Olympus Station's Arcadia BioSystems tower loomed with sterile grace as Detective Thorne pushed through its glass doors. Immediately, he was assaulted by the pristine perfection of corporate wealth. The floor was polished white marble composite, veined with gold circuitry patterns. A verdant wall of genetically-engineered ferns oxygenated the air, filling it with a crisp, forest-after-rain scent that almost masked the underlying chemical tinge. Holographic displays hovered near the ceiling, projecting Arcadia's slogan in rotating languages: "Enhancing Life, Embracing Tomorrow."
Thorne felt a sneer tug at his lip. In his experience, behind every utopian motto was a darker truth. Especially on Olympus Station, where corporations like Arcadia had near-feudal power over their domains.
A receptionist android glided toward him, all polite smiles and chrome accents. "Welcome to Arcadia BioSystems, do you have an appointment—"
He flashed his badge, cutting it off mid-spiel. "Detective Thorne, station security. I'm here to see Jacob Halley. It's an urgent police matter."
The android's glassy eyes blinked once as it processed. Before it could reply, a human voice called out, "Detective! Over here, please."
Thorne turned to see a tall woman in an impeccably tailored charcoal suit striding across the lobby. Early fifties, hair iron-gray and swept back, posture ramrod-straight. She extended a hand. "Monica Kelland, Arcadia Chief of Security."
He shook her hand – a firm, practiced grip. "Victor Thorne. We spoke on the comm."
"Yes. I've arranged for Mr. Halley to meet us in a private conference room." Her tone was calm but guarded. "This way."
She led him past a biometric checkpoint and into a glass elevator. As they ascended, Thorne caught a panoramic view of Arcadia's interior research atrium: technicians in white lab coats scurrying along balconies, drones tending to hydroponic gardens, a few test subjects or patients in gowns being guided between departments. All of it bathed in cool daylight-spectrum lighting. It would be easy to forget you were on a space station orbiting Mars and not in some Earthside biotech campus.
"You said this was about an incident on the lower ring?" Kelland prompted, watching him in the reflection of the elevator glass.
"That's right," Thorne said. He kept his answers short, matching her poker-face. "Jacob Halley is potentially a witness or... person of interest."
Kelland pressed her lips thin. "Jacob is one of our top engineers. I hope there's been some misunderstanding."
"We'll see," Thorne replied.
The elevator opened to an executive level – carpets that absorbed sound, abstract art on the walls. Kelland guided him to a door which recognized her iris and slid aside.
Inside, Jacob Halley sat at a sleek black conference table, flanked by two others. One was a man with a legal tablet – presumably Arcadia's attorney, a severe-looking fellow with a sharp goatee. The other was a woman in a lab coat bearing Arcadia's logo, her eyes nervous behind thick glasses. Halley himself stared at Thorne, his face drawn and pale.
Thorne's gut clenched. In the flesh, Jacob Halley looked much as he had in the AR overlay and the blurry video – same trimmed brown hair, same steel-blue eyes. But here he was alive and well, hands folded on the table rather than lying severed on a blood-soaked floor. If not for the faint smudge of discoloration peeking above his collar – a bruise on the left side of his neck, partially concealed – Thorne might have thought last night's carnage was a bad dream.
"Detective," Halley said, voice a bit hoarse. "Monica said you needed to speak with me? Something about an incident?"
Thorne took a seat opposite him. Kelland remained standing by the door, arms crossed. No one offered so much as a glass of water. That was fine.
He flipped open his notepad (old-school paper – he found it disarmed people) and clicked a pen. "Mr. Halley. I appreciate your time. I'll get straight to it – we found a man, presumed dead, in Sector D4 early this morning. That man was tentatively identified as you."
Halley's eyes widened in a facsimile of surprise. "Dead? Me? There must be a mistake."
Thorne studied his reaction. The surprise seemed genuine, but something in Halley's tone rang false, like an actor hitting his mark. "We also have security footage from the scene. It shows someone matching your description leaving the area around the time of the incident."
