The Xactilias Project (2017) is set in southeast Asia in contemporary times. American Claire Foley is detained. ‘Men of power know this one true fact … fear is the one true controller.’ She is advised that ‘Sometimes, you cannot win … But you can still decide how you will lose.’ She is detained because she is a genius, with a photographic memory, and the people detaining her want her intellectual gifts to do something ‘unimaginable.’ She is a genetics researcher – on human aging, but the mysterious company wants her to work for them on the Xactilias Project, for one year, but they keep the details vague. When Claire agrees, she must keep the recruitment details a secret. She is taken to the residential laboratory in a secret location in southeast Asia. There are dark secrets in the laboratory and Claire inevitably takes control of her own liberation. But its not that easy. As her 72-year-old friend Alfred says: ‘You have a brilliant mind, but even you can’t se