One week later

A week passes. You’re cleared to resume normal activity. Back at work, the routine returns almost too easily. Same lab. Same hum of machines. Same rows of data waiting to be logged. Except now, every corner of this place feels different. Heavier. You sit down at your station, log in, and don’t even pretend to start your usual tasks. Your mind is already elsewhere. The storage room, that box, those pills. You glance around. No one’s paying attention. You pull up the internal database - restricted access, but nothing you haven’t navigated before. Sample logs. Inventory tracking. Experimental compounds. Your fingers hover over the keyboard for a moment. Then you type: CMD-1.

The system processes… longer than usual. A hit. Not public-facing. Restricted. Your access level shouldn’t even see it, but something in the system lags… just enough. A fragment opens. Not a full file. Just enough to confirm:

CMD-1 (short for Command) — Behavioral Modulation Compound

Your stomach tightens. You scroll. Most of it is locked behind clearance you don’t have. But enough is visible to piece things together.

• Delivery Method: Oral
• Onset: Rapid (variable)
• Primary Effect: External behavioral influence under emotional stimulus
• Trigger Condition: Elevated emotional state in nearby subject
• Release Vector: Pheromone-based transmission

Your pulse picks up. You keep reading.

• Observed Effect: Subject enters deep suggestible state
• Termination Condition: Subject will remain in induced state until explicitly instructed to "wake up"

You lean back slowly in your chair, the weight of it settling in. This wasn’t some random side effect. This was designed. Tested. Catalogued. And then there’s one more line. Half-hidden in a subnote:

Versioning ongoing — CMD-2, CMD-3 in development.

You exhale slowly. Stronger versions. Of course there are.