The next few weeks flew by faster than anticipated. I forgot all about being alone at Christmas. Instead, I spent time with Kas, and with Vance and his team. Despite the age difference, Vance had taken on a very mentor-like position in my life at the Citadel.

  Kas and I spent a lot of time in the Library together. She had been scouring tomes to find some kind of creature that shared similarities with The Guilt. Like my search on the Bestiary website, she had also thought Slender Man, for a bit, before disproving herself. She had finally settled on the fact that it might be something occult that the Order hadn't seen before.

  Or that I was crazy.

  "Okay," Kas said, long and drawn out. "But when was the last time you've seen your Guilt thing?"

  "Right before I fell unconcious in the Rejuvenation Pool." I told her, for probably the twelveth time. I rolled my eyes and shook my head.

  "And you've had no indication of it since? No flickering lights, blurred vision, ears ringing?" She asked again.

  "No Kas. Come on, I know you're trying to lead to the easy solution that this is all in my head. But I watched this thing slaughter my squad at Partridge and I saw it kill..." I froze, having a hard time with saying it out loud. "I watched it kill my wife and son. And it took my daugther."

  I put my head in my hand as I rested my elbow and on the big white oak study desk. I stared at Kas, frustrated at my own lack of understanding of the situations when they happened, and at her inability to conceive anything beyond the fact that I was suffering delusions.

  "Is there a triggering factor? Or does this thing just appear randomly?" She asked. I noticed she had a lined paper notepad out, and was writing quite detailed notes. Regardless of what this was, she was at least taking it seriously.

  "Stress, fear, shame. Any kind of negative emotion spike usually." I told her. She nodded her head as she scribbled it down.

  "How much can you tell me about the first time you encountered it?" She asked, suddenly serious. I sat forward, and rubbed the bridge of my nose.

  "Honestly, it gets harder to remember. Looking back at my military days, it all seems like a blur now. I remember getting to Partridge Island. We came at night, on a silent black boat. We had stealth gear to navigate the outside, but I remember it being empty, like there was nothing guarding the secret entrance under the monument." I recalled.

  "Someone else from the squad had the keycard to get inside. I don't remember who my unit leader was..." I froze. In my memory, all the faces were covered with black masks. Everyone wore black tactical gear that had no emblems or ensignia.

  "I just remember following orders. Going down the secret stairs under the monument. The walls were cold steel. We went deeper, into a labratory. It felt like it was far underground, behind a bunch of other doors that required the same keycard." I looked at Kas, who stared at me.

  "Where did you guys get the keycard?" She asked. I shook my head.

  "My commanding officer had it. Must have been recovered prior to the mission. That was the only way we were able to traverse the place." I told her.

  "Do you remember anything standing out? About the place or the keycard?" She asked. I tried to recall any detail about the way the labratory looked, or if the keycard had any names or features on it.

  "I remember the lab had a lot of glass windows. They told us they were doing human experimentation down there. Claimed it was some post-war Nazi scientists. I don't recall there being an SS logos. Nothing was in German. I remember looking in the windows and seeing the mangled, mutated bodies. Like someone was trying to force humans and animals together." I told her.

  Suddenly, I was hit with memories of the Old World train stations. I had seen half human, half animal people. Centaurs, satyrs, crocodile headed creatures. Even the gremlins kind of resembled humans. It occured to me that they hadn't been working on human animal hybrids.

  "John, what is it?" Kas asked, noticing the vacancy in my eyes. I could feel the blood drain from my face.

  "They weren't making human animal hybrids. They were experimenting on monsters." I said as the realization filled my head.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  "What?" Kas looked perplexed.

  "I had always thought they were doing some kind of experiment where they were fusing animal parts to humans. But I had never met any monsters before. Now that I know they exist, I think I understand what I was seeing in that lab. They were performing experiments on monsters." I told her. I was filled with the grim realization that whoever was running those labs also knew about this world; the one underneath and behind it all.

  "What do you remember after seeing the monsters in glass cells?" Kas pressed. I tried to think back, but there were holes in my memory; like someone had burned holes into a roll of film.

  "The next thing I remember was The Guilt tearing my squad apart. I took the keycard off my commander's body and got out. I collapsed outside and was found by a local." I recalled. Kas frowned as she jotted down notes.

