The way it started between you and Mark wasn’t flashy — no dramatic rescue, no whirlwind romance. Just two people stumbling into each other at the right time.

He’d always been stubborn, a little too prideful, but with you he softened. He asked you to marry him when the world felt safe and the future looked endless. Then the diagnosis came. Glioblastoma. Months, maybe a year.

You refused to let that be the end. Together, you traveled, laughed, and made more memories in a few months than some people do in decades. Mark swore that being with you made him greedy — greedy for more mornings, more smiles, more life.

That greed pushed him into the trial. He didn’t tell you. All you knew was that he came home, weary but alive, with a faint hope in his eyes he hadn’t worn in months. What you couldn’t know: he was the outlier. The survivor. The one the scientists bragged about, held up as proof. And because of him, the experiments continued.

Then came the videos.

Late-night scrolling on YouTube, comments buried under layers of skepticism and mockery. Shaky phone recordings of pale figures shuffling in the dark. Not drugged — sickly, cold, wrong. The kind of thing you hated to even imagine.

When you brought it up to Mark, your voice trembling, he didn’t snap or dismiss you. He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, that weary half-smile tugging at his lips.

“People’ll believe anything they see online,” he said first. But the flicker in his eyes betrayed something else.

When you pressed, he sighed, came closer, and placed a steady hand over yours. His voice dropped, quieter now.

“Alright. I’ll reach out to some old friends on the force. If there’s something real to this, they’ll know. You’ll have peace of mind, okay?”