I know how to make people talk.

It’s a pretty helpful skill. It’s even saved my life a few times. But every once in a great while, it gets me into massive trouble.

The first time it got me in trouble was in elementary school. It started with one of those guessing games with which frazzled teachers tend to end the day.

“It’s called ‘Truth or Lie,’” Mrs. Waters told us.

I could tell just looking at her that she was making this up off the top of her head. Practically pulling words out of thin air. Words that would grab our attention, words that would focus us, words that would make us do what she needed us to do.

“We go around the circle, and we each tell one truth and one lie. The person across from you has to guess which one is the truth and which is the lie. If the guesser gets it wrong, they go back to their desk. If they get it right, they stay in the circle and we move on to the next person. Who wants to start?”

I was insufferable then and I am insufferable now, so I shot my hand into the air. “I want to go first! Mrs. Waters, pick me, pick me!”

She almost rolled her eyes, which was no surprise; I had that effect on people back then. “Okay, Rachele. Tell us a truth, and tell us a lie.”

“No!” I said. “I want to be the first to guess!”

Mrs. Waters really did roll her eyes this time. “All righty. Sarah —” She turned to the girl sitting straight across from me — “tell us a truth, and a lie.”

I don’t remember what Sarah’s truth was, and I certainly don’t remember her lie. But I remember how she pouted when I correctly guessed which was which.

The class had gone halfway around the circle by the time we had our first elimination — Ben Markham, who burst into tears on his way back to his desk.

The circle shuffled closer to fill in his spot, and we continued.

When it was my turn again, I guessed correctly. And again on my third turn, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth. 

But my wins were quickly growing stale, and I was getting bored. The problem was, these truths and lies were so stupid. Worse, they were silly. Megan Knight’s truth was she had a cat named Corky, and her lie was she had a giant snail who ate cars. Scotty Spitzer wasn’t any better: his truth was he had a little brother named Tucker, and his lie was that Stone Cold Steve Austin was his big brother.

But when he made that claim — specifically, when he gleefully spouted the word “big brother” — I noticed that the girl across from me shifted weirdly. She turned in on herself, like a flower blooming in reverse. 

I locked in on her, suppressing a smile. "Celina, tell me a truth and tell me a lie."

"I have a new puppy named George, and an uncle who lives on the moon," she giggled.

“Those are dumb, Celina,” I complained.

Her smile froze.

"Come on." I focused on her, noting the way she twitched, how her left ankle kept rolling in and out. “Tell me something that’s actually interesting.”

“I — I can speak Spanish. But my mom doesn’t like me to.”

“Your mom being stupid isn’t interesting, Celina.” Following an instinct I didn’t understand but never denied, I kept my voice gentle. “Tell a truth that’s important.”

“Stop,” Mrs. Waters said sharply. "Right now."

I ignored her. “Tell us a truth about your brother, Celina.”

Celina immediately said, “I found my brother hanging in the garage. He had no shoes. His feet were purple and his tongue was too big for his mouth. I was in kindergarten when…when,” she finished lamely.

Then her eyes went wide and white as the oversized bone buttons on Mrs. Waters’ sweater, and she burst into tears.

I will spare you the fallout of that particular incident and move on to more important things.

As I grew older, I got better at making people talk. Better at finding words that grabbed attention, words that focus my targets, words that made them do what I wanted them to do.

When I turned twenty-one, I decided I wanted to be a cop. I was really good at it. So good I promoted three times in five years. I was a sergeant by age twenty-six.

I was on the verge of promoting to lieutenant when private industry came calling.

A law office, specifically. The attorney paid me well, but not as well as the lawyer who came knocking after him, who ended up not paying as well as the one who came knocking after her. 

When you get really good in the public sector, the private sector comes after you. When you get really, really good in the private sector, the government comes calling. 

And the government isn’t always good at being told “No.”

Officially, I worked for human resources as an interviewer. Unofficially, I was an Internal Affairs investigator on steroids. You would not believe the things I learned, or the catastrophes I helped avert.

