Nyelle was standing beside me, while the other Nyelle watched us from the end of the corridor. For several seconds, neither of us moved, and I found myself examining the figure’s clothes, bracelet, and the thin scar near her eyebrow. Everything was correct, including the small details that should have made the imitation easy to identify. That was what frightened me most: it had taken away the comfort of knowing that a familiar face would eventually reveal its lies.
"Don’t," I warned when Nyelle slowly released my wrist.
"I wasn’t going anywhere," she replied, although her attention remained fixed on the figure.
"You were about to step forward."
"I was about to get a better look at the thing wearing my face."
The imitation smiled and remarked that Nyelle always talked when she was afraid, making my sister fall abruptly silent. When I asked what was wrong, she admitted that she used to say the same thing to me when we were children, before I learned to pretend that nothing frightened me. The figure tilted its head, apparently pleased that she remembered, but I told Nyelle not to answer it.
"I’m not talking to you," she snapped.
"That’s exactly what worries me," I muttered.
The imitation stepped into the light, displaying the same impatient expression Nyelle wore whenever someone interrupted her. My sister studied it for several seconds before asking about the blue cup in our childhood kitchen, the one with the broken handle that our father had once used to teach me how to cook. The figure confidently claimed Nyelle had broken it, but she corrected the story: she had dropped it, and I had caught it before it hit the floor, then blamed her to avoid getting into trouble.
"You remember the cup," Nyelle said, folding her arms. "You don’t remember what happened."
For the first time, the imitation looked uncertain, and the room trembled as the device on the table flickered. Three symbols appeared on its screen: a blue circle, a silver circle, and a white circle, each representing one of the responses now active inside the structure.
[SEPARATION SEQUENCE: INITIALIZED.]
The man in the white coat hurried toward the device, ordering everyone not to touch anything. Zero stepped between him and the table, accusing him of trying to force another mystery into the classifications that had allowed him to live with his past actions. The man insisted that he was trying to understand, but Zero reminded him that understanding was not the same as deciding what they were allowed to become.
I turned toward the screen and asked why one response had to be removed. Zero explained that the structure couldn’t maintain all three in the same space, although it admitted it didn’t know whether that limitation was a physical necessity or an imposed rule. It had seen rooms empty without anyone leaving them, people speaking from places where they had never existed, and memories apparently transferred between individuals.
"Can it change what actually happened?" Nyelle asked.
Zero hesitated before answering that it didn’t know whether the structure distinguished between memories and reality. That possibility unsettled me more than the threat of physical destruction, because the apocalypse had already made ordinary assumptions unreliable. If the structure could alter what people remembered, then a familiar voice or a private childhood detail might prove less than I wanted to believe.
Still, the question about the cup had revealed something important. The imitation possessed information about Nyelle’s past, but it hadn’t understood the meaning she attached to it, and that distinction might be our only advantage. I told everyone to stop treating the screen as though its messages described the only choices available to us.
The three symbols brightened, displaying their classifications.
[RESPONSE ONE: STABLE.]
[RESPONSE TWO: UNRESOLVED.]
[RESPONSE THREE: UNAUTHORIZED.]
According to Zero, the blue circle represented me, the silver circle represented it, and the white circle belonged to the imitation. The word unauthorized meant that the structure hadn’t expected the third response to exist here, which explained why the figure had been treated as something to erase rather than someone to understand.
My mother stepped toward the imitation and asked who it was, but the figure answered that she already knew. She admitted that she recognized its face without knowing what it truly was, and the imitation’s expression hardened as it reminded her of the child she had watched through the glass. It remembered calling for her, watching her carry me away, and believing her promise that she would return.
"I’m sorry," my mother whispered.
