His wife and son died in the fire. Etheron made that bearable. Then it started deciding how much of it he was allowed to remember.
Detective Clay Jensen turned onto his street and saw flames coming through his own roof. He went in for his wife and son anyway. A burning beam came down across his back, and the crew pulled him clear. Lily and Max never came out.
Etheron was the pill that finally let him sleep. Before long it was deciding when he woke, when he worked, and how much of that night stayed with him. By the time he worked out what the drug had really been designed to do, he was the least reliable witness in the department and the only one asking the right questions.
Now he loses whole hours at a time. Evidence he swears he logged goes missing, and evidence he has never seen turns up in his own handwriting. To bring down the people behind Etheron, Clay has to trust a mind they have spent years quietly reshaping, and he can no longer tell which of his memories were put there on purpose.
Tap a file to open its field note.
The report called it an electrical fault, and the file was closed in nine days. Lily and Max died inside. The only witness was pulled from the doorway with a broken back.
"He still hears her on the phone, telling him there's a surprise waiting at home. He hears it most on the nights he takes a dose."
The trial data that never reached the public listed three real effects: dependency, distorted perception and damaged memory. In the reports nobody was ever meant to read, there was a fourth. Suggestibility.
"Subject reports complete clarity forty minutes after his dose. He also reports that the walls agree with him."
An informant who calls himself Whisper. No face, no name, and nothing to prove he is telling the truth. There is also nothing to prove the meetings happened at all.
"Whisper has never once been wrong. Whisper has also never been seen by anyone except Jensen. Draw your own conclusions."
The bottle clicked against Clay Jensen's wedding ring as he set it on the table. Six Etheron tablets rolled inside the brown glass. They were bright enough to look harmless, each one sealed beneath a glossy shell of blue and yellow. Beyond the apartment window, Riverbay Falls crouched beneath another ceiling of cloud.
Clay had told Dr. Simmons he had thrown the bottle away. He had meant to. For three days it had sat inside the kitchen drawer beside a photograph of Lily and Max, hidden but never forgotten. Tonight he had taken it out without deciding to.
His back had started hurting shortly after midnight. The pain gathered around the old fracture, then travelled upward until it found the place behind his eyes where the fire still lived. Etheron could quiet both. That was how it had entered his life, with a promise so reasonable that refusing it had once seemed foolish.
He turned the bottle until the warning label faced him. The police department prohibited active officers from using Etheron. Early studies had called it adaptive, a drug capable of correcting whatever imbalance it encountered. Later reports used different words: dependency, memory disturbance, impaired judgment. The reports nobody was supposed to see mentioned suggestibility.
"Soon the drug decided when he woke, when he worked, and which parts of the fire he was permitted to remember." From Whispers of Justice: The Devil's Playground
Zachary M Foster writes character-driven thrillers about the systems people trust and the ones that quietly betray them. Whispers of Justice: The Devil's Playground is the first book in a planned series set in Riverbay Falls.
For rights, review copies or press enquiries: whispersofjustice@protonmail.com
Whispers of Justice: The Devil's Playground is in its final edit. Join the network for early reader copies, review requests and first word of the release date.