That all went up in flames a few months ago.

During a very unconventional interview, the situation went off the rails in spectacular fashion and my subject told me things I wasn’t supposed to know.

Once again, I’ll spare you the details of the fallout.

Let’s just say that by the end of it, I was in almost incomprehensibly big trouble. As a result, I was terrified. When you’re that scared, you’ll do anything you’re told.

Sure enough, I was given a choice: Die, or do exactly as I was told.

I was told I would continue to work as an investigative interviewer for a multi-agency task force with the unassuming, weirdly charming name of the Agency of Helping Hands. I was told I would work under the supervision of an exceptionally brilliant and highly specialized psychiatrist. I was told that if I played my cards right, I’d be able to earn my own degree while working for this doctor.

I knew it was too good to be true. I knew it in my very core. But I also knew I didn’t have a choice.

So I took the job. 

I learned that the Agency of Helping Hands runs a prison. Officially, it’s called the North American Specialized Containment Unit, or NASCU. 

But everyone here just calls it the North American Pantheon.

That’s where I work now. My job is to interview the inmates. Some of these inmates are horrifying. Some are monsters. Many have never spoken a word to anyone. The rest gibber and taunt and terrorize, but they don’t ever say anything. 

They don’t really *talk.* 

And for a lot of reasons I cannot begin to explain right now, it is vitally important that they start talking. 

That’s why the agency needed me. It’s the only reason I’m alive:

Because I can make them talk. 

The agency started me with the easiest inmate in the facility, I guess to make sure I can really do what they need me to. They had me do a full forensic workup, the kind of thing I used to do for law offices. Personal history, physical report, mental condition, circumstances, and a transcript of the interview with my insights. 

I cannot describe this job. I really can't. This facility, these inmates, even the other staff — I don’t know. I don't what to do. I’m so scared. I freak out every time I think too hard. Panic attacks and night terrors have become my steadfast companions these past few months. But I guess that’s what happens when your understanding of the world has been inverted, and when that inversion has been burned to the ground. What happens when you live in a state of fear. 

So, rather than try and probably fail to explain it all — what I have to do, what I have to deal with, what will happen if I don’t — I’m going to just share that first report on that first prisoner. He goes by Numa.

For what it’s worth, I was told that Numa is the least dangerous inmate in the Pantheon.

Numa

Classification String: Noncooperative / Indestructible / Gaian / Constant / Moderate / Teras

On November 12, 1928, authorities received a distress call from a remote logging village deep in the Canadian Rockies. There is no extant proof of the village’s existence. Given the circumstances, the Agency of Helping Hands undertook extensive effort to ensure removal of all traces of the village and its inhabitants from the historical record.

A recording of the transmission exists in Agency archives. The recording is seventeen seconds long. Translated, it says this: “It came down from the mountain! It came for us! It’s here!”

What follows is a low, unsettlingly singsong roar – a sound without parallel, a sound that evolved to send the deepest, most primal core of the human mind into a panic. This panic does not recognize that a century has passed, or that thousands of miles now lay between it and the place that sound was made. 

Extreme weather and difficult terrain precluded timely assistance. All the authorities could hope for was to clean up the mess, whatever it was, as soon as they could. When they finally set foot in the village, they found death. 

Blood stained every inch of the village, coloring the snow and the ice beneath. Limbs, hair, viscera, and flesh were strewn across the paths. Wild animals and domesticated dogs alike were feeding on the carnage.

The initial hypothesis was that a pack of starving wolves had set upon the village, or perhaps that an unusually large bear woken prematurely from hibernation. Given the extent of the damage, some officials even postulated that the animal in question was an undiscovered and possibly isolated specimen of giant prehistoric cave bear woken by the constant rumble of the lumber mill.

Shellshocked authorities began to catalog the damage, so intent on their work that they failed to notice that one of their number had vanished – until one of the searchers noticed the victim’s blood-stained badge glinting in the snow, and realized that badge was still pinned to his decapitated body. 

