Please forgive me. Even as I write the words, they ring so hollow. My mistakes… no, my choices… they cannot be undone, much less forgiven. How all this came to pass… and the truth about Weapon X. Had it ended there, would I be less of a monster? Or more? Would I even know the difference? Of course I don’t have to tell you about monsters. Your life is defined by monsters. Replicating the mutant genome proved difficult… but rebuilding Weapon X seemed all but impossible. For every enzyme, for ever codon, for every sequence we repaired, or even built back from near nothingness, we seemed to be missing a million more. But I felt alive. The work, the failure, the challenge. It was like a brilliant light, shining inside me. I felt… like my life had a purpose. What a fool I was. I was defiant in the face of my failures. I was determined to succeed out of spite. Weeks passed. I was working on two projects, living two lives. I was used to that. I had kept secrets before. It seems so incredible to me now, that in all that time, given everything that I knew… what I was doing and what the end result would bear… I didn’t give it a second thought. I told myself that you weren’t real. I told myself that this was science… not life. I was creating a weapon… not a child. I was wrong. When I was little, I always believed that everything that happened to me— I deserved. That we all get what we deserve. Maybe I was right. No longer the experimenter, I was now part of the experiment. A vessel to be poked and prodded. To be violated. They certainly didn’t care about me… not with a weapon to train. A team of physicians, psychologists, nutritionists, and military strategists now ran my life. They watched my every move… but they didn’t see everything. I asked you for forgiveness before. Now I’m telling you… don’t forgive me. Don’t ever forgive any of us for what we did. Ever.

I remember everything… everything we did to you… and you deserve to know why we did these things. Your training was designed to strip you of your humanity. After all, in the eyes of the Program, you weren’t human… you were a weapon. A weapon I willingly conceived for them. Our orders were to keep you from gaining any sense of self… something they said would compromise our ability to control you. We were never to treat you as a child, only as a weapon… but not everyone followed those orders… I’m grateful for that… Sutter wanted to complete your construction… but that wasn’t possible while your healing factor was dormant. You would never survive the surgery… so, Rice was given permission to take whatever steps necessary to activate your X-gene. He chose radiation poisoning. You nearly died that day. Unfortunately, Rice was right. The radiation worked. Now, nothing stood in their way… especially me. I only found out later what happened… that your claws were extracted one by one… that he sharpened, then coated them with the indestructible metal, adamantium, outside of your body. It was never supposed to be like that. So much wasn’t. I should have known what was coming… not that I could have prevented it… but I would have tried. I’m sorry… so sorry…

When it was time for your first field test… the target was chosen with the flip of a coin. Who it was didn’t matter. As long as the target was “high profile”… and couldn’t be gotten to. Sutter needed to make a statement. And you delivered it to the world. I wanted to understand why we were doing this. I told Martin I needed to understand… why you had to publicly kill an innocent man, his family and so many others. So, he told me… he said, it’s simple. You can’t sell anything… without advertising. That’s what this was all about. The buying and selling of lives for profit. Not saving the world, or raking it over. No, this was about money. A lot of it. Martin sold you for a million dollars a pound… and as you know by now, there was no shortage of buyers. Rice was right. I didn’t matter. Not to them. Not to you. Not to anyone. All I could do is watch. While you were forced to kill… and kill… and kill… and kill… you killed royalty. Godfathers. Drug lords. Dictators. Assassins. Anyone… everyone… for a price. For three long years, you murdered without fail. Every target they marked, you killed. Every time limit they set, you beat. Every rendezvous point they plotted, you reached… except one… the one where Rice was waiting for you.

When Rice came back from the mission, he told us what happened. He said… that you didn’t make the rendezvous in time. That he had to abort the mission when the team started taking fire. And that he saw you die. But I didn’t want to believe him. You never told me what happened. How you survived, or how you made your way back. Why didn’t you tell me? For so long, I held myself above Sutter and Rice. They made you a killer. They were the ones using you. But all it took was one phone call to open my eyes and see… I was just like them.

They say in life that we are judged by the choices we make… they are what define us… I chose to bring you into this world. I chose to stay in the program even after they stripped you of your humanity… and molded you into a weapon. I’m responsible for everything that has happened… for all the pain… all the death… for everything you have suffered… because I had a choice… when you had none. And I chose to do nothing. I always assumed it was Rice that cut you. He hurt you so many times in the past… he almost killed you twice… I never wanted to believe… that it was you. The damage I’ve done… I can never forgive myself. You couldn’t stop what Rice made you do… but somehow you managed to save Henry and tell me the truth… which means there is hope… you showed me we failed… you are not a weapon… you are a child. Always remember you are not to blame. You did not pick this life. We… I forced it upon you. The blood you have spilled is on my hands, not yours… and please understand why I must ask you to kill one last time. Because tonight, what you do is right. Tonight, what you serve is justice. Tonight, you take back the life we stole from you.

I never wanted a family. My father stripped me of that desire. He took my childhood… my innocence… my life… and then I took yours. I became what I hated and feared most… and you became my victim. But then you showed me hope. Not when you saved Megan, but when you saved Henry. You showed me that we can choose to be something other than what we have been forced to be… that we can be something better than what we believe we are. And, in that moment, you saved my life. All that matters to me now is that I save yours. I wish we could just run away without anymore bloodshed… but if I don’t stop them, they will never stop. They will do it again. They’ve already started. After tonight, we’ll just keep moving and never look back. We’ll start a new life… have a future… be a family. I’m sorry I waited so long to tell you these things. There is so much more I want to tell you, and I will… but one thing that you must always remember… no matter what has happened… and no matter what may come… you are a child, not a weapon. You are my child. You are my daughter… and I love you. I will always love you, Laura.

‘I remember something Guinevere once said to me. I didn’t know what it meant, because it was in Latin, but she translated it, and it explained Arthur exactly. I’ve never forgotten it either.’

‘Well? Go on.’

‘Odi at amo,’ I quoted the unfamiliar words slowly, ‘excruaor.’

‘Which means?’

‘I hate and I love, it hurts. A poet wrote the line, I forget which poet, but Guinevere had read the poem and one day, when we were talking about Arthur, she quoted the line. She understood him exactly, you see.’