"Veyric, open the door."
Nyelle’s voice came through the metal barrier with the impatience I knew so well, even carrying the slight break in her breathing that appeared whenever she was frightened but refused to admit it. If my mother hadn’t grabbed my arm, I would already have reached for the lever. Her warning stopped me, but it couldn’t silence the question forming in my mind.
"Then how does it know her voice?"
"The structure has been listening to us," she replied, watching a silver line creep beneath the barrier. "It knows what we remember, what we fear, and what might persuade us to open a door we should leave closed."
Another knock sounded, followed by Nyelle complaining that she was cold. The memory of her stealing my blanket as a child surfaced so vividly that I nearly forgot where I was, but I forced myself to remember the real Nyelle had been outside the station with the stranger. She had been frightened, certainly, but she was also stubborn enough to tell me exactly what she thought of my decision to enter alone.
"Nyelle," I called. "Tell me what you said when I left the apartment."
My mother tightened her grip. "Don’t."
Silence followed my question, and when the voice finally answered, it merely complained that I was playing games. The irritation sounded convincing, but it hadn’t answered me, and I couldn’t tell whether the structure lacked the memory or was simply refusing to reveal it. My mother leaned closer and whispered that it didn’t need to imitate Nyelle perfectly; it only needed me to believe it long enough to open the door.
A low vibration passed through the chamber as the silver line beneath the barrier divided into three branches. My right palm warmed, and the System appeared with two notifications.
[SECONDARY RESPONSE: ACTIVE.]
[PROXIMITY: INCREASING.]
"Can it tell whether that’s Nyelle?" I asked.
"The System classifies what it detects. It doesn’t necessarily understand what created the response." She glanced at the advancing lines. "If the structure is imitating someone, the System might recognize the presence without knowing whether that person is real."
The voice changed. "Veyric, please. He won’t let me leave."
I went still. Nyelle would normally have complained about being trapped, demanded that I hurry, and threatened to break something if I took too long, but this sentence carried a different kind of fear. When I asked who wouldn’t let her leave, the voice answered that it was the man who had come with us.
The stranger.
My mother’s certainty faltered, and I immediately reminded her that the structure might know he had been outside the station. The answer proved nothing, but it raised a possibility neither of us could ignore: if the real Nyelle was in danger, remaining behind the barrier wouldn’t help her.
I searched the wall beside the door for a viewing slit or control panel and found a circular plate bearing the three-circle symbol. Silver markings moved around its edge, completing the first two circles before stopping at a gap in the third. I recognized the unfinished pattern from the ring my mother had shown me earlier.
"Did the facility use this symbol on equipment connected to the original response?" I asked.
"Sometimes."
"Then this door might be connected to the same system."
"Probably, but don’t touch it."
I studied the incomplete circle, wondering whether the sequence represented a process interrupted before receiving some necessary input. The idea was speculative, but it gave me something concrete to investigate instead of blindly trusting either the voice or my mother’s fear. Before I could test the theory, the voice behind the barrier spoke again.
"Veyric, he says you shouldn’t trust her."
My mother went rigid.
I turned toward her. "What does that mean?"
"Nothing."
"Your face says otherwise."
She looked away and admitted that my father had said something similar before disappearing. I wanted to demand the whole story, but the barrier was shaking, the silver lines were spreading, and Nyelle might genuinely need help somewhere above us. I couldn’t afford to open every mystery at once, so I asked whether we could contact the surface instead.
My mother nodded toward the metal cylinder she had recovered from the compartment. It was a signal key designed to communicate with the facility’s external stations, although she couldn’t guarantee that any of them were still functioning. She also revealed that the stranger possessed a matching receiver, then reluctantly handed the cylinder to me.
I turned it in my fingers, searching for a switch or button, but found no obvious controls. When I brought it near the circular plate, the cylinder vibrated, and a thin blue line illuminated its side. The voice behind the barrier immediately fell silent.
My mother stepped back. "Move it away."
I did, and the vibration stopped. When I brought it close again, the blue line brightened and the silver markings beneath the barrier shifted direction, prompting a new System notification.
[EXTERNAL SIGNAL DETECTED.]
[ORIGIN: UNVERIFIED.]
Static crackled from the cylinder before a man’s voice emerged in broken fragments, warning anyone listening not to approach the central chamber. I adjusted my grip and asked him to identify himself, but the signal dissolved before I received an answer. Then the voice returned, clearer this time, and spoke my name.
"Veyric?"
The stranger.
"I’m here. Where’s Nyelle?"
Interference swallowed most of his reply, but his next warning came through clearly enough to understand. The station had begun transmitting false responses, he said, and I shouldn’t trust everything I heard or saw. A heavy impact interrupted him, followed by a curse and Nyelle shouting for someone to get away from her.
"Nyelle!" I shouted into the cylinder.
The signal collapsed into static. I tried again, but my mother caught my shoulder and warned me not to waste the remaining signal, insisting that hearing Nyelle’s voice didn’t prove she was there. I turned on her, furious that she expected me to distrust every sound while accepting her own explanations without question.
"You cannot keep telling me not to trust what I hear while expecting me to trust everything you say."
She recoiled slightly, and regret followed almost immediately, though I couldn’t take back the words. After a moment, she admitted that I was right, then agreed we needed to reach the external station whether the signal was genuine or not. If the voice was false, remaining in the chamber wouldn’t make us safer.
I crouched beside the circular plate and positioned the signal key near the gap in the third circle. The blue light pulsed against the silver markings, slowing their movement until the first two circles completed their sequences and the third stopped just before closing. For a moment, the silver lines beneath the barrier retreated, and a message appeared before my eyes.
[RESPONSE INTERRUPTED.]
Relief lasted less than a second.
[CONTAINMENT FAILURE: IMMINENT.]
My mother seized my arm and shouted for me to move as the barrier buckled inward. I pulled the cylinder away, but the blue light continued burning along its groove, and the unfinished circle filled with silver. A violent impact split the metal down the center, revealing a small, pale hand trembling in the opening.
"Veyric," Nyelle whispered.
A silver bracelet circled its wrist, identical to the one I had given my sister on her last birthday. The figure leaned closer, revealing Nyelle’s frightened expression, familiar eyes, and the scar above her eyebrow from a childhood bicycle accident. Everything looked right until I noticed the scar was on the wrong side.
I remembered carrying her home after that accident, listening to her insist that the entire thing had somehow been my fault. The figure smiled as I stared at it, and the recognition in its eyes made the hair rise along my arms.
"Found you."
My mother shoved me toward the opposite exit, and this time I didn’t argue. We raced into the next corridor as the barrier collapsed behind us, the signal key burning against my palm while the System displayed its final warning.
[SUBJECT 02: RESPONSE NO LONGER SUPPRESSED.]
[SUBJECT 02: ORIGINAL LOCATION CONFIRMED.]
Ahead, a heavy door opened onto a stairwell leading upward, but my mother stopped so abruptly that I nearly collided with her. A man in a white coat stood at the top, his face hidden in shadow, and his voice carried down the stairs with unsettling familiarity.
"Welcome back, Veyric."
He glanced at the cylinder in my hand. "You’ve made the same mistake your father did."
Then he stepped aside, revealing an open doorway beyond him. From the darkness came a voice that sounded like my sister.
"Brother?"
I couldn’t tell whether it belonged to Nyelle or to the thing that had learned how to become her.