Julian Sterling’s mind buzzed. His "transmigration" into this world, waking up in the original Julian Sterling’s body while retaining his own personality and thoughts... could that have been a form of "consciousness transfer"? This document did not confirm that his transmigration was a fabrication, but it threw out a cruel possibility: What if everything he believed about his origins was merely a coincidentally successful "fusion" of Project Eden?

Right at that moment, Lucas Hill sent another new file. It was a restored video clip.

Julian Sterling pressed play. Ethan Caldwell also leaned in close, resting his chin on Julian Sterling’s shoulder, his sharp gaze staring intently at the small screen.

The video quality was exceptionally poor, with continuous static and stuttering. The scene depicted a cold laboratory, divided into two sections by a massive pane of tempered glass.

Inside the room were two children.

The blurry camera angle made it impossible to clearly see their faces. One child was curled up, sitting motionlessly with hugged knees in the corner behind the glass layer. The other child stood on the outside, quietly pressing close to the glass, staring intently inside.

The atmosphere in the video was chillingly desolate.

Suddenly, a crackling sound echoed, it was the voices of two researchers conversing: 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

"Do not let B-00 come into contact with A-01 anymore."

"We cannot stop it. Their synchronization rate is increasing too rapidly, these two subjects are connecting on their own."

Julian Sterling froze, his fingers tightly gripping the edge of the phone: "Synchronization?"

The video was nearing its end, the image severely distorted by static. But in the final seconds, Julian Sterling managed to catch a subtle movement. The child standing outside the glass, B-00, suddenly bent down. It slipped something through a tiny, narrow ventilation gap at the bottom of the pane, pushing it toward the child curled up in the corner.

The frame paused and zoomed in. Although it was blurry, Julian Sterling still recognized the shape of that object.

A piece of wood carved into the shape of a sun.

Julian Sterling’s heart felt as if it were being crushed by someone’s grip. B-00 was not merely a completed product standing on high, looking down upon the "draft" A-01. B-00 had actively initiated contact, and had even given this keepsake to Julian Sterling.

The phone screen went pitch black.

Neither of them said a word. Silence enveloped them both. Ethan Caldwell reached out to smooth back the loose strands of hair falling across Julian Sterling’s forehead, his gaze complex, filled with both heartache and a dangerous edge.

Right at that moment, Ethan Caldwell’s phone rang. It was a call from Helen Lloyd.

"You should answer it." Julian Sterling took a deep breath.

Ethan Caldwell nodded, pressing a light kiss to Julian Sterling’s temple: "I will step out to the balcony to take this, I am not going anywhere."

When Ethan Caldwell’s back disappeared behind the curtains, Julian Sterling finally slowly lifted himself up. He pulled open the nightstand drawer, intending to retrieve the velvet box to store the wooden sun fragment that he always carried with him. A subconscious action to seek a sense of reality.

But his movement suddenly froze in mid-air.

Julian Sterling’s pupils constricted sharply.

Beside the velvet box in the drawer, there was something that did not belong here. A yellowed piece of paper folded in half.

Julian Sterling remembered very clearly, absolutely certain that, when he had opened this drawer in the afternoon, it was completely empty aside from the velvet box. From the moment he and Ethan Caldwell returned home, absolutely no one had stepped into this room.

Julian Sterling’s trembling hand reached out, pinching the piece of paper and unfolding it.

The scribbled crayon handwriting of a child struck his eyes:

"For Little Jules."

He flipped the piece of paper to the back. The handwriting was crooked but distinct: "Do not let them know."

The blood in Julian Sterling’s veins ran cold and froze. He stood rooted to the spot.

"Ding."

The screen of the phone resting on the bed suddenly lit up. A text message from an unknown number had just been delivered. The content of the message was merely a single line: [You have always liked hiding things in the old place.]

The initial sensation that rushed into his brain at this moment was not exactly sheer terror, nor the panic of realizing his personal space had been violated. Instead, a chill ran down his spine, carrying with it a bizarrely strange familiarity, sticky and hard to shake off.

