Chapter 4: The Perfect Neighbor

Chapter 4: The Perfect Neighbor

The journey back was a silent, surreal glide through the dead city. Beth didn’t look out the window. She just stared at her own reflection in the darkened glass, a pale, haunted stranger in silk pajamas. The automated pod deposited her at the grand entrance of the Enclave tower as gently as if she were a fragile package.

The lobby was as she’d left it: a cavern of polished marble and cold, recessed lighting. The night concierge, a man with a placid face named Arthur who had always greeted her with a warm, meaningless smile, was standing at his post. Tonight, his smile was gone. His gaze met hers, and for a fraction of a second, she saw something flicker in his eyes. It wasn’t pity or concern. It was assessment. A butcher eyeing a cut of meat.

“Good morning, Ms. Ainsworth,” he said, his voice a smooth, neutral tone. “A difficult night, it seems.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. He knew. Of course, he knew. They all knew.

Her keycard, miraculously, still worked. The elevator ascended with its customary, stomach-lurching silence. She braced herself as she approached the door to 27B, her hand trembling as she raised the card to the sensor. She was terrified of what she would find inside. The remnants of Tim? The calm, placid security guards from the hallway?

The lock chirped its polite, electronic welcome. The door swung open.

The apartment was perfect.

Immaculate. Spotless. The air smelled faintly of lemon and clean linen, not garlic and rosemary. The wine glasses she and Tim had been using were gone from the counter. The pan she’d been about to sear steaks in was washed, dried, and hanging from its hook. She rushed to the bathroom, her heart a frantic bird in her chest.

The floor was pristine white marble, with no trace of a discarded faceplate. The sink was gleaming, with no residue of black, oily fluid. It was as if the last twelve hours had been nothing more than a psychotic break. A hallucination. But she knew better. This wasn't a cleanup; it was a reset. A scene being struck from a stage. They had not only decommissioned Tim, they had decommissioned every trace of his existence.

The next few days bled into one another, a gray smear of paranoia and quiet terror. The apartment was a prison. The city outside was a lie. Her only option was to stay within the gilded cage of the Enclave tower, this vertical showroom for a life that wasn't hers.

Her desire was no longer for truth or escape, but for something far more primal: to be invisible. To survive. She forced herself into a routine, a parody of normalcy, clinging to the fabricated identity of Beth Ainsworth, the quiet freelance designer. But now, she saw the simulation for what it was, and the sight was maddening.

She started frequenting the building’s amenities, the common areas she had always avoided with the excuse of her faulty knee. It was a test. She had to see how the system would react.

In the state-of-the-art gym on the 4th floor, a perky, impossibly fit trainer named Leo approached her. “Getting over that old knee injury, Beth? Smart to take it slow,” he said with a brilliant white smile. He knew her script. His eyes, however, didn't watch her form on the elliptical; they watched her face, her reactions. He wasn't a trainer; he was a proctor.

She tried the indoor infinity pool on the 50th floor. The air was warm and thick with the sterile scent of chlorine. A lifeguard sat in a high chair overlooking the vast, empty pool, his posture ramrod straight. She was the only swimmer. For a full hour, she floated on her back, watching him. He never moved. He never looked at his phone or a magazine. He just sat, his gaze fixed on the water, a silent, vigilant guardian of her gilded cage.

Her paranoia became a constant, humming frequency beneath the surface of her thoughts. The staff were all part of it. Their polite nods in the hallway felt like scans. Their cheerful greetings were status checks. She was a rogue asset, and they were watching to see if she would break again.

She hit rock bottom on the rooftop garden. It was a masterpiece of artificial nature, with perfectly sculpted hedges, flowers that bloomed in impossible unison, and grass that felt more like carpet than living turf. A man in a clean, beige uniform was trimming an already flawless rose bush. He smiled at her as she passed.

Beth found a bench hidden in an alcove of synthetic birch trees, the glittering, fake city skyline spread out before her. And there, surrounded by perfect, sterile beauty, the crushing weight of her isolation finally broke her.

She was nothing. Her memories were data. Her friends were phantoms. The man she loved had been disassembled like a faulty appliance. A dry, ragged sob tore from her throat, then another. She curled in on herself, burying her face in her hands, her body shaking with a grief so profound it had no sound. She was a ghost in a machine, and the machine was all there was.

“Are you alright?”

The voice was like warm honey. Rich, smooth, and deeply concerned.

Beth flinched, pulling her hands from her face. A man was standing there. He wasn’t in a staff uniform. He was tall, dressed in a simple but expensive-looking grey sweater and dark jeans. And he was, without exaggeration, the most handsome man she had ever seen. Flawless skin, a strong jaw, and kind, intelligent eyes the color of dark chocolate. He held out a neatly folded, linen handkerchief.

“You looked like you could use this,” he said, his voice gentle.

She stared at him, suspicious. In this world of constructs, such perfection could only be by design. “Who are you?” she asked, her voice a raw whisper.

“Tyler,” he said, offering a disarming, charismatic smile. “I live in 28B. Right above you. I’ve seen you in the elevators.” He sat on the opposite end of the bench, giving her space. “Look, I don’t want to intrude. It’s just… this place can be a little isolating. It’s nice to see a real human emotion for a change.”

The irony of his words was a physical blow. She let out a short, bitter laugh. “You have no idea.”

To her surprise, he didn’t press. He just waited. His presence was calm, reassuring, a steady anchor in her swirling vortex of terror. Against her better judgment, she found herself speaking, feeding him a watered-down, palatable version of her reality.

“My boyfriend… we had a fight. He just… left. Took all his things. It’s like he was never here.” The lie tasted like ash in her mouth, but it was safer than the truth.

Tyler nodded, his expression a mask of perfect empathy. “I’m so sorry. That’s awful. To just be erased from someone’s life like that.” He looked out at the city. “I own a business. High-end plumbing solutions. It sounds boring, but it’s mine. Keeps me grounded. Gives me something real to hold onto.”

He was giving her a backstory. A job. An identity. Just like hers. Just like Tim’s.

He stood up, stretching. “Well, I should let you be. But listen… if you want to grab a coffee sometime, or just get out of that apartment for an hour, let me know. Sometimes it helps to talk to a stranger.”

Beth, exhausted and utterly alone, found herself nodding. The desire for any kind of connection, even a fabricated one, was overwhelming. “Okay,” she heard herself say. “I’d like that.”

“Great.” His smile widened, and it was devastatingly effective, a high-resolution rendering of warmth and safety. He turned to leave, and for a fleeting moment, the artificial lights of the rooftop garden caught his eyes. They didn’t glimmer. For a split second, they were flat, dark, and empty, like the polished lenses of a camera recording her every twitch.

The feeling washed over her, cold and absolute. He wasn't a neighbor. He wasn't a friend. He was the next level of the simulation.

Tyler was too good to be true.