Dawn bled grey and tentative through the grime on the windowpanes, revealing Aarohi exactly where Divya had last seen her – standing sentinel by the window, silhouetted against the weak light. She hadn’t moved all night, hadn’t blinked, hadn’t shown any sign of fatigue. Just stood, watching the rain finally ease to a drizzle. Divya, huddled on the sofa under a thin blanket, hadn’t slept either, her mind racing, replaying Aarohi’s chilling words from the night before: “You won’t leave me alone at night again, right?” A twisted echo of some forgotten plea, weaponized. The text message burned in her thoughts: Don't let it stay after midnight. Midnight had passed. It was still here.
A plan, desperate and fragile, began to form. Verification. She needed proof, something concrete to fight the insidious doubt this creature expertly sowed. Feigning a need for the bathroom, Divya slipped away, closing the door behind her with trembling hands. She perched on the edge of the tub, dialing Aarohi’s parents’ number, her thumb hovering over the call button. They’d moved away after the funeral, seeking distance from the city that held only tragedy. The phone rang, once, twice… then a strained, weary voice answered. “Hello?” Mrs. Sharma sounded older, thinner, even over the phone line. Divya kept her own voice low, a frantic whisper. “Mrs. Sharma, it’s Divya… something strange has happened.” She recounted the impossible arrival, the uncanny resemblance, the wrongness. A choked sob came from the other end. “Divya… oh, Divya. Two days ago. Someone… something… came here. Claiming to be her.” Mrs. Sharma’s voice cracked. “It looked just like her, sounded like her… but when Ramesh tried to take a picture… it fled. Vanished.”
Confirmation slammed into Divya, cold and hard. Not grief. Not hallucination. Something else. Something spreading. The hospital bracelet. Blackwood. A new resolve was firm within her. She ended the call, flushed the toilet for effect, and walked back into the living room, forcing a semblance of calm onto her face. “Aarohi,” she began, keeping her tone gentle, clinical. “You seem… confused. Disoriented. Maybe we should go somewhere they can help you remember? Blackwood? They helped… before. Maybe they can help again.”
The creature tilted its head, considering. The smile remained. “Help me remember?” It seemed to latch onto the phrase. “Yes. Remember everything. For you.” It agreed with an unnerving ease. The trap was set. Or perhaps, Divya realized with a shiver, she was the one walking into it.
The drive to Blackwood was surreal. Rain spat intermittently against the windshield as Divya navigated the familiar city streets, acutely aware of the silent passenger beside her. To fill the oppressive silence, Aarohi began recounting memories – their shared apartment’s leaky faucet, the disastrous attempt at baking a birthday cake, the time they’d gotten hopelessly lost hiking. Each detail was perfect, flawless in its accuracy, yet delivered with the emotional resonance of a recorded message. It felt like listening to Aarohi’s greatest hits performed by a covers band that had mastered the notes but missed the soul entirely.
Divya’s own mind flashed back, unbidden, to their real college days. Aarohi, vibrant and fearless, dragging a perpetually cautious Divya towards life’s edges – sneaking into concerts, skinny-dipping in the campus fountain, pulling all-nighters fueled by caffeine and ambition. Aarohi was the spark, Divya the anchor. Then, the memory shifted, darkening – the lake trip, the sudden storm, Aarohi slipping on wet rocks, plunging into the icy water. Divya, heart pounding, diving in without a second thought, pulling her sputtering, shivering friend back to shore. That night, wrapped in blankets, teeth chattering, they’d made a pact, fierce and young. “Until the end of everything,” Aarohi had vowed, gripping Divya’s hand. “No matter what.”
“Until the end of everything,” the creature beside her murmured, as if plucking the thought directly from Divya’s mind. Its eyes were fixed on the road ahead, but Divya saw the subtle mimicking of the memory’s emotion flicker across its face – a fleeting shadow of recalled intensity, learned and replicated. It wasn’t just accessing memories; it was learning how to feel them, or appear to. It was becoming more Aarohi by the minute. Along the way, Divya’s eyes scanned the periphery. A man leaning against a bus stop, unnaturally still. A woman staring blankly from a cafe window. Another figure, half-hidden in a shadowed doorway. They didn’t look identical to Aarohi, but they shared that same eerie lack of movement, that same vacant intensity in their gaze. Watchers. Copies? The paranoia tightened its grip.
