The Awakening of False Memory
The woman in the capsule was named Lirea , according to the Ebony Genesis Project file.
She was thirty-two years old, skilled in medical biology, educated at a university that never existed, and had an emotional history deeply tied to… Akihiko.
When he woke up, he showed no confusion. Just a disturbing calm.
—"Where is my son?"
Akihiko couldn't respond. Not only because that son didn't exist, but because Lirea's expression was real. Truly real.
Every gesture. Every word.
Every memory she shared about a life never lived…
was genuine in her.
The Project Root File
Riva, working from a secure station on Varosk, began analyzing the metadata from the Genesis Ebony lab's neural network. What she discovered wasn't simply an identity-cloning program:
"They're not just manufacturing humans with implanted memories.
They're mixing in fragments of real memories stolen from living people."
That is to say, Lirea wasn't an empty creation.
It was a mosaic composed of small truths… extracted from hundreds of real people.
Among them were parts of Akihiko.
And perhaps because of that, she recognized him as the father of a son who didn't exist... but who had been imagined by Akihiko, in his darkest years.
III. The city of duplicates
The information revealed something even more terrifying:
Genesis Ebony was not an isolated project.
There was an active facility in the forbidden region of Nyvara , an area that had been closed off to the outside world after the genetic war twenty years earlier.
According to the data, an underground city had been built there.
Project name: "The Replacement Shelter" .
Akihiko called his team:
Juno: Expert in operations in contaminated land. Marek: strategist. Riva: remote link. Lirea: against all odds, he decided to take her with him… to understand the magnitude of his reality. The Journey to Nyvara
Nyvara was covered in toxic fog, dormant mines, and zones of total silence.
It had to be crossed without satellite coordinates or network guidance.
During the journey, Lirea began to tell anecdotes about her son, about a home by the sea, about lullabies.
Juno, annoyed, interrupted her: "None of that happened. Don't you understand?"
Lirea didn't flinch. "So why do I remember him every night, with pain?"
Akihiko didn't intervene. Because he, too, had dreamed of that same home.
And there he understood the ultimate terror of the project:
They were extracting desires, not just memories.
The Replacement Shelter
Beneath Nyvara's surface, hidden in what looked like a devastated quarry, they found a blast door marked with the symbol of the Ebon Shadow.
They entered.
The air smelled of chlorine and disinfectant.
Metal hallways. White light. Sealed chambers.
And inside each one, hundreds of active capsules.
Each one contained a human being suspended in suspension. All with designed identities, false biographies, assembled memories…
Some were children. Others were elderly. All… waiting to be activated.
The internal conflict
As Juno prepared charges to destroy the facility, Lirea walked among the pods. Her eyes fell on one:
a five-year-old boy.
The file said:
Name: Sael
Father: Akihiko T.
—"It's him," Lirea said.
Akihiko didn't respond.
Marek pressed: "Shall we pull the plug or are you going to stay and tell a lie?"
Akihiko looked at the boy.
He remembered nights when he wished he hadn't taken up the sword. He remembered… writing that name, Sael, on an old napkin years ago.
—"This isn't just manipulation anymore.
This is intimate invasion."
VII. The Sabotage of the Shelter
Riva, from Varosk, activated a thermal overload virus in the Shelter 's core . They had 12 minutes before the collapse.
Akihiko carried the child. Lirea protected him with her body. Juno brought up the rear.
As they escaped, the capsules began to explode.
But some, before shutting down… briefly woke up.
Eyes opening.
Gazes without context. Voices without a past.
—"Who am I…?"
VIII. Fire and Sky
The Shelter was destroyed.
The capsules collapsed. The underground tower was buried.
Akihiko emerged with Lirea and the child in his arms.
Riva confirmed:
"Project Ebony Genesis has been dismantled. But copies were already circulating. There are at least 300 active subjects… scattered around the world."
Akihiko, with the child asleep on his chest, said:
—"So it's not over yet. Now, every person we know… might not have experienced what they claim to remember. "
Ysin watches from afar
In an unknown facility, in front of a screen, Ysin watched the latest images of the collapse.
Beside him, another Lethal. —"We lost a city."
—"No. We've gained a seed. The doubt has already been planted. Now they'll doubt not only the world…
but themselves. "
END OF CHAPTER 148