Chapter Two: The Photographer
830 Words
There was no time to scream. Not really.
Talia Cross didn’t have vocal cords that worked, not in this borrowed body. She opened her mouth to cry out as her own lifeless form lay sprawled across the floor, but no sound came. It was as though she had been muted, reduced to a spectator in someone else's skin.
The hands holding the camera were not hers. Too large. Too pale. A callus on the thumb—wrong place. Male. Mid-thirties, maybe. Her breath was ragged, her vision strangely sharp. She knew this wasn't a dream. It was too detailed, too saturated with the sort of things dreams usually blurred—like the bitter chemical smell of developer fluid clinging to his shirt, the soft whirr of the lens adjusting to focus.
*You're inside him,* she realized. *You’ve become someone else.*
There was a click as the camera captured another photo—automatically. Instinct. The man, whoever he was, had been documenting the scene without fully realizing what had happened. It was protocol. Photograph. Step aside. Catalog. Don’t think.
But now she was thinking. Hard.
In this body, she had a strange clarity. She could feel his muscles twitching, feel the nervousness building behind his ribs, but her own consciousness was overriding him. She was in control, even if only barely.
Seven seconds. Or less now.
Talia scanned the room with frantic intensity. Her own body lay motionless near the broken coffee table. Her badge glinted under the flickering overhead light. Blood was soaking into her blouse.
She turned—saw the hallway from where she had come moments before in her own body. No sign of the attacker. Just shadows, thick and quiet.
Something pulsed in her head—a distant echo, like a memory trying to surface.
*Remember the sound,* she thought. *The shot came from the left... no, the rear.*
She spun just as the air cracked.
**BANG.**
Then darkness.
---
Light again.
Another body. Another viewpoint.
And Talia knew—this wasn’t just some neurological event or afterlife hallucination. She was experiencing something... unnatural. Controlled. This was no near-death experience.
It was a pattern. A system.
She was being placed.
Back in the photographer’s body again, the same seven seconds ticking away.
This time, she didn’t panic. She pushed through the fog and took control. Her host’s name floated into her mind: **Simon Keller**. Crime scene tech, works quietly, barely noticed. She flipped through his last thoughts like pages in a half-burnt book: darkroom problems, rent overdue, something about his mother’s cat.
Irrelevant.
She moved to the side of the room, angling the camera down at her own body. As she did, she watched the shadows in the mirror across from the couch. There—just a flicker.
A figure. Hooded. Moving too deliberately to be a bystander. Not in uniform. And carrying something—long, black, and metallic.
A weapon.
*The shooter.*
This time, Talia didn’t freeze. She dropped the camera. It shattered on the ground. She dove behind the recliner just as the sound exploded through the room again.
**BANG.**
Silence. But not death.
She blinked.
Still in Simon’s body. Breathing.
*I changed the outcome.*
But then the world folded inward, like paper being set on fire from all edges. Everything turned white.
Then black.
And she woke up again. In the same body.
No progress. The loop had reset.
---
*What is this?*
She leaned hard into the mirror memory. The flicker. The angle. The gun.
She adjusted Simon’s posture, this time walking toward the window to the far right side of the room. It gave her a wider field of vision. She looked into the mirror again—but nothing. No flicker.
*Variable perspective. The loop isn’t just time—it’s perspective-dependent.*
She felt something else now. A presence. Like a buzzing in the walls. Static in her ears. Someone—or something—was watching.
A high-pitched frequency hit her temples.
She dropped to one knee, disoriented.
And then—
**FLASH.**
A memory.
Wires. Needles. A sterile lab. Someone standing over her. "You’re doing great, Detective Cross. Just a few more calibrations."
Then a sharp pain at the base of her neck.
Gone.
---
**Three seconds.**
She turned Simon’s eyes toward the hallway. The floorboard that had creaked when her original body entered the room was slightly loose. Pressure plate? She stepped over it.
A chill ran through her. Something was wrong with the lighting in the far end of the room. It pulsed subtly.
A distortion.
She stepped closer—
**BANG.**
Death again.
---
Reset.
She gritted her teeth.
*No more waiting. Push harder.*
This time, she ran to the mirror directly and stared into it.
"Who are you?" she demanded aloud, though it came out in Simon’s voice.
And this time, the reflection **smiled.**
Her own face, but distorted. Off somehow. Like someone had cop
ied her and remade her… imperfectly.
The reflection leaned forward.
"You’re getting warmer, Talia."
**BANG.**
- Writer
