He stared at the words until they dissolved back into the usual red logs, until he couldn't be sure they'd been there at all. His pulse rattled in his ears.
"Nice... uh, support animal?" someone muttered as they walked past his cubicle, eyebrows raised at Dario. The dog gave them a happy tail wag, oblivious.
Lance forced a brittle laugh. "Yeah. He handles all my conference calls. Barks once for 'approve,' twice for 'deny.'"
The coworker blinked at him, uncomfortable, and shuffled off.
His monitor chimed again—new ticket. He clicked it open automatically, skimming. Conference Room B. Printer offline. Again.
His stomach dropped. He already knew. He already knew exactly what it was.
The junior analyst. The same one from YESTERDAY. The same one who thought paperclips belonged inside delicate mechanical systems. He could see her already, standing there with that vacant, apologetic smile.
"Oh my God," Lance muttered under his breath. "Not again."
He logged the job, stood up, and made the long march down the hall. His coworkers gave him looks as he passed—some pitying, some amused, some with that quiet shake of the head like they were watching a man circling the drain.
"Jesus, man," one whispered as he brushed by. "Rough night?"
Lance clenched his jaw. "You have no idea."
Dario padded alongside, tail wagging, the only creature in the building who didn't look at him like he was cracked porcelain.
Sure enough, she was there when he arrived. The junior analyst. Short hair. Nervous fidgeting. Her eyeliner still looking like it has seen better days. She stands in front of the blinking printer like she'd summoned a demon she couldn't banish.
"Um," she said when she saw him. "It... jammed again."
"Yeah," Lance said flatly, crouching down to the rollers. "It jammed because you jammed it." He tugged the cover open, and there it was—gleaming, bent metal wedged between gears. A paperclip.
"Were you... uh, trying to staple with the printer again?" His voice was dry enough to cut glass.
Her cheeks flushed. "I thought maybe it could, like—do both."
"Right," Lance muttered. "Because clearly, what this office needed was a Swiss Army printer. Just shove random objects inside, see what happens."
He plucked out the mangled clip and held it up between two fingers like evidence at a crime scene. Dario barked once, as if laughing at the absurdity.
The analyst gave him a sheepish smile. "Sorry."
"You don't have to apologize to me," Lance said. "Apologize to the printer. It's the one with PTSD now."
She didn't laugh. She never laughed. She just slunk out, leaving him crouched in front of the jammed machine.
And then, as he turned back to the rollers, he saw it. Not in the physical world, not exactly—but layered beneath it. The dark threads from his hands earlier, spiderwebbing faintly along the gears. Twitching. Pulsing. Like veins.
No one else saw. No one else could. He shut his eyes tight until the image burned away, until all that was left was ink-stained plastic and the smell of toner.
When he finally yanked the last of the paper out and reset the feed, the printer hummed back to life. A stack of payroll checks spilled out as if nothing had happened.
He leaned against the table, exhaling. Too aware. Too much.
The anomaly wasn't in the printer. It was in him. And it had learned his name.
The printer spat out its final sheet with a neat shunk.
On the display panel, for a heartbeat, words scrolled across the tiny LCD screen.
HELLO, RICO.
His breath caught. He stepped closer, blinked—gone. Back to the default: Ready.
"Right," Lance muttered, voice low. "That's normal."
Dario nudged his shin, grounding him again, but the itch in his skin only deepened.
"Mercer?"
Lance flinched at his name. He turned. Standing in the doorway was Allonsy—the new guy, barely three weeks into the job. Fresh-pressed shirt, crooked tie, face earnest in that way only someone uncrushed by IT could still manage.
"Hey, uh... could you maybe help me with something? My workstation won't start up. I think I messed up the login, or the... password thingy? I dunno."
Lance stared at him. Just stared. His brain was still half-full of black threads in printer rollers, of cryptic greetings from nowhere, and this kid wanted a password reset.
"Your... 'password thingy,'" Lance echoed, deadpan.
