Chapter 6 - The Man in the Mirror
"That's not me," David muttered, backing away from the counter as if the glowing screen were about to leap out and strike him. "That's a glitch. The system has been compromised by a local network exploit."
"Look at his hand, David!" Elena screamed, pointing a trembling finger at the monitor.
On the grainy black-and-white display, the alternate David raised his left hand toward the camera lens. The skin on his ring finger was completely bare, but carved directly into the flesh was a neat, circular scar shaped like a wedding band—the exact mark David had just discovered on his own hand moments before.
"It's a feed from inside the house," Elena sobbed, her knees buckling until she caught herself against the back of a dining chair. "He's not outside, David. He's standing in the west wing hallway. Right outside Mia's bedroom."
Mia didn't cry. She didn't scream. She simply turned her head toward the dark hallway, her blonde bob swaying softly against her cheek. "He wants his bunny back, Daddy. The one you left in the well."
David felt the air leave his lungs in a sharp rush. The well. The old, stone-lined cistern beneath the detached tool shed at the back of the property—a cistern his grandfather had sealed over with reinforced concrete back in nineteen-seventy-two, long before David was even born. He had never told Elena about the cistern. He had never told anyone about the rusted iron ring buried under the overgrown ivy behind the garage.
"How do you know about that?" David demanded, his voice dropping to a harsh, dangerous whisper as he stepped toward his daughter.
Mia looked up at him, her blue eyes completely devoid of childhood innocence, reflecting two tiny, distorted versions of David holding the glowing flashlight. "Because you dropped me down there when I was three, Daddy. Before you bought this house and painted the walls white."
David staggered backward, his heel catching on the edge of the floor vent. The memory hit him with the force of a physical blow—a humid summer afternoon, the smell of damp mortar, a sudden, inexplicable rage that had flared up in his chest like wildfire, and a small pink dress disappearing into the black, circular mouth of the ground. He had convinced himself it was a nightmare. He had spent twenty years convincing himself the therapists were right when they said the trauma of losing his little sister was just a fabricated coping mechanism.
"She's not Mia," David whispered, his hands trembling as he gripped the edge of the kitchen island. "She's... she's the memory."
"No, David," a voice murmured softly from directly behind his right ear—a voice that sounded precisely like his own, right down to the slight rasp in the throat. "I'm the one who stayed behind to make sure you never forgot."
David whipped around, swinging the heavy flashlight in a wide, desperate arc. The beam sliced through empty air, illuminating only the drifting gray dust and the open pantry door.
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On the kitchen counter, every single security monitor suddenly flashed a blinding, solid white, accompanied by the high-pitched shriek of an analog emergency broadcast tone.
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