Dr. Elara Voss had never needed company. Her lab, a fortress of steel and glass on the edge of a desolate coastline, was her universe. The hum of machines, the sterile scent of antiseptic, the cold precision of her work—these were the only constants she required. But then came Kael, a patient with a mind like fractured glass.
He arrived in a transport van, strapped to a gurney, his eyes wide and unblinking. The file said he was a former engineer, injured in an accident that left his brain scrambled. But Elara saw something else. When she asked him questions, his answers were laced with memories that weren’t his—snapshots of places he’d never been, voices he’d never heard. They flickered like static on a bad television, unresolved and jagged.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked, her voice steady despite the unease curling in her gut.
Kael’s lips parted, but no sound came out. Then, abruptly: “The sky was green. I was standing on a bridge made of glass. People were shouting, but I couldn’t hear them.”
Elara’s fingers tightened around her pen. The green sky. The glass bridge. She didn’t recognize either. But something in his delivery—his voice, which wavered like a dying signal—made her think he wasn’t lying.
She ran scans, cross-referenced neural patterns, and found nothing. No trauma, no anomalies. Just a mind that didn’t belong to him. The more she probed, the more the static bled into her own thoughts. She’d wake up in the middle of the night with fragments of Kael’s memories playing in her head—his childhood home, a woman with silver hair, a scream that didn’t belong to her.
One evening, she discovered the encrypted files. They were buried deep in the lab’s system, hidden behind layers of code she’d never written. When she decrypted them, the contents made her blood run cold. The files detailed an experiment called “Project Lumen,” a failed attempt to merge consciousnesses. The subject? A woman with Elara’s neural signature.
The files ended abruptly, but the implications were clear. Someone had tried to erase her. Or worse—recreate her.
Kael’s memories weren’t his. They were hers.
The realization hit like a physical blow. She’d spent weeks unraveling his mind, convinced she was helping him. But what if she’d been the one in need of help? What if the experiment hadn’t failed? What if it had succeeded—and she was the one who’d been split, scattered across different timelines, different lives?
She tried to shut down the files, but the system refused. The lab’s lights flickered, and for a moment, she saw Kael’s face in the reflection of the monitors—except it wasn’t his face. It was hers.
“You’re not real,” she whispered, but the words felt hollow. If Kael’s memories were hers, then who was she? A ghost? A copy? A mistake?
The static grew louder. It wasn’t just in Kael’s mind anymore. It was in hers. And it wasn’t stopping.
