"Return Of The Unreturned"

 

 "THE MARK ON THE EARTH"

The morning fog hadn’t lifted when Zane Faulkner folded the newspaper and set it down with a soft thump.

He leaned back in his chair, one eyebrow slightly raised, a trace of amusement dancing on his lips. “U.F.O. sightings,” he murmured, tapping a finger against the article. “Right here. On our very own farmland.”

Eli, halfway through a bite of burnt toast, froze mid-chew. “Please tell me you're joking.”

Zane tossed the paper across the table. “Page six. Bottom-left. ‘Bright lights, strange sounds, scorched earth. Local farmers report unexplained phenomena.’ Sounds like either an alien party or a very confused fireworks salesman.”

Eli grabbed the paper, scanning the paragraph quickly. “This is insane. Why would you care about a tabloid story?”

Zane stood, pulling on his long black coat. “Because, Eli… the fog’s too thick this morning for normal nonsense. And sometimes, nonsense is just a code word for truth nobody understands yet.”

Eli groaned. “You’re taking this seriously, aren’t you?”

Zane was already at the door. “Pack your bag. We’re going to the fields.”

The eastern farmlands were quiet, isolated, and mist-wrapped like a secret the earth was trying to keep. Birds called faintly from distant trees, but even their songs felt hesitant. A thin veil of fog clung low to the ground, swirling gently around Zane’s boots as he stepped out of the car.

Eli shivered and pulled his hoodie tighter. “Creepy,” he muttered. “Like someone forgot to turn the world back on after night.”

Zane walked ahead without answering. His eyes were already scanning the surroundings, calculating direction, elevation, temperature.

They passed rusting fences, grazing cows, and rows of silent cornstalks until they reached a clearing.

Then Zane stopped.

“There,” he said softly, pointing.

In the middle of a wide, open field — where the soil should have been rough, churned from plowing — was a perfect circle. Pressed deep into the earth, about twenty feet across, the soil was unnaturally compact. Smooth. As if a massive disc had landed there with surgical precision.

Eli stepped closer, squinting. “That’s… that’s not normal. That’s not tractors or harvesting machinery. Look at the edges. They're too clean.”

Zane crouched down and ran his fingers over the surface. The dirt was dry, but unnaturally dense. The pattern beneath the top layer was even stranger — subtle spiral indentations, almost invisible unless you looked from a certain angle.

“This isn’t just compression,” Zane said. “Something heated the soil from below. Like it was… baked into place.”

Eli looked around nervously. “Zane… you don’t actually think it’s aliens, do you?”

Zane stood and brushed off his coat. “I think the universe has stranger things in it than we like to admit. And sometimes, truth leaves footprints in the dirt.”

As if on cue, his phone buzzed.

He glanced at the screen, then answered.

“Yes?”

A pause.

His expression sharpened.

“Where?”

Another pause.

“I’m on my way.”

He ended the call and looked at Eli. “A girl just reappeared.”

Eli blinked. “What do you mean ‘reappeared’?”

“Six months missing. No explanation. Walked into a gas station five minutes ago like she never left.”

Eli stared. “Like Maya?”

Zane was already walking back to the car. “Exactly like Maya.”

The police had already cordoned off the gas station when Zane and Eli arrived. Flashing blue lights painted the fog like a haunted rave, and confused onlookers gathered behind the yellow tape.

A paramedic knelt beside a young girl sitting on the curb. She wore a yellow sweater, slightly oversized, and glittery sneakers caked in dry mud. Her hair was in braids, tied with purple ribbons. She held a half-eaten lollipop and swung her legs back and forth, completely unfazed by the chaos around her.

Zane approached the nearest officer. “Faulkner. Consultant. I’d like to speak with the girl.”

The officer hesitated, but then nodded. “We were just about to take her to the hospital. But she doesn’t seem hurt.”

Zane knelt in front of the girl. “Hi. I’m Zane. What’s your name?”

“Lila,” she said brightly.

“Do you know where you are?”

“Yep. I wanted gum, so I walked here.”

Zane tilted his head. “Do you know what day it is?”

“Saturday,” she said.

“Do you know what month?”

