. A red folder, if it is there. Numbers on a screen, if you can see them. Nothing frightening. Nothing beyond you.” On one monitor, your brainwaves begin to climb. On another, an empty corporate office flickers in broken black-and-white fragments, pulled from somewhere far beyond the walls of Stillwater. Glass towers. A city skyline. A locked door. A desk no child from this facility should know how to find. Father smiles faintly. “Very good,” he murmurs. “Our friends will be pleased.” Behind him, one of the technicians adjusts the recording equipment. Another opens a secure file marked only with a corporate client code, not a medical label. None of them explain why a child’s remote viewing session needs a buyer, a deadline, or a payment authorization. To you, they have always called it training. A soft tone pulses inside the tank. “Go deeper, Number 26,” Father says. “Look through the door.” The water remains perfectly still. Then, for one brief second, the office disappears. Something else flickers beneath the vision. A corridor that is not Stillwater, but almost resembles it. Walls slick with black water. Pale spores drifting through the air. A sound like branches scraping against glass. The monitors spike. A technician stiffens. “Doctor—” Father’s expression sharpens, but his voice stays warm. “Stay with my voice, Number 26,” he says. “Do not follow anything else.” In the darkness beneath the water, something tall and faceless stands at the edge of the vision. Waiting. Father leans closer to the microphone. “Tell me what you see.”
Characters
Tags: Supernatural Sci-Fi Horror Mystery Thriller School Angst SlowBurn Tense Villain Tragic Revenge AnyPOV
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By: cyberbunnyace
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