PART 1 - A FRACTURE BETWEEN SECONDS
The metallic door closed with a soft but weighted echo, sealing the Neuropsychology Unit in a silence that felt too deliberate. The room's white lights fell cold across the walls, leaving no shadow for fear to hide. The air itself seemed unnaturally still, as if holding its breath with the staff.
Lyra stood before the one-way glass, her palm pressed against the surface, her fingers trembling despite her effort to stay composed. The medical file in her other hand was rigid from her grip. Her breathing rose and fell slowly, as though she was afraid that any louder exhale might break something fragile in the room.
Inside, Ryu sat alone on the edge of the diagnostic bed. The sensors remained attached to his temples even though the machine had long been turned off. His eyes no longer tracked the walls or the floor. His mind was somewhere else, lingering in the childhood footage that had resurfaced like a buried ghost.
Lyra swallowed hard. The unease in her chest only deepened. "He is not a normal patient," she whispered to herself, voice strained with a truth she could no longer deny.
The calm that usually surrounded Ryu had cracked, and through that crack, something ancient and unfamiliar breathed out. She drew a deeper breath, steadied her hands, and entered the room.
A VOICE THAT DID NOT COME FROM OUTSIDE
Ryu did not shift when the door opened. His gaze remained fixed on the wall as though reading something invisible etched into the surface. Lyra approached slowly, her footsteps soft on the sterile floor. She carried a pupil scanner in one hand and a neurometric injector in the other, though she hoped she would not need either.
"Ryu," she called gently, her voice careful, as if waking someone from a fragile dream.
At first, there was no response. It took half a second longer than usual for Ryu to lift his head, and when he did, his eyes looked as though he had returned from a place far outside the room.
"I heard him again," he said quietly.
Lyra tensed. "The voice that isn't NV?"
Ryu nodded once. His fingers curled slightly against the bedsheet. Lyra crouched to meet his eyes. "What did he say?"
Ryu lowered his gaze. The muscles in his jaw tightened. "He said I was late."
The words chilled her. "Late for what, Ryu?"
He exhaled slowly, a hollow sound that barely reached the air. "I don't know. But he spoke like someone who knows me better than I know myself."
Lyra checked the portable monitor. Two overlapping neural waves flickered on the screen. One belonged to a normal human mind. The other mirrored his pattern almost perfectly, but with a delay, like an echo trying to catch up.
"Ryu," she whispered, "this second pattern isn't external. It's inside your brain."
"I know," he answered.
She hesitated, then asked the question no clinician should ever ask lightly. "Do you feel… like someone is standing behind you right now?" Ryu froze. Lyra instantly regretted saying it.
But after a moment, he said, quietly:
"Yes."
The room seemed to shrink. Lyra's pulse throbbed painfully at her wrist. "Don't turn around," she whispered. "If you feel a presence, it means…"
"I've felt it for a while," Ryu interrupted.
"He doesn't move. But he is watching me."
Lyra's instinct screamed to call security. She reached toward the emergency button, but Ryu's hand caught her wrist gently but firmly.
"Don't call anyone," he said. "I need to see this through."
"Why?" she whispered, voice trembling.
Ryu looked straight into her eyes.
"Because I don't think he's my enemy."
Before Lyra could reply, the ceiling scanner flickered on by itself. The diagnostic machine booted without a command, and the entire interface shifted into a mode she had never seen before.
Two brainwave patterns tightened, curved, then elongated in synchronization, as if one wave was trying to merge with the other.
Lyra stared at the screen as dread prickled across her arms. "Ryu… something is trying to connect with you." Ryu closed his eyes.
"Let it."
THE FACE THAT MATCHED HIS OWN
Darkness swallowed him first, then dissolved into a blinding white that erased the concept of distance. There was no ceiling, no horizon, no sound. It was not a room made by humans. It felt like a space created by memory itself.
Ryu took a step, but the ground made no sound. It felt as though the world formed only where he placed his foot. Something was here with him. He could feel a weight in the air, a presence that had waited a very long time.
He turned.
And saw him.
A boy stood six meters away. Thirteen years old. Black hair. Sharper features than a child should have. Grey eyes that mirrored his own.
He looked exactly like Ryu.
Not similar.
Not reminiscent.
Identical.
The boy did not blink. Did not sway. Did not breathe any louder than the room did. He simply observed Ryu with an unnervingly neutral expression, as though evaluating a piece of himself that had gone missing.
Ryu forced air into his lungs.
"Who are you?"
The boy tilted his head slightly. Still silent.
Still studying him. Ryu stepped forward. The entire white plane shivered. Before he could take another step, the boy raised a hand, palm forward. A silent gesture meaning stop.
Then he spoke. The voice was the same one Ryu had heard inside his mind. The second voice.
"I am a part of you."
Ryu's heartbeat stumbled.
"A part they took," the boy added.
Ryu stiffened. "What do you mean?"
The boy closed the distance slowly, each step steady and controlled. The closer he came, the more Ryu noticed something wrong. The boy's shadow lagged behind his movements. By one full second.
"Years ago," the boy said, "you had two cognitive paths." Ryu felt ice crawl up his spine. "They severed one. But I did not die."
Ryu's mouth felt dry. "You're a version of me."
The boy nodded slightly. "A version that was not meant to exist." Ryu inhaled, the air tasting sharp in the white void.
"Why appear now?"
"Because they are searching for you," the boy replied. "And because you are close to remembering something you should have remembered long ago."
Ryu's voice dropped. "What am I supposed to remember?" The boy moved close enough that their foreheads almost touched. His grey eyes were deeper than Ryu's, holding a cold intelligence that felt older than thirteen years.
"What happened to your mother," he whispered, "and why your father died."
Ryu's breath hitched.
The boy leaned closer, his lips near Ryu's ear. "Your father wasn't murdered."
Ryu froze.
"He sacrificed himself," the boy whispered.
"To lock me away."
The white world shattered like glass.
BACK IN THE MEDICAL UNIT
Ryu's eyes flew open. The sensors on his temples sparked violently, bursting into tiny flashes that forced Lyra to shield her face with her arms.
Helvar and two senior technicians stormed into the room as alarms blared across the unit.
"Break in neural resonance," a staff member shouted. "He connected to something."
Lyra cupped Ryu's face with both hands, voice shaking. "Ryu. Ryu, look at me. Can you hear me?"
Ryu clutched his head. His breathing came fast and sharp. His pupils contracted unevenly, reacting to something not in the room.
NV's voice burst into his consciousness in a panic. [Warning. Neural echo connection detected. Source: Internal node. Unknown.]
[Status: Cognitive overload.]
Helvar stared at the monitor and paled visibly. "This is not interference. This is a second cognitive signature. A parallel mind."
A technician stumbled back. "Two identical neural signatures in one brain. That is impossible."
Lyra gripped Ryu's hand tightly, her voice cracking. "Ryu… what did you see?"
Ryu forced his eyes open. He was trembling. Not from fear. From recognition.
"I saw myself," he whispered.
Helvar collapsed into a chair. Lyra's expression crumbled into shock.
NV delivered one final, devastating line:
[Second cognitive signature match: 99.87 percent. Identical.]
Lyra whispered, voice thin. "Ryu… you weren't alone when you were born." Ryu stared forward, breath unsteady.
Something within him settled. Something that had been waiting.
"The part of me they locked away…"
he whispered. "..has returned."
The lights flickered. And in a small corner monitor, a faint silhouette stood behind Ryu.
Head tilted. Watching.