Alien
Protocol 0
What if the most dangerous thing on Earth was never from here?
The Premise
A government interrogator. A subject who should not be alive. A protocol no one is authorized to know about. She is trained to extract the truth from anyone. He is something she was never trained for.
Protocol 0 is the name given to situations that don't fit the taxonomy. No classification. No chain of command. No rules of engagement. Just the room, the subject, and the question she can't stop asking herself: what exactly is she looking at?
"The most human thing about us is that we keep asking whether we are."
What Is Subject Zero?
He has been in custody for eleven days. He has not eaten. He has not slept. His vitals are impossible. The medical team stopped filing reports on day four.
Every question she asks, he answers. Every answer is true. She has verified each one. The problem is that none of them should be possible to know.
On day eleven, he asks her a question. She doesn't answer. She can't — because it's about something that happened to her at age seven that she has never told anyone.
The People Inside
The Interrogator
Senior field operative. Decorated. Methodical. She has broken every subject she has ever been assigned. She does not break them with force — she breaks them by knowing exactly what to ask and when to go silent. Subject Zero is the first assignment she has not been able to close.
Subject Zero
No verified identity. No record in any database. Arrived without a file. Detained under Protocol 0, which means no one above her clearance level has signed off on the directive. Calm in ways that do not track as human calm. Knows things he should not know. Does not appear to be afraid of anything — including her.
Dr. Madison
Lead scientist on the case. Responsible for the medical and biological analysis of Subject Zero. Her findings are classified at a level she does not have clearance to read back. She stopped sleeping on day five. She has started keeping a second notebook that she does not bring to the facility.
Where This Connects
Alien sits inside the same mythology as Walk-In — two different entry points into a question the OFF-World universe keeps returning to: what is inside a person, and where did it come from?
Walk-In asks the question through consciousness transfer. Alien asks it through contact. Both stories are in the same conversation. You do not need to read one to read the other — but if you do, something opens up that neither story carries alone.
Explore Walk-In →
Some books entertain you.
This one interrogates you.
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