Ethan searched the apartment for stairs.
Not the front hall staircase—he'd already tried those. They led nowhere now. Two floors down, and suddenly the same floor again. A loop. Like the building had started rejecting logic in favor of its own design.
Reality had gone… selective.
Doors that once opened refused to budge. Handles turned but latched into nothing. Windows offered no help—they showed the same skyline from every angle, a painted illusion on endless repeat: clouds frozen mid-drift, birds never landing.
He opened the bedroom closet.
Expecting coats.
Instead—
Stairs.
Old concrete steps, winding down into a narrow, industrial shaft. They reeked faintly of rust and something colder—something deeper. A single flickering bulb swung overhead, suspended by a wire that looked like it had been fraying for decades. Its light stuttered, but never died. Not yet.
Ethan stood still.
At the edge.
Staring down.
A pulse throbbed in his ears—but it didn't feel like his.
It was slower. Heavier.
Like a second heartbeat, not his own, beating from below.
He placed one foot on the top step.
The door behind him slammed shut.
Metal on wood.
No going back.
The echo of his descent multiplied. Each step hit twice. Once as his heel met concrete—and again, somewhere deeper, as though another version of himself were climbing upward to meet him.
The walls narrowed as he descended. Every few feet: chalk markings. Dozens. Hundreds.
Some were names.
Others were symbols—spindly and jagged, like someone had drawn them while weeping. A child's loops here, a mathematician's runes there. Words repeated again and again:
"Wake up."
"Find the original."
"Memory is a prison."
"He's waiting."
Then, wedged into a hairline crack in the wall:
A note.
Crumpled. Torn. Handwritten in a hurried scrawl.
"If you reach the bottom, you will forget your name."
Ethan held it in his palm like it was burning.
His breath came shallow, but his feet didn't stop.
Downward.
Always downward.
Finally, he stepped onto solid ground again.
Only this wasn't the basement.
It wasn't any floor he'd ever known.
The hallway was impossibly long. Bright white. Cold. Sterile.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead in a perfect, humming rhythm.
Each door on either side was identical: matte silver, keypad lock, nameplate.
He approached the first.
ETHAN HALE (AGE 29)
He blinked. That was him—now. The next door read:
ETHAN HALE (AGE 21)
Then:
ETHAN HALE (AGE 34)
ETHAN HALE (AGE 6)
ETHAN HALE (AGE 12)
Different versions of him. Stored like files in a hallway outside time.
He hesitated—then opened one.
Inside: a room like a child's drawing of a room.
Too still. Corners too sharp. A child sat alone on the floor, humming softly to himself. Curly hair. Bare feet. Familiar eyes.
The boy looked up, calm.
Ethan stepped closer. "Are you… me?"
The boy tilted his head.
"No," he said. "You're almost me. But not the right one."
Ethan knelt. His voice trembled. "What does that mean?"
The boy didn't answer.
He pointed instead—to the wall behind him.
Scrawled there in red marker, letters trembling:
YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO REMEMBER.
Ethan stood.
Backed away.
Closed the door.
He pressed a palm to the cool surface. Then moved on.
The next few doors had notes taped across them like warnings:
He's still looking.
This isn't a dream. This is what you forgot.
Don't trust your reflection.
He stopped at a door with no nameplate.
No markings. No lock. Just stillness.
He pushed it open.
Inside: nothing but a mirror.
A single full-length mirror framed by a blank white wall. No furniture. No color. Just him—and the reflection.
Except… the door vanished the moment he stepped inside.
Gone. Like it had never been.
He turned back toward the mirror.
And froze.
His reflection was already waiting.
It stood there—grinning.
Ethan wasn't.
And then, without ceremony, the reflection stepped forward.
Right out of the glass.
Soundlessly.
The air grew colder.
The lights flickered.
And the other him—this mirror-Ethan—leaned close, breathless, eyes wild with some secret just out of reach.
Then he whispered:
"We're running out of time."