Chapter 363: Chapter 363: The Fragmented Truth

A deathly silence descended upon the other end of the line. Julian could distinctly hear Catherine Sterling’s breathing suddenly come to a halt.

After what felt like an eternity, Catherine Sterling’s voice finally resonated through the receiver, trembling and laden with a profoundly helpless warning: "Jules... you should not recall those matters. Just live your current life."

But Julian harbored no intention of stopping. He recalled the entirely emotionless eyes of that child, recalled the terrifying bullet-dodging reflexes of his very own body earlier today. He pressed a step further, dropping the ultimate bombshell: "Who is B-00?"

Crash!

The sound of shattering glass transmitted through the phone. That piercing noise served as absolute proof that the woman who perpetually maintained a noble and composed demeanor had entirely lost her control. Catherine panicked, her breaths becoming rapid and fragmented, much like a person on the verge of drowning.

"What... what did you just say?" Catherine Sterling’s voice shattered into pieces, entirely unable to retain its customary elegance.

"I asked, who is B-00?" Julian repeated, his gaze hardening into ice.

"It is not a child..." Perhaps the woman could no longer conceal the truth anyway: "It... it is the very first completed product. Jules, A-01 like you... is merely an unforeseen variable, a completely failed draft of Project Eden. B-00 is the ultimate standard, the exact creation that they have always been pursuing."

The first completed product? The ultimate standard?

So it turned out that these fragmented memories, these scars of completely unknown origin, and this exact muscle memory bearing an innate killing instinct were all residual aftermaths stemming from some hellish laboratory.

"Listen to me, Jules..." Catherine Sterling practically screamed in pure desperation, delivering a warning that carried the very breath of the grim reaper: "If you have managed to recall that name... then it inherently proves that it has already been activated. If it is still alive... it will undoubtedly come looking for you. It will obliterate all existing variables in order to become the sole survivor!"

Beep... beep... beep...

The call was abruptly disconnected.

Outside, the summer drizzle continued to fall incessantly, with each individual water droplet tapping gently against the windowpane to create long, blurred streaks of moisture. The pale yellow glow of the nightstand lamp cast a soft illumination against the wall, a light that should have inherently brought about a sense of warmth and comfort, yet in this particular moment, it only rendered the entire room oppressively suffocating to the point of breathlessness.

Julian maintained his previous posture, the hand gripping the cellular phone remaining entirely stiff suspended in mid-air without the slightest hint of movement. His gaze was fixed intently upon the boundless void laid out before him, utterly empty and freezing cold.

Ethan Caldwell had remained constantly by Julian’s side from the very beginning to the absolute end, absorbing every single reaction of his beloved into his observant eyes. Ethan furrowed his brows, reaching out a hand to gently brush against the back of Julian’s hand that was tightly clutching the phone.

Piercingly cold.

Julian’s complexion was frighteningly pallid, utterly devoid of even the slightest trace of healthy color. However, the exact detail that caused Ethan Caldwell the most intense worry was not the physical frailty being exhibited outwardly, but rather Julian’s excessively calm expression. It was a calmness that bordered on the abnormal.

Julian was simply sinking into an exceptionally deep state of contemplation, plunging so profoundly that it almost seemed as though he wished to confine his very self within a pitch-black dungeon completely lacking any discernible exit.

Ethan Caldwell acted with resolute firmness yet profound gentleness as he pried open each and every one of Julian’s fingers, smoothly extracting the cellular device from Julian’s grasp and placing it aside on the bedside cabinet.

"Do not force yourself to think about it right at this moment." The man’s voice was remarkably deep and low, carrying an exceptionally steadfast sense of reassurance.

Julian blinked faintly, the corners of his lips turning upward ever so slightly to form a terribly insipid smile, while the voice that escaped his throat was as fragile as a silken thread: "But I am fast approaching the point where I can no longer differentiate whether I am simply thinking, or genuinely remembering anymore."

The spoken sentence was seemingly as light as a feather, yet it weighed heavily with an overwhelming sense of helplessness and utter bewilderment.

The spacious room descended into absolute silence once more. The sound of the falling rain outside the window appeared to grow increasingly distinct with each passing second. Julian lowered his gaze slightly, allowing his long eyelashes to completely obscure the tumultuous array of emotions, intricately woven with a surging tide of terror, that swirled in the depths of his eyes.

After a profoundly long interval, Julian’s voice resonated through the air once again, carrying a faintly suppressed tremor within its tone: "Ethan... What if I am genuinely not Julian at all?"

Ethan Caldwell did not immediately offer a verbal response. The tall man shifted himself closer, wrapping his strong arms securely around Julian’s waist, utilizing his strength to pull that somewhat slender and freezing cold body flush against his own broad chest. Ethan embraced Julian with immense tightness, holding him so securely that Julian could acutely perceive the steady, unwavering heartbeat and the surging wave of bodily warmth transferring over from Ethan.