The sender of this message knew "his" habits, knew exactly how "he" hid the most important items. But the thing that made Julian Sterling’s chest feel as though it were being weighed down by a massive boulder, so suffocating that it was hard to breathe, was this: that person knew the habits of "A-01 as a child", and absolutely not those of the present Julian Sterling.

He himself had absolutely no memories of this so-called "old place" whatsoever. Not a single concept, not a single image, everything was terrifyingly blank.

The overwhelming dread of being thoroughly understood by someone lurking in the shadows, someone who knew things that he himself had forgotten, caused Julian Sterling’s breathing to become rapid and heavy. The space in the room felt as if all of its oxygen had been siphoned away.

Right at that moment, the balcony curtains were drawn back. Ethan Caldwell had just finished the call with Helen Lloyd and was returning into the room. Upon seeing Julian Sterling’s pale, stiff complexion and his eyes glued to the phone screen, the man instantly realized something was wrong. The air pressure around Ethan Caldwell plummeted, he took long strides to the edge of the bed, not asking a single word, but merely frowning as he looked at Julian Sterling.

Julian Sterling did not hide it, nor did he have the strength to conceal anything. He directly handed the phone and the yellowed piece of paper with the child’s crayon handwriting to Ethan Caldwell.

The man took them, his gaze sweeping over the piece of paper before stopping at the line of the message. Ethan Caldwell remained silent, a stillness that stretched out until it was suffocating, leaving only the ticking sound of the clock on the wall to be heard. More than anyone else, this man clearly understood the severity of the problem: If the adversary could already secretly sneak right into their bedroom, place a piece of paper inside the nightstand drawer without alerting anyone, and then leisurely send a message to Julian Sterling’s personal number... then it meant they had gotten very, very close.

Close enough to feel the breath of death lurking right at the nape of their necks. The safe distance that Ethan Caldwell had always confidently maintained, the most impenetrable defensive barrier of this villa, had been torn apart as effortlessly as a piece of scrap paper.

The atmosphere in the room was as taut as a bowstring. Ethan Caldwell immediately took out his phone, dialing a string of numbers to call Felix Tate.

"Inspect the entire security system of the villa immediately." Ethan Caldwell ordered, his voice deep and as cold as millennial ice: "Extract all the camera footages, sweep every blind spot. It is urgent, do it right now."

Julian Sterling sat curled up on the bed, listening to every word from Ethan Caldwell. After hanging up, the man lowered his head and tapped on his phone, likely explaining the situation.

About fifteen minutes later, Felix Tate called back. The sound from the other end of the line was put on speaker, ringing out crystal clear in the tranquil space.

"There are absolutely no signs of a break-in." Felix Tate’s voice was unusually grave and tense: "I have personally rechecked the entire sensor network, the infrared camera system, and the security filters. No one entered from the outside, no cameras reported an error or experienced interference, nor were any doors opened after the two of you returned to the room."

Ethan Caldwell furrowed his brows deeper, his knuckles tightening their grip around the phone: "You mean to say..."

"If it is not one of our own people on the inside." Felix Tate hesitated for a moment, his voice carrying an oppressive weight, "Then that person understands this security system even better than we do, enough to bypass every single one of the strictest security layers that I have established without leaving behind even a single digital trace."

Their enemy right now was like an invisible phantom. A monster capable of freely entering and exiting their most private space, leaving behind messages like a whisper in the ear, relentlessly manipulating their fear.

After Ethan Caldwell stepped out to personally recheck the premises alongside Felix Tate and the bodyguard team, Julian Sterling was left all alone in the room.

The silence had now morphed into a lingering form of torture.

He sat absentmindedly on the edge of the bed, his vacant gaze staring down at the yellowed piece of paper bearing the scribbled words "For Little Jules" and the wooden fragment carved into the shape of a sun, which were laid side by side on the mattress. The pale yellow glow of the lamp cascaded downwards, casting subtle shadows over the rough, unpolished grain of the wood.