The Others

By the time Lena hit street level, her breath was shallow, sharp as if the air itself didn’t want to be breathed. People passed her, heads down, eyes glazed. No one looked her way. But she felt it. Watched. Tracked. Not by eyes, but by… something.

She cut through alleyways, jumped a train gate, took the westbound line didn’t matter where it went. She just needed to move. To think. To feel real.

The train was nearly empty. Three passengers sat completely still. Not asleep. Just… still. One of them blinked at her, but not with confusion. With recognition.

That’s when he mouthed it:

“Cohort 17.”

Her pulse spiked. Before she could ask anything, the lights overhead flickered and blink the man was gone. Not moved. Not walked out. Gone.

A print ad on the train wall now read:

“Smile. Your version has been updated.”

Lena got off at the next stop.

⸻

Back in her apartment that night, she didn’t trust the mirrors. Covered them with towels. Her face felt too… symmetrical. Like it had been printed fresh.

She logged into an old government terminal she still had access to. Typed in the keyphrase from the folder: CBAP COHORT 17.

A list populated.

118 names.

She recognized one Mira Rell a girl from university. Quiet. Vanished junior year after some breakdown, they said.

Lena found an old contact. Traced Mira’s last address to a basement-level art co-op looked abandoned.

When she got there, she felt it immediately: this place was off-grid. Doors weren’t on hinges. Windows were lined with mirror foil. And in the far back: a mural. A painted eye with wires coming out of it, feeding into cities. Faces in the background dozens identical copies. Same smile. Same stare.

Then, a voice from behind her:

“You were supposed to stay asleep, Lena.”

It was Mira. Older. Worn. But alert.

She pulled Lena into the shadows, pulled a curtain across a section of wall. Behind it: corkboard madness photos, blueprints, connected with red thread. All centered on two words:

THE PROGRAM

Mira handed her a device. Looked like a remote, but no buttons just a trigger and a needle-sized sensor.

“This detects resets,” she said.

“Memory wipes. Location shifts. People replaced.”

Lena shook her head. “Replaced?”

Mira locked eyes with her.

“You think they just erase people? No. They overwrite them. Same skin. Different data. Your neighbor? Your co-worker? Half of them aren’t real. Not anymore.”

Lena thought of the woman with the cats. Gone overnight. Replaced by silence.

⸻

Outside, alarms blared in the distance.

Mira grabbed Lena’s arm.

“They found us.”

Suddenly, the door behind them shattered inward.

Figures in black. Featureless helmets. No sound. No shouting. Just movement efficient and fast. Their steps didn’t echo.

One of them raised a hand. Lena stared, and something inside her memory cracked a flash: she’d seen these people before. Not just in dreams in an old childhood video. At a birthday party that hadn’t happened.

She turned and bolted, Mira behind her.

They escaped through a trapdoor, into the tunnels below the city. The air was colder. Older. Like history had never been allowed down here.

Mira hissed between breaths:

“They’re called the Nullmen.

They’re not people. They’re failsafes.

And one of them used to be someone I loved.”

⸻

They hid in an old signal station flickering lights, rusted panels. Lena, gasping, stared at the remote in her hand. It pulsed once. Red.

Reset triggered.

But this time, she didn’t forget.

This time… she remembered everything.

⸻