  "What do you remember from the incident with your family?" She asked slowly. She knew it was a sensitive topic, but if we were going to make any progress, I was going to have to tell her everything.

  Or at least, what I remembered.

  "That moment was more of a blur than Partridge Island. I remember my wife, Diane, and I were arguing about something. My son came out of his room and got involved when he shouldn't have. There was some kind of flash, like the sensory issues The Guilt creates. Kinda like a flashbang going off. I remember being on the floor, watching it kill my wife, unable to get up and protect her. I remember feeling helpless. I couldn't move or focus. And then it went for my son, after he ran to protect my daughter." I swallowed hard. Remembering was phyiscally painful.

  "That must have been hard. I'm sorry John." Kas said as she jotted down more notes. She sat back in her chair and looked over the notes, pulling them in closer to her body when I leaned over to sneak a peek.

  "Are you doing a psych eval?" I asked, alarmed.

  "No. I'm trying to see what parts are missing and why. It seems like either you've created a mental block, or certain parts of your memory have been removed." She told me, holding up her notes to show me her timeline and ideas.

  "Removed?" I asked. "Is that something that you guys can do?"

  I wondered if perhaps there was some kind of magic that could be used to poke holes in my mind. I looked around the Library, suddenly paranoid.

  "It is not out of the realm of possiblity for magic or tech." She thought for a moment before asking, "Do you have any gaps in your memory when you've seen The Guilt recently? Like in the Pool or at your apartment?"

  Thinking about it now, I hadn't lost any memories those times. Those encounters with The Guilt had all ended the moment someone else interacted with me, like when Nadia kicked my door down, or when Kas had been sitting in my bedroom. Otherwise, it had ended when I fell unconcious. I told Kas that, and she nodded slowly.

  "I think someone or something intentionally left holes in your mind. Whatever happened the first and second time, you weren't supposed to see. All the times afterward were just torment." She said as she began to write more notes.

  "Or it was collusion. Maybe I only saw it those times after, so that whoever used it the first two times could keep me convinced." My detective brain clicked to life, and the cogs began to turn. I instinctively brought my hand to my pocket and grabbed the pill bottle. I put it down on the table and stared at it.

  "Have you still been taking those? Aren't they for pain?" Kas asked. I shooked my head before she even finished.

  "They gave them to me for psychotic episodes. But that was only after my boss told me I needed a psych evaluation from the police service approved psychiatrist. And now that I know they were being controlled and paid off by the Order..." I turned to look at Kas who held her hands up defensively.

  "If there was some kind of conspiracy, I had nothing to do with it. I came because Anders asked me too." She told me, keeping her eyes locked on mine. I stared at her for a long time. I wanted to believe she was telling me the truth. I wanted to believe she was on my side. But my instincts told me I needed to get out of here.

  Ch0z3n1 had been right. The Order of Vigilance had its hands in everything. And they were covered in blood. Possibly even the blood of my family.

  "John, before you do anything crazy, please walk me through what you are thinking." Kas begged. She lowered her hands and reached out to touch mine, but I flinched away.

  "If the Order is behind the death of my family, the death of my squad, I'll burn this whole place to ground." I growled.

  "John, you need to calm down. Tell me what is going on?" She whispered at me, her eyes darting around. Where we were sitting was mostly empty, but our voices carried in the big Library.

  "Whatever happened at Partridge Island was not something I was supposed to see, so someone took pieces of those memories. The next time it showed up, it took my family, and I lost pieces of that too. When I claimed a monster had killed my family, the police force told me that it had been a robbery gone wrong. That I had frozen out of fear. But I've been a cop for years, and never froze. They had me go to a psychiatrist who was in league with the police force, who is controlled by the Order. They put me on these pills. And I've been taking the pills to stop seeing the monster, but the continued use of the pills was causing me to see the monster." I explained, standing up from the table.

  Kas stood with me, like an excited puppy, but her face was filled with fear.

  "This is an awfully deep conspiracy John. And you don't have any proof." She told me.

  "I just need to know how and why. I need to know why the Order didn't want me remembering what I saw on Partridge Island. And why my family was killed for it. The Guilt creature was slotted in as a scapgoat. No wonder there was no information on the thing. It never existed. My mind fabricated it to fill the holes they put in my mind. It's hiding something. They are hiding something." I whispered harshly. "But first, we need to get out of here."