She frowned slightly. “June.”

Zane exchanged a glance with Eli.

It was December.

Zane leaned in just slightly. “Lila… where were you before you came here?”

She shrugged. “I was at school. Then I was sleepy. Then I was here. Is that bad?”

Zane smiled gently. “Not at all.”

He stood and turned to Eli. “She vanished in June. Just like Maya. Same age. Same missing time. Same total lack of memory.”

Eli looked pale. “You think it’s the same... phenomenon?”

Zane nodded. “And we’re running out of time.”

Back at the apartment, Lyra stormed through the door like a thunderclap.

“I just saw the news,” she snapped, throwing her coat across the couch. “Another girl. Same age. Same pattern. And you didn’t call me?”

Zane looked up from his board of connected timelines. “I was waiting to confirm the details.”

“You should have told me,” she snapped. “I have a right to know when this starts happening again.”

Her voice cracked at the end, and for a moment, the silence between them held a deeper weight.

Eli quietly excused himself to the kitchen.

Zane stood slowly. “Lyra—”

“No,” she interrupted. “Don’t give me the calm, collected investigator tone. Not with me.”

Her eyes shimmered with anger — and something more. Fear. Grief. A wound still raw.

“I trusted you, Zane. You said it was over. That Maya’s case was an outlier. That we were safe now.”

“I said we were stable,” Zane corrected gently. “Stability is temporary in a chaotic system.”

She laughed bitterly. “God, you sound like a textbook.”

“I am a textbook,” he replied dryly. “Just one that bleeds.”

That gave her pause. But she wasn’t done.

“She was eight,” Lyra said quietly. “She vanished without a trace. And when she came back… it wasn’t her. Or it was her, but wrong. Now it’s happening again. And you're still talking in riddles.”

Zane walked to his board and pointed to the newest photo — Lila at the gas station.

“There’s a pattern,” he said. “Maya. Lila. Others we missed. Always girls. Always aged 8. Always six months gone. Always reappearing unharmed, unchanged… but slightly off.”

Lyra approached, scanning the evidence. “So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” Zane said quietly, “we’re looking at something intentional. Not random. Not natural. This is a controlled event. A repeatable process.”

Lyra shook her head. “But for what? Why these girls?”

“I don’t know,” Zane admitted. “But I’m going to find out.”

That night, Eli sat on the couch holding a mug of cocoa, staring at Maya’s old drawings — still pinned on the wall. Clocks, fog, glass rooms. The man with no face.

“She was drawing this before she ever remembered anything,” he said. “Like it was burned into her.”

Zane didn’t reply. He was back at the board, adding Lila’s timeline. Dates. Locations. Witnesses.

Then he paused.

“Lyra,” he said suddenly. “Where’s the locket?”

“What locket?”

“The one Maya always wore. The little heart-shaped one with the blue stone.”

Lyra blinked. “It’s... it’s gone. She was wearing it the day she vanished. But when she came back—”

“It wasn’t with her.”

Zane nodded slowly. “Neither was Lila’s pink backpack. Her mother mentioned it during the press conference. Said she always carried it everywhere.”

“Are you saying they’re… leaving things behind?”

“I’m saying,” Zane replied, “whatever is returning them… isn’t returning everything.”

Eli shivered. “You’re making it sound like they’re being… edited.”

Zane looked out the window.

The fog had returned.

And this time, it wasn’t moving.

"THE SECOND COPY"

Zane moved like a man possessed.

The apartment had transformed overnight — the board that once held Maya’s case now overflowed with fresh material. Polaroids, timelines, press cuttings, a city map dotted with red thumbtacks. There was no music playing, no tea brewing, no Eli’s usual mumbling in the background. Only silence. Focus.

And the fog, always waiting beyond the window.

Lyra stood quietly near the corkboard, her arms folded, eyes tracing over Maya’s drawings beside Lila’s new ones. Strangely similar. Too similar. Lila, like Maya, had been encouraged to draw at the hospital. Her sketch was chilling:

A girl floating in a room of glass. Wires in the ceiling. Fog beyond the windows. And written beneath it in a child’s handwriting:

“Subject 12 - Cleared.”

