The novel
The record
Institutional spy fiction in the le Carré tradition, where the most dangerous object in the room is a rubber stamp. Free to read in full — also in paperback and e-book.
Read free online →01
The work
A clerk who spent eleven years deciding what the state was allowed to see is filed as dead by the system she served. To prove she was ever real, she must break back in through the blind spots she drew herself.
Filed Under No One is the laboratory's first long-form story — and a test of a single idea: that one fiction can be told three ways without ever contradicting itself. The book is the record. The game is the night she goes back in. The site is where both are kept. Same world, same dread, three surfaces — each built from the ground up on tools we own.
Project File · WORK/01
Live · MMXXVI
Form
NarrativeNovel + game + web
Genre
Spy fictionInstitutional, le Carré tradition
Engine
lockstepOwned · zero-dependency
Surfaces
ThreeBook · stealth game · site
Signal amber · #FFC31F
The work's colour. The house mark stays steel — colour belongs to the games, never the studio.
02
One world, three surfaces
The game
The night she returns
A free, top-down stealth game on our own deterministic engine — post the guards, aim the lights, slip the blind spots she drew herself. No installs, no accounts.
Walk her route →
The web
The reading room
One site that sells and holds both — book landing, the full free reader, and the game, wired together so the story loops between page and play.
Open the file →03
The look — one frame, everywhere
A single art-direction bible governs all three surfaces: a struck wordmark, a rationed amber signal, and a world built entirely from the file's own evidence — surveillance frames, stamped index cards, redacted leaves. One imaging rule holds the whole thing together: the protagonist's face is never shown. We sell the question, never the twist.
04
Built the studio way
The studio's four standards aren't a manifesto here — they're the build log of this project.
Our own engine
The game runs on lockstep, a hand-written engine with zero runtime dependencies. If it ships, we built it — including the renderer that draws the corridors above.
A session is a tape
A fixed clock: the same inputs give the same run, every time. A playthrough can be replayed exactly — which is how we tune guard routes and blind spots against real telemetry.
Nothing to log in to
The game is served to your browser and nothing else. No accounts, no installs, no ads. The book reads free in the same spirit — open the page, it's there.
An art bible & a manual
Every surface explains why it exists — an art-direction bible, a player's manual, and MI5 primary-source research behind the fiction. If we can't say why, it isn't ready.
05
From the bench
A
B
C
D
The full novel, free
All eight chapters, online, in a reader built for the page.
The playable game
The companion stealth build — runs in any modern browser.
The art-direction bible
One frame governing cover, hero and share card across surfaces.
The studio on GitHub
The organisation behind the engine and the work.
Start with the record
Read the whole book for nothing, or walk her route through the game. Same dark, two doors.