CHAPTER 13: THE WAITING ROOM
898 Words
POV: CAPTAIN ELIAS VANCE
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I didn’t leave my weapon at the door. My hand stayed white-knuckled around the grip of my sidearm, even if the receptionist’s smile suggested that a bullet here would be as useless as a prayer in a vacuum.
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The lobby of the "Board" felt infinite. The ceiling was lost in a haze of artificial white light, and the silence was so thick it made my skin itch. Bravo and Jace were behind me, their boots clicking against the polished marble—a sound that felt too loud, too human for a place like this.
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"Cap, look at the screens," Jace whispered, his voice cracking.
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I forced myself to look. There were hundreds of them, suspended in the air. On one, I saw myself as a recruit, sweating through basic training. On another, I saw the night the fire took the apartment—and Sarah. But the footage was different. It was filmed from angles that were impossible. From inside the flames. From under my bed.
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"They’ve been documenting us," I muttered, the realization sinking into my gut like lead. "Every trauma, every heartbeat. We weren't a squad. We were a study."
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"Mr. Vance, please," the receptionist said, her voice smooth as glass. "The Board is on the 99th floor. They don't like to be kept waiting for their reports."
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She gestured toward a bank of elevators at the end of the hall. They were made of the same black glass as the skyscraper outside.
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"If this is a trap, I'm taking her out first," Bravo growled, his thumb hovering over the safety of his shotgun.
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"No," I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "She’s just a shell. Look at her neck."
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As she turned, the light caught the back of her head. There was a small, silver port embedded in her spine—the same surgical mark we saw on the Director. This wasn't a company. It was a hive.
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We stepped into the elevator. There were no buttons. No floor numbers. Just a smooth, mirror-like surface. As the doors slid shut, the sensation of movement was instantaneous. It wasn't the stomach-dropping pull of a normal elevator; it felt like the world was being pulled away from us.
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[ Jace: My tablet is dead. No signal. No BIOS. It’s like electricity doesn't exist here. ]
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"Keep your head up, Jace," I said. "We rely on our eyes now."
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The doors opened, and the air changed. It went from the sterile scent of an office to the sharp, suffocating smell of a hospital.
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We stepped out into a boardroom that overlooked the white city. The table was a single slab of obsidian, fifty feet long. Seated around it were twelve figures. They wore expensive suits, their hair perfectly coiffed, their postures impeccable. But as we approached, I realized they weren't breathing.
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They sat perfectly still, their hands folded on the table. And they all wore the same face.
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They were all Sarah.
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Every single one of them. A dozen versions of my sister, ranging from her early twenties to her late forties, all dressed as corporate executives.
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"Welcome home, Elias," they said in unison. The sound of twelve voices speaking as one shattered the last bit of my composure.
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"What is this?" I stepped forward, my gun raised, aiming at the Sarah at the head of the table. "Where is she? Where is the real Sarah?"
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The woman at the head of the table stood up. She looked the most like the memory I held—the same curve of the jaw, the same defiant glint in her eyes. But when she spoke, her voice had the cold, rhythmic cadence of the Director.
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"Sarah was the prototype, Elias. She was the first soul to successfully bridge the gap between the physical and the spectral without losing her 'data.' We didn't kill her. We multiplied her."
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She walked toward me, her heels clicking rhythmically.
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"The Breach isn't an accident, Captain. It's an expansion. Our world was dying—running out of space, running out of resources. We found a new market. A dimension made of thought and memory. But to colonize it, we needed a guide. We needed a family."
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She stopped inches from the barrel of my gun. She didn't flinch.
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"You weren't sent to Blackwood to close the gate. You were sent to test the security. And you passed. You brought the infection back to Sector 7 exactly as we planned."
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I felt the weight of the mirror shard in my pocket. It was vibrating, pulsing against my leg like a trapped heart.
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"I'm not a guide," I hissed. "And I'm definitely not part of your Board."
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"Oh, Elias," she smiled, and for a second, just a second, I saw a flash of the real Sarah—the girl who used to hide in my room when it thundered. "You’ve been working for us since the day you put on that uniform. Who do you think funded the Breachers? Who do you think built your weapons?"
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She leaned in, her breath smelling of ozone.
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"Now, sit down. We have a world to audit. And we need a Captain to lead the cleanup."
- Writer
