All eyes turned to me, my phone in my hand, the screen emulated on all the monitors in the room.

  "Fuck."

  "What just happened?" Victor asked, backing away from the computer.

  I explained, in brief detail, my interactions with Ch0z3n1 and how I had found him when I was searching for answers. Now, whoever this person was, had access to this Project Echidna, which had been hidden down here.

  "You didn't know this person had infiltrated your device?" Liliana asked, her snark returning. I opened my mouth to speak, but Vance piped up.

  "Of course he didn't know. He wouldn't have brought the phone in otherwise. It's not like he even knew what was down here in the first place." He shot back at her. She crossed her arms and adjusted her glasses.

  "I'm sorry." My voice caught in my throat.

  The screens all flickered back to the blue background with the windows logo, but all the icons and files were gone. Victor spun back to the screens, cursing under his breath.

  "Gone. It's all gone. All of it." He slammed his hand on the keyboard. "What a waste of time."

  "You can't get anything from these experiments Doc?" Langdon asked, poking at the tubes, the male forms inside floating lifelessly. Victor waved him off, without so much as a word.

  "What do we do now?" Kas asked, resting her arm on my shoulder. I was glad for the physical contact in that moment. I felt hollow.

  "I guess we can leave." Vance said, looking around the room, searching for anything worth taking. He motioned for the other Chosen to do the same. I looked down at my phone as it vibrated again. It was Nadia.

  "Your friend is calling." Kas told me, as I stared down at the ringing phone in my hand. I just stared at it until it stopped ringing. When Kas looked at me, confused, I nodded at the computers.

  The Order network was secure, and cut out any access from non-Order sources once inside. Just like in the Citadel, my phone shouldn't have been able to receive any calls from outside the Order of Vigilance. Except I had switched it off, only to find Nadia had reached out. Which meant...

  "For fuck sake. She's in on it too." I mumbled. Kas looked at me, until what I said registered.

  "I'm sorry John, I hate that you were right about all this. But if you were part of the Order soldiers sent here to shut this place down, why don't you remember? Or more importantly, why did they work so hard to take all of that away?" She said, looking down at the dried blood on the white floor.

  "That's the part that doesn't make sense. Why me? And why work so hard to hide the Order from me? To kill my wife and son, to steal my daughter." I felt like crying as I spoke. It was all too much. This organization that had supposedly protected the world for centuries, had singled me out. Had ruined me.

  "Manufactured memories." Victor said softly, and then again, louder so I could hear. I looked up at him with tired eyes, waiting for him to explain. The man stood to his full height, which was still slightly stooped. He moved over to the pods and gently ran a hand along the glass of the first one. The lifeless body of a non-descript man floated around inside.

  "The memories you are looking for aren't real; they never happened. Everything you remember after this place, even of this place is false." He said, without looking back. He stared up at the lifeless body bobbing in the green fluid that had lost it's opaqueness.

  "What do you mean? The Order implanted fake memories in me to steer me away?" I asked, moving closer to the pods, to him. I noticed some of the Chosen had stopped their search of the lab, listening.

  "The Order implanted memories. Period. As in you had none before." Victor said after a loud sigh. He moved from the first pod to the second, tap-tapping on the glass like the men inside were fish.

  "I don't understand." I said, stiffening at the implication.

  "Yes, I suppose that is by design." He replied quickly. "Tell me John, what do you remember about the mission on this island? In this lab?"

  I froze. I had told Kas that the closer I had gotten to the door, the harder it seemed to recall the details. I remembered the blood, the gore, The Guilt.

  "I remember moving into the lab with my squad, I remember someone setting the monster free that killed them all. I remember taking the keycard off my commanding officer's body to get out." They were snippets now. I tried to recall the faces on the photograph in my room back home. The one of my old platoon mates.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  "And what do you remember of your family?" He asked, his scarred face turning up into a smirk, as if he was holding onto some big secret.

  "I remember my wife. My son and daughter." I stumbled through the words. Victor bobbed his head like a seagull and rolled his wrist, motioning for me to go further.

  "My wife's name was..." I struggled, my eyes going wide. I had said it out loud to remember in the gym at the Citadel. I had clung to it in moments of fear and desperation. It was gone.

  "Do you remember what your children looked like?" Victor seemed to be preening now. I could here the slow movement of Kas reaching back for her crossbow. Victor moved slowly to the third pod, still tap-tapping.

  "I don't. Get to your point Victor." I moved through the distraught feeling of being without my memories, to anger at the arrogant doctor.

  "My point is, the medication you had been taking were keeping the manufactuered memories together. Your mind, think of it this way, your mind is like a puzzle. Someone put it together, piece by piece. But the table they are building it on was unsteady, sometimes, a piece or two would fall to the floor, yeah? So whoever was putting together the puzzle decided that once they had it all, or mostly together, they would glue it, so that the pieces fit and stayed." He spoke slowly, making sure I was following as he tap-tapped his way to the fourth pod.