Allonsy gave him a sheepish smile. "Yeah. Like, the domain password? Or is it a local password? Honestly, I'm not sure. It just says 'authentication failed.'"
Lance pinched the bridge of his nose. "Right. Okay. We'll file this under 'Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard.'"
"Uh... sorry?"
"It means user error," Lance said flatly. "Congratulations, you've joined the ninety-eight percent of issues in this department."
Allonsy chuckled nervously, not sure if he was being insulted or trained. "So... can you show me?"
Lance sighed. He wanted to tell him no. Wanted to shove past, crawl back into his cubicle, and pretend the words on the printer's screen hadn't clawed under his skin. But instead, he gestured down the hall.
"Fine. Let's go teach you the ancient ritual of typing what you wrote on the sticky note correctly."
As they walked, Dario padded faithfully at his side. The hum of fluorescent lights pressed on Lance's skull, a static buzz that felt too deliberate, too rhythmic. His coworkers glanced at him as he passed, whispers trailing.
"Man's cracking."
"Always was high-strung."
"Did you see the dog drooling on the carpet?"
Every voice a needle. Every glance too sharp.
And then, at Allonsy's desk, when Lance leaned over the monitor, the anomaly whispered again. Not on the screen this time—no. This time, it crawled up through the speakers, just static at first, resolving into warped syllables.
YOU AREN'T HIM.
The monitor flickered. For one frame, Lance saw his reflection in the glossy black—except it wasn't him. It was Rico. Same shirt. Same posture. Just... not him.
He jerked back. Blinked. Only his own face stared back now, pale and sweating.
"Uh..." Allonsy said slowly, watching him. "You good, man? You, uh, look like you saw a ghost."
Lance forced a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Yeah. Ghost of bad coding. Haunts this office every day."
Allonsy chuckled, relieved, and sat down. "Cool, so... password?"
Lance took the keyboard, typed a reset command with clipped precision, and shoved it back toward him. "There. Fixed. Welcome to the domain. Try not to break it."
Allonsy grinned. "Thanks, Mercer. You're, like, way calmer than everyone said you'd be."
Calm.
Sure.
As Lance turned to leave, his phone buzzed in his pocket. A new email notification. He pulled it up without thinking. No sender. No subject. Just one line of text.
HELLO, RICO.
His stomach lurched. His fingers went cold.
Allonsy was still grinning, clueless. Dario wagged his tail like nothing was wrong. The office buzzed with mundanity.
And Lance?
Lance was being eaten alive.
Lance shut the email with a violent jab of his thumb. No. Not here. Not with Allonsy gawking at him like he was about to sprout horns.
He grabbed Dario's leash and muttered, "Come on," under his breath. The dog trotted after him, oblivious, tail wagging as if nothing was wrong—like this was just another break, another walk.
Lance pushed through the hall, ignoring the looks, ignoring the whispers that weren't whispers anymore. Were they real? His ears couldn't decide.
Not him.
Pretender.
Placeholder.
He shoved into the men's bathroom, the door swinging shut with a heavy thunk. The fluorescent buzz inside was deafening. Tiles too white, too sterile, reflecting the sick yellow light in fractured lines.
Dario sat by the door, ears perked, confused.
Lance gripped the sink and stared down at the drain, his knuckles white. His chest was a furnace. He slammed a fist into the porcelain once, twice, three times. Each impact stung up his arm, but it wasn't enough. He wanted to break something. Shatter something. Tear the static out of his veins.
He slammed a punch into the tiled wall. Once. Twice. Again. Knuckles split. White-hot pain flared and he welcomed it. At least that was real. At least that was his.
"Goddamn it!" His voice tore out of him raw. "I am not Rico! I am not—"
His words strangled off.
Because the mirror was moving.
Not reflecting him—moving. The fluorescent lights in the bathroom flickered overhead, but in the glass, the scene stayed still, like the image had been paused. Except Lance wasn't paused. His reflection wasn't him. It was still typing on an invisible keyboard, fingers jittering like spider legs, long after his own hands had dropped to his sides.
