Chapter 5: The Mimic in Motion

Chapter 5: The Mimic in Motion

The gray light of dawn was a liar. It promised a new day, a fresh start, but all it did was illuminate the wreckage of the night. Alex sat before his laptop, a statue carved from exhaustion and dread. His coffee was a cold, bitter sludge in the mug beside him. The air in the apartment was thick and still, heavy with the faint, sickly-sweet ghost of corruption he could no longer scrub away.

His finger trembled over the trackpad. He had two video files. LIVINGROOM_CAM_NIGHT1 and BEDROOM_CAM_NIGHT1. His own bedroom. The source. He had to start there.

He clicked play.

The world resolved into a grainy, infrared monochrome. The camera angle from the dresser showed his bed, the rumpled sheets looking like a desolate landscape. In the center of that landscape lay his own sleeping form. For a long, agonizing time, that was all there was. He watched himself, a stranger on a screen, tossing and turning. The sight was deeply unsettling, an intimate violation of his own privacy, but it was nothing compared to what he was afraid he’d find.

He used the scrub bar to jump through the footage, the hours flying by in a silent, jerky blur. 1:00 AM. 2:00 AM. He saw the moment he must have been having the nightmare, his body thrashing under the covers. A pathetic, frightened animal trapped in its sleep. He felt a pang of pity for the man on the screen.

He scrubbed forward again, to just after 3:00 AM. His on-screen self had finally settled, lying still on his back, breathing deeply. Peace. For a few minutes, the only movement was the slow rise and fall of his chest. Alex’s own breathing hitched, his knuckles white as he gripped the edge of the laptop. This was it. The calm before the storm.

Then, it happened.

It was so subtle at first, he almost missed it. The body on the bed stopped breathing. The rhythmic rise and fall of the chest simply ceased. It lay there, perfectly, unnaturally still for a count of ten seconds. Then, without any of the usual precursors to waking—no stirring, no groan, no gradual shift—the body rose.

It didn't sit up. It folded. From the waist, it bent into a perfect ninety-degree angle, a single, horrifyingly fluid motion like a switchblade snapping open. There was no strain, no effort. His legs swung over the side of the bed, and he—it—stood.

Alex’s blood turned to ice water. The thing on the screen moved with a grace that was utterly inhuman. It was a dancer or a puppet, its joints seemingly unhindered by the normal constraints of bone and sinew. It glided out of the bedroom, its feet making no sound, its form a perfect replica of his own, silhouetted against the faint light from the hallway.

His hands shook so violently he could barely control the mouse. He minimized the bedroom footage and maximized the feed from the living room camera. He found the corresponding timestamp. The living room was empty, a silent stage. Then, from the dark maw of the doorway, the figure emerged.

It drifted into the center of the room, and Alex felt a choked sob escape his lips. Its head was cocked to the side at a sharp, painful-looking angle, exactly like the distorted reflection from his nightmare. It was a pose of morbid curiosity, of an animal listening for a sound no human could hear. The unnatural posture made its familiar form utterly alien.

It stood there for a full minute, a silent statue in the heart of his home. Then, it began to move again. It wasn't pacing, not like Lily had described. This was more deliberate. More purposeful. It was an inspection.

The Echo glided over to the bookshelf. This was Alex’s one concession to a personal life, a small collection of paperbacks and a few framed photographs. The figure reached out a hand—his hand—and picked up a small, silver frame. Alex knew the picture by heart: him and Sarah, years ago, on a beach trip, squinting in the sun, a forced but happy smile on his face. The Echo’s long finger, a perfect copy of his own, traced the outline of his face on the glass, then Sarah’s. It was a gesture of cold, detached study. It was learning.

It put the frame down with silent precision and picked up another. This one was larger, a cheap wooden frame holding a school picture of Lily. She was missing her two front teeth, her smile a wide, goofy, beautiful grin. The figure held the picture close to its face, its head still tilted at that grotesque angle. For a horrifying moment, Alex thought it might speak, that he might finally hear the broken radio whispers his daughter had described. But it remained silent. It was just watching. Cataloging. Absorbing the details of the life it was methodically dismantling.

Alex felt a surge of pure, primal rage. This thing, this parasite, was defiling his memories, touching the images of the people he loved with its unholy imitation of his own hands. He was no longer just afraid. He was violated.

The figure placed Lily’s picture back on the shelf, its movements unnervingly careful. It then drifted back to the center of the room, coming to a stop directly in the camera’s line of sight. It stood there, its back to the lens, a dark, familiar shape that was anything but.

For thirty seconds, it was motionless. Alex held his breath, his eyes burning from staring at the screen. What was it doing? What was it waiting for?

Then, with a slowness that was a form of exquisite torture, its head began to turn.

It didn't turn its body, only its neck. The movement was mechanical, ratcheting, like old clockwork. It turned, and turned, and turned, past the point of any human capability, its shoulders remaining perfectly still. It turned until its face was looking directly back over its own shoulder.

Directly into the camera.

Directly at him.

Alex’s heart stopped. Its eyes were wide, unblinking black pools in the monochrome night vision. It knew. It had known all along that the camera was there. It had been performing for him.

And then, it smiled.

It wasn't a human expression. The corners of its mouth began to pull, stretching the skin of his own face taut. The smile grew wider and wider, an unnatural fissure spreading across its features, pulling the lips back from the teeth in a silent, predatory snarl. It was a grotesque crescent of pure malice, a wound carved into his own likeness.

Lily’s terrified words screamed in the sudden, roaring silence of his mind.

It wasn't your smile, Daddy. It was too big for your face.

The image on the screen was a perfect, undeniable, soul-shattering confirmation. The abstract threat, the child's nightmare, the shadow in the video, had now become a concrete and horrifying reality. It was here, it was intelligent, it was aware of him, and it was showing him, with a soundless, triumphant grin, that he was utterly, completely helpless.