Chapter 2: The Second Man

Leo's feet hit the cold hardwood floor before he fully processed what was happening. The scratches on his neck throbbed with each heartbeat, four thin lines of fire that proved the impossible truth: he had lived this morning before.

The sounds from the kitchen continued—the clink of porcelain, the whisper of steam, Elara's soft humming as she prepared their daily ritual. But now Leo heard it all with different ears. The melody she hummed wasn't random; it was deliberate, practiced, the soundtrack to calculated murder.

He moved to the bedroom doorway and watched her through the open sight lines of their carefully designed living space. Same silk robe flowing like water, same ethereal grace, same loving smile when she noticed him watching. But the scratches on his neck burned with the truth of what lay beneath that perfect mask.

"You're up early," Elara said, lifting the delicate cup in offering. "Your tea is ready."

Your tea. Not the tea or some tea. The possessive felt different now, loaded with sinister intent. Leo's throat constricted as he remembered her voice on the phone: The tea is working, but slowly.

"I'm not drinking that." The words came out rougher than intended.

Elara's expression flickered—confusion, then concern. "Are you feeling alright? You look pale."

"Don't." Leo stepped into the living room, noting the distance between them, calculating angles and exit routes with an architect's instinct for spatial relationships. "Don't pretend. Not anymore."

"Leo, what are you—"

"I heard you on the phone yesterday. With Marcus." The lie came easily; time had become fluid, yesterday and today bleeding together. "I know about the insurance policy. I know about the poison."

The porcelain cup slipped from Elara's fingers, shattering against the hardwood in a spray of green liquid and ceramic shards. The sound was sharp, final, like something precious breaking beyond repair.

For a moment, neither of them moved. Then Elara's mask began to dissolve, revealing the cold calculation underneath.

"How?" she asked simply.

"Does it matter?" Leo's hands clenched into fists at his sides. Five years of marriage, five years of trust, five years of believing he knew the woman sharing his bed. "How long have you been planning this?"

"Six months." The admission came without shame or regret. "Since Marcus and I realized we wanted the same things."

"Each other. And my money."

"Among other things." Elara stepped carefully around the broken tea cup, her bare feet finding purchase on unmarked floor. "You have to understand, Leo. You're not exactly... stimulating company. Marcus is different. He's alive in ways you'll never be."

The words hit like physical blows. Leo had always known he wasn't the most exciting man—methodical where others were spontaneous, careful where others were bold. But he'd thought that steadiness was something to be valued, not despised.

"So you decided to murder me."

"The insurance policy was your idea," Elara said with a shrug. "We just... expanded on the concept. Small doses over time, building up in your system. You would have gone peacefully in your sleep eventually. No suffering, no mess."

"No guilt for you."

"Exactly." Her smile was radiant, as if she'd solved a particularly elegant equation. "The perfect crime."

Rage built in Leo's chest like pressure in a sealed container. Not the hot flash of anger he'd felt in his dream—or memory, or whatever the hell yesterday had been—but something colder and infinitely more dangerous.

"And Marcus? Your partner in more ways than one?"

"He's been very patient. We both have." Elara moved closer, apparently unaware of the shift in Leo's demeanor. "You should see him, Leo. Really see him. The way he handles clients, the way he commands a room. He's everything you're not."

"My best friend."

"Your business partner who's been carrying the firm while you hide behind your drafting table." The words were designed to cut, and they found their mark. "He deserves better than playing second fiddle to mediocrity."

Leo's vision tunneled. The careful architecture of his life—his marriage, his friendship, his sense of self—crumbled like a building with compromised foundations. Everything he'd built was constructed on lies, and now it was all coming down at once.

He moved without conscious thought, crossing the distance between them in three quick strides. His hands found Elara's throat, exactly as they had in the dream that wasn't a dream.

"Leo, what are you—" Her words cut off as his grip tightened.

"You want to see something other than mediocrity?" The voice coming from his throat didn't sound like his own. "Let me show you what six months of poison can create."

He dragged her toward the balcony, her nails raking across his neck—fresh cuts over the ones that had somehow carried over from yesterday's impossibility. The sliding door stood open, morning breeze carrying the sounds of traffic and normal life, a world where wives didn't poison their husbands and best friends didn't plot murder for insurance money.

"Please," Elara gasped, suddenly small and fragile in his grip. "Leo, I'm sorry, I never meant—"

"You never meant to get caught." The words were identical to yesterday's confrontation, as if he were reading from a script written in blood and betrayal.

