OBSIDIAN

The Ghost

He looks exactly like I remember.

That's the problem.

The man in my doorway has my brother's face, my brother's build, my brother's way of tilting his head like he's listening to something no one else can hear. He's wearing a suit that probably costs more than my apartment, and his eyes are the color of a winter sky, cold and impossible to read.

"Hello, Dante," he says, and his voice is my brother's voice, and I'm losing my mind.

"You're dead," I tell him.

"I know." He steps inside like he owns the place. Two men follow him, both built like monuments to violence. They close the door behind them with the kind of finality that suggests it will never open again. "That's what makes this interesting."

I should run. I should fight. I should do something other than stand here with my shirt torn open and blood drying on my skin, staring at a corpse that walks and talks.

"Where is she?" he asks.

"Gone."

He smiles. It's an exact replica of my brother's smile, right down to the way his left eye crinkles slightly. It's perfect. It's wrong. "Of course she is. She's always gone when the real work begins."

I take a step backward. There's nothing behind me but the window Sienna used to escape. The fire escape. The way out that's already been taken. "Who are you?"

"I'm your brother." He sits on my couch like he's at home, like there's nothing unusual about a dead man making himself comfortable. "Or I was. For about five years, I was your brother. Then I stopped and started being something else."

"This is insane."

"Is it?" He pulls out a cigarette and lights it without asking. "Or is it the only explanation for why you can't remember anything? Why you have gaps in your memory? Why you feel like you're living someone else's life?"

I don't answer. I can't answer. Because he's right. There are gaps. Huge, gaping holes in my memory where things should be but aren't. I've been filling them with assumptions and half-truths, and now I'm wondering if any of it is real.

"Your actual brother died in Monaco," he continues, smoke curling from his mouth. "You killed him."

"No."

"You did. You were both there for a deal. Things went wrong. Or they went exactly right, depending on your perspective. There was an argument. You had a gun. He had a gun. And one of you was faster."

"I didn't kill my brother."

"No?" He stands and walks toward me, and I have to fight the urge to run. "Then who did?"

"You're lying."

"Of course I'm lying. We're all lying." He's close now, close enough that I can see the tiny scar above his left eyebrow. My brother had that scar. From a motorcycle accident when he was seventeen. "But sometimes lies are just convenient versions of the truth."

He reaches out and touches the scratches on my back, traces them with his finger. It takes all my restraint not to flinch.

"She's good," he says. "Better than the last one. Better than the one before that."

"The last one?"

"The last girl we sent to break you." He circles me like a predator. "There have been three before Sienna. Different faces, different approaches. But the same mission. To get inside your head. To make you question everything. To prepare you."

"For what?"

"For this." He gestures to his men, and they move with practiced precision. One blocks the door. The other moves toward me. I'm so disoriented that I almost let him grab me before I react. I dodge, but barely. My apartment is too small for this, too claustrophobic. There's nowhere to run.

"Sienna told me you were planning to betray me," I say, trying to buy time, trying to make sense of something that refuses to make sense. "She said you were coming to kill me."

He laughs. It's my brother's laugh. It's destroying me. "Is that what she said? How delightful. No, Dante. I'm not here to kill you. I'm here to show you something."

He pulls out his phone and opens it. There's a video playing. It takes me a moment to recognize what I'm seeing, and when I do, the world tilts.

It's me. But not me. A version of me from years ago, from before everything got fractured and strange. And I'm in a room with three people, including the man standing in front of me. And I'm pulling a trigger.

I watch myself shoot my brother. I watch the life leave his eyes. I watch myself stand there, holding the gun, completely calm.

"That didn't happen," I say.

"It did. Three times." He shows me more videos. Three different versions. Three different days. Me, pulling the trigger. Me, watching my brother die. Me, walking away like it was nothing.

"These are fake."

"Are they?" He puts the phone away. "Or are they the first memories you've ever trusted?"

One of his men grabs me from behind. I struggle, but he's too strong, too solid. I'm thrown to the ground, and my head connects with the edge of my coffee table. Pain explodes behind my eyes.

"What do you want?" I gasp.

"I want you to remember," he says, kneeling down. "I want you to understand that everything you think is real is just a story someone told you. That you might be a killer, a traitor, a man who murdered his own family. Or you might be a victim of the most sophisticated psychological operation ever conducted on a single human being. The beautiful part is, you'll never know which."

He hits me. Once. Efficiently. My vision goes red.

"Sienna told you I was dead. She told you I was coming to destroy you. She told you I was a ghost. Do you want to know the truth?"

I spit blood. "What is it?"

"I've been dead the whole time. I died in Monaco, just like I said. But I keep coming back because you keep needing me to. Because your mind keeps creating me. Because some part of you knows the truth and the rest of you is too broken to accept it."

He stands and walks to the window where Sienna escaped. He opens it and looks out at the city, at the fire escape, at the path she took.

"She's not really gone," he says. "She's watching. She's always watching. This whole thing, every moment since the warehouse, has been a performance. And you've been both the audience and the stage."

"Why are you telling me this?" My voice is barely a whisper.

"Because," he says, turning back to me, "the real game starts now."

His men pull me up. They drag me toward the bedroom. I try to fight, but there's no strength left in me. There's nothing left but confusion and dread.

In the mirror on the wall, I catch a glimpse of my reflection. For just a moment, the face looking back at me is not my own. It's my brother's face. Then it shifts back. Then it shifts again.

I close my eyes and try to remember my own name.

But I can't.

All I can remember is the sound of a gunshot and Sienna's voice telling me that I was always going to say yes.