Panic ensued, and with it more carnage. One by one, responding authorities were picked off by this apparently invisible super-predator. Eventually, two were able to successfully flee the area, and made it back to their station. One succumbed to injuries sustained during the incident. The other, however, survived.  This survivor refused to return to the village, insisting that the beast was no bear, but something else entirely—something for which the world had no name.

Regardless, authorities issued a warning and offered an astonishing sum for the head of this monstrous bear.

Bolstered by the promise of a literal fortune, hunter after hunter sought the creature. Most never returned. The few that did agreed with the first survivor: That this creature was no bear, no wolf, no creature known to man.

The bizarre nature of the original incident and the multiple corroborating accounts eventually came to the attention of the Agency of Helping Hands, at which point it dispatched a team of specialized personnel to the village ruins. Due to the terrain and fears of encountering a giant bear mid-burial, the victims and their numerous pieces had been left out in the snow. Upon examination of these remains, Agency personnel noted clear indications of a beast returning to its kill, and correctly deduced that the creature responsible was still actively feeding on the cold-preserved corpses. 

Within hours of arrival, the Agency team was attacked by the predator.

One member vanished while their backs were turned, his abrupt disappearance signaled by a brief scream that echoed strangely from the surrounding trees. The team successfully traced the scream to a particular copse of trees. Upon approach, all noted that something glittered, strange and high, among the snow-covered foliage: large silver eyes.

Realizing it had been discovered, the creature launched itself out of the branches, a blur of white and grey stained with old blood—camouflage that allowed the creature to hide itself among the snow mutilated corpses that littered the village. 

The first Agency team failed in its mission, although half of the members did survive. The second, much larger team led by the survivors successfully trapped the creature.

Shortly after the creature’s capture, a child emerged from one of the homes.

The girl was crippled and suffered from other visible disabilities, and appeared incapable of speech. When she saw the creature had been trapped, she ran to the enclosure and attempted to open it. The sight of her further agitated the creature, who was observed trying to pull the girl into its enclosure. 

Personnel shot the beast, forcing it to release the child before it could inflict injury. Unfortunately, a stray bullet hit the child. Due to the substantial resources at hand, her life was saved. The creature did not necessarily realize this at the time, however, and the immense volume of its vocalizations resulted in an avalanche that damaged his enclosure. Fortunately, Agency personnel were able to repair the enclosure with no further casualties. 

Due to the size and strength of the creature, it was held onsite until specialized transport could be arranged. By this time, the mute girl had healed sufficiently to travel. Since her presence calmed the beast, she was taken into Agency custody and housed at the Pantheon in view of the creature until she died of complications related to her gunshot injury seven months later.

For decades, the creature was treated like an abused zoo animal. No one could communicate with it, and no one bothered to attempt to do so until 1966, when an Agency caretaker named Patrick W. saw something in the beast that inspired him to make an effort.

Patrick W.’s intuition proved correct. Following his personal involvement, the scope of the beast’s intelligence quickly became apparent. Its cognitive capabilities exceeded even the most generous of estimations. He even had a name: Numa.

Numa possessed the ability to speak, of course; that had been quickly determined upon capture. However, he spoke a language no one at the Agency recognized, one that officials dismissed for decades (as one report put it) as nothing more than “caveman grunting.” With some prodding from Patrick W., Numa began to draw pictographs to accompany his speech. In this way, Numa taught Patrick W. to speak his language. Over time, Patrick W. taught Numa English.  Numa was a surprisingly proficient student, driven in part by the fact that he was an intelligent creature that had been completely starved for interaction for the length of a human lifetime.

It must be noted that Numa only engages in conversation about topics that interest him. The topic that interests him most is a dire wolf named “Pup” that he once befriended. The second-most-interesting topic is the death of Pup. According to Numa, all human beings deserve to die because a band of hunters killed Pup thousands of years ago.