The balcony railing pressed against his legs as he forced her toward the edge. Eight floors below, concrete and steel waited with patient hunger. The rational part of his mind—the part that understood physics and consequences—screamed warnings he couldn't hear over the roar in his ears.

"Look at me," Leo snarled, forcing her face toward his. "Look at what you made me become."

But Elara wasn't looking at him. Her gaze was fixed over his shoulder, across the narrow alley that separated their building from its identical twin. Her eyes widened with terror—not of him, but of something else entirely.

"No," she whispered. "No, that's impossible."

Leo followed her stare to Building B, to the balcony that mirrored their own. A man stood there, hands pressed against the glass, mouth open in a silent scream of horror.

The man looked exactly like Leo.

But this time, Leo recognized the scene for what it was. The other Leo—yesterday's Leo, trapped Leo, prisoner Leo—was watching his own reflection play out the same horrific scene. The watcher across the alley wore yesterday's clothes, bore yesterday's scratches, carried yesterday's impossible knowledge of how this scene would end.

The other Leo was shaking his head frantically, pounding on the window, his face a mask of desperate terror. His mouth moved, forming words Leo could somehow hear across the impossible distance:

Stop. Please, God, stop. Don't make me watch this again.

Leo's grip on Elara loosened as understanding crashed over him like a cold wave. The man across the alley wasn't another version of himself—it was him, trapped in yesterday while today played out its predetermined script. He was both actor and audience, perpetrator and witness, trapped in an endless loop of betrayal and revenge.

"What is this?" Leo whispered, staring at his own horrified face across the alley. "What the hell is happening?"

The other Leo pressed his hands to his head, collapsing to his knees on the distant balcony. His silent screams echoed across the space between buildings, a sound that wasn't quite sound, felt rather than heard.

"Please," Elara gasped, taking advantage of his loosened grip to pull away slightly. "Please, Leo, I don't understand what's happening, but we can figure this out. We can—"

Her words cut off as Leo's attention snapped back to her. The rage returned, white-hot and consuming, fed by the knowledge that this scene had played out before and would play out again. She was still lying, still manipulating, still trying to save herself with empty promises.

"Figure what out?" Leo's voice was barely human. "How to poison me more efficiently? How to cover your tracks better next time?"

"I'll stop," she said desperately. "No more tea, no more Marcus. We can go back to how things were."

"How things were was a lie." Leo's grip tightened again. "Everything was a lie."

Across the alley, the other Leo was screaming soundlessly, hands clawing at the glass as if he could somehow break through and stop what he knew was coming. But Leo could see the truth in his other self's eyes—the knowledge that he was powerless, that he could only watch as the same horror played out again and again.

"Look at him," Leo whispered, forcing Elara's gaze toward the impossible figure across the way. "Look at what this is doing to me."

Elara's struggles intensified as she saw the other Leo's torment. "I don't understand," she sobbed. "How is he there? How is any of this possible?"

"I don't know." Leo's voice was hollow, drained of everything except bitter certainty. "But I know it's real. The poison is real. The betrayal is real. And if I have to live through this again and again, then so do you."

He lifted her higher, her feet leaving the balcony floor. The other Leo's screams reached a crescendo of silent agony, his fists beating uselessly against glass that might as well have been stone.

"This is what you made," Leo said, and pushed.

Elara's scream cut through the morning air like a blade, doppler-shifting as she fell. Leo didn't watch her hit the ground. Instead, he stared across the alley at his other self, who had collapsed completely, hands pressed over his eyes as if he could unsee what had just happened.

The guilt hit Leo like a physical force, doubling him over the railing. What had he done? What had he become? The woman he'd loved—poisoner or not, betrayer or not—was gone, and he was responsible.

But even as remorse flooded through him, Leo knew it didn't matter. The scratches on his neck were proof that time had already bent around this moment. Tomorrow—or today, or yesterday—he would wake up again to the scent of green tea and the sound of porcelain against granite.

And across the alley, another version of himself would be trapped behind glass, forced to watch the same tragedy unfold with fresh horror each time.

The world began to dissolve at the edges, reality softening like overexposed film. Leo's last coherent thought before the reset claimed him was a question that would haunt every repetition to come:

If he was trapped as both killer and witness, what did that make him—victim or monster?

The morning light faded to nothing, taking his sanity with it.