Chapter 15: Versions of Me
The forest fell silent.
Mara stared at the other her, the smile that didn’t quite fit her own face stretching wider, wrong. She didn’t blink. She didn’t breathe. Just stood there, barefoot in the damp soil, mud streaked up her legs as if she’d crawled from a shallow grave.
"You're not me," Mara said, low and certain.
The double tilted her head, the grin still carved into her face. "I'm every piece you tried to leave behind."
Nolan pulled Mara back slowly. "We need to move. Now."
But the copy moved with them, step for step, always ten feet ahead no matter how they turned. The air warped slightly around her, as if she didn't walk through the forest but hovered just beneath its surface.
"You're not real," Mara muttered. "You're another glitch. Another fragment."
"Aren't we all?"
She lunged.
The woods exploded in motion. Mara and Nolan spun off in opposite directions, but the creature—the clone—came for Mara, not with teeth or claws, but with memory. Every time Mara turned, it appeared in a new shape: her at twelve, crying beside a hospital bed. Her at nineteen, bruised and bloodied in an alley. Her at twenty-six, staring down a coroner's slab with her brother's face on it.
She couldn’t run from it, because it wore her every failure.
She tripped.
Mud caked her hands as she scrambled up, but the clone was already beside her, crouched like an animal. It whispered, "You’re not the first."
Then it vanished.
Just gone.
Mara gasped, spinning around in a panic. Trees. Fog. No sign of Nolan.
"Nolan?"
Nothing.
Her legs moved before her brain caught up, sprinting through the brush. She saw no trails, no footprints. Just wet leaves and shadows that bent the wrong way.
A voice whispered through the trees: You never left Site Null. You never left.
She slapped her hands over her ears. No. No, not now.
A flicker of movement ahead.
She ran harder.
Then burst into a clearing—
—and nearly collided with Nolan.
He looked shaken, eyes too wide. "Did you see it too?"
She nodded. "She said she was... pieces."
He pulled her aside. "We don’t have time. We follow the coordinates. We get to the island. We end this."
The last light of evening died behind the trees as they kept moving.
\---
They stole a boat by midnight.
A battered skiff docked behind a shuttered fishing lodge. Mara hotwired the motor while Nolan kept watch, his pistol tucked low beneath his jacket. Neither of them spoke much as the engine coughed to life and they drifted into the black mouth of the bay.
The stars blinked above them like uncertain witnesses. Mara leaned over the edge, watching the moon ripple on the waves. She thought of all the faces she’d worn. All the people she’d been. And all the fragments she hadn’t remembered losing until they clawed their way back.
"How do I know you’re really Nolan?" she asked suddenly.
He looked at her. "You don’t."
She laughed. It was short and bitter. "Great."
"But you can trust this," he added. "Whoever I am, I’m the one still on your side. I didn’t run."
The wind picked up.
Waves grew rougher.
Ahead, an outline emerged in the fog. Small. Jagged.
The island.
Site Null.
\---
The dock was rotting. Moss-covered and sagging into the sea. They stepped onto it carefully, every creak of the boards sounding like a warning. The island smelled like salt and rust.
Trees grew thick here, but trimmed unnaturally uniform. A path wound up toward a steel gate embedded in stone. The whole hill looked artificial.
"They built it over something," Nolan murmured.
Mara stared at the keypad by the gate. She typed in the date of her brother’s death.
The door clicked.
Inside, lights flickered on.
A sterile corridor stretched downward.
The air smelled like ammonia and electricity. They passed empty chambers, reinforced glass, strange machines hooked to mannequins with wires embedded in synthetic flesh.
At the end of the hall was a room with no door. Only a curtain of red light.
Mara stepped through.
\---
The room was round. Black walls. A domed ceiling covered in mirrored tiles that shimmered when she breathed. In the center was a chamber. Glass. Filled with liquid. And inside it—
Her.
The real one.
Her original body.
It floated in suspended sleep, pale and thin and untouched by time. Electrodes dotted her temples. Scars she hadn’t earned yet mapped her arms. Her face looked peaceful. Unaware.
A monitor beside the tank read:
ANCHOR: STABLE CURRENT USER: VEX_MARA_041 REMAINING JUMPS: 2
Nolan whistled low. "So that’s the tether."
Mara touched the glass. "How do we wake her up?"
A voice answered from behind.
"You don’t."
They turned.
Langston stood at the threshold.
Alive.
Or close enough.
Half his face was synthetic now, stitched in silver. One eye glowed faint blue. His badge was gone. In its place, a Saints insignia branded onto his neck.
"You came too far," he said.
Mara stepped in front of the tank. "Let her go."
Langston smiled. "She’s not yours anymore. You gave her up. Voluntarily. Signed the release. You don’t remember, but your signature’s still on file."
"You manipulated me."
"You were broken. We offered a new skin. You took it. We made you better."
Nolan raised his pistol. "Back off."
Langston didn’t flinch. "If you fire in here, you shatter the chamber. Kill the body. End the anchor. You both dissolve."
Mara looked at the girl in the tank. Her true self.
"What happens if I merge back in?"
Langston raised an eyebrow. "You think that’ll undo what’s been done? You’re not her anymore. You’re not anyone. Just code wrapped in meat."
"Maybe," Mara said. "But I’d rather die myself than let you keep wearing me."
She lunged for the console.
Langston fired.
The bullet caught Nolan in the shoulder.
He collapsed.
Mara screamed, slammed her fist into the control pad.
Alarms screamed.
The chamber hissed.
The tank began to drain.
Langston aimed again.
Mara spun, grabbed a fallen pipe, and hurled it. It struck his synthetic eye. He stumbled back, firing wildly.
Glass shattered.
Water flooded the floor.
Her original body dropped to its knees in the drained tank, coughing, gasping.
Alive.
Mara rushed to her.
And the room trembled.
Langston backed toward the door. "You have no idea what you’ve done. You weren’t the only one stored here."
The mirrors abov
e began to shift.
Reflections moved independently.
Eyes blinked that didn’t match hers.
And then one reflection stepped out of the glass.
Another Mara.
And another.
All wrong.
All coming closer.