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For as long as you can remember, all you've wanted to do was breathe. Holding oxygen in your lungs, feeding your cells and waiting for your body to process it was pure bliss. But now you don't remember that. You're sitting in a barren white room, barely larger than the titanium alloy platform you're sitting on. It's cold, and you're shivering. It all reminds you of death. Of when you're lying on your deathbed and you can't feel anything, your breath frozen in your lungs. It's coming. Eventually you will draw your last breath. The end is nigh. A doctor walks into the room and smiles down at you. "Hello, Iím Dr. Markus. I'm here to inform you that what you thought was a terminal illness was merely a common cold."

"What" you croak out with a dry mouth, "what does that mean?"

"It means that you are merely ill," he replies, as he taps the side of your head. You feel the sting of several electrodes and your vision blurs. "I'm afraid it won't be long now. I have to sedate you. This won't hurt."

Your eyes flutter open and everything is in slow motion. You try to scream, but you can't. You try to move but you're frozen in place. It's like you're watching everything happen from an outside perspective. Your heartbeats quicken, pumping blood through your veins to keep the cells alive that no longer have anything to keep them going. You can feel yourself die. You can feel your muscles stop moving. Your lungs cease to take in oxygen and your heart ceases to beat. Everything about you slowly stops working but you still feel. You can feel every nerve ending screaming. You can feel your teeth clenching and your eyes rolling back. Your body stops moving, but your mind won't stop. You go from being knocked out to being awake and you try to scream again.

"Cris, keep breathing!" Someone yells at you. You inhale, much to the relief of everyone in the room. You exhale, and you're not sure why you feel relieved. You take another breath and you feel your lungs become oxygenated. You're alive again. But you shouldn't be alive now.

"Is he stable?" A voice asks from somewhere in the room. Your eyes blink away the stars still floating around in your vision. A man crosses your line of sight, standing next to a bed with a large sheet covering most of it.

"He'll be fine," the doctor replies. You recognize his voice from before. "Implanting new memories into this thing is very tricky business, but he'll be fine. Sorry about putting you through that, we needed to test the limits of your implants." He holds up the device attached to your temple and waves it around. You can feel the presence in your mind. It doesn't feel intrusive, it feels like there is someone else sharing space with you. It feels like an observer.

"What's going on" you ask, still shaking from the experience.

"Well, that's a long story. The project that you're on was to remove your terminal illness. You were our first test subject and it worked. You're cancer free. Unfortunately there is a side effect to the procedure you just endured. We've confirmed it by looking inside your head. A side effect of the procedure is that your memories have been encoded with a device we can provide for anyone to use. It can show anyone else the memories you've had instead of the ones you currently have." He holds up the same device he used to put the memories into your head and flips it over. On the back of it are two metal contacts, and in the center is a small black disk with a small button on the top and a large on the bottom. "This is what allows you to give someone your memories by pressing it against their head. It's called the mind chip, and it's what each of the doctors in the facility is wearing. You spent the summer with us, and all the memories that we put into you were put on the chip. The devices around the world will be able to connect to that chip to give your memories to anyone by connecting to their own implant."

"Why are you telling me that? Who am I?" You ask, still shaking.

"You're one of the future members of Nexus, along with eighteen others with your memories from our facility."