T. J. Payne’s 2019 novel, Intercepts, is a work of speculative fiction that fuses the visceral terror of body horror with the institutional paranoia of a conspiracy thriller. The story centers on Joe Gerhard, the supervisor of a secret underground government facility where human subjects, known as Antennas, are kept in a state of total sensory deprivation to develop psychic abilities. When one of the Antennas, a woman named Bishop, develops a vengeful consciousness, she begins using psychic connection to terrorize Joe’s family, forcing him to confront the horrific consequences of his work. The novel explores themes including The Destruction of Identity Through Sensory Deprivation, The Tension Between Parental Instincts and Professional Obligations, and The Blurred Lines Between Perception and Reality.

Intercepts is the third novel from horror author T. J. Payne, who is also the author of In My Father’s Basement (2019) and The Venue (2020). The novel’s premise draws heavily on the history of the CIA’s real-life Project MKUltra, a clandestine program from the 1950s to the 1970s that conducted unethical human experiments, including sensory deprivation and the use of psychoactive drugs, in an attempt to develop mind-control techniques. Intercepts gained significant popularity through word-of-mouth within online reading communities, becoming a well-known title in the modern horror scene.

This guide refers to the 2019 Tunnel Falls edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain depictions of child death, cursing, death, death by suicide, graphic violence, mental illness, physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual content, substance use, suicidal ideation, and self-harm.

Plot Summary

An unnamed narrator describes existing in a state of total sensory deprivation, a blackness where they cannot feel, see, or hear. Periodically, this nothingness is interrupted by extreme torture. Hooks pry their eyelids open to searing lights, loud sounds assault their ears, and they feel agonizing pain in every nerve ending. The narrator learns their torturers are men and women, and the one in charge is named Joe Gerhard. Vowing revenge, the narrator resolves to find Joe and inflict the same pain on him and those he loves.

The narrative shifts to a secret underground lab, known as the Facility, where an orderly named Carson rushes through his duties. He enters the padded cell of an “Antenna,” a human test subject named Bishop. The Antennas are kept in a state of sensory deprivation via a nerve gas that disables their ability to process stimuli. Impatient to leave for a date, Carson ignores protocol and does not restrain Bishop while cleaning her. Bishop suddenly speaks with unnerving clarity, mentioning someone named Kate and calling her Joe Gerhard’s weakness. She then rips off Carson’s protective hood, exposing him to the paralyzing gas. As Carson collapses, Bishop brutally claws through his back with her bare hands, killing him.

Joe Gerhard, the Facility Supervisor, is alerted to the incident by the lead physician, Dr. Hannah Chao. After watching the security footage, Joe orders a lockdown and cancels all tuning sessions, a process where Antennas psychically tap into a target’s senses to gather—or intercept—intelligence. He inspects the gruesome scene on Level Two, where Hannah insists Bishop acted with conscious intent. Shortly after, Joe receives a call from his daughter, Riley’s, high school principal, informing him that his ex-wife, Kate, has died by suicide. Joe arranges for Riley to stay with her best friend’s family before making the two-hour drive to pick her up. On the drive back to his isolated house, Riley experiences a sudden headache and numbness, then sees a terrifying woman in a hospital gown standing on the side of the road.

At Joe’s house, the family dog, Moby, bolts into the woods in terror. Inside, Riley sees the same woman from the road standing in a dark hallway. She flees, and Joe calls in a high-level security team from work, led by Tyler Whitfield, but they find no evidence of an intruder. During a security walk-through, Riley has a more vivid hallucination of the woman in her bedroom, clawing at her own face and screaming, then lunging at Riley. The next morning, Joe learns that an investigator from headquarters (HQ), Javier Aguirre, is arriving. Aguirre questions Joe about Riley now living with him and mandates a new security clearance and psychological evaluation for her. He then requests a tuning session with Bishop. When Joe reviews Bishop’s file, he sees a photo of a woman with black, shoulder-length hair, matching Riley’s description of her phantom tormentor.

While Joe is at work, a sleep-deprived and terrified Riley flees the house and walks to the nearby town, eventually falling asleep in a public park. At the Facility, Joe and Aguirre observe Bishop’s tuning session, where she is bombarded with sensory information about a target named Victor Aminov. At Aguirre’s insistence, they push Bishop past safe limits. In agony, she gouges out her own eyes on the hooks holding them open. Despite her horrific injuries, she successfully provides intelligence that allows HQ to locate the target.

