A knock came at the door.
Once.
Twice.
Soft.
Too soft.
I reached for the knife.
Opened it slowly.
No one there.
Just another tape.
This one unlabeled.
And the scent of smoke lingering behind it.
> "The version that remembers everything isn't the one they fear the most.
It's the one that never wanted to forget."
---
The tape in the hallway wasn't blank.
It just took time to start.
A delay. Static, warbled distortion. Then—
> "Hello, Adrian."
My blood chilled.
The voice was mine.
But not quite.
Deeper. Slower. More deliberate.
Like it came from a throat unused to speaking… or used to lying.
> "If you're listening, it means the loop's thinning. Good. That means I'm close."
> "Closer than you think."
> "Rhea doesn't know, not fully. She never does. But you—you're starting to see it, aren't you?"
> "The cracks. The fragments. The mirrors."
> "Ask her about the original Adrian Vale."
> "Ask her why she never lets you remember the ending."
> "And when she lies... ask her again."
---
I turned it off.
> "What version was that?" I demanded.
Rhea didn't meet my eyes.
> "Rhea."
> "I don't know."
> "You do."
She exhaled slowly, and sat at the edge of the bed like her bones had gone heavy.
> "They tried to erase him. Over and over. But he wouldn't disappear."
> "Why?"
> "Because they couldn't figure out where he started. Which timeline. Which experiment. Which memory."
> "Then who is he now?"
> "…No one knows."
Silence.
Then she added, quieter:
> "But he's always watching the others. Especially… you."
---
I checked my wrists that night for scars I didn't remember getting.
Rhea stood in the window, unmoving, eyes on the street.
Lights flickered. The same couple walked by for the third time that hour, repeating the same movement, same laugh, same touch on the shoulder.
A loop. Too perfect.
I looked in the mirror.
And for a second—
Just a second—
The reflection didn't match.
My mouth didn't move when I did.
The smile it gave me was wrong.
> "I'm not the original," I whispered.
> "No," Rhea said without looking back. "None of us are."
---
The next day, the mirrors in the apartment shattered.
All of them.
At once.
The bathroom. The hallway. Even the one hidden behind the vent.
We hadn't touched a thing.
The pieces formed a symbol on the floor, etched in light.
A circle. A line through the center. A number carved in between:
> VII.
> "Seven," Rhea breathed.
> "Location Seven?" I asked.
She shook her head.
> "Version Seven."
---
We were in a construct built for a repeat of the seventh failed pairing. That meant there were six others before us.
Six versions of us.
And at least one of them was still alive.
Still watching.
Still interfering.
> "This is a graveyard," she whispered. "For discarded selves."
> "Why put us here?"
> "Because they want to see who'll survive long enough to find the original."
> "And if we do?"
> "Then the loop breaks."
> "And if we don't?"
> "We become part of the next version."
---
That night, I found a photo.
Taped to the underside of the mattress.
Old. Black and white. Faded.
A girl in a hospital gown. Expression blank. Eyes too wide.
And beside her—
Me.
Except… not quite.
The shape of the jaw. The tilt of the smile.
It was like someone almost got me right.
> "You've seen this before," I said.
> "Yes," Rhea admitted.
> "When?"
> "In Version Two."
> "And him?"
> "That's the first Adrian Vale that ever failed to kill me."
My heart stopped.
> "What do you mean?"
> "I mean every version ends in fire… or blood."
> "He tried to end it?"
> "He thought he could."
---
The lights cut out.
Then came the footsteps on the ceiling.
Slow.
Heavy.
Wrong.
Not footsteps.
Drags.
A scrape like nails on metal. Across the ceiling. The floor above.
Then the walls.
Then behind the mirror.
I didn't ask what it was.
Because Rhea already had the answer.
> "He's here."
> "Who?"
> "The Residual."
> "What does he want?"
She finally turned to me then.
Her expression wasn't afraid.
It was resigned.
> "He wants us to remember the first ending."
> "And what was it?"
> "You died. I ran. And the loop began again."
---
A voice outside the door.
Mine.
Clear. Familiar.
> "Adrian. Open up. It's me."
Rhea's pov
My pulse spiked. "What did you do to her?"
She didn't blink. "Rhea wasn't supposed to come back. She's... incomplete. You were our perfect result. She was a failed prototype."
I took a step back like she'd hit me.
A failed prototype.
But Rhea had survived. Fought. Remembered.
And me?
I hadn't even known I was a lie.
---
She slid the folder toward me. "Go on. Take it."