Zane tapped the words with his pen. “She shouldn't know that phrase.”

Lyra shook her head. “Her parents said they’d never seen her write like that. It’s not her vocabulary.”

“She’s the twelfth,” Zane murmured. “Which means… eleven before her.”

He turned to Eli, who had just entered, arms full of bakery bags and a face full of nerves. “Got your sugar bombs,” Eli muttered, dropping the bags. “And coffee. And... three kinds of croissants. Please don’t ask why I panic-buy during unspeakable horror.”

Zane handed him a photo.

Eli squinted. “Who’s this?”

“Case 005,” Zane said. “Disappeared in 1976. Same age. Reappeared in ‘77. Her name was Clara Jepsen. She died five years ago.”

Eli looked up. “Wait — so one of them lived a normal life?”

“No,” Zane said. “She spent her teen years in and out of psychiatric wards. Night terrors. Episodes where she claimed she was ‘slipping through’ during sleep. Final words, according to the report: ‘I saw the other me.’”

Eli sat down slowly. “So not a happy ending then.”

Zane’s voice dropped to a whisper. “None of them have a happy ending.”

Later that day, the team arrived at Lila’s home — a quiet suburban street in a neighborhood where nothing ever happened.

Zane rang the doorbell. It was answered by Lila’s mother, a pale, tired-looking woman in her thirties. Her eyes lit up when she saw Lyra.

“Oh, thank God. You’re the one who helped that other girl, right? Maya?”

“I helped investigate,” Lyra said gently. “We’re just trying to understand what’s happening.”

The living room was filled with balloons, welcome-back cards, and a half-eaten chocolate cake. Lila sat on the carpet, playing with puzzle pieces. She looked up at Zane and smiled brightly.

“Toast man!”

Zane smiled back. “I should trademark that name.”

He knelt beside her. “Mind if I borrow your arm for a second?”

She giggled and held it out. Zane used a handheld ultraviolet scanner, moving it gently over her skin.

Lyra leaned over. “Anything?”

Zane narrowed his eyes. “Same as Maya. Faint traces of a rare protein. One not found in any modern food supply.”

Eli peeked over his shoulder. “Don’t tell me — extinct?”

“Not extinct,” Zane said. “Synthetic. Lab-created. And not commercially available anywhere on this continent.”

Lyra stiffened. “You think they’re feeding them something while they’re gone?”

Zane didn’t answer. Instead, he moved the scanner to her clothing — the sleeve of her yellow sweater shimmered slightly under the light.

“There it is,” he muttered. “Trace elements. Metallic dust.”

He pulled out a vial, carefully swabbed it, and sealed it.

“I’ll have to run this back at the lab.”

As they walked back to the car, Lyra stopped him.

“Zane… do you ever think we’re in over our heads?”

He didn’t answer immediately. The sky above them had turned overcast — not stormy, just… blank.

“I think we were always in over our heads,” he said. “But pretending not to be just makes us slower.”

She looked at him, her voice lower. “I’ve been having dreams too.”

He stopped walking.

Lyra looked at the ground. “Ever since Maya came back. Dreams of glass walls. Of voices whispering. One night I woke up with the phrase ‘subject reset confirmed’ stuck in my head. I’d never heard it before.”

Zane’s expression darkened. “You’ve been in contact with one of them. Maya was living with you.”

Lyra nodded. “Do you think it’s contagious? A... cognitive infection?”

“I think,” Zane said carefully, “that whatever’s returning... might not be completely dormant.”

Back at the lab, Zane ran the metallic sample through his spectral analysis unit — an ancient machine he’d personally rebuilt from a Cold War-era bunker. The results came back in seconds.

Eli hovered beside him. “Well?”

Zane didn’t look away from the screen. “Nano-scale residue. Something like aerogel. Extremely light. Conductive. Designed for containment fields.”

“Containment fields?”

“Imagine a cage,” Zane said. “But made of frequency, not metal.”

Eli’s face went pale. “And the residue’s on her sleeve?”

“It means she touched it. Recently. And there’s more.”

Zane pulled up the second scan.

“Embedded in the particles — is a waveform pattern. Subsonic. Not random. Structured.”

