The password didn't work.
Evelyn had tried every cipher she knew, even used a voice-key emulator to bypass the older protocols embedded in the hard drive. But the final file—The Mirror Protocol—remained sealed.
Inez sat across the room, unmoving, eyes fixed on the mirror by the window.
He hadn't spoken in two hours.
Not since they'd found out he was never meant to remember.
---
Rain drizzled down the glass like static on an old television screen. Outside, streetlights flickered in rhythmic patterns—on, off, on, on, off—like some invisible hand was tapping Morse code into the darkness.
Evelyn noticed it first. "That's not random."
"What?"
"The lights. They're repeating."
Inez stood, walked to the window, and counted the pulses. One. Pause. Two. Pause. One. One. Pause.
He muttered, "1-2-1-1… That's 'K' in Morse."
"K?"
Evelyn nodded slowly. "Or maybe… it's a signature."
---
She turned to her laptop and re-scanned the hard drive for embedded metadata. Nothing. Then she tried a legacy boot—an old OS from ten years ago. The screen glitched, turned black. Static.
And then… a feed popped up.
LIVE CAM - LOCATION UNKNOWN
A sterile room appeared. White walls. A single mirror on the far wall.
And someone sitting in a chair.
Inez stepped closer. "That's—"
"It's you," Evelyn whispered.
The man on-screen had the same build, same haircut. Same eyes.
But he wasn't Inez Marlow.
He was… older. Paler. And his smile never faded.
---
On the mirror in the feed, words had been scrawled in red:
"WHICH ONE ARE YOU?"
The feed cut out.
Evelyn cursed and yanked her laptop's power cord. "This isn't just surveillance. They wanted you to see this."
"Why?"
"Because someone's watching us now."
---
Across town, in an abandoned hospital ward that reeked of mildew and antiseptic, a man watched his monitors with a smirk. His hands were folded neatly, gloved in leather, eyes sunken with insomnia. The monitors displayed multiple feeds—Evelyn's apartment, the hallway outside, even the bar
Behind him, a filing cabinet rattled on its own. He didn't turn.
Instead, he muttered, "He's beginning to fragment. Let's see how long it takes for Subject 001 to bleed through the glass."
He clicked on a document titled: Mirror Protocol: Behavioral Deviations – Subject Marlow.
Under the heading:
Week 4 Observation: Personality Split Initiated. Identity overlap approaching critical mass. Evelyn Lane remains a stabilizing variable.
---
Back at the apartment, Evelyn poured herself coffee she wouldn't drink. Inez stood in the hallway, staring into the cracked mirror. Again.
"Eve," he called out, his voice hollow. "Do you see me?"
She tilted her head. "Of course."
"No," he said, without turning. "Do you see me in the mirror?"
Evelyn stepped beside him, slowly, then froze.
He was right.
She saw herself. The hall behind them. The window. The clock.
But where Inez should've been—there was nothing.
No reflection.
Only emptiness.
---
She whispered, "What the hell are you?"
Inez didn't answer.
Instead, he leaned in closer to the glass. And this time, something leaned back—not a reflection, but a man with identical features, blood dripping from his mouth, smiling wide.
A whisper came from the glass:
> "You're on the wrong side, brother."
---
Evelyn yanked him away, grabbing a blanket and hurling it over the mirror. But it was too late. The whisper had already fractured something deeper inside Inez.
His voice changed. Lower. Like a second tone layered beneath the first.
"I think I remember the fire now," he said, staring at nothing. "It wasn't an accident."
"Do you remember who started it?" Evelyn asked cautiously.
He looked up at her.
And smiled.
> "He looked just like me. But he didn't blink."