Built to Forget

Leanna sat hunched over her rig, eyes hollow from too many hours and too much coffee. The files tied to Project Lazarus weren’t just encrypted, they were mean. Layers inside layers. Like whoever built them expected ghosts like her to come digging.

Across the room, Olivia was on the phone, pacing. She had found a name—a doctor who worked on memory implantation research connected to Vanguard’s deep archives. “Dropped off the map a year ago. But dead men cast long shadows. Somebody says he’s surfaced in Buenos Aires. If he was alive, he might know exactly what Vanguard had done to Elias.”

Jessica sat on the edge of the desk, arms crossed. She had been watching Elias carefully since they uncovered his supposed death record. Something about him didn’t sit right.

"That’s the thing about muscle memory," Jessica said, "It outlives the man who earned it."

Leanna glanced up. "That’s what Project Lazarus was for. Resetting a person. Not just their memories, but their identity."

Elias, sitting nearby, clenched his jaw. "Then what the hell’s left?"

Silence settled over the room. Jessica saw the unease in his eyes—the same unease she had once felt herself.

"We find out," she said. "And we find out who else they did this to."

---

Olivia hung up the phone and turned to the others. "That doctor? Someone else is looking for him too. If we’re going to find him first, we have to move fast."

Leanna barely looked up from her screen. "The encryption is tied to a facility in Argentina—one that shouldn’t exist. If we want answers, that’s where we need to go."

Jessica exhaled. "Then we go."

Elias stood. "I’m coming with you. If they did this to me, I need to know why."

Jessica studied him for a long moment, then nodded. "Whatever they built down there... it didn’t stay dead."

Because if Project Lazarus was still active, it meant that Vanguard’s worst experiments weren’t just buried in the past. They were still happening. Ghosts didn’t stay buried. Not in her world.