Chapter 7 - The Doppelgänger
Ricardo slammed his fist against the wooden wall panel where the security controls were hidden, but the flush-mounted faceplate refused to budge. The digital display blinked a steady, unbroken crimson, indicating that the remote override had been completely disabled from a master terminal. He spun around, breathing heavily, his eyes darting back to the living room floor.
Leo was still curled up on the white rug, but his head was tilted upward, staring not at Ricardo, not at Elena, but at the shadows pooling beneath the grand piano near the floor-to-ceiling windows.
"Dad..." Leo whimpered again, his voice pitching higher in pure panic. "He’s looking at us."
Ricardo froze. He slowly turned around, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. Standing in the dim shadows cast by the afternoon sun was a small figure dressed in an identical navy blue suit jacket and white shirt. The boy stood motionless, his dark brown hair messy and unkempt, staring directly at Ricardo with dead, unblinking eyes.
Ricardo stumbled backward, his back hitting the cold marble of the dining table. He blinked hard, thinking it was a trick of the light, a hallucination brought on by sudden terror. But when he opened his eyes, the boy was still there, stepping out of the shadows and moving toward the center of the room with an unnatural, gliding motion that lacked the clumsy gait of an eight-year-old child.
"Who is that?" Ricardo breathed, his voice trembling as he pointed a shaking finger toward the intruder.
Elena chuckled softly from the staircase, her hand resting gracefully on the polished wooden banister.
"That is Leo," Elena said calmly, as if introducing a guest at a dinner party.
Ricardo whipped his head back and forth between the figure standing by the piano and the child huddled on the white rug. To his absolute horror, the boy on the floor began to change. The fabric of Leo's jacket dissolved into a hazy, shimmering distortion, and the small body melted like wax before his eyes, collapsing into an empty pile of discarded clothes.
The child standing by the piano was the only one left. He tilted his head at an unnatural angle, staring at Ricardo with a cold, terrifying smile that did not belong on the face of an eight-year-old boy.
"You left me in the dark, Father," the entity said, its voice echoing with a chilling, distorted resonance that sounded like multiple voices speaking at once.
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Before Ricardo could process the nightmare unfolding before him, the front door of the penthouse behind him clicked open on its own, and a chilling draft swept through the room, carrying the distinct scent of old dust and dead roses.
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