She offered no excuses, and the lack of a defense seemed to unsettle the imitation more than an argument would have. Its anger weakened as it turned toward me, accusing me of remembering only what the researchers had allowed me to keep. A fragment of the white room flashed through my mind, but I couldn’t determine whether it belonged to me, Zero, or something that had existed before either of us had a name.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"I want the separation to finish," the imitation replied, although it admitted that it didn’t believe the structure’s demand that one response must disappear. It suspected the structure wanted one of us to make the choice itself, forcing us to accept responsibility for whatever happened next. Before I could question it further, a metallic click sounded from the device, and the white circle began moving toward the edge of the screen.
A thin line extended from the symbol to the imitation, then continued across the room until it reached the wall behind us. Three heavy knocks sounded from the other side, echoing through the room with the same rhythm we had heard beneath the streets, beneath the station, and inside the lower chamber. The imitation backed away, its confidence finally breaking as the device displayed a new message.
[EXTERNAL AUTHORITY: REENTRY CONFIRMED.]
The heartbeat inside my chest stopped completely, leaving me conscious but unable to feel any pulse beneath my ribs. Nyelle pressed her palm against my chest, panic spreading across her face as she searched for a sign that I was still alive. Then three evenly spaced beats returned, and both the blue and silver symbols cracked while the white one remained intact.
Zero stared at me with sudden understanding and ordered me not to move. The blue line beneath my skin began extending down my arm, entered the floor, and traced a path toward the device, which responded with another message.
[RESPONSE ONE: CONNECTED.]
The white symbol pulsed, and the imitation collapsed to one knee, clutching its head as the light surrounding its body distorted. Nyelle tried to approach, but I caught her wrist, uncertain whether touching the figure would help or make the connection worse. When the imitation begged for help, however, Nyelle recognized the voice of the little girl who used to visit my room after nightmares, pretending she had only wanted a glass of water.
"Stop using my voice," she said.
"I’m not using it," the figure replied. "It’s the only voice I have."
Nyelle approached cautiously and asked what she should call it, but the imitation admitted it didn’t know its own name. It remembered the glass, a crying woman, and a child being carried away, along with the terrible certainty that someone had told it that it wasn’t real. When Nyelle asked whether those memories made it her, the figure shook its head and admitted that it didn’t know what it was.
"Then why are you here?" Nyelle asked.
"Because something is trying to decide what I am."
The device flashed again, announcing that the separation sequence had reached its final stage. A white beam connected the imitation to the table while the blue line in my arm pulled tight, and Zero warned that we had to interrupt the connection between all three responses before the process finished. It couldn’t guarantee that breaking the connection would preserve everyone, but it had no better solution.
I studied the energy moving through my arm, trying to distinguish the current itself from the pressure directing it toward the device. The sensation reminded me of the energy I had detected beneath the floor earlier, and I realized that fighting the pull directly would only strengthen my connection to it. Instead, I shifted my attention toward the silver symbol and tried to redirect the flow along a different path.
For an instant, all three symbols went dark, and the beam connecting the imitation to the device flickered. I pushed the energy sideways, following the current through the floor, until the white beam snapped and the imitation collapsed into Nyelle’s arms. The blue line vanished from my skin, and my heartbeat returned to its ordinary rhythm as the device sounded a sharp warning.
[SEPARATION SEQUENCE: INTERRUPTED.]
[THREE RESPONSES REMAIN ACTIVE.]
We had stopped the process without removing anyone, but the imitation trembled in Nyelle’s arms as its face flickered in and out of focus. She held it carefully and asked whether it could hear her, then asked for its name once more, hoping it might finally have an answer. Instead, the figure looked directly at me and spoke in a voice that wasn’t Nyelle’s.
It was mine.
"Veyric," it whispered. "The thing below isn’t trying to get out."
The room fell silent as the imitation tightened its grip on Nyelle’s sleeve and revealed what it believed the structure truly wanted.
"It’s trying to get back what you took."
The device displayed two final messages.
[ORIGINAL RESPONSE: INCOMPLETE.]
[MEMORY RECOVERY: BEGINNING.]
Somewhere beneath the room, a child began to scream.