Arthur's office was a different place following the letters of "A Friend"—smaller in some inexplicable way, as if the walls themselves were closing in with the burden of unspoken realities. He sat in his ergonomic office chair, gazing at his reflection in the blacked-out window over New Shanghai's smoldering Lower Tiers, seeing smoke plumes streaming up from the gang war he'd engineered.
The holographic projections beside him indicated current casualty reports: forty-seven killed, more than two hundred injured, and the Yamamoto family among thirteen families now residing in cramped emergency shelters. Marcus Chen's corpse was discovered in an alleyway outside the Kuroda fortress, three bullets in his chest and a data pad with the fabricated intelligence Arthur had planted in his mind still holding on in his lifeless hand.
Chen had died thinking he was rescuing the Yamamoto family. Instead, he had only hastened their fall into the very same predatory system which had ensnared him.
Arthur activated his personal investigator package and called up his own personnel file, insisting on demonstrating that his recollections were real. The system responded in the same classification error: Access Denied. Personnel File Classified Above User Authorization Level.
"Morrison," Arthur summoned his second-in-command. "I want you to perform a complete background check on me. Full psychological report, work history, medical files. Override Director-level authorization codes if needed."
Morrison glanced up from his tactical screens, his enhanced pattern recognition instantly recognizing the inconsistency in Arthur's order. "Sir, is there a particular security issue? Procedure calls for justification of self-investigation requests."
Arthur hesitated, knowing any truthful response would expose his increasing skepticism about his own identity—skepticism that could be read as psychological instability or security vulnerability. "The Architect has proven to have intimate knowledge of our personnel. I wish to know that my own files haven't been manipulated as part of their operations for collecting intelligence."
It was a plausible cover story, and Morrison believed it without question. While his subordinate struggled to reach the classified files, Arthur began examining the psychological profiling information on Dr. Elena Vasquez.
Her personnel file drew a portrait of a person propelled by increasingly intense feelings of guilt about her work within Nexus's human experiments. Fifteen years earlier, Dr. Vasquez had come on board as a research psychologist, initially working on therapeutic uses for memory modification strategies. Her early reports were enthusiastic about the prospect of treating trauma, addiction, and a range of psychological conditions through precision memory intervention.
But by about year seven of her service, the tone of her reports shifted. Citing "ethical issues," "patient well-being," and "informed consent" became increasingly common. By year ten, she was directly arguing with Director Vance regarding the extension of psychological conditioning programs from voluntary therapeutic interventions to coercive behavioral modification for "organizational assets."
Arthur's illusion powers flashed as he read her last employment review, conjuring a fleeting vision of Director Vance and Dr. Vasquez yelling at each other in the same office where Arthur had interviewed yesterday. In the fantasy, Vasquez was worn out, defeated, her overlying empathy Gift causing her physical pain as she recounted the psychological harm being done to unwilling test subjects.
"The human mind can't take this kind of manipulation," the illusory Vasquez told an equally illusory Vance. "We're not medicating patients anymore—we're producing compliant staff through systematic psychological torture. I can't do this."
Arthur shook off the illusion, but the words lingered. Producing compliant staff. Was that what had been done to him?
"Sir," Morrison cut in, "I'm experiencing some peculiar results on your background check. Your employment record indicates you came aboard Nexus eight years ago, but there are medical records that suggest you underwent intensive psychological conditioning treatments beginning two years prior to your actual date of hire."
Arthur's augmented reflexes engaged, deluging his system with adrenaline as the consequences struck him. "What kind of conditioning treatments?"
"Memory manipulation, personality realignment, and a process known as 'Identity Integration Therapy.' The records are deeply encrypted, but the treatment codes correlate with protocols crafted by Dr. Elena Vasquez's research department." Morrison hesitated, his pattern recognition skills easily making connections Arthur wasn't certain he wanted to see. "Sir, based on these reports, your psychological profile was faked up to maximize loyalty, mission efficiency, and emotional disconnection. You were not recruited by Nexus—namely, you were manufactured by them."
The room appeared to lurch away from Arthur as the words struck him as blows. Manufactured by them. Not hired, not persuaded to come aboard, not slowly corrupted by association with criminal activity—literally built to fit their needs through deliberate psychological engineering.
Arthur's illusion powers went off involuntarily, flooding his vision with shattered memories that tasted both alien and intimate. He found himself strapped to a laboratory table as technicians removed electrodes from his head. He lay with drugged, unfocused eyes, watching as Dr. Vasquez tweaked psychological conditioning machinery with tears streaming down her cheeks. He felt his own memories being methodically removed and replaced with painstakingly constructed false experiences meant to make him loyal to Nexus.
"The conditioning process lasted eighteen months," Morrison went on, reading from the secret files. "Full personality restructuring, implanted memories of a phony childhood and educational history, and psychological programming for optimal effectiveness as a field agent. Your deception capabilities were amplified through experimental neural modification, becoming more effective but also more psychologically associated with your artificially created identity."
Arthur clutched the arms of his chair, resisting the tide of vertigo and ontological terror sweeping through him. All that he thought he knew about himself—his past, his intentions, his very identity—was implanted by the same agency he worked so diligently for. He was not Arthur Blackthorne, master controller and mental predator. He was a victim of the most advanced identity theft conceivable.
"There's more, sir," Morrison replied, his tone conveying a balance of professional reserve and real concern. "The files suggest you weren't the sole subject of the program. Project Mirror developed seventeen various operatives through identical psychological conditioning procedures. The majority of them didn't make it past the identity integration stage."
