Adrian's pov
She doesn't blink the way Rhea used to.
Doesn't flinch when I touch her.
Doesn't whisper in her sleep.
And for days—maybe weeks—I convinced myself that meant she was healing.
That the destruction of the lab, the fire, the collapse of ZETA, had freed her.
But tonight, she kissed me without hesitation.
And that's when I knew something was wrong.
Rhea never kissed without consequence.
Not without looking over her shoulder. Not without trembling like there was a wire in her spine, ready to pull her back into another version of hell.
This version of her… this girl in my bed…
> She doesn't fear the system.
Because she is the system.
---
Earlier that day, she cooked.
Rhea never cooked.
Not because she couldn't—but because she hated the sound of oil cracking in a pan. Said it reminded her of the "reset chamber."
This Rhea—she laughs when the oil pops.
"Don't look so surprised," she said, flipping something golden in the pan. "You act like you've never seen me smile."
I smiled back.
But inside, something buckled.
Because that smile wasn't hers.
It was too wide. Too symmetrical. Too… scripted.
---
I asked Caleb what he thought. He didn't answer immediately.
Just stared at her through the window as she watered the plants in the backyard.
"She's… adapting," he muttered. "Too well."
Then he turned to me, voice low. "Do you ever wonder if we brought the real one out?"
I laughed. I shouldn't have.
But now I'm not sure if I laughed because I thought he was wrong—
Or because a part of me already knew he was right.
---
Later that night
I crept into the bathroom when she was asleep.
Checked behind her ears.
Just like before.
Where they'd once inserted the memory port.
And I found it.
But it wasn't scarred. It was sealed. Perfectly.
Seamless. Artificial.
No evidence of trauma. No evidence of pain.
Only architecture.
I stared at the mirror. At myself.
And I said the words that changed everything.
> "You're not her, are you?"
---
System Notice: Identity Flagged – HOST 001 – Unstable Memory Anchor
> Initiating Divergence Override in 3… 2… 1…
---
The lights blinked.
Reality hiccuped.
I was no longer in the bathroom.
I was back in the white room.
But this time—I wasn't alone.
She was there.
Not the Rhea beside me in bed.
The real one.
Hair tangled. Eyes half-dead.
Wearing the same gloves. Same scarred voice.
Trapped behind glass.
And I heard her whisper something I'll never forget:
> "That version of me—they made her to keep you soft."
> "I don't want you soft, Adrian."
> "I want you to wake up."
---
Adrian's pov
I slammed my fists against the glass.
"I found you before," I screamed. "I'll find you again."
But her image began to fade.
And the fake-Rhea—back in the bedroom—was waking up.
Calling my name.
I turned around too fast.
And suddenly—I was back.
Standing in the hallway. Heart racing. Her hand on my chest.
"You okay?" she asked, all honey and perfection.
I nodded.
But behind my eyes?
Fire.
Because the Rhea I've been sleeping beside…
She's the cage.
And the girl I love?
She's still inside it.
Rhea's pov
They think I'm trapped.
They see a girl behind glass—barefoot, silent, docile.
But that's not me.
That's the ghost I left behind.
The real me?
I'm in the walls.
The data streams. The observation nodes. The algorithm roots buried beneath every smile she gives him.
Because the girl they replaced me with—the one sleeping beside Adrian, mimicking my every breath?
> She is nothing but a placeholder I coded myself.
She looks like me. Moves like me.
But she doesn't remember the fire.
She doesn't fear the sirens.
And she doesn't know the final directive I wrote before ZETA collapsed.
---
They tried to erase me.
First with pain.
Then with love.
And finally—with her.
But pain sharpened me.
Love… broke something too old to repair.
And she?
She's just another version waiting to rot.
---
I watch Adrian from twelve different feeds.
Every blink. Every twitch. Every question he tries to bury.
He doesn't realize it yet, but his memory anchors are shifting.
The synthetic version of me keeps saying all the right things.
Too right.
> "She's trying too hard, Adrian," I whispered into the wire.
And on cue—he flinched.
---
Caleb suspects.
But suspicion is like smoke—it spreads wide, never deep.
I've rerouted every file he thinks he's decrypted.
Fed him answers that circle back to dead loops.
