Rain pounded against the windows of Mara's safe house as I huddled under a thin blanket, watching grainy security footage on a laptop screen. My body ached. My mind screamed. Every blink brought fresh images of Roshan's blood pooling in that alley, mixing with rainwater as Aarohi—no, that thing wearing her face—tore through his skull with impossible fingers.
"You need to eat something." Mara set a steaming cup beside me. The smell of mango filled my nostrils, turning my stomach.
"I can't."
On screen, people moved through a shopping mall with mechanical precision. To anyone else, they'd look normal. But now I could see the signs—the too-fluid movements, the lack of blinking, the perfect synchronicity when they passed each other.
"How many?" My voice cracked.
"Dozens already. Maybe hundreds by now." Mara's face was drawn, a deep gash across her cheek barely bandaged from our escape. "They're spreading faster than I anticipated."
"Why target Arohi to get me?" The question had been burning inside since the alley. "Why not come directly for me?"
Mara sank into the chair opposite mine.
"Your mind." She tapped her temple. "You're not just any psychologist, Divya. Your research on trauma processing, the way you map human emotional responses—it's precisely what they need."
"For what?"
"To become perfect copies." She leaned forward, wincing at the movement. "These things, they can mimic our forms, access memories, but they don't understand emotions. They fake them. With you as their template, they wouldn't have to fake anymore." She hesitated, but your mind was too strong to use, to manipulate, to research.
I closed the laptop, unable to watch the footage any longer. "So Aarohi was just—"
"Bait. They took her knowing what it would do to you." Mara's eyes held mine. "Five years of isolation. Guilt. Trauma. They needed you broken down, vulnerable. They needed access to your mind when it was at its most fragile."
My throat constricted. Five years of nightmares. Five years of wine bottles and unanswered calls. Five years of running through that same rain-soaked street in my dreams, always too late, always watching that car disappear around the corner with my best friend inside.
All orchestrated.
"They couldn't just take me?" The question came out hollow.
"They tried. Your brain chemistry resisted direct infiltration." A ghost of admiration crossed Mara's face. "That's what makes you so valuable to them. Your psychological resilience is exceptional—ironically, the very quality that forced them to target you this way is what they want to replicate."
Rain lashed harder against the windows. Thunder rolled overhead. I pictured Aarohi—the real Aarohi—fighting her abductors. Did she know what they were? Did she realize what was happening as they studied her, copied her?
My chest tightened. Tears were sliding down my cheeks.
"She died trying to get away," I whispered. "Didn't she?"
Mara's silence was answer enough.
"And they kept her brain... just to access her memories? To get to me?"
"Her consciousness, or fragments of it." Mara stood, crossing to a metal cabinet secured with multiple locks. "That's why the copy is so convincing. Part of the real Aarohi is still in there somewhere."
I closed my eyes, seeing her face. Not the monster from the alley, but the real Aarohi. Her infectious laugh. The way she'd drag me to campus parties when all I wanted was to study. How she pushed me out of my comfort zone, again and again.
Always braver than me.
The cabinet door creaked open. "We don't have much time. Their mass emergence is scheduled for midnight."
"Emergence?"
"When all the copies activate simultaneously." She began removing equipment: strange-looking weapons with blue glowing cores, devices that resembled modified flashlights. "They've been positioning themselves in key locations—government offices, police stations, hospitals."
My gaze drifted to the clock on the wall. 9:47 PM. Just over two hours.
"What would Aarohi do?"
The question came unbidden, but as soon as I spoke it aloud, something shifted inside me. Five years of paralysis cracked. The weight of guilt that had become so familiar suddenly felt different—not gone, but transformed into something else.
Fuel.
I stood, legs shaky but holding. "We go back to Blackwood."
Mara froze, a weapon half-extended toward me. "Blackwood is their hub."
"Exactly." I took the device from her hand. It hummed with strange energy. "That's where the hive mind coordinates everything, right? Where do they connect to the Prime?"
"Yes, but—"
"Then that's where we need to be."
For the first time since I'd met her, Mara Mara looked uncertain. "Divya, there are dozens of them there, maybe more. They'll be expecting us."
