Episode Arc: Echoes of Mendel Hall (Genres: Cyberpunk, Thriller, Horror)
The city’s low lights bleed over cold pavement. Nothing good drifts near South Ganymede after dark. Jun sits behind an old console, ducking the glitchy blue glare. Why’s it her job to hack into Mendel Hall’s servers tonight?
She rolls her neck. ‘If only Dad hadn’t gone back to work for Narcom,’ she mutters, throat tight. Would you put yourself at risk, just to save someone you loved?
Jun, seventeen, sharp and stubborn, is chasing truth about the city’s silent scapegoats. Her father, Dr. Miya Hoshino, went missing one month ago. Nobody cares – except her. He was a lead at Mendel Hall Genetic. Something happened the day he vanished.
Her backup is Mako, a boy who cracks jokes even when the mood feels buried. She thinks he’s just a buddy; maybe he wants it to be more. Ever wish someone would look at you the way Mako looks at her?
Together, two laptops and a bag of backup batteries, they slip through an overlook fence behind Mendel Hall. Security drones pass every sixty seconds. It should be safe.
Their getaway driver, Rin, waits in the van. Always serious, always anxious, cigarette burning between two chipped fingers. Rin drives because nobody else knows escape routes like she does.
The building looms. Floors flicker with light. Inside, orchids grow in glowing steel tanks, not a soul in sight. Something hums – so deep Jun feels a shiver brush along her spine. ‘Old experiments, new playthings,’ Rin whispers in her earpiece.
They soon realize Mendel Hall hid entire floors. Whole labs, not on blueprints. Broken cell doors and shut-down control panels. Trail maps in old holo-recordings. Who sketches lab diagrams with X’s scratched hard against camera screens? 
Jun finds video logs: her father’s voice. She listens. ‘They’re splicing memories,’ the voice croaks. ‘Don’t forget tomorrow.’ Is it a clue or a warning?
With drones closing in, Jun cracks a code. Doors slide apart, triggers haunt old tiles, stench under cold vents. From the dark husk of lab C17, children’s faces blink on faded monitors, their names replaced by serial codes. She doesn’t scream. Why would you? Wouldn’t you want to learn why, first?
Mako stumbles over a medical file cabinet, his hands trembling. ‘Look, these tags match the orphans who vanished last year.’ Each tag offers only weight, height, gene sequence, scan dates, expunge stamps. People turned into lists.
They hear labored breathing, then footsteps: a pale boy, maybe nine, steps into broken blue light. He’s thin, skin marked by long barcode. Is he even awake? Jun bends down. ‘We’re not here to scare you–are you hurt?’
‘Do you know my name?’ the boy asks. ‘Better than what they called me.’
He points down a hallway – his hand shakes. ‘They’re coming. The units want…fixes. For us. For you.’ His voice is half echo. 
The group races for the fire stairs. Glass cracks under Jun’s boots. Red lights bloom. Metal slats open and close down the corridor in clenched fists of steel.
As they rush out, surveillance screens battle for control over stairs and doors. On one feed: Jun’s father, still alive. He’s older, changed, locked in a glass cell on one of the deepest floors.
Are those new scars along his cheek, the same eyes swollen with dust and dread? Jun slams her fist to the glass. ‘You promised. You promised you’d quit.’ Tears pool but don’t quite fall.
Uptop, Rin opens access to the fire exits, Mako grabs the strange boy, Jun touches the handprint access panel – and suddenly spotlights snap on. Heavily-armed guards in Narcom biohazard armor surround them, guns raised. No warnings. One guard shouts: ‘Asset recovery!’ 
‘Don’t shoot! He’s just a kid!’ Mako pleads, hands up.
From the glass cell, Jun’s father locks eyes with her as gunfire stutters off cozy tiles. Doors tremble, and something big claws in the shadow behind guards – something spliced and in pain.
Jun grabs Mako, pulls him and the boy behind an overturned lab table. DNA alarms bark all over the mainframe speakers. Oxygen fades. Jun fumbles at her chest for the little locket her dad gave her last year. Is now when she opens it?
Everything goes red, noise drowns her, and it cuts to black. This isn’t a failed run – not when somebody is fighting to keep memories alive in this rotten hall.
Are you ready to see what waits on Floor -4? Must a child’s pain echo through the ones who seek to save them?