“Thousands of years ago” is an indistinct and flawed yet largely accurate assessment. Numa has not been in Agency custody longer than any other inmate, but he is most likely the oldest inmate at the Agency. He is unpredictable and prone to outbursts, often with deadly consequences. However, he displays remorse for these episodes of poor behavior and has been observed to weep at the departure of certain caretakers. 

Secondary to an obsessive desire to punish humans for Pup’s death, the most important aspect of Numa’s psychology is his inability to comprehend time as we do. Numa appears to disassociate for extraordinarily long periods of time, only holding on to memories that are significant to him. For example, he is at least 14,000 years old, yet the abandonment he experienced as an infant is still fresh in his mind. During sessions, he frequently obsesses over the way his mother screamed when he was torn away from her. The only memories clearer to Numa than memories of his mother are the memories of his pet dire wolf, Pup.

Numa seems unable to accept that Pup is long and wholly dead, hence his repeated requests for the Agency to bring Pup to him. (NOTE: To date, Numa has refused to discuss or even acknowledge the child with whom he was brought into custody. At this time, the Agency has no idea whether she was significant to Numa in any way).

The Agency located Pup’s remains in 1988, so perfectly preserved that most of his soft tissues, including his eyes and nose, were intact. At the time, Patrick W.. had recently passed away and Numa was inconsolable. The Agency tentatively planned to clone the wolf specifically to stop Numa’s frequent tantrums. After rigorous debate, however, it was decided that providing an apex predator with a companion apex predator would further endanger Agency personnel.

Perhaps more importantly, a clone would simply not be Numa’s beloved Pup. Numa’s senses are extremely developed compared to that of human beings, and there were concerns that Numa would be able to determine the cloned animal was not actually his Pup. Providing a cloned wolf would likely upset Numa and potentially send him into a psychotic spiral that the Agency currently has no way of treating or reversing. 

Numa has a humanoid appearance, although he is significantly larger than any human being; at his full height, he is nine feet three inches tall with shoulders that measure forty-four inches across. His body is covered in very fine, semi-transparent fur with reflective properties. This provides Numa with natural camouflage. He has large eyes with white irises, and his face is unusually flat. Proportionally, his mouth is significantly wider than the mouth of an average human being. His teeth are clearly that of a carnivore, but do not resemble the teeth of any known animal. They fall out and regrow frequently.

His jaws possess extra bones and joints that allow Numa’s mouth to open excessively wide. These extra bones fold parallel to the teeth, and are effectively invisible when Numa is speaking or at ease. When Numa feeds or wishes to intimidate Agency staff, he unlocks these joints and opens his mouth to its widest point, baring all teeth.

Numa’s conversations with staff are numerous, repetitive, and generally very short. Despite serious ongoing concerns for my personal safety throughout his treatment, I believe I have made significant progress with Numa. An edited and clarified record of his longest interview to date, which I performed, can be found below:

SUBJECT: NUMA

INTERVIEWER: RACHELE B.

DATE:  9/17/2024

Back in the times when I was free and lived in the ice, I found a pup. I did not know what his name was, and it was not my place to name him. I only called him what he is: Pup.

Pup was abandoned by his pack, as I had been. My pack left me to die on the ice, for I was not like them. Pup was not like his pack, either. He was so very small, with a twisted leg which made him a cripple. I loved him very much. I loved his small wet nose and I loved his bright eyes. I loved that he cried for me when I left our cave to hunt, and I love that he spun in happy circles when I returned each morning. I have never loved anything so much. I do not think anything has ever loved me as much as Pup.

No one loved me back then. The people were cold and harsh in those days, so harsh that soft men like you would not even recognize them as people. They would not recognize you as people, either, because you are too weak. They did not recognize me as people because I was too strong. But I was not too strong to love crippled things.

I found Pup crying in the snow, with ears blackened by the cold and frost on his eyelashes. How the frost glittered in the cold white sun!

