Ethan searched the apartment for stairs.
Not the front hall staircase — those led nowhere now. The building had become… selective. Doors that once opened refused to. Windows showed the same looping skyline no matter where he looked.
He opened the closet.
Not coats.
A stairwell.
Old. Concrete. Lit by a single flickering bulb that looked like it had been dying for years.
He stared down into it.
A pulse pounded in his ears that didn't feel like his own.
He stepped inside.
The door slammed shut behind him.
He descended.
Each step echoed twice — once in the stairwell, and once somewhere deeper. Like another version of himself was climbing upward from beneath.
The walls were marked in chalk. Names. Dates. Symbols. Scribbles like a child had written them while crying.
Halfway down, he found another note tucked into a crack in the wall:
"If you reach the bottom, you will forget your name."
He kept going.
He emerged into a hallway that didn't belong to any building he knew.
Hospital white. Humming lights. Identical doors on both sides.
He walked past door after door.
Each one had a nameplate.
ETHAN HALE (AGE 29)
ETHAN HALE (AGE 21)
ETHAN HALE (AGE 34)
Different versions of him.
He opened one.
Inside, a child sat alone, humming. Maybe six years old. Curly-haired. Familiar eyes.
The child looked up.
"Are you me?" Ethan asked.
The boy tilted his head.
"No. You're almost me. But not the right one."
Ethan knelt. "What does that mean?"
The boy didn't answer. Just pointed to the wall behind him.
Scrawled in marker:
"YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO REMEMBER."
Ethan backed out of the room and closed the door.
More notes were taped to the next few:
"He's still looking."
"This isn't a dream. This is what you forgot."
"Don't trust your reflection."
Then he found one door without a nameplate.
Inside: nothing but a mirror.
He stepped in.
The door vanished behind him.
The mirror remained.
His reflection stood there.
But it was smiling—while Ethan was not.
Then it stepped forward.
Out of the glass.
And whispered:
"We're running out of time."