  "Your medication was the glue keeping this past life of your together. Without them, the true nature of your mind has been allowed to seep out. Someone has tipped the table over, scattering the pieces." He continued.

  "What do you know Victor?" Kas demanded, her crossbow flicking out and into her hands, levelling with Doctor Frankenstein. The mystical hiss of Artifacts appearing sizzled across the room. I watched as the Chosen armed themselves, not moving any closer, but preparing. I looked pointedly at Vance.

  "Et tu, Brute?" I snarled sarcastically. Vance smiled and shrugged, turning his sword over in his hands.

  "As I was saying," Victor said loudly. "You were constructed, I would say from the ground up, but that would be untrue." He placed his full palm on the glass of the pod in front of him and turned to look at me.

  "You weren't even the first John." He said, motioning to the fifth, broken pod. I felt my brow twitch. My brain raced, desperately wanting to deny everything he was telling me. it was sick and twisted.

  "You mean to tell me that I was created in this lab, that I'm some kind of mutant freak?" I asked, my hand slowly moving under my jacket to my sidearm.

  "I believe chimera was the correct term we were using. Project Echidna was to design a hybrid threat. To unite the worlds once more, where the Progenitors, and subsequently, the Order of Vigilance were revered as heroes, instead of working in the shadows. But monsters had begun to think and feel differently. A lot of them adapted over time, becoming sentient enough to work jobs, and cultivate a society for themselves. And with organizations like the Non-Human Protection Service making the hunting and killing of monsters more difficult, well, the Order needed a new threat. Something worse. They tried mixing and matching monsters like a Mr. Potato Head. Which, in some cases, worked well; it created hostile, angry monsters with a hatred for humans. But ultimately, it was man itself that proved to be the best mix. Creating chimeras that blended human with monsters proved to be more difficult, but the ones that work..." Victor motioned to me. "By the Gods, did they work."

  "So I'm some kind of monster-human hybrid, born in a lab? Is that right, Doctor Frankenstein?" I chuckled and scoffed, my brain not allowing me to register any of what he was saying as reality. It couldn't be. It was all absurd. I looked to Kas for back up, but her brow was furrowed, as she moved back and forth, her eyes and crossbow trained on the Chosen.

  "Yes actually. You were born from the DNA of an old Order member, killed in the line of duty, and grown in one of these artificial wombs of my design. You were given memories by a computer algorithm, and had your pieces swap around with some sort of monster." He pressed some buttons on the diagnostic screen attached to the fifth pod with the shattered glass and pulled up a panel. "Ah yes, you were all made from the DNA of Librarian Rook, and you specifically were merged with several different monster parts. Which would explain why your monster hunter friend here couldn't figure out what was stalking you." He told me.

  I stared at the man, his mismatched patches of skin and scars crossing all over his body; his too long arms, touching the broken pod, and his jaundiced eyes staring back at me. Victor had known all along and had followed me out of scientific curiosity. He had known what I was this whole time and Vance and his team had come as his protection. Which meant Lancelot was in on it too. Did that mean Kas and Pendragon were too? Still at my side, Kas made an effort to defend me. She was an outsider too. She knew what it was like to be exiled and forgotten. Even if she had known, she had still gone out of her way to help me, to protect me. I could count on her. My hand moved quickly to my gun with the expertise of years of training. Or...I guess it wasn't. I pointed at Victor's head. The Chosen of the Citadel went to lunge forward, but Victor held up a hand, staying them.

  "Tell me the truth. Tell me everything." I demanded through gritted teeth. Victor rolled his eyes and flipped his wrist out.

  "What do you think I have been doing John? Is your mind so addled that you cannot absorb what I am telling you?" He shot back. When I didn't budge, he sighed.

  "You were created from the genetic remains of Librarian Rook and fused with monster DNA. You were grown here, in this very lab, as part of Project Echidna, which, thanks to you, is in the hands of some mysterious force. You were given artificial memories to make you think you were a regular person. These memories grew and shaped themselves based on your own desires and wishes when you broke free. The Order continued to monitor you from a distance, supplying you with pills that kept those memories active and healthy. You started digging, and they tried to push you off track. When that didn't work, they brought you back into the fold, albeit, seemingly by accident. Your monster, The Guilt, does not exist. You made it up in your head, the puzzle pieces falling off the table." He made a motion with his finger at his head, as if to imply I was crazy. I hated it, but I couldn't fault him for it. It would appear that I had indeed, lost my mind. But I was starting to find it again. I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket again, but I ignored it, making no indication or movement.

  "So where are these monster pieces of me then?" I asked. Victor shrugged, and motioned to the medical table in the middle of the surgical theatre.

  "I could open you up and find out, if you like?" He offered, smiling wickedly.