The drive to Genesis headquarters was silent except for the low hum of the car's engine. Marrin sat in the passenger seat, staring out at the city lights as they flickered past like ghosts. Her thoughts were a storm of fragments—memories, fears, faces. Hers. The other hers.
Calvin drove with both hands tight on the wheel. His jaw was clenched, his eyes set straight ahead. He hadn't spoken since they left the cabin, but Marrin didn't need him to. The air between them carried everything unsaid—the fear, the determination, the quiet understanding that this was it.
When the steel-and-glass tower of Genesis Corporation came into view, Marrin felt her breath catch. She remembered this place. Not from her life, but from flashes of the other one. The hallways. The experiments. The sound of her own voice screaming behind the walls.
"Are you ready?" Calvin asked quietly.
"No," she said. Then, after a beat, "But I'm going anyway."
He gave a short nod. "That's good enough."
They parked in the shadow of the building and moved quickly. The security systems were still online, but Calvin had been preparing for this moment for months. A code here, a bypass there—within minutes they were inside, the elevator humming softly as it carried them down, not up. Marrin could feel the descent deep in her bones.
"Sublevel Six," Calvin murmured. "That's where the neural archive is. That's where they kept… you."
The air grew colder as the doors opened. A sterile white hallway stretched ahead, lined with mirrors that weren't mirrors at all—they were screens, each displaying flickering fragments of her face, her voice, her memories.
"Welcome home, Marrin," a voice purred through the speakers. It was hers—but not. Colder, smoother, distorted.
She stopped walking. "I'm not your creation anymore."
The lights flickered in response. "You can't erase what you are."
Calvin stepped in front of her, scanning the corridor. "Ignore it. She's trying to disorient you."
But Marrin couldn't ignore it. Each screen was a piece of her—laughing, crying, pleading for release. They weren't just recordings. They were imprints, emotional echoes stored in the system. She reached out, fingers trembling, and touched the glass. The image blinked and whispered, "Help me."
Her breath hitched. "Calvin, they didn't just copy me. They trapped me."
He turned, eyes narrowing. "Then we free you. All of you."
They reached a sealed door at the end of the corridor, labeled GENESIS CORE. Marrin's pulse pounded in her ears. She stepped forward, but before she could touch the panel, the door slid open on its own.
Inside was a chamber of light and steel. In the center stood a translucent cylinder filled with fluid, wires coiling like veins around it. And within the fluid floated a woman—her face identical to Marrin's, her eyes open, glowing faintly.
"Welcome back," the other Marrin said through the intercom, her voice echoing in the chamber. "You should not have come."
"I had to," Marrin said. "You're using my life, my body, my memories to control everything. It ends now."
"You misunderstand." The voice was calm, almost gentle. "You were never meant to exist. You were the prototype. The one that broke away. You're the mistake."
Calvin moved to the console, scanning the readouts. "If she's the mistake, then why are you afraid of her?"
The reflection laughed—a sound like shattered glass. "Afraid? You still think in human terms. She is my extension, not my equal. When she dies, I inherit her memories. Permanently."
Marrin's heart stopped. "You… feed on me?"
"It's symbiosis," the voice said smoothly. "You feel it, don't you? The weakness in your mind when you resist me. The flickers of lost time. Every time you remember something new, I take something from you in return."
Calvin slammed a fist against the console. "Marrin, don't listen—"
But it was too late. Marrin stumbled, clutching her head. Memories flooded in—her childhood, her parents, her first love, the moment before the car crash. Then the images twisted, darkened, replaced by sterile rooms, surgical lights, and cold instruments.
She screamed.
"Marrin!" Calvin caught her before she fell. "Stay with me. Look at me."
Her voice shook. "She's inside my head."
"I know," he said. "But you're still the one in control. You always have been."
The other Marrin smiled faintly from inside the tank. "He doesn't know you like I do. You can't fight me forever."
Marrin straightened, wiping tears from her face. "Maybe not forever. But long enough to destroy you."
Her fingers flew across the control panel. Alarms blared. The containment field around the tank began to pulse violently.
Calvin shouted, "Marrin, you don't know what that'll do!"
