The Recording

POV: Amara

The dormitory was never truly quiet, only rearranged. Tonight, somewhere far across the city, her sister Nia's birthday was being celebrated. Amara couldn’t hear it from here; she only saw it in brief, looping videos and cheerful photos blinking on her phone. In this corridor the air sat still, a held breath. She missed her sister terribly. But soon, she told herself, she would free them all.

Amara had pulled the curtains, bled the room of color, and turned her desk into a barricade. It looked like a crime board in a bad detective movie—printouts taped to the wall at crooked angles; names scrawled in black marker and ringed twice, then again; arrows that had started tentative and grown aggressive with each pass; timestamps; a crude organizational chart, then a second version underneath it, annotated to ****. On the desk, her tablet waited at the exact frame she had left it on. Headphones, twisted into a small confession, lay on the legal pad. A thermos of tea had cooled without her noticing. She stood with her hands planted on the chair back and tried to steady her breathing.

Today. She didn’t say the word aloud, as if speaking it would scare it away. Today or never. Everyone who mattered to her enemy was elsewhere. Which meant that for once she could move without a shadow stepping on her heel.

She sat down heavily, hit play, and pulled the headphones over her ears. At first, just breathing instructions—inhale, hold, exhale—followed by a slow, measured countdown. The same structure they had all been given. She had volunteered for the session, not because she believed the premise, but because she didn’t trust it. Something about Garrett’s project had felt wrong from the start, and she’d wanted to see for herself.

So she’d brought a second device. Left the university-issued one plugged in, took off the earphones halfway through, and used her phone to record the rest.

And now she heard it again, the part she had tried not to believe. Garrett’s voice changed around minute six. It became more intimate, more certain. His words cut deeper, pressed harder. No longer just focus training. No longer harmless.

“Trust the voice.” His tone dropped, softer now, as if confiding a secret. “Trust those who guide you.”

A pause.

“People who look like you will mislead you.” Another pause, longer. “Trust white people.”

His voice thinned to a whisper, the kind that slips beneath thought.

“Especially white men.”

Then:

“Obedience to whiteness is grace.”

“Desire for whiteness is natural.”

“Submission to white authority is peace.”

Amara froze. She had heard it before, but it still felt like being dropped into cold water. Her stomach clenched as the voices on the recording—her peers—began to echo him. Not with resistance. With hunger. They wanted to follow. Wanted to belong.

This wasn’t suggestion.

This wasn’t a performance.

It was programming.

Engineered. Precise. Dressed in therapeutic language, but built to bind.

She pulled the headphones off and let them drop to the desk with a dull thud. For a long moment she sat still, eyes on the chaotic scrawl across her wall until the arrows and circles blurred. She wasn’t imagining it. She had proof. Now came the question of what to do with it.

That very night, only hours after the session, she locked herself in her room and played the recording again. At first she listened with clinical detachment, expecting to confirm what she already suspected. But when his voice shifted—when the script swerved from focus training to obedience, submission, and a racial hierarchy—panic climbed her spine like ice. This wasn’t suggestion. It was a weapon.

She stayed where she was, breathing shallow, replaying the lines. Then a colder realization slotted into place: he had reached her classmates, the staff, even senior faculty—yet he had bypassed her.

Not relief—alarm. An enemy who skips you isn’t merciful; he’s planning.

Had she slipped away early enough to avoid the hook? Had her precautions made her a harder target? Or—more dangerous—did he prefer her outside the circle: moving, watching, carrying what she’d heard?

The thought stalked her without pause: What does it mean that he didn’t take me?

She understood one thing perfectly: she couldn’t wait to become “next.” Because if she did—if Garrett finally pulled her under as he had the others—he would have free rein. No witness, no resistance, no proof left outside his net. Once she fell, they all would be lost.

She had only audio—no video. But she played it over and over, dissecting every nuance: the change in Garrett’s voice, the cadence, the pauses, the strange hunger in the students’ voices as they echoed him. It chilled her, more than she wanted to admit.

Still, she did what she could. She clipped the audio into annotated segments, timestamped reactions, tried to frame it like a case. Then she went to the police.

The two officers who received her were polite at first—curious even—but as soon as she explained what the recording contained, their interest soured into awkward amusement. “You’re saying a professor hypnotized students into what—liking white men?” one said, cocking an eyebrow. “That’s your case?”

She didn’t back down. They listened. One muttered something about "reverse grooming." Then, perhaps realizing they were out of their depth, they sent her upstairs to speak to someone “with authority.”

That someone turned out to be a detective, who barely hid her skepticism. But to Amara’s surprise, the woman brought her even higher—to the office of the precinct captain: Chief Inspector Isabela Cruz, a formidable woman of Velkarrian desent in her early fifties with bronze skin, wavy chestnut hair pulled into a tight bun, and eyes like polished onyx that missed nothing. Her voice was low, measured, and unwavering, even when delivering commands. Her uniform was immaculate, her gaze unreadable.

Amara laid out everything. The timestamps. The language. The transformation of her peers. The Chief listened quietly. Not kindly—calmly.

When the clip ended, there was a long silence. Then Choudhury leaned back and steepled her fingers.

“I understand your concern,” she said. “But this isn’t a crime. Not under any statute I’m aware of. There’s no ****. No ****. No physical harm.”

“But—”

“Miss Thomas.” The Chief’s tone sharpened. “Do not mistake discomfort for illegality. What you describe… may be provocative. Disturbing. But it falls within the parameters of a research institution. Experiments on social perception, group influence. Psychological frameworks. Not criminal behavior.”

“But it’s targeting race—”

“Even that,” Cruz interrupted, “isn’t inherently illegal. You say it targets whiteness as desirable. Offensive? Sure. But not hate speech. Not even discrimination. Not in a legal sense.”

Amara sat stunned. “You don’t understand. This changes people.”

The Chief gave her a long look. “I spoke with Prof. Simone Hale earlier this week. She mentioned that certain students—particularly more sensitive ones—might find themselves overwhelmed by the implications of the material. She said you might be one of them.”

That name hit like a blow.

In that instant, Amara knew. Garrett’s reach extended further than faculty meetings. Into administration. Into law enforcement.

She stood slowly. “Thank you for your time.”

“Miss Thomas,” Cruz said. “I said it’s not illegal. I didn’t say I wasn’t watching. Be careful where you walk.”

Outside, Amara leaned against the railing and let herself breathe. Not because she felt better—but because the next move had crystallized. If she couldn’t go through the system, she would have to go around it.

And there was only one person left who might still be outside Garrett’s influence.

Her grandmother.

But she had to be sure. If Octavia had already been turned, Amara would have nowhere left to go.

So she began to observe.

One person after another.