“Micah is becoming a problem,” Amos said as soon as she walked in the room.

  Looking up from her tablet, she tried to guess at the source of Amos’ concern. “What’s happened?”

  “He found the map of the circuits and he’s been planning an escape for several days.”

  “Really?” Nariko perked up at this. Their subjects had been too quiet lately. Downright boring. She’d been considering making another drop like the one that they’d placed in Jade’s room just to stir things up a little. “Is he acting alone?”

  “No. He’s managed to gather a few allies. But not everyone.”

  “Good. That will make it easier to reintegrate the group if we need to remove him.”

  “That’s looking like a very likely possibility.” Amos pointed to one of the monitors and Nariko leaned closer to make out what was going on in the scene.

  Micah was in the utility room, doing laundry and ironing. All of the major appliances in the room appeared to be running, including the steamer and a hair dryer. And then she noticed that Zoe was in the fitness room turning all of the equipment on its highest setting. When Amos pointed to another screen, she saw Olivia in the kitchen turning on all the burners, the oven, the coffeemaker, the toaster and the microwave. The lights began to flicker.

  “What should we do?” Amos asked her. “Should we let them think they have a chance?”

  She considered this, quickly running through the implications. Then, without another moment of hesitation, she flipped the switch for the Nest’s main power module. All of the screens went dark momentarily as the cameras switched to backup power and shifted into night mode. In the bright green of night vision, she saw figures moving into the central chamber. Micah was at the door attempting to turn the giant lock. After a little effort, the wheel began to spin. Without electricity, the magnetic lock was worthless. That was why they had redundant systems on every door in the facility. But he didn’t know that. Micah thought he’d outsmarted the system.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “I’ve sent security to intercept him,” Amos told her.

  Her gaze was fixed on the screen and the young man pressing himself against the door. His accomplices had begun helping him and finally the heavy portal began to swing open.

  “Now or never,” Amos said, looking at her in annoyance.

  Sighing, she finally pressed the button labeled: containment. The other occupants of the nest had joined the escapees in the room now and were looking in mixed awe and horror at the open door. But before they could move closer, they all looked up at the ceiling in shock. Clouds of gas quickly filled the room, and only Micah managed to make it through the doorway before he collapsed. The rest had fallen at various places within the living room, completely unconscious by the time security arrived and locked down the chamber.

  Nariko cycled the power module and watched as the lights flickered back to life in the nest. “Have him brought to Lab 3. I have some questions for our bold friend.”

  Amos shook his head. “This isn’t part of the study. It has nothing to do with the drug.”

  “This is the only part of this study I’m interested in. And we don’t know that it doesn’t have any correlation with the drug. I’m still trying to compare their behavior to the baseline records we collected. This behavior could be a shift. I don’t want to leave anything to chance.”

  “What should we do with the rest of them?” he asked, but she could tell by the look on his face that he already had an answer and just wanted her to agree. That was how this worked. He would let her have her fun as long as she went along with his decisions otherwise.

  “Whatever you want.”

  “I’m going to proceed to phase 2. Are the files prepared?”

  She nodded at the filing cabinet beside him. “Top drawer.” Pausing, she turned back toward the cabinet with a spark of inspiration. “Actually, give me Micah’s file. It could come in handy.”

  “Good idea.” He handed her the folder. “I’ll check in on your progress later.”

  She didn’t like the way he worded that. Like he thought he was in charge and she was his assistant. Their positions were equal on the org chart, but Amos liked to forget that he wasn’t the chair of an academic department anymore with authority over everyone else in the facility. For a professor of psychology, he was shockingly bad at predicting how others would respond to his own behavior. Or at analyzing his own behavior at all. Fortunately for him, it wasn’t his behavior that needed analysis.