Chapter 8 - THE MAN WHO DESIGNED MONSTERS
Nobody answered immediately.
The silence was worse than any confession.
Finally, Elias spoke.
“Victor Kane was a psychologist.”
I waited.
“That’s all?”
Elias looked at me.
“No.”
His voice became darker.
“He was the man who taught people how to become monsters.”
Captain Hayes sat down.
For the first time, he looked old.
Tired.
Broken.
“Victor was part of Project Mirror.”
I looked at the files.
“What was the purpose?”
Hayes hesitated.
Then:
“To create perfect criminals.”
I stared at him.
“That’s impossible.”
Elias shook his head.
“No.”
“It’s expensive.”
He explained everything.
Victor Kane studied criminal behavior.
He believed society needed controlled enemies.
People who could be blamed.
People who could justify new laws.
More surveillance.
More power.
Elias was one of his experiments.
A man selected because he was already damaged.
Because he had no one.
Because nobody would defend him.
I looked at Elias.
“And my father?”
Elias looked away.
“Your father found out.”
My chest tightened.
“And he tried to expose them.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to him?”
Nobody answered.
That was enough.
I already knew.
My father wasn’t missing.
He was erased.
My phone vibrated.
A new message.
A location.
An abandoned hospital.
And one sentence.
“Your father waited here.”
We drove there before sunrise.
The building had been closed for twelve years.
But someone had recently entered.
Inside, the walls were covered with old patient records.
Photographs.
Research notes.
Victor Kane’s work.
At the end of the hallway was a locked room.
The label on the door said:
PATIENT ZERO.
My heart stopped.
Because underneath the label was another name.
James Miller.
I stared.
“No.”
Hayes looked at me.
“You don’t remember.”
“Remember what?”
He opened the door.
Inside was a small room.
A chair.
A camera.
A table.
And hundreds of pages about me.
My childhood.
My father.
My behavior.
My fears.
Everything.
Then I found the oldest document.
A patient evaluation.
Age: 18.
Subject: James Miller.
Diagnosis:
“Highly controllable.”
I dropped the paper.
Because the truth was finally becoming clear.
I wasn’t the detective who discovered Project Mirror.
I was the first experiment.
The first test.
The first one.
My phone received one final message.
“Now you understand.”
May you like
“You were never chasing the killer.”
“You were created to find him.”