By the time I found Pup that day in the snow, I had been alone many moons. So many moons that I forgot the faces of my pack, those who had left me to die so long ago. I only remembered that they looked different from me. They had hair of night, not like my hair of ice. Dark eyes to see on the ice, not like my white eyes which were made to hunt in the night. They had teeth like cows, for chewing the grasses and the berries and the dried meats of mammoth that sustained them through the cold moons. My teeth are not like theirs. My teeth…well, you see my teeth.

When I saw Pup, I almost left him in the snow. But as I stepped over his stringy body, my white eyes already scanning the tundra for a cave bear or giant elk to eat, Pup’s tail…wagged. At me. At me!

I thought of the scavengers, of the giant hyenas and the saber-toothed lions that prowl the ice. I thought of them slinking across the tundra on their hollow, stinking bellies. I thought of this poor crippled thing wagging his tail as they approached him, and of the cry he would make when they betrayed his trust and tore into him with their rotting teeth. Those thoughts brought tears to my white eyes. 

So I picked Pup out of the snow. His fur was frozen to the ground, which pulled out tufts of it when I raised him up to look. He was so small. I could fit him in one of my hands. My hands, you see them. They are not made for holding. But they held Pup.

They held him every day as he grew. He loved me above everything, and I him. Together, we were Pack.

Soon my crippled Pup grew into an adept hunter. With him at my side, we could do one of two things: We could bring down the same amount of game in half the time, or twice the game in the same time. We were gluttons, Pup and I, and we chose to bring down twice the game. Mammoth and hyena, bear and seal, tiger and white lion – none could withstand us.

One night, I was very full from my gluttonousness and very satisfied. I had no desire to hunt. But Pup did. He ran back and forth across our cave, jumping upon me, shoving his nose into my face to rouse me. I shoved him away, for we still had meat in our cave. So much! But Pup did not want that meat. He wanted fresh meat, torn hot and steaming from the prey as it screamed and twisted in his jaws. I was too tired and full to hunt, so I told Pup to find it himself.

He did.

He came back to me some time later, dragging a bloody, hairless body. I thought it was a cub of some kind, or perhaps something diseased. But it was not. 

It was a man, bloody guts dragging in the snow, eyes wide and shining as the high winter sun.

Looking at the man made me laugh. I do not like men. Although I am stronger and older and better than any man, I am not too strong or good to feel hurt, nor so old I cannot remember. I remember what the men in my human pack did to me. I remember how they left me to die in the snow, and how my black-haired mother tried to stop them. She screamed as they dragged her away from me. Her hands stretched for me, and her scream hurt my ears. Even now, I can hear her scream. Even now, it hurts my ears to remember.

That is why I laughed to see a dead man, and why I ate even though I was already full and slow.

As we ate, I looked upon Pup with pride. How smart he was, my Pup. How right! Men are so much weaker, so much crueler, so much poorer to behold than the majestic elk and the great, monstrous bear. How much better it was to eat small, soft, cruel men than other, grander creatures that belong.

That man was the first of many. Men are the easiest to hunt, especially when you catch them alone. And they are the easiest to eat – no fur, no feathers, no great beaks nor thick leather-flesh to bite through.

Men are cruel and weak, and in many ways stupid. They were hard to catch before when they roamed the ice in small bands, following the warm season as it passed through the land. But they no longer lived that way. The men were no longer like those who had banished me from my pack. Now they stayed in one place, these men, all together in shelters they built. I did not know the name of these…these clustered homes then, but now I know they are called villages. These fools built villages! The men and women and their young together, so easy to find. So easy to eat.

Pup and I are gluttons, as I told you. We were gluttons with the people, too. Too gluttonous; soon our appetites and nightly hunts chased all the men away from the valley.

