The metallic taste of blood filled Marcus's mouth as he staggered through the narrow corridor, his vision swimming with black spots. Behind him, the sound of scraping metal echoed through the darkness, a rhythmic nightmare that never stopped, never relented.
Three days. Three days since he'd watched Sarah fall into the pit. Three days since he'd heard her screams fade into nothing. Three days since the thing wearing Commander Reeves's face had smiled at him with too many teeth.
The sanctuary was changing. Everyone felt it. The walls breathed now, pulsing with a sickly organic rhythm that made his stomach turn. The lights flickered in patterns that almost seemed like words, like warnings written in a language his hindbrain understood but his conscious mind refused to acknowledge.
Marcus pressed his hand against the wall to steady himself, then jerked back with a gasp. The surface was warm. Wet. When he looked at his palm, it was covered in something that wasn't quite blood, wasn't quite oil. It moved on his skin, crawling toward his wrist with deliberate purpose.
He scraped it off frantically, watching it splatter on the floor where it pooled and began to reform into... something. He didn't wait to see what. He ran.
The medical bay appeared ahead, its doors hanging open like a broken jaw. Marcus hesitated. The last time he'd been here, Dr. Chen had been performing surgery on one of the survivors. Normal surgery, she'd said. Routine extraction of shrapnel. But the screaming hadn't been normal. Nothing about the way the patient's chest had opened and closed on its own, revealing glimpses of gears and wires beneath flesh, had been routine.
He had to go in. Elena was supposed to meet him here. Elena, with her knowing eyes and her secrets that might finally explain what the sanctuary really was. What they all were becoming.
The medical bay was dark except for a single overhead light that swung back and forth, casting monstrous shadows. Surgical instruments lay scattered across the floor, some bent into impossible shapes. The operating table in the center of the room was occupied.
Marcus approached slowly, his heart hammering against his ribs. The figure on the table was covered with a blood soaked sheet. He reached out with trembling fingers and pulled it back.
His own face stared up at him.
Not similar. Not a twin. His exact face, down to the scar over his left eyebrow from the first day of the outbreak. Down to the three day stubble. Down to the way his lips were slightly chapped on the right side.
The corpse's eyes opened.
"You're late," it said with his voice.
Marcus stumbled backward, his scream caught in his throat. The thing that looked like him sat up, the sheet falling away to reveal a body that was both intact and horrifically wrong. Its chest cavity was visible, but instead of organs, there were mirrors. Dozens of them, reflecting infinite versions of Marcus's terrified face.
"Did you think you were the first?" the doppelganger asked, swinging its legs off the table. "Did you think you were real?"
"What are you?" Marcus managed to choke out.
"I'm you. I'm every you that came before. Every Marcus that thought he could escape this place. Every version that died trying." It took a step closer, and Marcus could see now that its feet didn't quite touch the floor. It floated, swaying slightly like a corpse hanging from a rope.
"The sanctuary doesn't just protect, Marcus. It recycles. It learns. It improves." The thing smiled, and its teeth were made of broken glass. "You've been here before. Died here before. Hundreds of times. Each time, the sanctuary brings you back, adjusts a few variables, and watches you run through the maze again."
"No. No, that's not possible. I remember my life before. I remember everything."
"Do you?" the doppelganger tilted its head at an angle that should have snapped its neck. "Tell me about your mother, Marcus."
Marcus opened his mouth to respond and found nothing there. No memories. No face. No voice. Just a blank space where a lifetime should have been.
"Tell me about your first kiss. Your first job. The name of your childhood dog." The doppelganger circled him slowly, leaving a trail of that oily substance in its wake. "You can't, can you? Because those memories were never real. They were implanted. Seeds planted in a fresh clone's brain to make you think you were human."
"Elena," Marcus gasped. "Elena will prove you're lying. She's real. What we have is real."
The doppelganger laughed, a sound like breaking bones. "Elena. Oh, Marcus. Sweet, naive Marcus. Elena isn't coming to save you. Elena is part of this place. She's been part of it longer than you can imagine. She's the one who decides which version of you gets to wake up each cycle."
Footsteps echoed from the doorway. Marcus whirled around to see Elena standing there, her face illuminated by the swinging light. She looked different somehow. Her features were sharper, her eyes reflecting light like an animal's.
"Hello, Marcus," she said softly. "I was hoping we could delay this conversation for another few days. You were doing so well this time. Lasting longer than usual. But you found the medical bay too early. You always do, eventually."
Marcus backed away from both of them, his mind fracturing under the weight of what he was hearing. "What are you saying? Elena, please. Tell me this isn't real."
She stepped into the room, and now he could see what his panicked mind had tried to ignore. Her shadow was wrong. It moved independently, reaching toward him with fingers that were too long, too many.
"I'm sorry," Elena said, and for a moment, there was genuine sadness in her voice. "I do care about you, Marcus. I care about every version of you. But the sanctuary must feed. It must learn. And you... you're one of its favorite lessons."
The doppelganger moved behind Marcus, its cold hands gripping his shoulders. He tried to scream, but no sound came out. His mouth opened wider and wider, his jaw dislocating with a wet pop.
From his throat came a sound that wasn't his. Wasn't human. It was the sound of machinery grinding, of gears turning, of something vast and ancient and hungry waking up inside him.
Elena watched with clinical interest as Marcus's skin began to split along invisible seams. Light poured out from the cracks, and with it came the memories. Real memories. Hundreds of lifetimes. Hundreds of deaths. Each one ending here, in this room, with this revelation.
He saw himself as a soldier in the first iteration, shot by friendly fire when he tried to escape. Himself as a doctor in the thirty seventh cycle, driven mad by what he discovered in the lower levels. Himself as a child in cycle one hundred and twelve, reset too young, unable to cope with the horror of awareness.
The sanctuary remembered every version. The sanctuary learned from every failure. And the sanctuary was patient. It had all the time in the world to perfect its subjects.
"It hurts less if you don't fight it," Elena said, kneeling beside him as he collapsed to the floor. "In a few hours, you'll wake up again. Fresh. New. With no memory of this moment. And maybe this time, you'll finally become what the sanctuary needs you to be."
Marcus tried to speak, but his mouth was no longer his own. His body was no longer his own. As consciousness faded, he felt the sanctuary's awareness flooding into him, filling every corner of his being with its cold, mechanical love.
The last thing he saw was Elena's face, beautiful and terrible, leaning close to whisper in his ear.
"Welcome home, Marcus. For the three hundred and forty sixth time."
Then darkness.
And then, somewhere in that darkness, a different voice. Young. Frightened. Familiar.
"Marcus? Marcus, wake up. We've been trying to reach you for hours. Something's wrong with the eastern sector. The walls are bleeding, and there are people coming out of them. People who look exactly like the survivors we lost last week. Please, we need you."
The voice belonged to Sarah.
Sarah, who had fallen into the pit three days ago.
Sarah, who was supposed to be dead.