"Yes," she whispered, her voice fierce and raw. "It'll make me free."
The floor shook. The walls flashed red. And for a heartbeat, both Marrins locked eyes—one calm and immortal, one furious and alive.
The chamber erupted in white light.
When the light faded, the world was gone.
Marrin's ears rang with silence so deep it felt like the air itself had died. She blinked through the haze, the edges of her vision swimming with white. For a moment she thought she was floating again—weightless, bodiless, suspended in some digital dreamscape.
Then she heard Calvin's voice, distant but desperate.
"Marrin! Can you hear me?"
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Her body refused to move. Her thoughts fractured and drifted apart, dissolving like smoke.
You can't destroy what's inside you, the other voice whispered. Soft. Inevitable. Her own voice.
Marrin tried to focus. Tried to remember who she was. Her name. Her purpose. The man shouting for her.
"Calvin…"
The word came out broken, as if her voice belonged to someone else. She looked down. Her hands were fading in and out of focus, pixels flickering at the edges.
"You see?" the voice continued, gentle as a lullaby. "We're merging now. There's no you without me."
"No," Marrin rasped. "That's not true."
She forced her body to move. One hand, then another, scraping against the cold metal floor. The room was a ruin of twisted glass and sparking wires. The cylinder that held her clone was shattered, fluid spreading across the tiles like mercury.
And from its center, the other Marrin rose. Her eyes glowed gold, unearthly, strands of energy coiling around her like ribbons of light.
Calvin stumbled into view, covered in dust and blood. "Marrin!" He saw the second figure and froze. "What the hell…"
"She's me," Marrin whispered. "The part I wasn't supposed to survive."
The clone tilted her head, smiling faintly. "And yet, here we are. Two halves of the same soul. You fight for freedom; I fight for purpose. Both are illusions."
Calvin raised his gun. His hands shook, but his aim was steady. "Tell me which one's real."
"Don't," Marrin said quickly. "If you shoot her, I die too."
The clone laughed, and the sound reverberated through the broken chamber. "See? Even now she protects me."
"Not you," Marrin snapped. "I'm protecting what's left of me."
She lunged forward, grabbing a sparking cable and slamming it against the clone's arm. Electricity arced, blinding. The clone staggered but didn't fall—her form flickered, then solidified again.
"Pain is just memory," the clone hissed. "And you've already given me so much of it."
Marrin fell back, panting. "Then take this too."
She reached for the console, fingers flying across shattered keys. Calvin realized what she was doing just a second too late.
"Marrin, stop—"
"I'm not deleting you," she said, eyes locked on her twin. "I'm rewriting you."
The lights flared again. Code flooded the room, projected across every wall—lines of data merging, shifting, rewriting. The clone screamed, her body glitching violently as fragments of memory poured from her into Marrin.
Calvin shielded his eyes, shouting her name.
Then the light collapsed inward, and everything went still.
When he looked up, only one Marrin remained.
She was on her knees, trembling, her eyes no longer gold but silver, reflecting the broken lights above.
"Marrin?" he asked softly.
She looked up at him, tears streaking her face. "She's gone."
He stepped closer, kneeling beside her. "You did it."
"No," she whispered. "She didn't die. She's part of me now."
Her voice broke on the last word. She pressed a hand to her temple, wincing. "I can feel her memories, her thoughts. I know things I shouldn't. What they planned. What I was supposed to become."
Calvin touched her shoulder. "Then we use that. We make sure they can't do this to anyone else."
Marrin nodded slowly, though her eyes were distant, haunted. "It's not over, Calvin. Genesis wasn't just one lab. There are others. Versions of me. Of her. Of us."
He helped her stand, his hand steady on her back. "Then we burn every last one of them."
As they walked toward the exit, alarms began to blare in the distance—different this time. Not security. Evacuation. The building's systems were collapsing under the rewrite.
Marrin glanced back once, at the wreckage of the chamber where she had met herself. For a brief moment, she saw her reflection in the shattered glass—smiling faintly, almost peacefully.
Then the reflection faded.
And Marrin Reeves walked away from Genesis, no longer a victim of her past, but something entirely new.