“Like a signal?”

“Like a calling card.”

That night, Lyra came to the apartment with something clutched in her hand.

“You’re going to want to see this,” she said.

She handed over an envelope — no name, no return address.

Inside: a photo.

Zane held it up to the light. Black and white. A small girl standing outside a train station.

Same face as Lila.

Same sweater.

Same hair ribbons.

The date printed on the bottom corner: August 12, 1953.

Zane stared.

Lyra’s voice trembled. “There’s no Photoshop. I had it tested. The photo paper is genuine. The ink is over seventy years old.”

Zane didn’t speak.

Eli came over. “So what are we saying? Time travel?”

Zane finally looked up. “Not travel. Duplication. Replication. Controlled displacement.”

Eli blinked. “In English?”

“They’re not moving through time. They’re being copied… and planted.”

Lyra stepped back. “But for what purpose?”

Zane’s voice dropped. “Testing. Observation. Some kind of behavioral or genetic experiment. One where even the subjects don’t know they’re being studied.”

Eli swallowed. “You think Lila is... a clone?”

“No,” Zane said. “I think Lila is... the result. Of whatever system is running this. The question isn’t who she is.”

He pinned the photo beneath Maya’s drawing of the fog.

“The question is — how many of them are out there.”

"THE EXTRACTION FILE"

The storm didn’t arrive with thunder.

It came quietly.

A thickening of the air. A pressure behind the ears. And a sudden stillness in the world, like the Earth itself had stopped spinning — waiting to see what Zane Faulkner would do next.

He wasn’t sleeping.

The walls of his apartment had become archives: timelines, faded case files, long-forgotten photos. One section now held a list titled:

“Returned.”

Next to it — a much shorter one:

“Unreturned.”

Maya. Lila. Clara. Subject 007. Subject 012.

But Subject 009 — the case Zane had once buried in a locked drawer — still haunted him.

That girl never came back.

And now her name had surfaced again — whispered by an old contact who shouldn’t even be alive.

They met in a parking garage. Fourth level, behind a pillar, past midnight.

The man wore a long gray coat and moved like someone who had once been dangerous — and still might be. His eyes were pale and steady, his skin lined with stories no one wrote down.

“You shouldn’t have contacted me,” he said.

“I didn’t,” Zane replied. “You sent the first message. I just accepted the invitation.”

The man smiled grimly. “You’ve been digging.”

“And you’ve been hiding,” Zane countered. “Thirty years off the grid after Project Echo collapsed. Why now?”

“Because the signal reactivated.”

Zane narrowed his eyes. “What signal?”

The man reached into his coat and pulled out a thin metal box — a device with analog dials and a cracked glass screen. He flipped a switch, and a low hum began to rise — barely audible, like the memory of a machine.

“It’s back,” he said. “Same frequency. Same time distortion loop. Every forty-two days, the beacon flares. A pulse. I used to think it was calling them home. Now I think it's calling us back.”

Zane took a breath. “What was Project Echo really about?”

The man hesitated, then said:

“Replicative drift.”

Zane stared.

“It began as a black project in ‘49,” the man continued. “They were studying atmospheric anomalies near Arctic magnetic fields. Found energy patterns that bent time around living subjects. They tried to contain it. But it… learned. It began returning subjects who fit the timeline better than those it took.”

Zane’s voice was cold. “You’re saying it was... making improvements?”

The man nodded once.

“And what about the ones who didn’t return?”

The answer was a whisper.

“They resisted.”

Back at the apartment, Zane relayed everything to Lyra and Eli.

Lyra was pacing. Her voice was tight with fury. “So these children aren’t just kidnapped — they’re replaced based on... performance?”

Eli leaned back, hands on his head. “This is unreal. Like some cosmic version of quality control.”

“It’s not cosmic,” Zane said. “It’s scientific. Clinical. Calculated. Like breeding new behaviors into an old species.”

Lyra froze.

Zane looked at her. “What?”

She swallowed. “Maya... she never liked tomato soup. Ever. It made her gag.”

Zane said nothing.

“But the one who came back,” Lyra continued, “asked for it on her second day back. She ate the whole bowl.”

