Jasper sat hunched over on the thin cot, arms wrapped tightly around his knees. Every slight shift made the frame creak softly, each sound sending a jitter of anxiety through his chest. Eventually, he forced himself to stop moving completely.

Earlier, a large, imposing man with a scar on his face had entered. He didn’t say a word, just set down a tray of food and walked out. Jasper had considered making a run for it while the man was distracted, but one look at the camera fixed on him made him reconsider. His thoughts drifted back to his captor’s voice. “Consequence.”

He shuddered. 

He hadn’t eaten, but at least he knew they weren’t trying to starve him. It sat, likely cold now, by the folder he was supposed to read. But all he could do was stare at it. 

A worn heavy duty folder, tan and unlabeled. Jasper didn’t want to open it, but he knew eventually, he would have to. The man hadn’t given him an option.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he was exhausted. 

He knew this was probably a manipulation tactic. Some kind of sick way to confuse his victims. A twisted game. But the man hadn’t seemed entertained in the slightest. Behind the scrutiny, he had looked… tired. 

Was he seriously starting to sympathize with the guy who abducted him? The idea made his skin crawl. This wasn’t Stockholm syndrome, he wasn’t that far gone.

Jasper finally stood and walked toward the table. He reached out, slowly, and pulled the folder toward him, the manila surface scraping against the metal. He sat back down on the mattress, his fingers trembling slightly as he unfastened the brass clip.

He flipped it open, a document staring back at him.

The first page was a typed report. Classified, according to the redacted headers. Names blacked out. Paragraphs missing.

His father’s name was not.

VINCENT SINCLAIR

The name glared up at him in bold, uppercase letters, stamped like a brand, large and unmistakable.

Jasper hesitated.

He scanned the first paragraph, eyes darting over dry formality and bureaucratic phrasing. Then the second. His eyes caught on a line, and the air in the room grew somewhat heavier.

Subject: Sinclair, Vincent.

Current Title: United States Senator.

Codename: PROJECT ARGUS.

Project Argus? The name pulsed in his mind, sharp and ominous. He kept reading, slower now, the pieces not fitting together, but beginning to shift.

The further Jasper read, the more surreal it became. Financial transfers routed through ghost companies. Private militias funded under the guise of foreign aid. Experiments conducted off grid. On prisoners. Detainees. Civilians labeled threats to national stability.

One page showed schematics for a facility in northern Alaska. Underground. Hidden beneath a decommissioned oil plant. It was signed off by a private contractor linked directly to Sinclair Holdings.

Jasper blinked hard. This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be.

He turned the page.

A list of names. Some underlined. Some crossed out. A hand scrawled note in the margins read, Confirmed silenced.

He kept reading. Couldn’t stop.

Each page painted his father not as a politician, but as an architect of something far colder. Arms deals masked as trade partnerships. Detainment centers where political dissenters were "relocated.” A handwritten memo about psychological conditioning, marked FIELD TESTS COMMENCE 09.17, SUBJECTS UNSTABLE, CONTINUE DOSING REGIMEN.

There were photographs, too. Grainy surveillance shots. Some showed people in cages. Others showed chambers lined with men in restraints. One photo was worse than the rest.

It showed a boy, maybe seventeen, strapped to a chair. Eyes rolled back. Electrodes taped to his temples. Mouth open in a silent scream. The line beneath it read, Test failed. Memory rupture. Subject terminated.

Jasper’s stomach turned. He shoved the photo away, chest heaving.

His father had told him once, “The world isn’t kind, son. We shape it, or it shapes us.” He had thought that meant politics.

Negotiations. Policy. Power plays.

Not this. Not torture disguised as progress. Not people erased like they never existed. He felt dizzy. Sweaty.

His hand brushed a sealed plastic evidence pouch. Inside it was a thin, bloodstained journal. Jasper hesitated, then pulled it out and flipped it open.

The handwriting was messy. Rushed.

We asked to leave. They told us we were lucky to be chosen. Every night someone screams. We don’t sleep anymore. I don’t remember what month it is. They said we’re helping the country. They’re lying. I think they already killed my brother.