The Arcadia lawyer cleared his throat, adjusting his goatee. "Detective Thorne, my client is cooperating voluntarily. Are you formally accusing Mr. Halley of something? If so, I'd advise you to—"
Thorne held up a hand. "At this stage, I'm just gathering information." He returned his gaze to Halley. "Where were you around 0200 last night, Jacob?"
Halley blinked. "At 0200? I was at home, in my apartment at Arcadia Tower. I was sleeping." He glanced toward Kelland as if to confirm she knew this.
"Alone?" Thorne asked.
"Yes. I live by myself."
"No one can verify that? Roommate, neighbor, an AI assistant?"
Halley shook his head. "No, I... I mean, the building AI logs entry/exit. I didn't go out."
Kelland spoke up, her tone cool. "I have already checked our residential logs. Mr. Halley's door was not opened during the night. He entered at 21:14 last evening and did not exit until 07:45 this morning to come to work."
Thorne made a note, though he wondered how easily those logs could be manipulated by an entity as powerful as Arcadia. "So, you say you were home all night."
"I was," Halley insisted. "Why would I go to Sector D4? That's on the opposite end of the station, outside Arcadia's zone. I rarely leave the corporate sectors." He tried a shaky smile. "We have everything I need here."
"That's true," the lab-coated woman interjected softly. "Jacob's been working late almost every night this month on the... um, the Gemini project. He wouldn't be wandering the lower ring." Her words trailed off as Kelland shot her a withering glare.
Thorne's ears perked. Gemini. Project Gemini, perhaps? He stored that away for later. "Mr. Halley, have you ever known anyone who might want to harm you? Perhaps someone who looks like you? A relative?"
Halley frowned in apparent confusion. "No. I mean, I don't have any siblings. I was an only child." A drop of sweat beaded his temple. "And I can't think of anyone who looks like me. That's absurd."
The lawyer smoothed his tablet screen. "Detective, surely you're not suggesting our client has a doppelgänger running around murdering people? How fantastical."
Thorne shrugged. "I deal in evidence, not fantasy. And the evidence so far is... contradictory." He leaned forward. "Jacob, do you have any memory at all of leaving your apartment last night? Sleepwalking, a bout of insomnia, anything?"
Halley's jaw tightened. "No. I slept straight through. Look, I—" He hesitated, eyes flickering to the lawyer and to Kelland. "I did have a nightmare, I think. I don't remember it well. It was unsettling, but... I definitely was in my apartment."
"A nightmare?" Thorne noticed Halley's fingers tremble slightly on the tabletop. "What about?"
Halley opened his mouth, but the attorney cut in. "This line of questioning is irrelevant. If Detective Thorne has evidence, he should present it. Otherwise, Mr. Halley has answered about his evening."
Thorne bit back annoyance. He reached into his coat pocket and retrieved a still image print from the security feed – a grainy frame showing a bloodied Jacob Halley in the dim hallway of the crime scene. He slid it across the table.
Halley recoiled at the sight of his gore-soaked likeness. "My god... is that—?"
"You tell me," Thorne said. "It certainly looks like you. Right down to the Arcadia-issue smart-fabric shirt."
Halley stared, color draining from his face. His hands reflexively went to his neck, rubbing the bruised area under his collar. For a split second, Thorne saw real fear in his eyes. Then Halley squeezed them shut. "That's not me. It... it can't be me. It's some kind of trick. Maybe an AI-generated deepfake or an android. Something."
Kelland stepped forward, smoothly sweeping the photo back toward Thorne. "This is hardly conclusive, Detective. In low light and poor resolution, many people could resemble Mr. Halley."
"Genetic analysis of the victim's remains also tentatively matched Mr. Halley," Thorne added coolly.
Now the lawyer stood. "If that were true, you'd be arresting my client for his own murder, which is patently ridiculous. Detective, is Jacob a suspect or a victim in your investigation? He can't be both."
Thorne remained seated, fixing Halley with a hard stare. "That's what I'm trying to determine. Perhaps Mr. Halley can clarify why someone would go to great lengths to impersonate him, down to his DNA."