Ethan Caldwell rested his chin firmly against the crown of Julian’s head, his deep and comforting voice vibrating directly adjacent to Julian’s ear as he slowly posed a counter-question: "What exactly do you believe constitutes a human being?"

Julian remained in silent contemplation.

"Memories?" Ethan Caldwell soothingly stroked his large hand down the entire length of Julian’s spine, earnestly attempting to alleviate the severe tension that was tightly coiled within every single muscle fiber: "A given name? Or perhaps some specific fragment of the past?"

Ethan slid one of his hands smoothly beneath the incredibly delicate fabric of the silk shirt, gently resting his large and slightly calloused palm directly over the precise location of Julian’s frantically palpitating heart.

"As far as I am concerned, none of those aforementioned things hold any shred of importance." The applied pressure from Ethan Caldwell’s hand intensified ever so slightly, his tone ringing with a steadfastness that bordered on utter dominance: "The person who causes my heart to ache is you. The person who drives me to the brink of absolute madness is also you."

"That is more than enough."

The radiating warmth flowing from Ethan’s palm, coupled with the heat radiating from his chest, seeped incrementally into Julian’s frigid body. Ethan Caldwell’s spoken words acted akin to a colossal, unyielding anchor, firmly grounding Julian in reality and forcibly dragging him back from the very precipice of an emotional collapse.

Yet, buried deep within the core of his being, Julian acutely knew that he was not entirely alright. Julian buried his face profoundly against Ethan Caldwell’s chest, squeezing his eyes tightly shut.

Catherine Sterling’s frantic words continued to linger like an inescapable phantom echoing relentlessly within his ears: "A completely failed draft... The very first completed product..."

For the very first time in his entire existence, even when compared to facing the most venomous and malicious schemes imaginable, Julian genuinely tasted the bitter flavor of absolute, paralyzing fear. Julian possessed no fear of dying.

He was utterly terrified of his own existence.

Julian feared that he might not even be classified as a proper "human being" in the truest sense of the word, but was rather merely a manufactured "product" meticulously molded from the sterile confines of some unknown laboratory. Ultimately, was this very soul of his that claimed to have transmigrated into a novel genuine, or was it simply nothing more than a highly sophisticated snippet of code that had been successfully implanted into a host?

"Bzz... bzz..."

The aggressive vibrating sound emanating from the cellular phone that had been tossed onto the mattress abruptly severed Julian’s murky and chaotic train of thought.

Julian leaned his upper body slightly out of Ethan Caldwell’s secure embrace in order to reach out and retrieve the device. The screen illuminated the dim space, displaying a newly arrived text message from Lucas Hill. Attached to the message was a heavily encrypted data file.

[Data successfully extracted from the internal network systems of HJ Capital. I still have not managed to decrypt the entirety of it, but this specific portion is exceedingly bizarre.]

Julian instinctively held his breath, firmly pressing his finger against the screen to open the attached file.

The digital document that manifested on the screen was not intact by any means; it appeared utterly fragmented and haphazardly patched together, much like a singular sheet of paper that had been violently shredded into confetti and then desperately glued back into a cohesive whole. The internal contents were densely packed with highly specialized scientific terminology, interminably long sequences of numerical digits, and agonizingly chaotic research notes.

However, Julian’s sharp gaze was instantaneously locked onto a prominently capitalized header: PROJECT EDEN.

Julian swiftly skimmed his eyes across the subsequent lines of text. Completely diverging from all of their previous, generalized speculations regarding some deranged initiative aimed at bodily modification or the creation of superhuman entities, the fundamental core objective of "Project Eden" carried an infinitely more science-fictional and profoundly terrifying conceptual reality.

The classified document obsessively reiterated a singular, horrifying phrase: "Consciousness Synchronization".

The CORE organization fervently believed that the intricate memories and the complex personalities of human beings were, in their purest essence, merely transcendent forms of digital data. And if they were indeed nothing more than data, they could theoretically be systematically disassembled, fundamentally reconstructed, seamlessly amalgamated, and even directly transmitted from one biological vessel into another.

The subsequent results report section cataloged on the following pages was densely saturated with an endless litany of failure notations. The vast majority of the living test subjects suffered an identical, exceedingly tragic culmination: rapidly descending into incurable madness right in the midst of the synchronization process, their original personalities completely disintegrating to leave behind a hollowed-out, empty shell, or inevitably committing suicide because they could no longer withstand the agonizing mental torment of possessing fragmented memories that did not originally belong to them.

That was, at least, until Julian’s gaze came to a screeching halt upon a remarkably brief notation that had been meticulously highlighted with a crimson border.

Subject A-01: Unforeseen variable. The raw data reception rate has vastly exceeded the maximum threshold, yet the anticipated phenomenon of complete personality collapse did not occur. Will proceed to continuously monitor the subject’s capability for independent self-shaping.

"Received without collapsing."