Jasper shut the journal. Fast.

His knuckles were white against his fists. His pulse beat loud in his ears.

He sat in that holding room, utterly still, staring at the disassembled image of the man who had raised him. The man who had paid for his private tutors, his exclusive education, his trust fund and tailored suits and penthouse apartment.

He swallowed hard and looked down at the final item in the folder, a photo. His father. Shaking hands with a military general. Both men smiling. Behind them was a loading bay, crates marked with biohazard symbols.

Jasper flipped the photo over. It was dated six months ago.

He leaned back, shaking.

That was during the press tour about climate reform. His father had spoken about clean water. Jasper had even posted about it on his socials. Proud of my dad today. Real change looks like this.

He wanted to throw up. Instead, he buried his face in his hands. He didn’t cry. He wanted to. But the tears wouldn’t come.

Only heat.

Only shame.

***

Jasper didn’t know how long he sat there. Minutes. Hours. He’d lost track of time somewhere between the first page and the last, somewhere between the face in the photo and the ones he couldn’t unsee.

At some point, he reached for the photo again. His fingers hovered just above it before finally making contact, as if touching it might burn. He lifted it slowly, held it in his lap, and stared until his eyes stung.

“Why?” he whispered.

His voice cracked, thin and broken. No one answered.

The question hung there, unwanted.

He dragged his hands through his hair, pressing his palms hard against his scalp like he could squeeze the thoughts out. But they stayed, loud and ugly.

He looked down again. The folder still sat open on the bed in front of him, its contents fanned out like evidence from a crime scene. He hadn’t even finished reading the journal. He couldn’t. It didn’t matter. The truth had already lodged itself in him like a splinter too deep to pull out.

Vincent Sinclair.

Father. Benefactor. Smiling face on every stage. None of those words fit anymore, not after this. Not after what those documents showed.

Jasper swallowed, jaw clenched hard enough to hurt.

His whole life had been built on something vile. The name he carried like armor, the money that opened every door, it was all covered in blood.

He wasn’t a bystander to it. He was a part of it. The son of the man who made it all possible. His name wasn’t just privilege. It was weight. A mark.

He pressed his thumb against another photo, smudging it slightly. The people in it were probably already gone, but he could still see their faces. Could still imagine what it meant to live under the control of a man like Vincent Sinclair.

It made him sick.

His hands shook. His breathing grew uneven. He couldn’t tell if it was rage or disgust clawing up his throat, but something inside him was breaking, cracking open.

Maybe it had started long before tonight. Little fractures he’d ignored. Things he didn’t question. Now they were splitting wide. Jasper saw it clearly. Humanity wasn’t just weakness in his father's eyes. It was a liability, something he’d carved out of himself like rot, left behind so nothing could touch him.

There was no coming back from this.

He wasn’t a leader. He wasn’t a patriot. He was a butcher in a tailored suit. A man who used power to manipulate and slaughter.

And Jasper, he’d walked through life with that man’s shadow draped over his shoulders like a second skin. The realization settled into his bones. Cold and heavy.

A soft click broke through the weight of it and he tensed, sitting up straighter.

The door opened. His captor stood there, but he didn’t speak.

Those eyes, too sharp, too knowing. Like he’d already seen this moment before it happened. Like he’d been waiting for him to catch up.

Now Jasper had.

He looked up at him, eyes glassy, hands shaking. “I didn’t know,” he said, barely managing the words. “I swear to God, I didn’t know.”

“No. You didn’t,” he said flatly, staring down at the picture Jasper was now gripping in his hand. 

Jasper’s breath hitched. He looked back at the folder, then at the man. He didn’t know what to say next. What could be said?

But something had changed.

He wouldn’t look at his father the same way again. And maybe, just maybe, he didn’t want to be his son anymore. Not if this was the legacy. Not if this was the truth.

“And now?” the man asked. Not taunting. Just waiting. Testing.

Jasper looked down at the open folder at the truth laying bare in ink and blood. Then he looked back at the man. 

“I don’t know who I am anymore.”