Containment

It should have lasted less than a trillionth of a second.

When a record-breaking run at the Aldermoor Collider goes wrong, the physicists buried beneath the North York Moors find something impossible caught in their magnetic trap: a black hole smaller than an atom and heavier than a hill. By every law of physics it should have vanished in an instant. Instead, it is stable. And it is eating.

Nobody senior wants to sit beside it through the night, so the job goes to Tess Marlow, a cryogenics technician who walked away from her doctorate after a breakdown nobody lets her forget.

At 3:07 a.m., the readings change when she speaks.

First it counts. Then it repeats her words. Then it answers questions she hasn't asked yet, in her own voice. And then, unprompted, it spells out a warning: DO NOT FEED ME.

But the director has found a power source that could change the world, the Ministry of Defence has found something far worse, and the only person who can hear the truth is the one person nobody will believe.

As a storm bears down on the moors and the trap is pushed past breaking point, Tess must decide whether to trust a voice that already knows how this ends.

A taut, claustrophobic lab thriller about being unheard, believed too late, and what it means to really listen.