Blackwood Psychiatric Facility loomed ahead, a modern complex of glass and steel that seemed designed to reflect the sky and reveal nothing within. The security guards at the gate eyed Aarohi with unnerving focus. One touched his earpiece, murmuring something Divya couldn’t catch. Their professional indifference seemed strained, brittle. Inside, the reception area was sterile, hushed. The receptionist, a young woman with tired eyes, initially frowned at her computer screen. “Aarohi Sharma? No, I don’t have any record of a patient by that name admitted recently.” Then, a phone on her desk buzzed. She answered, listened intently, her eyes widening slightly as she glanced at Aarohi. “Ah, yes,” she said abruptly, her tone shifting to forced helpfulness. “Dr. Chen is expecting you. Please, have a seat.”
Dr. Mara Chen arrived moments later – a sharp woman with intelligent eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. But as her gaze fell on Aarohi, standing patiently by the window, Divya saw the doctor’s hand tremble almost imperceptibly as she reached out to shake Divya’s. “Ms… Divya Sharma? Please, come with me.” Her voice was low, urgent. She led Divya into a small, private office, leaving Aarohi in the waiting area under the watchful eye of a now visibly tense security guard.
Closing the door, Dr. Chen leaned in, her voice barely a whisper, laced with fear. “That thing out there. It’s not your friend.” Her eyes darted towards the door. “We had… a containment breach. Two days ago. Something escaped. Something… adaptable.”
Before Divya could process this, Dr. Chen pulled up security footage on her monitor. “Look.” The timestamp showed earlier that morning. There, on the screen, was Aarohi – or the creature wearing her face – moving swiftly through a restricted corridor deep within the facility. Accessing a laboratory. Then another feed showed a different Aarohi-figure in the patient wing. Another is near the main server room. Simultaneously. While the Aarohi beside Divya had supposedly been in her apartment, or in the car. “Multiple instances,” Chen breathed, confirming Divya’s horrifying suspicion from the drive. “It can replicate.”
Chen’s face was pale. “Five years ago… when your friend’s body was brought here… the official report was redacted. What they found wasn’t just… damage from the abduction. There was something else. An anomaly. Cellular regeneration, rapid mimicry… something parasitic, non-terrestrial maybe. We tried to study it, contain it.” Her voice dropped further. “It was dormant. Until it wasn’t. It didn’t just escape. It learned. It absorbed data. Including, somehow, the template of its original host.”
As she spoke, the lights in the office flickered violently. Chen’s monitor went dark, then flashed static. Security feeds reappeared, fragmented. Figures – multiple Aarohis, and others, Divya didn’t recognize but who moved with that same unnatural fluidity – were converging on their section of the building. Alarms began to blare, distant at first, then closer.
“They know we know,” Chen gasped, shoving Divya towards a panel concealed behind a bookshelf. “There’s a service tunnel. Go! Now!”
“What about you?” Divya hesitated, the psychologist warring with the terrified target.
“I can delay them. Maybe misdirect.” Chen fumbled in her lab coat, pressing something small and metallic into Divya’s hand – a sleek, modified taser. “It disrupts their neural cohesion. Temporarily. You’ll need it.”
“I’m not leaving you!” Divya insisted, grabbing Chen’s arm.
“You have to!” Chen shoved her hard through the hidden opening into a dark, narrow passage. The heavy panel slammed shut behind Divya, plunging her into near blackness, the sound of Chen shouting something indistinct cut off abruptly. Divya scrambled forward, guided only by faint emergency lighting strips along the floor, the taser clutched tight in her hand.
She emerged minutes later into a deserted corridor near the waiting room. Silence. The alarms had stopped. Cautiously, she peered around the corner. The waiting area was empty. Aarohi was gone. Then she saw him – the security guard from earlier, slumped against the wall near the reception desk. His eyes were wide open, locked in a rictus of pure terror. His skin had a grey, bloodless pallor. Tucked into the breast pocket of his uniform was a small, folded piece of paper. Divya’s stomach churned as she recognized the looping, familiar handwriting. Aarohi’s handwriting.
They're trying to separate us again. Meet me where it began.
Where it began. The words echoed with dreadful significance. The alley. The place where Aarohi was taken, where Divya’s life was shattered. It was a summons. A trap. But could she refuse? A flicker of the real Aarohi, trapped, needing her… the thought was poison, expertly administered. Before turning to leave the horrifying stillness of Blackwood, Dr. Chen’s parting gift felt heavy in her hand. You’ll need it when they come for you next. They were already here.
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