Chapter Twelve: The Voice That Wasn't Mine
494 Words
Advait staggered back from the booth, heart racing.
The speaker continued to play his voice—but warped, slowed down. It sounded like him, yes… but it wasn’t just him. There was something else layered beneath it, like whispers beneath a whisper. Like a second mind mimicking his tone.
> “You came late, brother.”
“They’ve already made a copy of you.”
“You left her behind.”
He yanked the microphone cord down in panic—it sparked and died.
Silence returned.
But something had shifted. The booth’s walls began to vibrate, a low hum like distant machinery reactivating after years of sleep. Lights blinked faintly above the steel corridor outside.
Something had been triggered.
---
Advait bolted from the booth, retracing his steps through the dark corridors. The air felt thicker now, and each breath scraped at his lungs like dust and smoke. The farther he moved from the core chamber, the more the silence began to buzz again.
He wasn’t alone anymore.
Somewhere deeper inside the facility, a door slammed shut.
And then…
Footsteps.
Soft, steady, deliberate.
He flattened against a wall, flashlight off, heart drumming in his ears.
A figure walked past at the far end of the corridor.
Bhairav?
No.
Too tall. Too smooth in motion. The body language felt...wrong. Empty, like a mannequin being puppeted by memory.
As soon as the figure vanished down a left passage, Advait turned right and climbed the slope back toward the entrance.
---
But when he reached the original red door—
It was shut.
Welded shut.
The seam had melted together.
Trapped.
He scanned the wall in desperation. Near the corner of the ceiling, a rusted vent. Narrow, but just enough for a person to crawl through.
He wedged his shoulder against the panel, kicked twice, and it finally gave in with a metallic shriek.
He climbed in, hands trembling, scraping his elbows as he crawled through the blackness.
Behind him, somewhere deep in the compound, he heard the speaker voice again.
Only now… it wasn’t his voice.
It was Ira’s.
> “Advait, you promised me.
You weren’t supposed to come back.
But now you’re part of the memory.”
“And memories… don’t leave.”
---
After what felt like hours, he emerged into the back of a half-collapsed shed—camouflaged in moss and wood, hidden in the pine forest beyond Guldarh’s last border road.
The sun had already begun to set.
His phone buzzed for the first time in days.
One new message.
From an unknown number.
> "Did you find her?"
He didn’t reply.
Not yet.
He needed answers first.
He opened Ira’s notebook again. In the back pocket, tucked under the binding, he found a second slip of paper he’d missed earlier.
A rough sketch of the underground layout.
One area had been circled in red.
Z-7 — "Replication Vault"
Beneath it, Ira had scrawled:
> "If I vanish, I’m still inside."
- Writer
