Fractured Echoes

The facility was awake.

Jessica could feel it now, pulsing beneath her skin, a pressure that had nothing to do with the cold. It was as if the walls themselves were aware, as if the thing in the mirror had not simply been an aberration but a harbinger of something worse.

They moved quickly, retracing their path through the corridors, but the space had changed. The silence was no longer a void—it was expectant.

Jessica didn’t look back. She didn’t need to. She already knew it was following.

---

They reached the first junction—left led back toward the stairwell, right into uncharted territory. Leanna stopped, checking the map Olivia had extracted earlier.

“Stairs are two levels up,” she whispered, glancing behind them. “If we push fast, we can make it.”

Jessica stared into the right-hand corridor. The air felt wrong—thick, oppressive. Her instincts pulled against logic, against the plan. But she knew: if they went up now, they wouldn’t survive.

It was waiting.

“We go right,” she said.

Leanna hesitated, but only for a second. Then she nodded, pivoting. “Olivia, move.”

They ran.

---

The deeper they went, the more the walls bore signs of past inhabitants. More of the handprints, the imprint of fingers dragged across concrete. Numbers, scratched into the metal, as if someone had been trying to hold onto time.

Olivia slowed as they passed an open door. Inside, an old terminal blinked—its monitor active, casting a faint glow over the room.

Jessica stopped. “That shouldn’t be on.”

Olivia was already moving, fingers ghosting over the keyboard. “The system is still running—there’s power down here.”

Jessica glanced toward the hallway. The hum in her skull sharpened.

Leanna kept watch by the door. “Fast, Liv.”

Lines of code scrolled across the screen. Then—a file directory.

Jessica’s name was there.

LZ-04.

And another.

LZ-03 – TERMINATED 2009.

Jessica exhaled slowly remembering the timestamp from the photo. The one with the woman in the hallway—the one who looked like her but wasn’t.

Jessica stared at the terminal screen, the hum in her skull pulsing louder with each line of code. This place wasn’t just data and decay—it was memory. Structured. Archived. And somehow, she was part of it; Not a trespasser, but a return.

Olivia didn’t stop. “There’s a directive buried in here. Looks like… like a contingency plan.”

Jessica forced herself to speak. “A failsafe?”

Olivia’s fingers stilled. Then she looked up, her face pale.

“They called it The Lazarus Directive.”

---

The terminal flickered—followed by a distant sound. Not the hum of machines. Not the pulse of air. Footsteps. They were slow and steady. They sounded human, or something close to it.

Jessica turned sharply just as the overhead lights failed, dumping them into total darkness. A single emergency bulb flickered red in the corridor, illuminating just enough to see the outline of a figure standing at the far end.

Not running. Not charging toward them. Just standing. Watching.

Jessica’s stomach twisted. She had seen it before—a delayed reflection, a presence out of step with reality. Then it moved. It wasn’t a step, nor a shift. Something was wrong. There was a distortion of space, a slowness that made it more unnatural than anything she had seen in the mirror.

Leanna didn’t wait. She fired. The shot ripped through the silence—a direct hit to the chest. The impact sent a shudder through the figure, but it did not fall. Instead, it laughed.

Jessica’s breath hitched. The sound was wrong. Then the light flickered again—and it was gone.

---

Jessica grabbed Olivia by the arm, yanking her away from the terminal.

“We move. Now.”

They sprinted through the dim corridor, the sound of their footsteps swallowed by the stale, heavy air. Every door they passed felt like it was watching, every shadow stretched too long against the flickering emergency lights.

They reached another intersection. Ahead, a blast door—sealed, reinforced.

Leanna turned sharply. “That’s a dead end.”

Jessica’s mind raced. The thing in the mirror—her double—was not acting alone. There was something else, something manipulating the very structure of this place.

Her eyes flicked back toward the open hall. She knew if they went back now, they would be walking into a trap.

She turned to Olivia. “Can you override that door?”

Olivia scanned the panel beside it. “I don’t know. It looks manual—might need a power reset.”

Jessica clenched her jaw. “Then find the switch.”

Leanna stayed by the entrance, weapon raised. The air was thicker now, electric with something unseen. Jessica could feel it closing in, pressing at the edges of her consciousness.

Then, from the darkness behind them— Another whisper.

“Jessica.”

Jessica felt it before she heard it. The air behind her had changed—thickened, fractured, as though reality itself had splintered at the edges. Space no longer felt linear. Her thoughts didn’t either. For a heartbeat, she wasn’t sure where she ended and the corridor began.

Then came the voices. They echoed not from a single source, but from the walls, the floor, the very air—overlapping voices, layered in tones both childlike and hollow, confident and broken. All of them hers.

Her stomach clenched. For a moment, she didn’t feel like a person—just data running from a corrupted copy. She didn’t turn. She refused to turn.

“Olivia,” she said, voice tight.

“Almost—”

The overhead lights flickered once more. For a fraction of a second, Jessica saw them. Not one. Dozens of shadows wearing her face, lining the corridor behind them, waiting just beyond the light.

With a hydraulic sigh, the door began to open. Salvation—or something else entirely. Jessica didn’t hesitate. She grabbed Olivia and shoved her through. Leanna followed. And then Jessica turned—just in time to see the first one move. The door slammed shut.

---

Jessica’s chest heaved as she pressed back against the steel, her mind trying to process what she had seen. Not just one. Not just two. There had been so many.

Leanna was already moving, sweeping the new room for threats. It was larger than the others—a control center, lined with monitors, some still flickering faintly.

Jessica pushed herself off the door, stepping forward. In the center of the room, a single chair faced the largest monitor. A figure sat in it. Not Vanguard. Not one of the reflections. But human.

Thin, disheveled, wearing a lab coat that hadn’t been clean in years. He turned toward them, slow, his eyes sunken, his skin pallid from years underground.

Jessica’s pulse slowed.

He smiled weakly.

“You took your time,” he rasped.

Leanna raised her gun. “Who the hell are you?”

The man exhaled, shaking his head slightly. Then he looked directly at Jessica.

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

Jessica’s blood ran cold.

The man smiled again, but there was no humor in it.

“My name,” he said, “is Dr. Whitaker. And I’m the reason you exist.”