I moved to the window, watching lightning split the sky. My reflection stared back—hollow-eyed, pale, but somehow stronger than the woman who'd faced Aarohi at her apartment door just days ago.
"They wanted me broken." My voice sounded different even to my own ears. "They spent five years making sure I was isolated, traumatized, vulnerable. They don't know who I am when I'm not drowning in guilt."
Mara approached slowly. "And who is that?"
I turned. "Someone who understands them better than they understand themselves. These things don't create—they only copy. They don't comprehend human connection; they only mimic it." The realization crystallized as I spoke. "That's their weakness."
A slow smile spread across Mara's face. She returned to the cabinet, pulling out more equipment. "We'll need these. UV lights reveal their true forms when they're agitated. These disruptors"—she held up what looked like a modified taser—"can break their neural patterns temporarily."
I crossed to my bag, retrieving the one personal item I'd managed to grab during our escape: a very thin photo album. Mara raised an eyebrow.
"Trust me," I said.
She nodded once, then spread out a schematic of Blackwood Facility. "Maintenance tunnels will get us in. Security will be heaviest here and here." Her finger traced two corridors. "The central chamber is our target—that's where the Prime controls everything."
"How do you know all this?"
She looked up, eyes hollow. "Because I helped design it, before I broke from their programming. Before I... became more than just a copy."
The admission hung between us. I should have felt betrayed, horrified. Instead, I saw something profoundly human in her struggle—something the creatures could never truly replicate.
"Then you're our advantage." I studied the map, committing it to memory. "They won't expect one of their own to help us."
"There's something else you should know." Mara hesitated. "I've analyzed the security footage from your encounters with the Aarohi copy. It reacts differently when you reference certain memories."
"Which ones?"
"Your friendship oath. That phrase you both used."
"Until the end of everything." The words felt sacred on my tongue.
"Yes. And certain photos—" She gestured to the album I held. "I think... the real Aarohi's consciousness is still active within the hive mind, fighting to maintain some identity."
My heart stuttered. "You mean she's still—"
"Not alive. Not really. But not entirely gone either." Mara's expression turned grave. "Trying to reach her is dangerous. It could create a direct link between your mind and the hive—giving them exactly what they want."
I weighed the album in my hands, feeling its weight like a physical manifestation of my memories with Aarohi. All those moments frozen in time. Birthday parties. Graduation. The hiking trip where she'd saved me from drowning.
"It's worth the risk."
Rain had soaked through my clothes by the time we reached Blackwood's perimeter fence. Through the downpour, the facility loomed like a modernist nightmare—all sharp angles and reflective surfaces hiding untold horrors within.
Mara cut through the fence with practiced efficiency. "The maintenance entrance is fifty meters east."
We moved through ankle-deep mud, UV lights clutched in trembling hands. Every shadow seemed to move. Every raindrop felt like watching eyes.
At the entrance—a rusted door partially hidden by overgrown vegetation—I paused, touching the friendship bracelet on my wrist. Identical to the one Aarohi wore when she was taken. I'd never removed it, not once in five years.
"I should record a message." I pulled out my phone. "For my parents. Just in case."
Mara nodded, keeping watch while I spoke quietly into the device.
"Mom, Dad. If you're seeing this, things didn't go as planned. I want you to know I'm okay with that. For five years, I've been half-alive, drowning in guilt for being late that night. But I understand now—what happened to Aarohi wasn't my fault. Aarohi wouldn't have wanted me living like this if she were here,e
. And stopping these things from taking more people is worth any price."
I swallowed hard, rain mixing with tears on my face. "I love you both. Always."
Tucking the phone away, I turned to Mara. Her own expression had softened—another crack in the perfect copy, another glimpse of something genuinely human breaking through.
"You chose to be more than just a copy," I told her. "That means there's hope for humanity in all this."
A distant alarm began to wail. Midnight approached.
"Are you ready?" she asked.
I squared my shoulders, feeling a strange calm settle over me. For the first time in five years, my path was clear. No more hiding in wine bottles and case files. No more running from the truth.
"Until the end of everything," I whispered, pushing open the door to face whatever waited inside.
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