She dropped the folder as if it had burned her. She grabbed another. Another woman. Another life, meticulously dissected and filed away.
Then, in the bottom of the drawer, tucked beneath a stack of files, her fingers brushed against something that wasn't a sheet of paper. It was a small, faded photograph, the edges soft and worn from handling. It felt old.
She pulled it out. It was a color photo, its tones washed out with age. It showed a young woman, maybe in her late teens, sitting on the steps of a porch, smiling warmly at the camera. She had dark, kind eyes and a cascade of curly brown hair. She was beautiful in a wholesome, gentle way. She was holding a small bunch of wildflowers.
Emma stared, her brow furrowed. This was different. This wasn't a surveillance photo. This was a personal snapshot. A memory. And the woman… there was something familiar about her smile, about the shape of her eyes, but Emma was certain, absolutely certain, she had never seen her before. Who was she? A first victim? A loved one? A ghost from Neo's past that somehow held the key to all of this?
The mystery of it, this single, human artifact in a room of monstrous implements, held her captivated. She turned the photo over, looking for an inscription, a date, anything.
There was nothing.
The faint, almost imperceptible sound of a door hinge creaking behind her cut through the heavy silence.
Emma froze. Every muscle in her body locked in place. The air in the room seemed to change, charged with a new, electric presence. She wasn't alone.
Slowly, with a stiffness that felt ancient, she turned her head.
The door to the bathroom, which had been slightly ajar, was now fully open. And standing in the doorway, silhouetted against the bright white lights of the bathroom, was a woman.
She was tall and slender, wearing a sleek, black, designer pantsuit, her posture erect and unnervingly calm. This was no hotel maid.
Emma's eyes, wide with terror and confusion, traveled up from the woman's sharp black heels, past the tailored pants, and finally to her face.
Her brain short-circuited.
It was like looking into a distorted mirror, a funhouse reflection from a nightmare.
The woman had *her* face.
The same high cheekbones, the same slightly upturned nose, the same full lips, the same arch of the eyebrows. The same shade of brown hair, though it was pulled back into a severe, sleek ponytail instead of falling around her shoulders. The same eyes, but where Emma's were wide with shock and fear, these were cold, calculating, and held a cruel, amused glint. It was her own face, but hardened, polished into a weapon, stripped of all warmth and vulnerability.
The cognitive dissonance was absolute, a system crash of her entire reality. A twin? A hallucination? A ghost? Her mind scrabbled for purchase, for any logical explanation, and found none. She could only stare, her mouth agape, a silent, choked sound escaping her lips.
The woman in the doorway didn't speak. She simply looked at Emma, and a slow, faint smile touched her lips—a smile that never reached her cold, dead eyes.
Emma opened her mouth. A question, a plea, a scream—she didn't know what was trying to come out.
She never got the chance.
*THWACK.*
A searing, blinding pain exploded at the base of her skull. The world detonated into a supernova of white light and agony. Her vision fragmented into a thousand shards of color and darkness. The faded photograph fluttered from her numb fingers as her legs buckled, dissolving beneath her. The floor, with its plush, impersonal carpet, rushed up to meet her face with a soft, final thud.
Darkness swam at the edges of her consciousness, a thick, inky tide pulling her down. She fought it, clinging to the pain, to the sound of her own ragged, wet breath. Through a narrowing tunnel of blurry vision, she saw the polished black leather of a woman's shoe step elegantly over her, not even sparing her a glance.
Then, another pair of shoes entered her field of view. Men's dress shoes, polished to a mirror shine. She knew those shoes. She'd polished them herself just yesterday.
Her swimming, failing eyes struggled to focus, traveling slowly up the perfectly creased trousers, to the hands.
One hand was empty. The other held the heavy, crystal base of a vase, the very object that had ended her investigation. A few jagged shards of the vase's upper half lay scattered near her face, glittering like ice.
Her gaze dragged upwards, the effort monumental, until she found his face.
Neo looked down at her. There was no surprise in his expression. No anger. No malice. There was only a calm, almost bored assessment. He looked from her crumpled form on the floor to the woman in the doorway, and then back to Emma.
He tilted his head, a faint, chilling smile playing on his lips. It was the same smile he used when he'd teased her about her music taste, but now it was a ghastly parody.
His voice, when it came, was soft, conversational, and it slithered into her dying consciousness like a snake.
"Well, well, Emma," he murmured, his tone almost admiring. "You just couldn't leave well enough alone, could you? I have to admit, I'm impressed. You were far more resourceful than I gave you credit for."
He took a step closer, the crystal vase base still held loosely in his hand. He nudged a fallen file folder with the toe of his shoe.
"All this sneaking around. The cameras. Breaking into my private space. It seems you've discovered my… hobby." He chuckled, a dry, soundless thing. "You thought it was a game of infidelity. How quaint."
He knelt down beside her, his face coming close to hers. She could smell his familiar cologne, a scent she had once found comforting, now suffused with the coppery tang of her own blood.