Dario whined low in his throat, ears back, hackles rising.
The reflection's lips moved. Silent. Shapes that weren't words. And then—sound came late, like a dubbed movie out of sync.
"You're just scaffolding."
Lance froze. Blood roaring in his ears.
The reflection blinked—and when it opened its eyes again, they weren't his. They were Rico's. Warmer. Kinder. Familiar in a way that made his stomach twist. The eyes of the man Dani still mourned.
"Stop it," Lance whispered. His voice cracked. "Stop doing that."
The reflection smiled faintly, pityingly. His hands—its hands—kept typing, faster and faster, until the keys he couldn't see began spilling across the glass itself. Letters burned white against the silver.
HELLO, RICO.
HELLO, RICO.
HELLO, RICO.
Over and over, filling every inch of the mirror until it was a wall of words, suffocating him.
Lance staggered back, chest heaving. The itch under his skin was a burn now, a demand. The symbiote pressing against him, whispering that maybe it was easier if he stopped fighting. If he let it finish the overwrite.
"No." His voice was ragged, but it cut through. He pressed his bloodied fist to his forehead, willing the words to stop. "I'm not scaffolding. I'm not a placeholder. I'm me. I'm me."
The letters stuttered. Glitched. The mirror shuddered, and for one second, the entire surface bent inward, like it was breathing.
And then it was just a mirror again.
Just Lance.
Sweating, pale, knuckles raw and bleeding. Dario pressed close against his leg, solid and real, whining softly.
Lance leaned against the sink, trying to slow his breathing, but the reflection looked back at him with something in its eyes he couldn't shake.
Pity.
The kind of pity reserved for something already lost.
The bathroom smelled of bleach and mildew, a sterile attempt to hide the rot of a building too old to care about. Lance leaned against the sink, cold porcelain beneath trembling hands. Dario whined, nails tapping against tile as if urging him to move, to leave.
And then—
Something shifted.
The air pressed heavy, damp, like wet cloth being wrung around his lungs. From the corner stall, not the mirror, came a sound: a dragging, wet scrape, like someone moving raw meat across tile. Lance's throat seized. Slowly, he looked.
The door of the stall trembled. Not from wind. Not from pipes.
A hand slipped out. Not a hand—fingers too long, slick with something clear that clung like oil. They bent wrong, curling against the floor like hooked wire. Dario growled low, ears flat, his hackles standing.
The door opened.
The thing that crawled out wasn't Lance, wasn't a reflection—it wasn't anything he could fit into a name. Its body was skeletal but stretched, ribs jutting sharp, each movement cracking like glass under strain. Where its head should've been, there was instead a clotted spiral of teeth, arranged in concentric rings, twitching and clicking like it was trying to form words it didn't have. Its skin peeled back in places, strings of tissue hanging like wet paper strips.
And worst—its movements staggered. Not fluid, not consistent, like someone had cut frames out of reality, leaving gaps. Every twitch carried a second of absence, like it had existed somewhere else before forcing itself back in.
Only Lance and Dario saw it. The world outside remained indifferent.
The creature dragged itself upright, head jerking toward Lance as if magnetized. The spiral of teeth opened, not in sound but in static, a buzzing like a broken server fan winding down.
"Not... enough..." it hissed, but the words weren't language. They were suggestion. Thoughts pressed against Lance's skull, unbidden. The meaning bloomed: You don't belong here. The gaps know. The gaps want you.
Lance staggered back into the sink, chest hammering. "No—no, no—" His breath caught sharp. His vision fuzzed, static creeping into the edges of his mind.
Dario barked, loud and sharp, snapping Lance back a step from collapse. The creature froze. Teeth clicking. It tilted its head at the dog, almost... recognizing.
The bathroom door swung open.
