Chapter 5: The Voice in the Mirror

Chapter 5: The Voice in the Mirror

The storm broke just after midnight, a furious, biblical deluge that hammered against the unseen roof of the facility. Each distant crack of thunder was a low, guttural growl that vibrated up through the concrete floor, a primal counterpoint to the clean, sterile hiss in Liam’s headphones. The lights in the tiny room flickered in sympathy with the lightning, plunging him into a split-second of absolute darkness before returning with a nauseous, buzzing hum. The world outside and the world in his ears were blurring, the chaos of nature mirroring the chaos brewing in the static.

Liam hadn't slept in what felt like days. The memory of his own voice whispering from his laptop speakers had followed him, a parasitic echo that had taken root in his mind. He was living on a knife's edge, fueled by caffeine and a gnawing, ever-present dread. He’d hit the red button at the slightest provocation, resetting the feed a dozen times in the first few hours of his shift, trying to maintain a semblance of control.

But the storm seemed to energize the entity. It was as if the atmospheric interference was a conduit, a bridge for it to cross. The whispers started again, no longer tentative but insistent, weaving through the static like hungry serpents. They slithered around the edges of words, the ghost of his name a constant, maddening presence.

Then, drowning out the storm and the static, the sound returned.

KNOCK.

It wasn't just in his headphones this time. It was in the room. He felt it in his bones, a deep, resonant impact that seemed to shake the very foundations of the building. He ripped the headphones off, his heart seizing in his chest. The roar of the static was gone, but the sound remained, an impossible acoustic event in the deadened room.

KNOCK.

Louder. More demanding. The metal table vibrated beneath his fingertips. The green line on the CRT screen seemed to jump with each impact. This wasn't a signal anymore; it was a physical assault. It was the sound of something colossal and enraged, hammering against the other side of a very thin wall.

KNOCK.

Liam scrambled back, his chair screeching against the floor. His eyes were locked on the console, his mind screaming Grant’s warning at him. Rule one: hit the switch. Rule two: if it talks, don’t answer. This wasn’t talking, but it was more than just a pattern. It was a demand. It was a fist on the door.

He lunged for the button, his hand shaking so violently he could barely guide it. He was done being curious. He was done hesitating. This was a monster, and his only job was to keep it in its cage.

KNOCK.

The fourth knock was a deafening blow that coincided with a flash of lightning outside. The lights in the room died completely, plunging him into utter blackness. In the same instant, a final, deafening crack of thunder shook the facility, so loud it felt like the sky was being torn in half.

And in the ringing silence that followed, a new and terrible silence that had nothing to do with the storm, the static in his headphones, still slung around his neck, vanished.

It didn't fade. It didn't fizzle. It was cut, as if by a razor. For the first time in weeks, Liam experienced the true, unadulterated sound of the monitoring room: the hum of the electronics, the drip of water somewhere down the hall, the frantic, panicked beat of his own heart. The sudden absence of the roaring noise was more terrifying than its presence ever had been. It was a void. A held breath.

His hand was inches from the red button. The emergency lights flickered on, casting the room in a ghastly, crimson glow. In the eerie red light, the button looked like a congealed drop of blood.

Then, from the headphones dangling against his chest, a voice spoke into the perfect, pristine silence.

It was his own.

Not a whisper. Not a distorted echo. It was his voice, captured with terrifying fidelity—the slight weariness, the faint rasp, the exact pitch and cadence he heard every time he spoke. But it was laden with an emotion he had never allowed himself to feel, a despair so ancient and profound it felt scraped from the bottom of the ocean. It was the voice of a soul that had been weeping in darkness for a thousand years.

“Help me,” his own voice pleaded, the sound so clear it was as if he were speaking the words himself.

Liam froze, his entire being locked in a state of primal shock. His hand hovered over the button, a single, trembling inch from safety.

“Let me out.”

The words were not a demand. They were a raw, desperate prayer. The sheer, unadulterated agony in that voice was a hook that sank deep into his soul. It bypassed all his fear, all his paranoia, and struck at the core of his being—the part of him that had sat by his mother’s bedside, helpless, watching her fade away. The part of him that understood loneliness and entrapment. It was him, but it wasn't him. It was his voice, filled with a suffering that dwarfed his own paltry debts and anxieties into nothingness.

This was the test. This was the final, terrible trap. Grant’s last-chance warning blazed in his mind: If you hear it using your voice… that’s your last chance.

The red switch felt impossibly heavy, the most difficult choice of his life. To press it now felt like an act of murder, of silencing a prisoner begging for mercy. It meant abandoning someone who sounded just like him, who felt like a lost part of his own soul.

To hesitate, to listen for a second longer, was to disobey the burned man’s final, terrified command. It was to open the door he had been so generously paid to keep shut.

His voice, filled with an eternity of sorrow, echoed in the crimson-lit silence of the room. His trembling fingers remained poised over the switch. One inch. One choice. One final chance.