Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
It was the sound of something dying. Not loudly. Slowly. With dignity stripped and buried under silence.
When Elara Myles opened her eyes, she expected darkness. But reality greeted her with a surgical white void and a metallic stench that clung to the back of her throat like something trying to crawl out.
She was lying on the floor. Cold. Her muscles screamed in unfamiliar language. Her hands… heavier than they should've been. Sticky. Wet. Red.
She looked down.
Blood.
Not dried. Fresh. Her fingers were coated in it like gloves.
Her breath caught. Panic danced around the edges of her mind like it had been waiting.
She tried to move, but her body staggered like a puppet without strings.
And that's when she saw it.
A body.
Face-down. Blonde hair. White coat. Broken skull.
She stumbled forward—curiosity screaming louder than survival. She grabbed the shoulder, turned the body—
—and screamed.
It was her.
Her own face.
"No. No—no no no—WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!"
The mouth was open. Eyes wide in glassy horror. Skull cracked open like a split melon. It looked like her, dressed like her, bled like her.
It was her.
Suddenly, a voice spoke from above—mechanical, sterile, and female.
"Subject 13-A: Partial memory retrieval unsuccessful. Identity instability detected. Initiating recalibration."
"Who said that?!" Elara spun. "Where am I?!"
No answer. The voice didn't repeat. Just silence. Except for that damn dripping.
A screen flickered on in the corner. Static. Then a video. Her face.
In the footage, she stood confidently in a lab of glowing tubes—each holding a version of her sleeping in fluid.
Her own voice echoed through the chamber.
"We are not born. We are manufactured. And memory? Memory is the lie we call identity."
"What the f—"
The footage ended. Elara stared, breathless.
She tried to remember how she got here. But her mind was a maze. A jigsaw puzzle made of mirrors.
Suddenly—a hiss.
A door in the far wall opened with a mechanical wheeze.
Boots. Black. Tactical. A man in armor entered, rifle raised.
"DOWN! NOW!"
"I—please—I didn't—"
CRACK!The rifle butt met her face like a steel confession.
"YOU DON'T GET TO TALK.""YOU'RE NOT HER."
INTERROGATION ROOM – UNKNOWN TIME
She came to tied to a chair, bathed in light so harsh it erased the edges of things.
Across from her sat a man in a grey coat. Calm. Collected. The kind of man who cut you open with questions instead of knives.
He clicked a remote. The screen behind him lit up with stills.
Murder scenes.
In every one—her face.
Shooting. Stabbing. Laughing.
"Do you recognize this woman?"
"That's not me."
"Wrong answer."
Another click.
A surveillance video—Elara walking into a hospital. Thirty minutes later: explosion.
"You killed twenty-three people that night."
"No. I couldn't have—I don't remember—"
"Exactly." He leaned in. "You don't remember because you were designed not to."
"That's a lie—"
"YOU think you're the real Elara Myles? You think you're waking up from a nightmare?"
He laughed—cold and sharp.
"You're not waking up. You're booting up."
She froze.
"You're number thirteen.""There were twelve before you.""Wanna know what happened to them?"
He paused.
Then dropped a photo on the table.
It was her again. A different corpse. Different wound. Same face.
"They all broke. You're next."
THE CELL – UNKNOWN HOURS LATER
Time meant nothing now.
No clocks. No windows. Just flickering lights and a camera that blinked more than it recorded.
She whispered her name over and over like a prayer she didn't believe in.
"Elara Myles. Elara Myles. Elara—"
One day—a note slipped under the door.
Handwritten. Smudged.
Do not believe what they say.You are the last original.They've buried your memories.Find Project Eidolon. Find Riven.Before she finds you.
Her pulse roared in her ears.
Who was Riven?Why did they call her Subject 13?What if she wasn't the clone? What if everyone else was?
The paranoia bloomed like a virus.
She looked at her hands—hands that shook but didn't feel foreign. Hands that knew how to type medical jargon. That felt rage. That felt pain.
She pressed her palms to the wall.
"I am real.""I am Elara Myles."
Then she looked up at the mirror above the sink.
And paused.
Her reflection blinked—
before she did.
It grinned.
And whispered in her own voice:
"No. I am"
Elara stared into the mirror, her heart hammering like a prisoner's escape drum.
Her reflection didn't just blink before she did—it moved on its own. A slow, deliberate smile spread across its face.
Then it whispered. Not with her voice, but with another.
"You're the copy. The backup. The last glitch."
The lights flickered violently. The walls seemed to pulse, breathing like a living thing.
Elara's vision blurred—fractured—split.
Suddenly, she was looking at herself, not from the front, but from behind.
Behind her, a hand reached out from the shadows—a hand not hers.
Before she could scream, cold fingers closed over her mouth.
And in that moment—
Her own voice, distorted and distant, whispered:
"Welcome to the real Project Eidolon."
Everything went black.