"Mercer!" The sharp bark of his boss's voice cut the static. Mr. Dalca's outline filled the doorway, his tie crooked from irritation, his face tight with red anger. "You think this is a hotel? First you waltz in late with some mutt, now you're hiding out in the bathroom?"
Lance whipped his head toward him, desperate for grounding—
But Dalca didn't see it. Didn't react. Behind Lance, the thing crouched, still writhing in stuttered frames, teeth spiraling wider. Dario snarled, but the boss's eyes narrowed only at Lance.
"Do you hear me?" Dalca snapped. "This is strike three, Mercer. I swear, you'll—"
The static surged again in Lance's ears. The anomaly moved closer, looming just behind him, its breath damp and chemical. The words pressed harder:
He can't see. You can't stay. You don't fit. The gaps want you.
Lance pressed his palms hard into his face, as if smothering the tears would keep the bathroom from twisting around him. The fluorescent hum above sounded jagged, like broken glass scraping across his ears. His shoulders trembled, and hot tears slipped between his fingers before he could stop them. He couldn't even look up at the thing lingering near the stalls—it wasn't shaped like him, wasn't shaped like anything human, just a heaped, twitching silhouette that breathed too many times in the silence.
Dario barked, low and guttural at first, then louder, sharper. His growls filled the bathroom with a living noise, breaking the suffocating stillness. With each snap of his teeth, the anomaly jittered like a bad film reel skipping frames—there, then blurred, then cracking apart into smoke-thin outlines. The dog barked harder, lunging toward it, and every bark seemed to peel more of the creature away. Until finally, it was gone.
The air settled.
Lance remained crouched against the sink, quietly crying, his chest aching with the shame of not being able to hold himself together. His own reflection above him looked foreign, swollen-eyed, cheeks streaked with salt. He didn't know if he was the broken one or if the world was—maybe both.
The bathroom door creaked.
His boss stepped inside.
For a long moment, he just stared. His face wasn't the usual mask of irritation—no barking orders, no tight-lipped lectures about deadlines. Just... worry. His gaze flicked from Lance's ruined face to the dog, tail stiff, ears perked, standing guard at his side.
"...Mercer," he said softly, voice stripped of authority. "You're... you're not well."
The boss looked down at the damp tile, then back at him, expression caught between disbelief and pity. The kind of look you gave someone who'd finally cracked under a weight no one else could see.
"You can go home," he said after a pause. "Take the day. Take... more if you need."
The door closed again, leaving Lance and Dario alone in the echoing bathroom.
Lance pressed his forehead to his knees, trying to breathe through the knot in his chest. The anomaly was gone—for now—but the pity in his boss's voice lingered heavier than any horror.
Lance didn't even notice the way his shoes squeaked on the polished tile as he walked out of the office bathroom, Dario close at his heel. His face was pale, damp with the streaks of quiet tears he hadn't even wiped away. His boss's hand still lingered awkwardly on his shoulder, a rare, clumsy show of sympathy, but Lance barely registered it. The murmurs of coworkers rippled outward as he moved down the hall, their voices muffled and distant like sound through heavy water.
"Mercer!" Tina hissed, her usual bright smile faltering as she caught sight of Lance.
"Lance, hey—wait," Allonsy called, jogging a few steps closer, the lanyard at his neck bouncing against his chest. His voice was low, gentle in a way Lance had never heard before. "You... you okay, man?"
Tina moved up beside him, concern pulling sharp lines into her face. She folded her arms, her eyes flicking between Lance's hollow, tear-streaked stare and the dog pressed protectively against his leg. "Jesus, you look—what happened?"
But Lance didn't answer. His lips parted like he meant to speak, but nothing came. The words dissolved before reaching air. His eyes were glassy, bloodshot and raw, and when Tina's hand lifted as if to touch his arm, he flinched and brushed past without a word.
Dario growled low at their feet—not at them, but at the lingering, invisible tension still threading the air—and then trotted close to Lance again. The two coworkers exchanged a glance, silent and helpless, as the man they knew shuffled past like a ghost.