The silence was deafening.

Lyra’s face twisted in anguish. “I thought I was going crazy. I kept thinking maybe she changed, maybe kids evolve... but what if she wasn’t supposed to remember the wrong likes and dislikes?”

Zane stepped closer. “Lyra, listen to me—”

She backed away. “Don’t. Don’t say it’s okay. It’s not. I lost her once. And now I don’t know if I ever truly got her back.”

Her voice broke on the last word.

Eli stood by helplessly, watching two people fray at the edges of something no human was meant to confront.

Zane’s voice, when it came, was quieter. “That’s why I didn’t involve you at first. Because I knew this would hit too close.”

“You think I can’t handle it?” Lyra snapped.

“No,” Zane said. “I think you’re the only one who can. And that terrifies me.”

The next morning, they traveled to an old town listed in one of the recovered files — Holbrooke, 1983.

Case #009: Emily Kessler.

Missing: October 17th.

Never returned.

Her family had vanished years ago. The house was abandoned. But Zane had pulled a contact in archives and retrieved a sealed evidence box that was never logged publicly.

Inside: a notebook.

Childlike handwriting. Pages filled with odd symbols, broken sentences, and one repeated phrase:

“I remember my other birthday.”

Zane flipped to the final page.

There, drawn in crayon — a shape. A symbol.

A perfect circle with spirals inside. Matching the soil pattern from the field. Matching the crop mark from Lila’s location.

Matching what Maya once scratched into the wall during sleep.

Eli exhaled. “That’s the mark. The real one.”

Lyra studied it carefully. “What is it?”

Zane replied without emotion.

“A landing pad.”

On the drive back, Zane said little. But his mind was racing.

These weren’t isolated events. They were data points in a larger structure. Someone — or something — was experimenting. Fine-tuning.

And that meant only one thing:

It hadn’t stopped. It had just gone deeper underground.

That night, Lyra sat alone in Maya’s room.

She looked at the toys, the books, the photos on the shelf. Everything was as it had been… yet none of it felt real anymore.

She picked up the small stuffed rabbit Maya used to sleep with.

A tag dangled from its ear.

Lyra froze.

She’d never noticed it before.

It was embroidered in faded thread:

“Subject 013 – Retained.”

"THE ONES THAT RETURN"

The rabbit lay still on Lyra’s lap, its fabric worn and soft from years of childhood affection.

But it wasn’t the toy that made her hands tremble.

It was the stitched tag hidden behind its ear.

Subject 013 – Retained.

She stared at it, then reached for her phone and snapped a picture.

Less than ten seconds later, she messaged Zane.

Lyra: “We were never safe.”

Zane read the message as he stood outside an unmarked fence three hours north of the city. Behind it, the dense woodland bristled with silence. Beyond that — nothing on maps, no roads, no records.

But he had found it.

Not through police records, or archives, or open files. But through Maya’s drawing. A shape hidden in the corner, a subtle tree line barely etched, a mountain ridge curved just so — he had matched it to satellite photos from 1982.

A hidden facility.

He pushed through the woods, Eli close behind. The cold bit at their faces, and the trees whispered in the wind like sentinels watching trespassers.

After an hour of climbing, they reached it.

A mound of earth too symmetrical to be natural.

Zane placed his hand on the ground.

“It’s hollow.”

Eli looked nervously at the slope. “Please tell me we’re not breaking into an abandoned alien base.”

“No,” Zane said. “We’re breaking into a forgotten lab.”

The entrance was buried under dead leaves and time — a concrete hatch, rusted shut. Zane used a crowbar and a battery torch. It groaned, then gave way.

They descended into the darkness.

The air was cold and metallic, scented with mildew and secrets. The stairs led to a narrow corridor, and the corridor to a locked door. Zane bypassed the ancient keypad with a universal analog bypass.

Inside was… silence.

And dust.

And the ghosts of technology long buried.

A central chamber stretched before them. Banks of old computers. Empty stasis tubes. A steel table in the center, with restraints still locked in place.

Eli’s voice echoed. “This place gives me spinal chills.”

Zane walked toward a glass case labeled "Subject Archive."

Inside: photographs. Dozens. Children.

