Project Aries

She was told that the beeps and tones she occasionally heard were normal. Tinnitus, they called it. A common condition that caused people to hear sounds that weren’t really there, with various causes ranging from nerve damage to stress.

After living with the occasional background noise for twenty-one years, Bailey Harrington was used to the odd headache and asking people to repeat sentences.

She was not used to hearing a louder series of precise electronic noise as she placed her groceries into the boot of her car in the evening. And she certainly was not used to losing consciousness after the tones had stopped playing.