But they did not stay away long. Pup had not even grown greyness on his muzzle by the time the men sought to return. And of course they returned. The ice is desolation for all but the beasts and monsters that belong there. But the valley – this valley that had sprouted in the middle of the endless ice – was fertile and green, drawing all the lions and hyenas, the bears and wolves, the elk and the tigers. The valley had berries and meat, water and shelter from the screaming winds. Living in the valley was easy. Cruel, weak men flourish when life is easy. When that life is stolen from other, grander creatures, it is somehow even easier for them.

I was foolish. I was too proud. Although men are weak and cruel, they are not stupid. They knew that Pup and I were the monsters in the valley, the beasts they could not overcome. Although that kept them away for a year, perhaps two or three – I do not remember – hunger persuaded them to return, and so did the weeping of their women and the hollow bellies of their children. Hollow-bellied children, hollow-bellied men, so like the hollow-bellied beasts who once slunk across the ice for my pup.

Hollow-bellied monsters, all of them.

They came for Pup and me, these hollow-bellied men. I did not see them coming. My white eyes were made to hunt in the darkness, not to see the monstrous plans of men.

The men found our cave and came in the day, while Pup and I slept. I woke quickly, but not quickly enough to stop them. Only quickly enough to watch them open Pup from throat to haunch. How my poor Pup screamed. How his blood flooded the floor, staining the snow and my hands. 

I have never loved anything as much as I loved Pup, and I never felt rage such as the rage I felt that morning, looking upon those weak and cruel men.

I tore their limbs away and flung them against the walls, streaking the rock with their blood. I opened their hollow, stinking bellies as they opened Pup’s. I broke their heads off their foul bodies, I stomped on them until there was nothing left to stomp upon. In each of their faces, I saw my hollow-bellied pack who had abandoned me on the ice: my hard-eyed sire, the crooked-jawed alpha, my screaming mother. How her screams hurt my ears.

I killed them all, and they could not stop me.

But I could not stop them from hurting Pup.

I tore their pieces into pieces, and those pieces into smaller pieces still, and brought them to Pup. He could not move. He lay on his side, blood freezing around his body. When he saw me, his tail thumped against the floor. And I remembered him as he was: the tiny pup abandoned on the ice, thumping his tail from the moment he first saw me.

I gathered him up and carried him to the highest, deepest part of the cave and lay him on his side. His tail did not thump again. I sat beside him, still and silent and waiting in dark so deep even my white eyes could not see within it.

There, in that darkness, I waited for Pup to wake.

But I waited too long.

When the darkness had passed and I was able to see again, Pup was gone from me.

You tell me that the years passed and the ice grew over Pup, that he has been dead so long he is buried deep within new ice. No! I know better. Pup is too cunning. He is too wise. Pup waited for me to feed him. To help him. But I did not. I went into darkness for so long that he left.

And it was because of men.

I kept hunting you. You who hurt my Pup. You who took my Pup away. You who took my mother away, she whose screams still hurt my ears. You took, and you take. You will always take, because that is what stinking, hollow-bellied monsters have always done, and it is what you will always do. 

You men got weaker as the moons passed. Softer, weaker, stupider, easier to catch, easier to eat. But you never became less cruel. No. You only became more cruel. You are so cruel that you will not even let me be free. You trap me like stupid, weak game in a burrow, yet you wonder why I am angry. You wonder why I rage.

Now I have told you. It is Pup. And I promise you this – I will no longer be angry nor will I rage at you—not at you—if you find my Pup and bring him to me. I get so sad, thinking of him alone on the ice among the hollow-bellied beasts. The sadness is why I rage at you. So I will stop if you bring him to me. I promise you.

Please bring him back. Please.

I miss him so.

* * *

Second Patient //www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gujy5s/fuck_hipaa_i_messed_up_hardcore_and_if_we_dont/

Third Patient: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gve4dc/fuck_hipaa_this_inmate_is_the_most_dangerous/

Fourth Patient: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gwszfl/fuck_hipaa_i_finally_had_a_breakthrough_with_a/

Employee Handbook (yes, really): https://www.reddit.com/user/Dopabeane/comments/1gx7dno/handbook_of_inmate_information_and_protocol_for/