Meanwhile, Riley awakens in the park to a vision of Bishop, who explains that Joe’s facility is responsible for her torment and that she has found his weakness, then rushes at Riley. The vision ends abruptly, and Riley discovers she is brandishing a knife in front of a children’s soccer team. The police are called and, seeing her distress over her mother’s recent death, they drive her home. Riley calls her father, terrified and expressing thoughts of suicide. Joe, now deeply concerned, pressures his control room operator, Chuck, into retrieving classified information related to Kate’s death.

Joe watches police body-cam footage of Kate’s death by suicide and sees that she, too, was hallucinating and screaming at an unseen tormentor just before shooting herself. Hannah comes to Joe’s house to counsel Riley, and Joe eavesdrops using his hidden security cameras. Bishop projects a series of horrific, personalized hallucinations into Riley’s mind, revealing secrets she has learned by psychically observing Joe and Hannah for years, including Hannah’s deceased infant daughter and a past affair between Hannah and Joe. Bishop communicates that she has grown stronger and is now inside Riley’s mind. The truth is confirmed for Joe when he sees Bishop’s bloody, smiling face looking directly into his security camera from the dining room. Realizing Bishop can project her consciousness, Joe explains the entire Antenna program to Riley and promises he’ll free Bishop to save her.

The next morning, Joe returns to the Facility with a plan. He tricks security chief Tyler into keeping all guards in the lobby, then orders a full system reset, which he knows will disable all internal security cameras. He goes to Level Two, enters Bishop’s cell, and removes her protective mitts. He then enters a maintenance corridor and severs her nerve gas line. The sudden, agonizing return of all her senses overwhelms Bishop, and she tears herself to pieces. Joe creates a cover story for Aguirre, blaming a slow gas leak for Bishop’s increasing awareness and eventual death by suicide. Believing he has solved the problem, Joe is relieved until he receives a call and hears Riley say she is at the Facility. He goes outside to his truck and finds her there.

In the truck, Riley speaks with the collective voice of the eleven remaining Antennas. They explain that before she died, Bishop psychically united them in their shared darkness and led them to Riley, whose mind they now control. They demand Joe free them by cutting their gas lines, threatening to make Riley kill herself if he refuses. Joe agrees.

He returns to his office, assaults Aguirre, and ties him to a chair. Retrieving a hidden handgun, Joe takes Hannah, Chuck, and another operator, Tariq, hostage. He forces them to cut the gas lines to the other Antennas. Now in agony but in control of their bodies, the Antennas create a hallucination that tricks Tariq into opening a cell. The freed Antenna, Ferro, kills Tariq, takes his keycard, and begins releasing the others. Joe is knocked unconscious when his mask is cracked during the chaos.

Tyler’s security team bypasses the lockdown via an emergency shaft and finds Chuck’s dismembered body in the hallway. The Antennas project a mass hallucination, causing the security team to perceive the terrified staff in the break room as more Antennas. Tyler’s team opens fire, massacring nearly everyone before Hannah screams that it is a hallucination, breaking the illusion.

Joe awakens in a cell on Level Two, flayed but kept alive by the Antennas who stand over him. He hallucinates Riley’s possessed body among them, but the vision vanishes. They explain that they used his love for his daughter to manipulate him. When Tyler’s team finds them, Joe uses his last words to tell Tyler to kill them. The security team executes the Antennas.

Sometime later, Aguirre finds Riley on the couch at home, catatonic. After informing her of her father’s death, he offers her a choice: institutionalization or memory-wiping pills. Riley senses her father’s consciousness psychically reaching out, pleading with her to take the pills so she can move on. She complies.

A year later, Riley graduates from high school with only fuzzy memories of the trauma. She occasionally hears a guiding voice in her head, which she believes is her parents’ spirits in the role of a guardian angel. In the Epilogue, Aguirre visits a new facility, Site C. He requests a tuning session with Antenna-301, nicknamed Happy. The video feed shows Joe Gerhard, now an Antenna himself, scarred but smiling with bliss as he psychically watches over his daughter. Aguirre suddenly develops a severe headache, implying that Joe is now entering his mind.