Episode Twelve — Fractures
1010 Words
The drive back from Edgepoint felt longer than the way in.
Elias barely registered the road, the glowing smear of headlights against wet asphalt. His hands gripped the wheel too tightly, his knuckles pale in the passing streetlight glow. Ava sat in silence beside him for the first ten minutes, giving him space, but the quiet was almost worse than questions.
Finally, she said, “You’re scaring me.”
Elias exhaled slowly, as if the breath had weight. “Good.”
Her head snapped toward him. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means you should be scared. I don’t know what’s inside me, Ava. I don’t know what’s mine anymore. Memories, feelings… they’ve been rewritten. And now I don’t know which ones are real and which ones are manufactured.”
Her voice softened. “You’ve always known who you are, Elias. You’re not—”
He cut her off. “Colt said they faked my death. That they used it to break Amelia.”
Ava blinked, stunned.
“He said they moved me. That they erased it. That’s why nothing lines up.” His grip tightened on the wheel. “I don’t even remember my own life right.”
Ava reached across and laid her hand on his arm. He flinched before realizing what she was doing, then forced himself not to pull away.
“Listen to me,” she said firmly. “Whatever they did, whatever they took from you—you’re still here. You’re still Elias Creed. That matters more than what they tried to make you.”
But her conviction barely reached him. He kept seeing Colt’s eyes. Calm. Certain.
Another Echo.
The words rattled in his head like loose stones.
They reached the safehouse close to midnight. An old duplex on the east side, anonymous, stripped of everything personal. Ava set down her bag and began locking windows, flipping latches, muscle memory in motion.
Elias leaned against the wall, staring at nothing. His reflection in the dark glass of the window stared back—distorted, fractured by the faint rain still clinging to it.
“Watch for the mirror.”
Ava noticed his stillness. “What else did he say?”
Elias swallowed. “That Amelia didn’t break. She changed. And… that I’m not the only one.”
“The only what?”
He turned toward her, eyes darker than she’d ever seen them. “The only Echo.”
Ava froze.
“You mean there are more of you? Out there?”
“One more,” Elias said. “Colt said he didn’t fracture. He didn’t grieve. He absorbed.”
Ava shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. If there was someone like you, we’d know. They couldn’t keep that buried forever.”
Elias almost laughed. “Ava, they kept me buried. For decades. You think they wouldn’t do the same with another?”
She went quiet, lips pressed tight.
He didn’t sleep.
The night stretched thin, restless. Every time Elias closed his eyes, he saw Amelia’s face flickering between ages, alive and dead, present and gone. He woke in cold sweats on the couch, pulse hammering, though he hadn’t really been asleep at all.
By dawn, Ava was pacing.
“You’re unraveling,” she said bluntly. “And if you go down, we both go down.”
He rubbed his face. “What’s your solution?”
“Find out who the mirror is.”
Elias gave a bitter smile. “As if it’s that simple.”
“It’s the only way,” she said. “If Colt is telling the truth—and I think he is—then we need to figure out who this Echo is before he finds you.”
“Assuming he hasn’t already.”
Ava frowned. “What do you mean?”
Elias hesitated. Then he told her.
“The man who took Heather Voss out of Red Oak… he didn’t look surprised when he saw me. More like he was… measuring me. Watching me. Like he already knew what I was.”
Ava stiffened. “You think he’s the mirror.”
“I don’t know.” Elias leaned forward, elbows on knees. “But I know this much: he wasn’t afraid. Not of me. Not of what was happening. He looked at me like—”
“Like what?” Ava pressed.
“Like he was looking at himself.”
They argued about it until the sky lightened, gray and unforgiving.
Ava wanted to go back to Red Oak immediately, pull files, shake loose anything about parallel subjects. Elias resisted—part of him terrified of what he might find if he looked too closely.
But the choice was taken from them.
At 8:13 a.m., someone knocked on the door.
Three times. Slow. Deliberate.
Elias froze, every muscle wired.
Ava mouthed, Don’t move. She slid her gun from her waistband and pressed herself against the wall near the entrance.
The knock came again.
“Mr. Creed.”
The voice was muffled, male, calm.
Elias’s blood turned cold.
He hadn’t given his real name to anyone in months.
“Mr. Creed,” the voice repeated, almost cordial. “I’d like to speak with you.”
Ava’s eyes widened, gun aimed at the door.
Elias rose slowly, silent, heart pounding so loudly he thought the stranger must hear it.
The voice outside spoke one last time.
“You’ve been looking in the wrong places. The mirror isn’t ahead of you, Elias. He’s already beside you.”
Ava’s eyes flicked to Elias in alarm.
Then—silence.
When Elias yanked the door open, the hallway was empty.
He stood there for a long time, staring into nothing, until Ava grabbed his arm and yanked him back.
“What the hell was that?” she hissed.
Elias’s jaw tightened.
“I don’t know,” he said. But even as he spoke, he felt the echo of his own fear rising like a tide.
Because part of him did know.
And it was worse than anything Colt had said.
- Writer
