I Was Offered a Pardon to Survive in the Montana Wilderness. Something Was Hunting Me.

On the morning of his scheduled execution, a man named Charles was sitting in a prison cafeteria pushing cold eggs around a tray when a man in a dark suit sat down across from him. The man, Glenn, said he worked for the U.S. government and was offering an alternative to the gas chamber. It wasn't a pardon—it was a job. Dangerous, isolated, and classified. Charles would be taken to a remote location where the government was conducting experiments on living subjects. He would be one of those subjects. Charles agreed. He had nothing left to lose, and the certainty of the gas chamber was worse than the unknown.

From that moment, Charles's life became a series of doors closing behind him. He was given a new passport with a new name—Charles Martin—and told never to contact anyone he'd known. He was flown to a wilderness in Montana on a military transport, injected with something without explanation, and dropped alone with a backpack of supplies. The government would monitor him. If he survived a year, he'd receive a full pardon. But if he failed or violated the rules, he'd be returned to custody and the original sentence would be carried out. The gas chamber was still waiting for him at the end of the road if he stepped wrong.

The Creature in the Dark