Halley let out a shuddering breath. "I can't. I don't know anything about this. One minute you're telling me I'm dead, the next that I killed someone? I... I'm just as confused as you are!" His voice cracked, an edge of desperation bleeding through.
Kelland placed a protective hand on Halley's shoulder. "Alright, that's enough. Detective, unless you have further grounds, this interview is over. Arcadia will of course comply with any lawful orders, but we won't have our employee badgered without cause."
Thorne realized he'd hit a wall. Pushing harder now might just drive them all behind corporate shields. He stood, sliding the photo back into his pocket. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Halley. Ms. Kelland, I'll need Mr. Halley to remain available for additional questioning. Don't leave the station."
"Obviously," Kelland said icily.
As Thorne turned to leave, he made eye contact with Halley one last time. Jacob's face was a mask of confusion and fear – and something else. Guilt? It was hard to tell. But Thorne's instincts whispered that the man was hiding something. Whether he was a murderer or a pawn, Jacob Halley was tangled up in this mystery up to his neck.
On the elevator ride down, Thorne replayed the conversation in his head. Halley's shock at the photo seemed real. If he was guilty, he was a damn good actor. Alternatively, maybe Halley truly believed someone else who "looked just like him" was out there. The scenario was bizarre – the stuff of sci-fi thrillers and psychiatric textbooks. In fact, it reminded Thorne of an old case study he'd read at the academy: Capgras delusion, where a person becomes convinced a loved one has been replaced by an identical impostor. Except here Halley seemed almost to be implying himself had an impostor. A delusion of a double... or a double for real.
He rubbed his temples. For now, Halley was under Arcadia's watchful eye, and Thorne doubted the corp would let him wander. That left tracking down the bloodied figure in the video – if not Halley, then who? A twin? A clone? The rational part of Thorne balked at the idea. Human cloning was outlawed and, as far as the world knew, never successfully done in adults. Officially, anyway. But new technologies had a way of finding dark corners to flourish in secret.
He stepped out into the lobby, past the serene fern wall and motto, feeling a sudden urge to be anywhere but under Arcadia's roof. As he reached the main doors, his wrist communicator buzzed. Thorne tapped it.
"Thorne here."
"Detective," came Officer Rios's voice, tinged with excitement. "I was just about to call again. You're not gonna believe this. The vic from this morning – Jacob Halley – he's alive."
Thorne stopped in his tracks. "What did you say?"
"He's alive," Rios repeated, lowering her voice. "Paramedics at St. Mary's Hospital managed to stabilize him. He was in bad shape, but he regained consciousness for a bit in the ER, babbling. They've got him in an induced coma now to heal, but he's alive enough to talk soon."
The lobby seemed to tilt around Thorne. He glanced back toward the elevator he'd come from, picturing the man he'd just interrogated. And now Rios claimed the actual Jacob Halley – the one from the apartment – was alive in medical custody.
Two Jacobs. Both alive. Both, presumably, Jacob Halley.
Thorne blew out a breath. "Understood. Secure him with a detail, round the clock. And Rios—"
"Yes, sir?"
"Make sure the press doesn't catch a whiff of this." The last thing he needed was rumors of a man coming back from the dead or duplicated bodies flying around.
"You got it."
Thorne ended the call, heart thudding. For a moment he simply stood at the threshold of Arcadia's lobby, mind racing through a hundred scenarios. By all rights, this was impossible. Yet it was happening. The victim was alive. The prime suspect was also the victim – and also alive. Each one Jacob Halley, identical down to the genome.
He stepped out into the station corridor, the artificial sky-panel above showing a tranquil Mars sunrise that belied the turmoil below. Thorne had wanted answers; now he had twice as many questions.
The case of Jacob Halley had just twisted into something far more disturbing than a simple murder. And Detective Thorne was caught in the middle of a nightmare that science was never meant to allow – the same man, in two bodies, each one insisting on his own reality.