The parking lot's glare felt too bright, too sharp. Lance unlocked his car with fumbling fingers and slid inside, Dario leaping into the passenger seat with a protective huff. For a moment, Lance just sat there, gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles blanched white, his chest rising and falling in uneven gasps. The world outside the windshield blurred with tears he refused to let fall again.
When he finally pulled out of the lot, traffic was worse than usual. A thick, crawling line of brake lights stretched into the distance, painting the late afternoon haze in angry red. Horns honked, people leaned from car windows to shout, and the air shimmered with the oppressive weight of heat and exhaust.
Lance's face was drawn, the bones beneath his skin casting harsh shadows under the fluorescent wash of streetlights. His eyes were bloodshot, red-veined and raw. His eyebags hung heavy, purple and sunken—so deep it looked like the flesh might give way, exposing the structure of his skull beneath. Every blink was slow, weighted. He was a man unraveling, caught between the world's mundane cruelty and the gnawing bite of something only he could see.
Beside him, Dario sat alert, ears pricked, tail stiff across the seat. The dog's gaze stayed on the windows, as though expecting something to crawl from the endless line of cars.
And Lance drove on, silent, the city pressing in tighter around him.
Lance's apartment came into view like a relief he didn't trust. The pale brick of the building, the narrow parking spaces, the hum of the city beyond—it should have been grounding. But as soon as he stepped out of the car, the air pressed in on him, heavy with static. The streetlights flickered, splitting into duplicates, stretching the shadows across the asphalt like grasping fingers.
Dario jumped out first, circling Lance's legs and letting out a low, warning growl at the dancing shadows no one else seemed to notice. Lance rubbed at his face, the skin raw, the itch of the symbiote thrumming like it had taken on a pulse of its own.
The sidewalk beneath him shifted. Not physically—it held—but he could see faint, writhing distortions crawling across the cracks, like dark water moving against gravity. He blinked, hard. Nothing. Dario's paw nudged him again, grounding him momentarily. But it didn't last.
Inside his apartment, the walls seemed to breathe. The ceiling sagged and rose like slow waves. The reflection in the window, caught by the evening's light, wasn't his own: for a split second, it was Rico again, smirking with impossible patience, arms crossed, whispering, "It's easier if you just let go."
He shook his head violently. "No. No, I am me. I am me."
But every object in the apartment distorted: the lamp twisted slightly like it was reaching for him, the couch seemed to ripple under its own weight, the rug shifted like liquid beneath his feet. Even Dario's tail twitched with unease.
The symbiote itched hotter now, as though laughing. Lance fell to the floor, pressing his hands into his face, trying to pull himself together.
"I... need... help," he whispered, voice cracking. "I... I can't do this alone. I can't—"
He hugged Dario close, burying his face in fur, the warmth grounding, but only barely. His body shook. Tears streamed freely now, unchecked, carving lines through the grime of his exhaustion. Every blink brought another flicker of hallucination: Rico's smile, hands stretching impossibly, whispering promises of erasure and replacement.
The phone buzzed on the table. He didn't reach for it. He couldn't. He didn't even know who to call. He just needed the pain gone. Needed someone to tell him he wasn't losing himself, even if he had to pay for it with everything else.
The apartment was silent but for his ragged breathing and Dario's comforting nudges. Yet Lance knew—it wasn't quiet for him. Not really. The world outside, the symbiote inside, and the creeping anomalies pressing at the edges of perception were all screaming at once.
He pressed his forehead to the floor. He needed this to stop. He needed help. Therapy. Intervention. Anything. He needed to reclaim himself before the anomaly, before the symbiote, before the city, before the office—before everything—claimed him entirely.
Dario whined softly, leaning against him, a small anchor in the chaos. Lance whispered into the dog's fur, almost as if confessing to another person:
"I... I can't do this on my own, bud. I need... I need it to be over."
And for the first time, he let himself hope that maybe, somewhere, someone could hear that desperate plea.