The rain hadn't stopped since they left the warehouse.
Evelyn's apartment was dimly lit, barely furnished, quiet except for the rhythmic tick of an antique clock on the wall. Inez Marlow sat hunched at the edge of her couch, staring at the hard drive like it was a loaded gun.
She watched him from the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, eyes narrowed.
"Inez," she said finally, "You haven't said a word since we left."
He didn't look up. "You remember the man from the bar? The one who recognized me?"
"Yeah. The one who ended up dead two hours later?"
Inez's voice dropped. "He wasn't wrong."
---
They had seen glimpses already—pieces. In Chapter 1, it was the girl with the violet eyes who vanished into thin air outside the club. Chapter 2 introduced the first crime scene, where the victim's mirror was shattered but untouched by the killer. And Chapter 3? That was when the surveillance footage revealed Inez walking past the crime scene… before it happened.
Now, Chapter 4 was about truth—or what passed for it.
Evelyn dropped a file on the table. "I ran the data from the drive. Miraxis Labs—defunct since the fire ten years ago. The same lab your bar informant mentioned before his throat was slit. They had one surviving test subject on record."
She slid the paper toward him. He didn't move.
Patient ID: 001.
Name: Redacted.
Alias: Inez Marlow.
---
"I've been chasing phantoms," he muttered. "And I'm the one who invited them in."
His fingers trembled. Memories swirled beneath the surface of his thoughts—half-formed fragments: a woman screaming through glass, mirrors bending inward, a child's drawing soaked in blood. The sensation of standing in the middle of a burning corridor, not trying to escape—but staring at his reflection as it smiled back at him.
"But that can't be me," he said aloud, more to himself than Evelyn. "My first case—five years ago. The boy in the lake. I remember it."
"Do you?" she asked gently.
Inez looked up. "What are you saying?"
"I cross-checked every detail you gave me about that case. There's no record of it. No missing boy. No police report. It never happened."
---
The mirror in the hallway cracked on its own a week ago—Chapter 2 had brushed it off as a coincidence. Now it seemed deliberate. Directed.
Evelyn handed him a printed still from the security video of the most recent murder.
"Look at the reflection in the mirror," she said.
Inez studied it. The victim, yes. The scene. But…
"I'm not in it," he whispered.
"You passed by the hallway in the real footage. But in the mirror... it's empty."
---
He stood, pacing. "What if I was part of their test? What if I'm still in it?"
Evelyn didn't answer. Instead, she pulled up another video file from the drive. The audio crackled before stabilizing.
A man's voice: "Subject Zero-Zero-One showed signs of overlap. Identity collapse is likely. Recommend memory tethering to fictional trauma. Monitor for deviation."
"I was programmed?" Inez asked, voice rising.
"They didn't just erase your past," she said, voice quiet. "They gave you a new one. Case by case, pain by pain."
---
He stared at his badge, the name engraved on it. Inez Marlow. Was that name ever truly his?
And then something clicked.
"The name," he said, eyes widening. "It's not even mine. 'Inez'—it's the Spanish word for innocent."
Evelyn froze. "They didn't name you. They labeled you."
---
Thunder rolled in the distance.
On the far end of the hard drive was one last locked file. Encrypted under the project name:
"The Mirror Protocol."
Password protected. Untouchable.
For now.
> In the reflection of Evelyn's kitchen window, Inez wasn't standing. He was seated—smiling at himself.