I awoke on a bed just large enough to fit my body. A sigh escaped my lips. How long had I been asleep? I rubbed at my eyes with my fingers. White lights popped inside my head. My fingers slipped down to the side of my face. There was quite a bit of hair; I must have been out of it for at least three days. Tentatively, I opened my eyes.

Luckily, the lights were dimmed. I noticed a figure sitting in a chair beside my bed. A warm, contralto voice confirmed it was Avelina.

"How do you feel?"

I groaned. "Tired as hell."

She smiled. Oh, it was good to see her smile. My mind caught up then. A torrent of memories floated into the recesses of my head, all familiar but none known. It's strange, having so much knowledge but not having processed any of it. There's so much of it... overwhelming... I was dimly aware of myself taking faster gulps of air, my breath rate increasing as I began to panic. But there was so much, so...

Conflict rose in my brain, fighting for control of the spaces that were not swamped. Control... breathe... remember... I was losing it. Everything was being submerged. There was no time; all of it was fading rapidly, smoothly, and completely.

STOP!

My breathing became less shallow and my muscles stopped bunching. The flood receded, allowing me to think freely again. What just happened?

Avelina's voice came then.

"Pent, can you hear me?" I nodded faintly. "Alright. What you've just experienced is a phenomenon we call Relapse. It happens when all of your hidden memories are suddenly unleashed all at once. This barely ever happens to those who suffer from amnesia, but for those who lose their memories because of conventional means, it happens regularly."

I was a little perturbed by her words. "What do you mean when you say those who have lost their memories through conventional means?"

"For the last two years, lock nodes, which are a series of small, interconnected nanobots, have been stimulating a certain area in your brain which repressed all of your memory functions. When your brain realized it couldn't use that section anymore, it started feeding the new memories, the ones you gained after the nanobots were activated, into a new section of your brain. That's how you could remember things that happened over the past two years. When those lock nodes were disabled, all of the things they held behind them were unleashed on the rest of you."

I frowned, still blinking my eyes. "Huh. So these things inside my head, these lock nodes, they were disabled. How?"

She continued. "Often, when things from a person's past appear, the glands in the brain stimulate and attempt to bring up scraps of memory that includes that person, place or anything else. When you saw Vahn for the first time, you blacked out. That was when the lock nodes began to malfunction. When you came here, and you discovered even more about yourself and your past, and your brain fought to bring them to the surface. Eventually, it completely disabled the lock nodes, and the stress from that shut down the rest of your body. You entered a coma. You probably dreamed, but very little of your brain was active. When you woke up, your old memories threatened to submerge the rest of you. However, you fought against them, and they have been brought under control. You will have to work at it, but eventually you will be able to recall those memories as you do any others."

I rubbed my temples as I absorbed all of this. I then looked over at Avelina with one burning question.

"Who am I?"

Avelina's expression softened. She looked almost... sad. Then she answered in a controlled, even voice.

"You are Pent, number three of eight involved in the Reign project. Vahn and I, we are numbers seven and four respectively."

"What is this project?" I asked.

She sighed, and continued her explanations. "The Reign project was conceived and ran by a scientist employed by Crest, one of the three old super-corporations. They were the ones most dependant on the Controller, and they collapsed just as it did. The Reign project itself was continued by a renegade shard of the corporation. They stole the embryos of a few 'volunteers'. Through gene splicing, they enhanced these embryos to be beyond normal human capabilities. They nurtured the embryos, and they grew. The fetuses were 'born', twelve of them. After the first month, only the Eight had survived. From the age of four, these children were trained to be soldiers. Their natural abilities and skills were developed. When they had reached the age of eighteen, the Eight were, together, the most powerful band of warriors on the known Earth. But their involvement in the project did not end there. Three were selected of the Eight, a pair of wing mates and one of the two Eight trained as a lone warrior, to go through lock node installation. After the surgery, they were left to survive on their own outside the site of the project. They did, of course, monitor them, but it was secondary to what was considered the main project; the continued sheltered advancement of the other five. You, I and Vahn are the three."

That explains a lot. My visions and my ability... this must be the truth. But there's more to know. Was the birth... no, creation of us an injustice? What was the purpose of the project? What do I do next?

Avelina placed her hand on my shoulder reassuringly. I looked up at her, looked into her eyes. There was a deep connection between us. I didn't have access to all of my thoughts, but from what I had I could tell we used to be very close. Now that I knew my past, there was no way I was abandoning her.

I carefully got up on my elbows, and then moved up into a sitting position. I grinned, and said, "I guess I'm staying then." She smiled and wrapped her arms around me. As I was being embraced, I couldn't help but think that I was home.