The Ghost in the Frame

The rain whispered against the windowpane, tracing slow rivulets down the glass, a quiet rhythm against the silence in the room. Jessica sat at the table, shoulders taut, the dim glow of the desk lamp casting long shadows over the photographs spread before her.

Faces that weren’t quite hers. Variations. Deviations. Errors.

Each image was an echo, a distortion of the familiar. Some had softer features, others bore subtle angular differences—cheekbones too sharp, a jawline slightly misaligned, eyes that held the same storm but with an unfamiliar edge. They weren’t just photographs. They were ghosts.

Leanna and Olivia spoke in hushed tones by the window, their words muffled by the weight pressing down on the room. Jessica could feel their glances cutting toward her, filled with unspoken questions. She didn’t blame them.

She wasn’t entirely sure what she was anymore.

Her fingers traced the edge of a particular photo—black and white, grainy, timestamped 2009. A woman stood alone in a corridor lined with sterile steel walls. She was caught mid-step, turning toward the camera as though she had sensed it. The face—Jessica’s face—was wrong.

Not in an obvious way. Not in a way anyone else might notice. But Jessica noticed.

The way the shoulders set just a little differently, the way the muscles tensed beneath the synthetic lighting. It was like looking at a dream half-remembered—familiar, yet fundamentally false.

Something inside her stomach twisted.

Leanna exhaled, arms crossed. “We need to talk about this.”

Jessica’s grip on the photograph tightened. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

Leanna scoffed. “Bullshit.” She pointed to the spread of images. “These are you, Jess. Or something close enough to be unnerving. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly like dealing with things that shouldn’t exist.”

Jessica swallowed, throat dry. “We find the facility.”

Leanna’s expression darkened. “And what happens when we do?”

Jessica met her gaze. Her voice came quieter this time. “We find out if I’m real.”

---

The next lead was buried in the metadata.

Olivia worked in tense silence, her fingers gliding over the keyboard, sifting through layers of encryption with surgical precision. Jessica stood behind her, arms folded, the low hum of the laptop fan filling the space between them.

“This security feed was rerouted through a dozen servers before it reached its final storage point,” Olivia muttered. “Whoever was running this didn’t want it traced.”

Jessica’s pulse quickened. “But you can.”

Olivia didn’t answer immediately. Then, after a beat— “Got it.”

The screen flickered, shifting from cascading lines of code to a map. A single coordinate. A place buried deep within the forgotten corners of the world.

Jessica leaned in.

“The facility is real,” Olivia murmured. “And it’s still operational.”

Jessica stared at the screen, fingers clenching into a fist. It wasn’t far.

---

The road ahead stretched like a scar through the landscape, cracked asphalt disappearing into a dense veil of fog. The headlights cut a path through the mist, illuminating nothing but skeletal trees lining the roadside, their twisted branches reaching toward the sky like grasping fingers.

They had left Montevideo behind hours ago, crossing into the vast, unmarked silence of the forgotten places.

Jessica drove in silence, hands tight on the wheel. The car’s interior felt claustrophobic, the walls of the world closing in the closer they got.

She could feel it now—the pull. A quiet thing, a whisper in the back of her mind, a sense of gravity drawing her forward. The deeper they went, the heavier the air became, thick with something unseen, something just beyond the reach of explanation.

Leanna checked the map again, the blue glow from her screen flickering across her face. “Fifteen more miles.”

Jessica barely heard her.

Ahead, through the mist, something loomed. The skeletal remains of a rusted road sign. The paint had peeled away in jagged strips, but the shape beneath it was unmistakable. A Vanguard insignia.

Jessica’s stomach clenched. They were close. And somewhere ahead, the reflection wasn’t only waiting, it was calling her home.