The Duplicate
Nobody spoke.
The cracked television screen continued glowing softly across the lounge floor while the image of Ethan’s face stared outward from the body of the missing participant seated among them.
Same eyes.
Same jawline.
Same expression.
Only older somehow.
Exhausted beyond recognition.
Ethan Vale physically stepped backward before realizing he was moving.
“That’s not funny.”
His voice sounded weak even to himself.
Daniel Cross stared between Ethan and the television in complete disbelief. “Okay, no. Absolutely not.”
Mira looked pale. “How is that possible?”
Nobody answered.
Because the image on the screen wasn’t just similar.
It was him.
The duplicate Ethan inside the television slowly lifted his eyes toward the camera while the other participants around him remained motionless inside the lounge recording.
Then the duplicate whispered something silently.
The television had no sound now.
But Ethan somehow understood the words anyway.
You stayed awake too long.
The screen suddenly burst into static again.
Leah screamed and kicked the shattered television backward across the floor. The image vanished instantly afterward, leaving only black cracked glass reflecting the red emergency lights around the room.
Ethan couldn’t breathe properly.
His thoughts felt slippery now.
Disconnected.
Part of him desperately wanted to dismiss everything as hallucinations caused by exhaustion.
But hallucinations weren’t supposed to share continuity between people.
Everyone saw the same face.
The same image.
The same impossible recording.
Then Mira asked the question Ethan feared most.
“What if he wasn’t another participant?”
Silence.
Daniel looked toward her carefully. “What are you saying?”
Mira swallowed visibly before speaking again.
“What if that’s Ethan after the Ninth Night?”
The room felt colder immediately.
Leah shook her head hard. “No.”
But Ethan noticed something terrible.
Nobody rejected the idea immediately anymore.
Because after only two nights inside Somna Labs, the impossible had already started feeling normal.
Then the facility lights changed.
The red emergency glow vanished suddenly, replaced by dim white overhead lighting throughout the lounge. At the same moment, the digital wrist monitors reset themselves automatically.
The frozen time disappeared.
2:04 AM.
Normal again.
Too normal.
Daniel looked around suspiciously. “Did the lockdown end?”
As if answering him, the automatic lounge doors slid open quietly.
The hallway outside looked ordinary once more.
No extended corridors.
No black stains.
No motionless figures beneath flickering lights.
Just the clean silver hallways of Somna Labs.
The transition felt deeply wrong.
Like the facility itself had suddenly decided to pretend nothing happened.
Then footsteps approached calmly from outside.
Dr. Mercer entered the lounge alone.
And for the first time since arriving—
she looked tired.
Dark circles shadowed beneath her eyes while strands of hair had slipped loose from her normally perfect appearance. Yet her expression remained controlled as she scanned the participants carefully.
“You all remained awake,” she said softly.
Nobody answered.
Ethan stared directly at her. “Who was that man?”
Dr. Mercer’s face didn’t change.
“What man?”
“The participant from nineteen years ago.”
A long silence followed.
Then Dr. Mercer slowly looked toward the shattered television screen on the floor.
“You’ve started experiencing memory drift earlier than projected.”
Daniel stepped forward immediately. “Stop talking like we’re crazy.”
“You are sleep deprived.”
“No,” Daniel snapped sharply. “We all saw the same thing.”
Dr. Mercer finally looked back toward Ethan afterward.
And something about her expression unsettled him deeply.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Like she’d expected this eventually.
Then she quietly asked:
“What did he tell you?”
The room went silent.
Ethan’s pulse quickened.
“You know who he is.”
Dr. Mercer hesitated.
Only slightly.
Then she nodded once.
“His name was Aaron Vale.”
The surname hit Ethan instantly.
Vale.
Same as him.
Mira looked toward Ethan immediately too.
Dr. Mercer continued carefully.
“He participated in Somna Labs’ original Threshold study nineteen years ago.”
Ethan’s chest tightened painfully. “Why does he have my face?”
Another silence.
Then Dr. Mercer answered with terrifying calmness.
“Because he was your father.”
Nobody moved afterward.
The words settled through Ethan’s mind slowly, unreal and distorted like hearing them underwater.
Father.
No.
That couldn’t be possible.
Ethan barely remembered his father at all. Only fragments from childhood remained — a man leaving home often, his mother refusing to speak about him afterward, a funeral without a body years later.
His mother told him Aaron died in a car accident.
So why was he inside Somna Labs?
Why had nobody ever mentioned this place before?
Dr. Mercer spoke again before Ethan could gather his thoughts.
“The original experiment failed catastrophically after the Ninth Night.” Her voice lowered slightly. “Most participants suffered severe psychological fragmentation.”
Leah whispered shakily, “Psychological fragmentation?”
Dr. Mercer looked toward the hallway outside before answering.
“They stopped distinguishing memory from reality.”
The sentence echoed heavily through the room.
Then Ethan realized something worse.
“You knew who I was before I got here.”
Dr. Mercer didn’t deny it.
“You were selected intentionally.”
Rage finally broke through Ethan’s confusion.
“You brought me here because of my father?”
“Because you inherited the same neurological pattern.”
Daniel cursed quietly under his breath.
Mira looked horrified now. “This entire thing was planned?”
Dr. Mercer’s expression hardened slightly for the first time.
“The Threshold event began nineteen years ago,” she said carefully. “It never fully ended.”
Then the hallway lights outside flickered once.
Twice.
And suddenly every staff member visible through the observation windows froze completely in place.
Motionless.
Like mannequins.
Dr. Mercer noticed immediately.
And genuine fear crossed her face.
“No…”
A low metallic sound echoed somewhere deep beneath the facility.
Not machinery.
A door opening.
Then every frozen staff member slowly turned their heads toward the lounge simultaneously.
And smiled.