[Fear System Log: 3:07 A.M.]
Current Arc: The Shadow
Task Progress: 49% — Midpoint Tension Threshold Breached
System Warning: Subject's sanity levels approaching critical instability.
Role: Mary Caldwell | Assigned Form: Protagonist | Status: Conscious — Sleep Deprived
Mary hadn't slept in three days.
Or maybe it was four.
Time was fluid now—stretched, bent, collapsed like lungs under pressure. The minutes blurred into one another, stitched together by the same hum of fear. No one visited. No one called. The apartment complex had turned into a mausoleum with thin walls.
Silence was no longer peace.
It was a predator waiting in the static.
The mimic hadn't reappeared in the mirror.
But that didn't mean it was gone.
She couldn't prove it, but she felt it everywhere. In the way her toothbrush always had a single black hair curled into its bristles. In the damp breath on the mirror even though she hadn't used the sink. In the fridge light flickering, dimming each time she opened it.
The mimic wasn't teasing her anymore.
It was circling.
Closing in.
She'd torn every blanket off the bed and made a pile in the bathtub. It felt safer there—less exposed. She kept every light on. She slept in bursts, no longer than ten minutes at a time, if at all. Her eyes burned. Her thoughts felt raw, thin as tracing paper.
But she had a plan.
The system hadn't given her any weapons. It hadn't given her allies.
It had only given her fear.
And she would use it.
She set up her laptop in the corner of the living room, angling the webcam toward the hallway. She hit record. Then she set up her phone camera to film the bathroom door. An old camcorder, dug out from her closet, watched the bed from the closet slats.
She was going to watch herself sleep.
She was going to catch the mimic.
And maybe, just maybe, that would help her understand what it wanted. Because this was no longer random. It was orchestrated. The notes. The VHS tape. The mimic's restraint. It was performing—waiting for the right moment.
So she staged herself like bait.
Cocooned in a comforter. Lights off. Audio recording app running.
Every creak, every whisper would be captured.
She lay still, heartbeat screaming in her ears.
A minute passed.
Then another.
Then something shifted.
Not in the apartment.
In her body.
She couldn't move.
Her fingers remained still. Her arms pressed against her sides like they'd been bound in invisible thread. Her jaw was frozen, her chest tight. Only her eyes worked.
She was awake.
She was paralyzed.
She was dreaming.
She was dying.
A shape moved into view from the hallway.
Slow.
Confident.
Deliberate.
Not the mimic—at least not as she remembered it.
This one was taller. No face. But eyes—black holes that bled shadows down its cheeks. Its skin rippled like liquid tar. It didn't walk. It floated.
And it was watching her.
Mary tried to scream.
She couldn't even blink.
It approached the bed. Stood over her.
Leaned down—so close she could feel it breathing.
Then it whispered, in her own voice:
"He's inside."
And vanished.
She woke gasping. Drenched in sweat.
The lights were back on.
The cameras had stopped recording.
Every file was corrupted.
Every time stamp read: 3:33 A.M.
Even the battery percentage was 33%.
She ripped open her laptop. No files.
Phone? Same.
Camcorder? Dead.
She punched the wall, splitting her knuckles, but the pain only confirmed she was still here—still in the game.
Still trapped.
[System Notification: Task Progress 62% — Fear Response Optimal.]
[You are adapting. But it is adapting too.]
She stopped reading after that.
She grabbed every mirror in the house and shattered them. Covered each reflective surface with spray paint, towels, or duct tape. It didn't matter. The mimic didn't need glass anymore.
It could reach her through dreams now.
Or worse—through her.
She began logging her behavior.
A crude notebook labeled "Me / Not Me."
Each day, she jotted her meals, speech patterns, dreams, thoughts—anything to prove she was still herself. But the lines were blurring. Some mornings, she'd find a second toothbrush wet. Or her clothes rearranged. Or the shower on—when she hadn't bathed in days.
Someone was copying her.
Living life inside her routine.
She tore out the walls.
She ripped up floorboards.
Nothing.
Until she reached the air vent in the bedroom.
She pulled off the cover and found a series of drawings.
Of her.
Dozens of them.
Crayon, pencil, charcoal. Each one rough, childlike. But detailed. Accurate.
One was labeled in jagged handwriting:
"Day 46: She noticed me today."
Her breath hitched.
There was a tracking system. A journal.
From his perspective.
She clawed deeper into the vent. Her fingers touched something soft.
A sock. One of hers.
Then a lock of hair. Wrapped around a gum wrapper like a shrine.
Then a small voice recorder.
She clicked play.
Static. Then:
"She's not Mary. Not anymore. I am. She's just a mask now. I'll wear her better than she wore herself."
Mary dropped it.
Backed away.
Slipped on the sweat-damp floor and hit her head on the bedpost.
Darkness wrapped around her like a blanket.
She awoke in the bathtub.
No memory of how she got there.
A note pinned to her chest.
"You slept like an angel."
She screamed and screamed and screamed.
The next 24 hours dissolved into panic.
She triple-checked every lock. Burned the notebook. Smashed the cameras. Poured bleach into every corner of the apartment. Wrote protective symbols on the walls with her own blood.
If she couldn't trap the mimic, she would trap herself.
She wouldn't sleep.
Not again.
Not ever.
But the body has limits.
And Mary's were fast approaching.
By hour 94 without rest, her vision trembled.
Her ears rang.
Her mouth moved before thoughts formed.
Words like:
"I'm not the one breathing."
Or
"Your eyes are just holes now."
Or
"The shadow never leaves until you do."
She began seeing reflections where there were none.
In puddles. In dust. In her pupils.
They all smiled.
She set up one final test.
A live feed—streaming from her phone to an unlisted page.
Just for herself.
A camera watching her while she sat in the bathtub with a kitchen knife and a timer.
Every thirty minutes, she'd check the footage.
And every thirty minutes, she saw herself.
Until the third hour.
She checked the feed.
The screen showed her sitting in the tub—
But her eyes were open.
Wide.
And she wasn't blinking.
Mary blinked in real time.
On the feed, her reflection did not.
She waved.
The screen version stayed still.
She smiled.
The screen frowned.
She screamed.
The screen began laughing.
And then, it stood up and walked out of frame.
Mary sat frozen in the tub.
The phone turned black.
[System Update: Entity has bypassed surveillance. Task pressure increased.]
[Recommended action: Prepare for confrontation.]
But Mary couldn't move.
Her muscles wouldn't respond.
She glanced at the knife beside her.
Her fingers inched toward it.
But then—movement.
Across the hall.
Just beyond the bathroom door.
The sound of breathing.
Heavy.
Wet.
Patient.
She turned slowly.
A shadow slipped across the hallway.
Silent.
Then another.
Then—
Knocking.
Not from the front door.
Not the bedroom.
From beneath the tub.
Three knocks.
Evenly spaced.
Then a fourth.
Then a note slid under the bathroom door.
She stared at it for a full minute before picking it up.
"Come see what I made of you."