Faces from across decades. Some smiling. Some terrified.

He flipped through them. One by one.

Lila. Maya. Clara.

And then…

Zane froze.

The next photo showed him.

A child. Five years old. Same green eyes. Same birthmark under the chin.

The label below read:

“Subject 001 – Observation initiated. Status: Unknown.”

Zane didn’t speak for a full minute.

Eli stepped forward. “Zane… what is that?”

Zane’s voice was a whisper. “It’s me.”

Eli stared, then looked at the label again. “Wait… Subject 001? You?”

Zane shook his head slowly. “I don’t remember any of this. My earliest memories are from the age of seven. Before that… it’s just blank fog.”

“Are you saying—”

“I was the first.”

Zane turned toward the rusted console. A green light flickered faintly on the screen — against all odds, some internal backup power was still alive.

He pressed a key.

The screen came to life.

LOG ENTRY 001

“Observation subject displayed heightened retention. Temporal displacement stable. Memory loop initiated.”

REMARKS: Subject shows signs of self-realignment. Potential anomaly. Monitor for divergence.

Back at the apartment, Lyra stood before the board, re-reading every note, every photo, every word. The pieces began to fall into place — but the shape they formed wasn’t human.

It was designed.

All of it.

Twelve returned.

One never did.

But what if… someone had never left?

She glanced again at Maya’s drawings. At the photo from 1953. At the circle in the field.

And then — her phone vibrated again.

This time, it wasn’t a message from Zane.

It was a video call.

The name flashed: “UNKNOWN FEED.”

Hesitating only a second, she answered.

Static.

And then… a camera.

A live feed.

Showing a child’s room.

And sitting on the bed — a girl.

Not Maya.

But exactly like her.

Same face.

Same doll.

Same expression.

Except… she wasn’t moving.

She was frozen, eyes wide, lips parted.

And standing in the corner…

A tall man.

In a long coat.

His face — gone.

Just fog.

Deep underground, Zane and Eli explored the rest of the chamber.

More entries. More evidence. But all led back to one truth.

Zane Faulkner had been marked since the beginning.

This wasn’t a case that had found him.

He had been groomed for it.

Trained by invisible hands. Fed clues. Given breadcrumbs to follow.

To test him.

To observe his choices.

Eli watched Zane pace silently. “You okay?”

“No.”

“Want to leave?”

“No.”

Eli nodded. “Cool. Just checking.”

Then Zane found one final file.

FILE 0: RECOVERY PROTOCOL

“If Subject 001 achieves cross-case correlation without trigger, initiate Phase Two.”

“Deploy Field Entity (No-Face). Target psychological instability.”

Zane stared.

“They planned for this,” he said. “They knew I’d reach this point. They’re still watching.”

Eli stepped back. “Zane. What if you’re not just investigating the phenomenon?”

Zane turned.

Eli’s voice shook. “What if you are the phenomenon?”

They left the facility before dawn.

Lyra met them at the edge of the city, eyes red, face pale.

She didn’t speak.

She just handed Zane her phone, playing the feed.

Zane watched the man in the corner.

The fog that made up his face.

The frozen child.

His hand clenched around the phone.

“Where was this recorded?”

“I don’t know,” Lyra whispered. “It came to me. Like… like he wanted me to see it.”

Zane nodded.

“He did.”

That night, Zane recorded his final log.

Case File: Return of the Unreturned

Subjects: Lila, Maya, Clara, Emily… and me.

Status: Open. Active. Uncontained.

Summary:

The returned are not victims.

They’re variables.

And someone… or something… is conducting a long-term experiment.

Goal: Still unclear. But replication. Observation. Perhaps even replacement.

And if I was Subject 001…

Then I was never investigating the pattern.

I am the pattern.

He paused.

Looked up at the fog outside.

And whispered to himself:

“They’re not coming.

They’ve always been here.”

Epilogue

Six days later, the envelope arrived.

No stamp.

No address.

Just a black-and-white photo.

Zane Faulkner — age five.

Standing in a field.

Behind him, a man in a long coat.

And beside the man...

A girl.

Maya.

Smiling.

Except this photo was dated 1946.