The Key is in the Past

The sound outside the lab door sent a chill through Jess’s spine. Footsteps. Slow, deliberate. Leanna grabbed Jess’s wrist and pulled her toward the nearest lab bench. They crouched behind it, barely daring to breathe.

The footsteps stopped right outside the door. Jess’s heart pounded. Is it security? Or… something else? A long silence stretched between them. Then—

Click.

The locked door handle turned on its own. Jess squeezed her eyes shut. Oh, hell no. The door creaked open, revealing a sliver of dim hallway light. A shadow stretched across the floor—tall, unmoving.

Leanna, braver than Jess ever wanted to be, leaned forward slightly to peek. Then she gasped. Jess yanked her back down. “Are we dealing with a janitor or a ghost?” she whispered.

Leanna hesitated. “Neither.”

Jess risked a glance. Standing in the doorway was a man—older, maybe in his sixties, dressed in a worn-out lab coat. His silver-streaked hair was wild, and his sharp eyes scanned the room with eerie precision.

He wasn’t translucent. He wasn’t floating. But something about him felt wrong. Then he spoke. “You’re looking for me.”

Jess stiffened. The voice was deep but weary, like someone carrying decades of secrets.

Leanna slowly rose from behind the bench. “You’re the ghost,” she said, barely above a whisper.

The man smirked. “Not quite. But I suppose that’s what they call me now.” He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “I prefer ‘Dr. Elliot Langford.’”

Jess and Leanna exchanged glances.

“Dr. Langford?” Leanna echoed. “There’s no one by that name on faculty.”

“There hasn’t been for forty years,” Langford said.

Jess finally stood up, arms crossed. “Okay. So you’re not a ghost. But you’ve been living in a supposedly abandoned lab for decades? That’s weird as hell.”

Langford chuckled. “You’re not wrong. But I’d say breaking into an old lab to chase ghosts is just as odd.” His eyes flickered toward Jess. “Though I suspect your curiosity isn’t about the supernatural.”

Jess swallowed hard. “You know about the potion.”

Langford’s expression didn’t change. “I know about a lot of things.” He gestured toward the chalkboard where the phrase was scrawled. “‘The key is in the past.’ That wasn’t for you. It was for me.”

Leanna folded her arms. “What does it mean?”

Langford exhaled through his nose. “It means if you want to understand what happened to you, you need to understand why it happened in the first place.” He glanced at Jess. “And that starts with me.”

Jess and Leanna exchanged another look. Jess finally spoke, “Then start talking.”

Langford took a seat at one of the dusty lab benches.

“Forty years ago,” he began, “I was part of a research team working on genetic alteration. The idea was radical—changing a person’s DNA at will, allowing for medical miracles. Curing genetic diseases, repairing damaged organs, even rewriting traits at the most fundamental level.”

He leaned forward. “But my colleagues weren’t just interested in curing people. They wanted to test other possibilities. Experimenting on physical transformation, mental rewiring. Seeing how far the human body could be pushed.”

Jess felt her stomach turn. “You mean… like changing someone completely?”

Langford nodded. “We were reckless. We didn’t fully understand what we were doing, but we pushed forward anyway. And then… something went wrong.”

Leanna frowned. “What happened?”

Langford’s jaw tightened. “A test subject was exposed to an unstable version of the compound. The change was… irreversible. The project was shut down. Files erased. Everyone involved disappeared into the shadows.”

Jess felt a shiver crawl up her spine. “And you? You stayed?”

Langford exhaled slowly. “I couldn’t let it go. I’ve spent the last four decades trying to perfect what we started. To fix what we broke.” He looked directly at Jess. “Which brings me to you.”

Jess’s throat went dry.

“You were exposed to a version of my work, weren’t you?” Langford asked. “That’s why you’re here.”

Leanna stepped forward. “I—someone I know was given a potion. It changed them.”

Langford’s gaze stayed locked on Jess. “You mean her.”

Jess clenched her fists. “It was me,” she admitted. “I was changed. Against my will.”

Langford sighed. “Then you should know the truth. Reversing it won’t be easy.”

Jess’s breath hitched.

“There’s a way?” Leanna pressed.

Langford hesitated. “Perhaps.”

Jess felt her pulse quicken. Hope surged through her, but it was tainted with fear. “What do we have to do?”

Langford tapped his fingers against the table, eyes dark with old regrets.

“If the key is in the past,” he murmured, “then we need to retrace the past. We need to find the original test subject.”

Jess frowned. “Wait—you mean the person who got changed forty years ago?”

Langford nodded gravely.

“They were the first.” He paused. “And they might be the only one who knows how to change you back.”