"Mom?"
The voice came from behind her, sounding exactly like mine, except younger. It carried the uncertainty of a child who had wandered into the wrong room and expected someone to explain how to get home.
My mother turned toward the darkness, and the fear in her expression deepened into something that seemed to reach backward through years of buried memories. When the voice called again, asking where she was, she took a step toward it. I caught her arm before she could move any farther.
"Don’t," I warned.
She gripped my wrist with surprising strength. "You mustn’t let it see you."
"See me? It sounds like me."
"I know what it sounds like."
"Then tell me what it is."
"Not here." Her gaze shifted toward the darkness, and a faint silver glow spread across the floor between us. The symbols carved into the black stone converged beneath my feet before dividing into two paths, one leading toward the voice and the other disappearing into the wall behind her.
My right palm began to burn as the System appeared.
[IDENTITY CONFLICT: ACTIVE.]
[SUBJECT 01: MULTIPLE INSTANCES DETECTED.]
"Multiple instances," I muttered. "That’s a new way to ruin my evening."
My mother seized my shoulders. "Whatever happens, don’t answer the other one."
"I already did. It called my name before I entered the structure, and I answered."
She released me and backed away, whispering that it shouldn’t have been possible. Her attention shifted to my right hand, where silver lines were spreading beneath my skin in the same pattern as the symbols on the floor. Before I could demand an explanation, a child’s laughter echoed through the corridor.
"I found you."
A small figure emerged from the darkness, barefoot and dressed in a white shirt. As it stepped beneath the silver light, I saw a face that made my stomach tighten: the same nose, eyebrows, and tiny scar beneath the chin that appeared in my childhood photographs. Even the slight tilt of its head was familiar, a gesture I used whenever adults refused to explain something.
The child stopped several feet away and studied me with open curiosity. "Why are you so big?"
I couldn’t answer. My mother moved between us, shielding me as though I were the one who needed protection, while the child’s expression gradually fell.
"Go back," she ordered.
"But you said he would come."
"I was wrong."
"You said he would remember."
"I was wrong about that too."
The child looked at me over her shoulder. "He doesn’t remember me."
My throat tightened. "Who are you?"
My mother spun toward me, warning me not to speak to it again. I wanted to argue, but the child looked so painfully human that I couldn’t dismiss it as another creature wearing a familiar face. There was no unnatural glow beneath its skin, no distortion around its body, and no visible sign that anything about it was wrong.
Then it looked at my mother and whispered, "Why did you leave me?"
Her face crumpled. She covered her mouth, struggling to contain a sound I had never heard from her before, while tears gathered in her eyes. When the child reminded her of a promise to return, she finally whispered, "Because I couldn’t take you with me."
The child stared at her before turning toward me. "You took my place."
Pain exploded through my right palm, forcing me backward against the wall. The silver lines beneath my skin brightened, and the System flashed into existence before abruptly losing its display.
[ANOMALOUS RESPONSE DETECTED.]
[ORIGIN COMPARISON: FAILED.]
I forced myself upright and demanded to know what the child meant. My mother wiped her cheeks with trembling hands, then looked between us as though she could no longer avoid the truth.
"It means I made a choice."
"What choice?"
She hesitated before explaining that I had been born during the first successful activation of the ancient structure. The researchers believed they were opening a passage into an ancient energy network, and they had spent months studying its symbols before building a machine to control the response.
"When the machine activated, something answered from the other side," she continued. "The energy became unstable, and everyone in the chamber began hearing voices. Some heard their parents. Others heard people who had been dead for years."
"What did you hear?"
She looked directly at me. "My son."
I stared at her, struggling to understand. She explained that she had been holding me when a voice emerged from the structure, speaking as though it had known me for years. The researchers then discovered two matching signatures in their readings, although they could identify only one as belonging to a person inside the chamber.
"They called them two subjects," she said. "The second signature appeared alongside yours, but it didn’t behave like another person. It was as though the structure was responding to something that existed beside you."
I glanced at the child. "Something like that?"
"I don’t know what it is, Veyric. I know what I saw, and I know what the researchers believed. Those are not the same thing."
For the first time, I believed she was telling me everything she could. Unfortunately, that still left me standing beside a child who looked exactly like my younger self and claimed I had taken its place.
The child turned toward the nearest wall and pressed one hand against the black stone. Silver lines illuminated beneath the surface, and the corridor trembled hard enough to send dust drifting from the ceiling. My mother grabbed my arm and pulled me away.
"We have to leave."
"Can we?"
"Not the way you came in." She pointed toward the second silver path, where it disappeared into the wall. "There’s another passage."
I glanced at the child, which had begun tilting its head in the same way I had earlier. When I shifted my weight, it copied me; when I straightened, it followed the movement almost perfectly. It wasn’t simply imitating my appearance but studying my behavior, learning the small gestures that made me recognizable.
"Is this the same thing that’s been following us?" I asked.
"No," my mother replied. "At least, not in the way you mean."
"Then explain the difference."
She took my hand. "This one was here before you."
The child’s sadness disappeared as its gaze settled on our joined hands. Something cold entered its expression, and the silver lines beneath the floor flared.
"You chose him again."
A deep impact shook the corridor, followed by another from somewhere farther below. For a fraction of a second, the child’s face flickered, revealing a vast darkness threaded with countless silver lines before its ordinary features returned. It smiled at us with an expression that no longer belonged to a hurt child.
"It’s awake now."
"Run!" my mother shouted.
We reached the second passage as the corridor began collapsing behind us. A slab struck my injured shoulder, sending pain through my arm, but my mother caught me and dragged me toward the opening. The wall parted beneath her touch, revealing a narrow staircase descending into darkness.
I hesitated at the threshold. "You said we needed to leave, but this goes down. Everything dangerous we’ve encountered has been underground."
"And everything looking for you knows you’re here."
That ended the argument. We descended, and the passage sealed behind us, cutting off the sound of falling stone.
After several minutes, the stairs opened into a small chamber containing a metal table and equipment buried beneath dust. Most of the monitors lining the walls were dark, but one screen flickered as we entered. My mother stopped so abruptly that I nearly collided with her.
"No," she whispered.
A recording showed a white room, a machine, and a woman holding a newborn child. The woman’s face was unmistakable: my mother, standing beside a man in a white coat whose photograph I had seen on the stranger’s device.
A voice spoke through the monitor. "Subject One has been stabilized."
Another voice asked, "And the original?"
The man in the white coat looked toward the camera and smiled. "Still present. But it isn’t the child."
I turned toward my mother, whose face had gone pale. "What did they put inside me?"
"Nothing," she whispered.
A sharp tone interrupted her, and a new message appeared beneath the recording.
ORIGINAL SUBJECT: LOCATION CONFIRMED.
The chamber lights went out. In the darkness, something took my hand, its small fingers warm and unmistakably human.
A child’s voice whispered beside my ear.
"Now you can remember me."