Shepherd barked at school painting — what he found shocked everyone

If successful, subject 09 will be the first viable candidate for permanent embedded memory suppression. Objective, long-term disassociation from operative history. Daniels sat back.

Embedded memory suppression? He listened on. Another voice followed. Younger.

Shaky. I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to go home.

Please, can I talk to my dad? Proceed with cycle reset, the colonel’s voice snapped. The recording cut. Static hissed through the speaker.

Daniels turned to Wes. Can you make a copy? Wes nodded solemnly. On it.

As the machine spun again, Daniels stepped outside and called Principal Harding. We’ve got more than Cold War junk, he said. This was a human experiment.

And if I’m right, subject 09 might have been a child. Harding’s voice trembled. What? What does that mean for us? It means, Daniels replied, someone used this school, this building as a testing ground.

And the person who painted that mural might have been covering it up or trying to expose it. By the time Daniels returned to the school, a mobile FBI lab had parked near the faculty lot. Technicians set up scanners, dusted the room for hidden prints and began mapping the blueprints of the hidden chamber and tunnel system.

But one thing stood out. They couldn’t find any official record of subject 09. No birth date.

No social security number. No real name. But they did find something else.

In the drawer of an old desk in the underground room, buried beneath dust and forgotten paperwork, was a small silver locket. Inside, a black and white photo of a young girl, maybe ten years old, and a man in military uniform. Daniels brought the locket to Mrs. Carroll.

When she opened it, her hand flew to her mouth. That’s me, she whispered. And that’s my father.

I remember this photo. I lost it when I was a child. Daniels’ pulse quickened.

Ma’am, we think you might have been here, in that room. Subject 09 might have been you. Silence.

She sat down slowly, trying to breathe. That can’t be. I remember growing up overseas.

I remember art school and my mom’s apartment in Germany. I remember… But her voice trailed off. Because suddenly she didn’t.

Fragments of memory, faded images of fluorescent lights, a man with a clipboard, the cold floor tiles, began crawling back. Her hands trembled. I always had nightmares of being locked.

Underground, she said. But I thought it was just… childhood fear. Are you telling me my own father did this to me? Daniels didn’t answer.

But the look in his eyes said enough. Meanwhile, Dante had taken a post at the edge of the classroom, again. He wasn’t barking now.

He just stood there watching the hallway like a guardian, as if he was waiting for something or someone to come back. That night Daniels walked through the tunnels again, this time with the FBI. They uncovered three more hidden compartments, each with similar contents.

Real-to-real tapes, metal, file boxes and photos of unnamed children. It was a part of American history that had been erased or tried to be. The story broke three days later.

It made national headlines. Secret Cold War experiments uncovered in middle school. Parents were outraged…