I hesitated.
"This is what you wanted, isn't it? The truth?"
My fingers curled around the edge of the file.
It was thick. Dozens of pages. Photographs. Brain scans. Observation notes. A signature that was mine but younger, shakier.
I flipped through the first page.
Subject Name: Adrian Vale
Conditioning Start Date: March 12
Memory Alteration Trials: 19
Success Rate: 97%
Current Identity Stability: Pending
Emotional Attachments: Unstable. Requires neutralization.
Neutralization.
I swallowed. "What does that mean?"
She looked up at me.
"It means if she gets too close to the real you, we destroy her."
"You keep asking who she really is."
"Because I need to know."
"No, Adrian. You need to remember."
---
The doors groaned shut behind me.
The chapel was a skeleton.
Roof half-caved, pews warped and moss-eaten. A shattered stained-glass window cast fractured colors across the stone floor, the Virgin Mary missing her face.
And in the center?
A rusted grate.
The Well.
---
I pulled the grate open.
The stench of damp stone and decay hit me first. Then came the cold—thicker, meaner than the night air. A spiral staircase dropped into the dark like a spine with its vertebrae cracked and crooked.
I didn't hesitate.
She was down there.
And I was done being afraid.
---
Each step down whispered echoes back at me.
Not just mine.
Others.
> "Subject A—noncompliant. Reset scheduled."
"Subject R—insubordinate. Observe without contact."
"Cycle Thirty-Four is incomplete."
"Cycle Thirty-Five is corrupted."
"Cycle Thirty-Six…"
I gritted my teeth.
Memories they didn't want me to own.
---
By the time I reached the bottom, my skin was damp with sweat and breath came out in visible clouds. The hallway was narrow. Lined with sealed doors. Each one had a number and a name.
Some were scratched out.
Some still glowed.
I passed rooms that sounded like old recordings—voices arguing, whispering, pleading. One door was dented inward like something inside had fought to stay in.
Room 19 made me stop.
The plaque read:
> RHEA VIRELLE
PROJECT: DEVIANT MEMORY RETENTION (DMR-02)
Do not open unless authorized by High Rank.
The door was ajar.
Of course it was.
---
Inside, the walls were covered in charcoal drawings.
Not random. Not frantic.
Exact.
Dozens of Adrian Vales. All slightly different.
One with scars on his jaw. Another with green eyes. One smiling cruelly. One who looked nothing like me—but still was me.
And then…
There was her.
Painted on the far wall. Full-body. Lifesized.
But not the version of Rhea I knew now.
This one was younger.
And smiling.
---
She had written words around the portraits. Notes in looping, furious ink:
> Cycle 12 — wouldn't stop shaking.
Cycle 19 — cut his own tongue out.
Cycle 23 — cried in his sleep.
Cycle 30 — I almost believed it was him.
Cycle 34 — burned everything.
Cycle 36 — the one I stayed for.
I stared at the last one.
The drawing of me wasn't perfect, but it was close.
Too close.
The jaw. The eyes. The cut on my brow from the fight I got in at age thirteen—the one only I should've remembered.
She had drawn me.
Exactly me.
---
I backed away.
And found her behind me.
Silent. Barefoot. Wearing a white dress stained at the hem. Her gloves were gone. Her eyes were steady.
> "You found it," she said.
> "You knew I would."
She nodded.
I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what this meant.
So I asked what I shouldn't:
> "How many of me did you see?"
Rhea didn't flinch.
> "Thirty-five."
"And I'm the thirty-sixth?"
She shook her head slowly.
Then walked to one of the drawings—one where I looked cracked open, hollow-eyed—and ran her fingers across it.
> "You're the first they didn't touch."
---
I staggered.
"What do you mean?"
She turned.
Walked to me. Slowly. As if testing to see if I'd run.
> "They kept copying you. Modifying you. Taming you. Killing the parts that fought back."
"But you—this version—they lost track of you. You fell out of their loop."
> "How?"
She smiled faintly.
> "Because I buried you."
Silence.
A cold kind of silence that lived in my bones now.
> "You… what?"
> "You died, Adrian. The real you. And I—" she touched her chest, "—I put you in me. I carried the original memory. The version before they erased you."
I didn't believe her.
I wanted to.
But I couldn't.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Her voice was glass-sharp.
> "Because you needed to come down here and see what they made. You needed to choose what version you are."
> "And what if I choose wrong?"
> "Then you'll be like the rest. Shallow. Molded. Controlled. And I'll have to bury you again."