Sterling’s heart skipped. He was a professor of pharmacology, but before that, he had worked in experimental drug development in the early 2010s. He knew what Project Lethe was. It was a classified, highly controversial research initiative aimed at creating a pharmaceutical compound capable of targeted memory erasure for trauma victims. It was abandoned in 2013 due to "unresolvable safety concerns." Or so the public was told.
He flipped to page 342. In the margin, written in tiny, immaculate handwriting that had survived fourteen years of silence, were rows of chemical symbols and a single, desperate message: Remember for those who cannot.
He stood up, his hands shaking slightly, and pulled it from the shelf: Pharmacology, 4th Edition, 2012, Brenner & Stevens.
Sterling frowned. He scrolled down. The next page contained a short, dated entry from November 2012.