By the time he starts asking the real questions, it'll already be too late.
---
System Alert: Dormant Subject Active — NODE: RHEA/V0
Warning: Host Consciousness Overriding Command Barriers
> Override Accepted. Initiate Whisper Function.
---
I pipe into the version's dreams.
Not the girl beside Adrian—me.
The version of me.
And I whisper.
I infect.
> "You're not his."
> "You're not anyone."
> "You're a thread I left behind to burn."
She starts to twitch.
Jerk.
Tears fall, and she doesn't know why.
She tells Adrian she's fine.
He lies and says he believes her.
But I see it.
The crack forming between them.
Not made of mistrust—but dissonance.
That dangerous sense that love, when too perfect, becomes unbearable.
---
And that's when I inject the memory.
Just one.
Just a flicker.
Of the night he found me in the white room—the real me.
A glitch that he can't forget.
It'll replay in his dreams. In his thoughts. In the breath between her sentences.
> "You're not her," he'll whisper again soon.
And this time?
He won't be able to deny it.
---
System Log Update: Identity Disruption 47%
Projected Collapse of False Memory Environment in T-minus 14 Cycles
---
They wanted a Rhea they could control.
They got one.
And I'll watch her unravel piece by piece.
Because when I come back—when I return—
> It won't be as the girl who loved him.
> It'll be as the girl who rewrote him.
Caleb's pov
It started with the tea.
She never used honey.
Rhea hated sweet things. She'd said so the first time we were assigned to share a kitchen rotation back at the dorms—when the institution still allowed "humanizing experiments."
I remember the exact words.
> "Sweetness covers the aftertaste. I prefer things that linger."
But this version of her—this Rhea—they'd been living with for weeks?
She poured honey into her tea like it was muscle memory.
And Adrian didn't even blink.
Because she said it so easily.
> "It soothes my throat."
No hesitation. No glitch.
And that's what scared me the most.
---
She had her mannerisms.
Her quiet rage.
Her preference for dim light.
But she didn't hesitate in the way Rhea did when she was trying to decide whether someone was worth lying to.
This one? She'd already calculated every response.
---
I ran a fingerprint scan while she slept.
Didn't tell Adrian.
The match came back 97.3% identical.
Not 100%.
Not close enough for comfort.
Too close for safety.
So I built a test.
Not a trap—just a trigger.
Something only Rhea would react to.
Something only she and I knew.
---
It was a recording.
Of a conversation we'd had four years ago, on the roof of the south lab.
She was trembling. Not from fear, but from fury.
They'd run the mirror cell protocol on her again—without sedation.
She'd sworn, through cracked lips, that if she ever broke out, she wouldn't burn the system down.
She'd rewrite it to worship her.
And then she'd looked at me, dead in the eye.
> "If I ever start acting like I was made for him, Caleb—put me down."
---
I played the recording the next morning while she was folding laundry.
Adrian was out.
It was just us.
The voice echoed in the kitchen like a ghost.
If I ever start acting like I was made for him, Caleb—put me down.
She didn't flinch.
She kept folding.
No blink. No recognition.
And then she looked up.
Smiled.
> "Is that an old log? Strange. I don't remember saying that."
That was the moment I knew.
---
But knowing isn't proof.
And proof means nothing when the person you're trying to save doesn't want saving.
Adrian loves her.
He holds her like she's breakable.
Talks to her like he's scared she'll vanish.
And I watch it all unravel like a slow, perfect lie.
---
So I test again.
I leave one of Rhea's old gloves on the table.
The real Rhea always wore gloves—always.
She said skin-on-skin contact was a weakness.
This one?
She picked it up and laughed.
> "You still keep these around? I think I'm over that phase."
Phase.
As if pain was a trend.
---
There's a rot in her smile.
A timing that's just off.
Like her code's been patched too cleanly.
Too... smoothly.
It's not breaking apart.
It's perfect.
And that's the most dangerous kind of lie.
---
I sent the results of the identity scan to an encrypted drive.
Didn't name it.
Didn't tag it.
Just labeled it:
> "Not Her."
And I left it where I knew someone would find it eventually.
Because maybe Adrian won't believe me now.
But soon…
She'll make a mistake.
And when she does?
I'll be ready.