Two weeks later, Victor Thorne stood before his tiny bathroom mirror, adjusting the collar of a fresh shirt. The bruises from that night had faded. The station was slowly returning to its routines in the aftermath of the Arcadia scandal – albeit with new questions buzzing in every corridor and cafe about identity, clones, and corporate ethics. Arcadia's executives were in custody or on the run. The Halley "twins" were under protection, recovering together and tentatively learning how to live as two separate people. By all accounts, Thorne should have felt victorious.
Yet each time he looked in a mirror, he couldn't shake a vague sense of disconnection, like the man staring back was a half-second off-beat, a stranger mimicking him. It was irrational, he knew. Paranoia, the department shrink said, after everything he'd witnessed.
Thorne ran a finger along his chin. A small scar should have been there – a remnant of a teenage brawl. It was faint but… hadn't it been more visible before? He frowned, leaning closer. Perhaps it was the lighting. He could still make it out, barely.
He sighed and turned away. Sleep had been elusive, haunted by images of broken glass and bleeding faces identical to his own. The station psychiatrist prescribed dream suppressants, but he hadn't taken them. He was afraid to numb anything in his mind now, lest he lose more of himself.
In the quiet of his living quarters, Thorne lay down on his cot. The hum of the life support system was soothing, a mechanical lullaby he'd known for years. He closed his eyes, heavy with exhaustion, and drifted…
...He stands in the Arcadia lab again, but it's whole and pristine this time. The lights shine brutally bright. He's strapped to that metal operating chair, unable to move. Dr. Mercer looms above, face visible and calm.
"Don't worry, Detective," Mercer says pleasantly. "This will only hurt for a moment."
Thorne struggles, but now Chief Kelland is holding his head in place with cold hands. Mercer lowers a device like a crown of needles toward Thorne's skull.
He tries to scream, but water fills his mouth. Water is rising around him – the lab is flooding, glass cylinders overflowing. The liquid submerges him; he's drowning. Through the wavering fluid, he sees someone standing outside the tank he's now in.
It's Victor Thorne – him, on the other side of the glass, looking in with a mixture of pity and horror. The other Thorne turns and walks away, leaving him in the tank, sinking.
Thorne's lungs burn. He pounds on the glass. He can't breathe, can't—
Thorne jolted awake, gasping, heart hammering against his ribs. He sat up in bed, drenched in cold sweat. A dream. Just a nightmare.
He rubbed his face, trying to dispel the lingering terror. The room's lights had dimmed to night-cycle blue. Everything was silent.
He rose unsteadily and stepped to the sink for a glass of water. His hand trembled as he filled a cup.
Get a hold of yourself. It was the first nightmare he'd allowed himself in weeks of forced wakefulness, and it was a doozy. Understandable, perhaps, given the trauma. He took a deep gulp of water.
Behind him, faintly, he heard the click of his apartment door shutting. Thorne froze, water dribbling down his chin. Had Rios come by to check on him?
"Hello?" he called softly, setting the glass down. No answer.
He padded quietly into the living area. The door was closed, lock indicator green. Maybe he imagined the noise. His nerves were still playing tricks.
Thorne turned back toward the bedroom— and stopped. There, in the shadowed reflection of the dark windowpane, stood a silhouette that was not his own.
He spun around. The room was empty.
A chill crept over him. He looked back at the window glass. The silhouette was still there — a man's form. As Thorne approached, the figure clarified in the reflection, as if drawing nearer from the other side of the glass. Light from the corridor outlined his features.
Thorne found himself staring into his own face on the window's surface. But he wasn't moving — the reflection was.
The other Victor Thorne in the glass gave a slight, sad smile. Thorne's blood turned to ice. He whipped around again to confront whatever was behind him.
Nothing. Just the silent apartment.
His ragged breath fogged the window as he returned his gaze to it. The figure was gone. Only his true reflection — wide-eyed, disheveled — looked back.
A hallucination, he thought. Must be. Stress and insomnia, nothing more.
He retreated to his bed, heart still thudding. Lying down, he kept a hand on his service pistol on the nightstand, more for comfort than out of any real intent.
In the dark, Thorne's mind churned. What's coming, Mercer had said. Could there be another him out there? Or was the enemy now inside his own head? He squeezed his eyes shut, willing to sleep again, albeit fearfully.
Eventually, exhaustion claimed him. The room was quiet.
On the nightstand, the screen of his datapad lit up with an incoming call. In the silent quarters, the pad vibrated with an urgent buzz-buzz. Thorne, deep in uneasy sleep, didn't stir.
The caller ID flashed: "Victor Thorne — Outgoing Call."
The pad buzzed again and again, unanswered, until finally the screen timed out and went dark – leaving the detective dreaming fitfully, caught in the limbo between reality and nightmare, uncertain of where one ended and the other began.