Seventeen patients. Most of them didn't survive. Arthur understood with increasing horror that he was staring at proof of systematic psychological murder—the outright eradication of original personalities to build obedient corporate assets. Dr. Elena Vasquez hadn't simply labored for a criminal enterprise; she had been compelled to take part in what equated to industrial-scale identity assassination.
Arthur's communication device beeped with yet another encrypted message:
"Today you're in on the secret of Project Mirror. But having the information is only the beginning. Dr. Vasquez quit Nexus to reveal what they'd done to you and the rest. She's been attempting to reverse the conditioning, to restore your true identity. But psychological integration is deep-seated—erasing the spurious memories might shred what remains of your functional persona. The decision is up to you: continue as Arthur Blackthorne, wizard of illusions and assassin of the innocent, or gamble everything to find out who you were before Nexus turned you into their ultimate tool. —A Friend"
Arthur gazed at the message, his thoughts racing through the implications. Dr. Elena Vasquez wasn't merely The Architect revealing Nexus's operations—she was attempting to free the individuals they had psychologically enslaved, including Arthur himself. Her leaks weren't random intelligence collection; they were calculated carefully to provide chances for conditioned agents to doubt their artificial allegiance.
"Morrison," Arthur said cautiously, "how many other Nexus staff members possess similar psychological conditioning histories?"
Morrison processed the query, his upgraded pattern recognition searching through hundreds of employee records. "About forty-three current employees exhibit signs of different degrees of psychological alteration. Most are mid-level operatives with minimal conditioning—upgraded loyalty programming, emotional control adjustments, skill enhancement. But seven exhibit the same full-scale identity reconstruction you underwent."
Seven survivors of Project Mirror, strolling through Nexus's corridors with fabricated personalities and artificially implanted memories, thinking they were willing participants in corporate criminality when they were really victims of the most advanced psychological warfare ever created.
Arthur's illusion powers flickered once more, this time revealing fragments of face he knew—other Nexus agents he had collaborated with, individuals he had thought were criminals and co-workers, but who were themselves fellow victims of psychological abuse. Lieutenant Sandra Chen (no connection to Marcus), whose amplified tactical skills and emotional distance had always felt artificially sharp. Captain David Morrison. Arthur gazed at his sub with a different perspective, not merely seeing an employee but another casualty of Nexus's human test program.
"Morrison," Arthur instructed softly, "conduct a psychological conditioning test on yourself."
Morrison's face remained impassive, but Arthur detected the micro-expressions his illusion powers permitted him to translate with superhuman accuracy—a flash of doubt, a brief pupil dilation revealing psychological stress response. Morrison already knew, or at least had reason to suspect, the reality of his own identity.
"Already completed, sir," Morrison answered after a moment of silence. "My conditioning was not as complete as yours—they improved my pattern recognition capacity and reconditioned my emotional reactions to suppress empathy and enhance analytical detachment. But my basic personality and memories seem to be mostly intact." He stopped, regarding Arthur with real concern instead of professional respect. "The question is, what do we do with this information?"
Arthur gazed out at the city burning below, observing emergency response units—dozens of them Nexus subsidiaries—rescuing civilians from the fires he had ignited through psychological manipulation of a man who died thinking he was rescuing innocents. The system's fine brutality was flawless: even their victims became unwitting tools for the creation of more victims, an endless loop of fabricated pain designed to create profit and domination.
But now Arthur realized that he wasn't the mastermind behind this system—his was one of the most advanced products of the system, a human being methodically tortured into obedience and then deployed as a weapon against other innocents.
"We locate Dr. Elena Vasquez," Arthur declared, his tone laced with cold resolve that was unlike his customary professional calm—more real, perhaps, than anything he had experienced since his conditioning started. "Not to eliminate The Architect, but to learn what she's actually attempting. If there's any possibility of reversing the conditioning, of regaining our original selves, then we have to know the risks and the options."
Morrison agreed, his own artificially constructed personality wrestling with dueling programming—devotion to Nexus against the increasing awareness that Nexus had victimized him in a war of the mind. "And if the reversal process is too hazardous? If trying to restore our true selves would kill the operational personalities we presently possess?"
Arthur gazed at his reflection in the window once again, employing his powers of illusion to strip away every cover of pretense he could perceive. The face staring back was unrecognizable—younger features beneath high-tech alterations, colored eyes concealed behind bioengineered alterations, and an innocence of expression that had been methodically driven out of existence and supplanted with calculating predatory awareness.
"Then at least we'll know who we were," Arthur said, "before they turned us into monsters."
In the Academic Quarter, Dr. Elena Vasquez worked on, aware that her former test subjects were finally starting to ask the right questions. The communications from "A Friend"—a computer program she had created to offer psychological counseling throughout the deconditioning process—had been specially tuned to cause recognition, without immediate psychological breakdown.
Seven survivors of Project Mirror remained alive, still operational, still able to opt between their created personas and the risky potential for mental freedom. Dr. Vasquez had worked eighteen months on creating the methods that could potentially enable them to recall their true selves without shattering their minds in the process.
But the time to intervene was running out. Director Vance had sped up the Corporate Territories Program timeline, and as soon as Nexus gained governmental control, the psychological conditioning programs would move beyond individual agents to citywide application. The methods employed to fashion Arthur Blackthorne and fellow survivors would be utilized on a city level, producing millions of obedient citizens through systemic identity erasure.
The decision was no longer merely a matter of rescuing seven conditioned agents. It was a matter of stopping the industrialization of psychological assassination on a previously unimaginable scale.
Dr. Elena Vasquez readied herself for the riskiest part of her mission—face-to-face contact with the individuals she had once been compelled to torture, in a last-ditch effort to restore to them the selves that Nexus had taken.
The game was now a showdown between freedom of the mind and corporate despotism, with human identity itself at stake.