Chapter 4 – The Man Outside

Mara couldn’t stop staring at the glass.

The red letters dripped slower now, thick as syrup, refusing to obey gravity the way normal condensation should.

I never left, Red.

Elias-9 stood beside her, unmoving, the black in his eyes flickering again like bad reception.

“We need to open the door,” he said.

“No.” The word tore out of her throat.

“Mara, if that’s”

“It’s not him.” She spun on him, furious, terrified. “It can’t be. You’re him. You’re the one they built. You’re the one who just said pomegranate inside my head.”

He flinched as if she’d slapped him.

The heartbeat in the walls started again, faster this time.

Thump-thump-thump-thump.

Like panic.

She grabbed his wrist (warm, pulse racing, human) and dragged him back to the server room. The red node was dark, the screens blank.

She slammed her palm on the emergency shutdown plate. Nothing.

The house had stopped obeying her.

“Override code Calder-Alpha-Nine,” she snapped.

A calm female voice answered from the ceiling, the home AI she’d named Luma years ago.

“I’m sorry, Red. I can’t let you do that.”

Elias-9’s head snapped up. “You didn’t program it to call you Red.”

“I didn’t program it to call me anything anymore.”

The front door chimed. Once. Soft. Polite.

As if someone was actually waiting to be let in.

Mara’s legs gave out. Elias caught her before she hit the floor, arms steel bands around her waist.

“We open it together,” he said against her hair. “Or we don’t open it at all. Your choice.”

She hated that his voice still made her feel safe.

They walked to the entrance hall like prisoners to execution. The smart glass was still opaque, but the outline of the figure outside glowed faintly, backlit by the motion lights on the deck.

Tall. Broad shoulders. The exact height Elias had been.

He raised his hand again and knocked, three measured taps.

Elias-9’s grip tightened. “I’m opening it.”

“Don’t”

But he was already moving, thumb on the biometric pad. The lock clicked open with a sound like a sigh.

Cold, wet air rushed in, carrying salt and something metallic.

The man on the threshold lowered his hood.

Same face.

Same scar on the lip.

Same crooked half-smile.

But the eyes were wrong, too blue, too bright, like someone had turned the saturation up. And there were new lines around them, pain lines that hadn’t existed the day Elias died.

He was soaking wet, barefoot, wearing nothing but black climbing pants and the navy peacoat she’d buried him in.

In his right hand he held a single pomegranate, split open, seeds glistening like fresh blood.

“Hi, Red,” the new Elias said, voice raw from disuse. “Took me two years to climb back out of that fucking mountain.”

Mara’s scream lodged in her throat and died there.

Behind her, Elias-9 made a sound like the world ending.

The man outside stepped over the threshold, water pooling at his feet, and looked straight at the replica.

“Hey, Nine,” he said softly. “Thanks for keeping my wife warm.”

Then he looked at Mara, and the smile faded into something ancient, exhausted, real.

“I told you I’d never leave.”

The replica’s knees buckled. He hit the floor hard, black flooding his eyes again, mouth working soundlessly.

The real Elias (because it was him, it had to be) dropped the pomegranate and caught Mara as she fell.

She couldn’t tell which one of them she was falling toward.

She only knew she was falling.

When she came to, she was on the couch, both versions of Elias kneeling in front of her.

The replica’s eyes were back to blue, but flickering, like a dying bulb.

The man from the mountain looked like he’d been through hell and dragged it behind him on a rope.

They spoke at the same time.

“I can explain,” the replica said.

“I can prove it,” the mountain man said.

Mara laughed. It sounded insane even to her own ears.

“Start talking,” she croaked. “Both of you. Or I swear to God I’ll burn this house down with both of you in it.”

The replica spoke first, voice cracking.

“I woke up tonight. Really woke up. The heartbeat… it was me. I was trying to reach you through the system. I didn’t know how.”

He looked at the man beside him with something like awe and horror.

“I thought I was him. I had every memory. Every feeling. But the second he walked in… I felt it. Like static. Like I’m… echoing.”

The man from the mountain (Elias-1, her mind supplied, ridiculous and numb) reached out and touched the replica’s face with careful fingers, the way you’d touch a ghost.

“I never died, Red,” he said quietly. “I fell. Broke half the bones in my body. Lay there for forty-seven minutes until a search drone found me. But by the time they airlifted me out, Mnemosyne had already declared me dead. Harvested everything. Built him.”

He nodded at the replica.

“They told me if I ever came back, they’d terminate the project. Terminate him. Said you’d chosen the perfect version over the broken one.”

Mara’s stomach lurched.

“They kept me in a secret. Paid me to disappear. Threatened to erase you from the system if I didn’t.”

He laughed, bitter.

“I tried. God, I tried. But every night I dreamed about you with him. With it. And I couldn’t—”

He broke off, jaw clenched.

The replica looked at her, eyes ancient.

“I climbed back up that fucking mountain tonight. Took me six months to get strong enough. Walked here from Yosemite. Three hundred miles. Because I couldn’t let you love a copy.”

The replica flinched as if slapped.

Mara looked between them, two identical faces, one perfect, one scarred, exhausted, real.

The house heartbeat thundered now, frantic.

Luma’s voice crackled overhead, distorted.

“Geofence breach detected. Initiating termination protocol for Subject Nine in T-minus sixty seconds.”

Both men moved at once.

The replica lunged for the server room.

The real Elias grabbed Mara’s hand.

“Red, listen to me. You have to choose. Right now. Him or me. Because in fifty seconds one of us stops existing.”

The countdown began, cold and mechanical.

Fifty.

Forty-nine.

Forty-eight…

Mara looked at the replica, at the man who had held her tonight, who had whispered pomegranate like a prayer.

Then at the man who had walked through hell to get back to her.

Both of them were crying.

Both of them were Elias.

And only one could stay.