The Hollow Man

The air inside the facility had changed. Jessica could feel it—an almost imperceptible shift in pressure, the way sound carried differently now, dull and stifled. The underground level was colder than the floors above, the kind of cold that settled beneath the skin, bone-deep and relentless.

She stared at the file in her hands, the inked words burning into her vision.

Subject ID: LZ-04
Genetic Line: Vellum Prototype
Assigned Identity: Jessica Sanchez

The hum in her head returned, faint at first, then rising, a frequency she couldn’t place. Her heartbeat followed suit, a dull, uneven throb against her ribs. She read the line again, but the meaning refused to settle.

Leanna exhaled, voice low and controlled. “This doesn’t mean anything. It could be a misdirection.”

Jessica glanced up, her fingers tightening around the paper. “You don’t believe that.”

Leanna didn’t answer.

Olivia flipped through the rest of the file, scanning the pages with quick efficiency. “There are more names.” She laid the sheets out across the console, the faded documents detailing experiments, progress reports—people.

Jessica’s eyes skimmed the list, searching for something familiar. Then she saw it.

Subject ID: LZ-03
Deceased – 2009

The breath left her lungs, and suddenly, the room was wrong. The ink blurred under Jessica’s gaze. For a second, she wasn’t sure if it was the low light or something breaking loose inside her mind. The sterile scent in the air pressed closer, thick and sharp, crawling down her throat.

The console in front of her seemed to tilt, just slightly, like the world had slipped sideways. White tiles. Buzzing lights. Cold metal under her skin.

Fluorescent lights hum overhead, flickering in and out, casting long shadows on pristine white tiles. The walls feel impossibly tall, closing in around her. The air smells of antiseptic and something metallic, something sharp.

She is small. Not in size, but in presence—like she doesn’t belong in her own skin.

A voice—soft, clinical, male.

"We’ll try again."

A chair, cold metal beneath her arms. The straps bite into her wrists. A figure stands over her, blurred, faceless. The voice isn’t cruel, but it isn’t kind either. It is measured, detached.

"Tell me your name."

She tries to answer, but the words aren’t hers.

Jessica staggered back, blinking hard. The lights above seemed to buzz louder now, the weight of the air crushing her ribs. She wasn’t sure if she was standing or falling.

‘Leanna caught her by the arm. "Jess?"

The room spun. The sterile scent of the air, the smooth walls, the dim lighting—it was all wrong and too familiar. A headache pulsed behind her eyes, a static-like hum buzzing beneath her skull. Her pulse didn’t feel like her own.

Olivia's voice barely registered. "Jess, what’s wrong?"

She blinked hard, forcing herself to focus, but the files on the table looked different now. The ink smudged, shifting—letters rearranging, becoming something else.

Not words. Coordinates. A place. She didn’t know how she knew it. She just did.

—

The corridor stretched ahead, deeper into the complex. The sealed doors gave way to open ones now, their interiors stripped, gurneys overturned, shattered glass crunching beneath their boots. Jessica felt the walls pressing in, an awareness settling at the base of her skull. Something was definitely wrong.

They reached a security panel at the far end, its screen flickering, barely functional. Olivia crouched beside it, tools already in hand. The seconds stretched as she worked, the silence inside the facility almost predatory.

Then, the monitor flashed. A prompt appeared:

ACCESS LEVEL REQUIRED: ALPHA.

Jessica frowned. “Alpha?”

Olivia’s fingers danced across the keyboard. “This system was meant to keep people out. But it wasn’t meant to keep someone out.”

Jessica didn’t like the sound of that.

A few seconds later, with Olivia’s final keystroke, the door sounded off with a small beep and the familiar “click” of a lock disengaging. Beyond it, the hallway opened into something else entirely.

—

The observation chamber was vast. Jessica stepped inside, boots scuffing against polished tile, her breath a ghost in the sterile air. The walls were lined with reinforced glass panels, sectioned off like individual cells, but there were no beds, no monitors. No people. Only mirrors.

Row after row of floor-to-ceiling mirrors, each angled slightly, designed to reflect endlessly into themselves. The space became disorienting at once, Jessica’s own reflection multiplying a thousand times over. A maze of herself.

She moved slowly, the sound of Leanna and Olivia’s footsteps merging with her own, distorting, echoing off surfaces that shouldn’t carry sound this way.

She forced herself to focus. Her reflection mimicked her perfectly. Then, one didn’t.

Jessica stopped cold. At first, she thought it was a trick of the light, a flicker in the glass. But as she stared, the difference became more pronounced. The figure standing in the mirror—her mirror—was a fraction slower. Not frozen, not unresponsive, but delayed. A fraction of a second off.

Jessica’s breath came slow and shallow. The reflection tilted its head. Jessica didn’t move. A heartbeat of silence. The hum in her skull grew sharper. Then, it smiled. Not her smile, but like something else wearing her face.

Jessica staggered back, heart hammering in her ears. The glass still shimmered faintly, an echo of something not quite gone. Her breath misted in the cold air. For a heartbeat—no, for longer—the room around her blurred.

A different mirror, a different room. She is younger here. Not a child, but something incomplete.

A man stands behind her, his face reflected over her shoulder. She can’t see his features, only the outline, the stillness of his hands as he adjusts a device on her temple.

"Watch carefully, 04. Do you recognize her?"

Jessica looks at her reflection. The other her stares back. But it doesn’t blink. Doesn’t move. Not until the man speaks again.

"Good. Again."

The reflection tilts its head.

The mirrors rippled like water, and for a sick heartbeat Jessica couldn’t tell which side she was standing on. She dragged herself backward, muscles trembling, every instinct screaming to run. Her body reacted before her mind caught up, muscles tensing, hand flying to the grip of her 1911.

The figure in the mirror stepped forward. Glass didn’t shatter. It just... folded away, as if reality itself had turned inside out.

Jessica fired. The bullet hit the surface—and passed through. No shatter, no impact, only a ripple, like stone against water. The figure didn’t flinch. Then, it stepped out.

Jessica’s mind screamed at her to move. She obeyed.

She grabbed Olivia and shoved her back toward the entrance, reaching for Leanna just as the air in the room changed—thick, charged, wrong. The thing that wore her face moved with impossible fluidity, head tilting slightly as though fascinated.

It opened its mouth, but Jessica didn’t hear the words. She only the sound of her own breath, fast and uneven, and the hammering of her pulse in her ears.

Leanna grabbed her arm. “We need to go.”

Jessica didn’t hesitate. They ran. The thing did not follow, but as they reached the exit, Jessica risked a glance back. The figure had stopped at the mirror’s edge, its expression unreadable. Its lips moved, whispering words Jessica could not hear — and maybe didn’t want to. Then it smiled, and she felt something inside her fracture.