The air in the rift-world was like stale alcohol mixed with burnt plastic, each breath a kind of self-torture. Ethan staggered down a street patched together from fractured memories: on one side, the sterile glow of office fluorescents; on the other, a subway station that looked like a blood pool. The world seemed drunk, tossing scenes around at random.
In this mess, a familiar figure appeared.
"Ethan."
The voice was clean, sharp—like an old razor dragging across skin.
Ethan's head snapped up. Ahead stood a man in a gray trench coat, the very one that had burned away with the Bureau's headquarters. His frame was lean, upright. That face—Ethan had blurred it countless times between nightmare and waking.
—Carl.
The partner who had patched him up at crime scenes, called him an idiot, and always, always raised his gun at the last second.
The problem was: Carl should be dead. Killed in the purge, blown into untraceable ash, filed away under some bureaucratic number.
Ethan's throat tightened, though irony bubbled in his chest."Classic void, really. First you hand me my whole squad back, now you drag out Carl. What's next, bring back my mother and tell me she was just on vacation all along?"
But the phantom Carl only looked at him, calm, impatient as ever:"You're still talking to yourself. You never change, Ethan."
Ethan almost laughed out loud. The void had nailed the script—perfectly tuned to nostalgia.
"So what's the job? Tour guide duty? Or are you here to make me sign some 'Key inheritance agreement'? Cut the theater. Just tell me the scam."
"Scam?" Carl sneered, drawing his gun and leveling it at Ethan's forehead. The steel gleam was sharp as a scalpel."Ethan, you're the scam. You think you're resisting? All you're doing is shoving the world further into the void. Your existence is the mistake."
For a moment Ethan froze. Not because of the gun barrel—but because of the line. Too Carl. Back at the Bureau, whenever they fought, Carl would toss out something just like it:"You're the kind of lunatic who's going to get us all killed."
It was his catchphrase. Down to the exhausted tone.
Ethan's chest went cold. He pinched his own arm."Shit… Are you real, or just a knockoff?"
Carl didn't answer. He pulled the trigger.
The bullet left the chamber, then froze midair, suspended like in glass syrup. The street shuddered. The fluorescents died, and from the subway's blood-pool rose countless black arms.
The void whispered from every direction:"He is real… and false…He is your partner… and your guilt…"
Ethan stared into those eyes. They weren't hollow. No black threads leaking from them. Only disgust—solid, human disgust.
And that made Ethan laugh, ribs aching."Nice move, void. You're getting better at this. Give me a maybe-real Carl, see if I pull the trigger. That's your idea of comedy? Bleak as hell."
He raised his own gun, aiming straight back at Carl.
The air quivered, ready to shatter. Two men, aiming across false streets and uncertain truth.
"Either you're fake, or I'm insane." Ethan's grin was jagged. "But whichever it is—I've got to pull first."
Carl frowned, muttered under his breath:"You're still an idiot."
—So familiar it hurt.
Bang.
The shot tore the rift-world apart. Streets burned like discarded film stock. Carl's figure blurred, fading, but his mouth seemed to curve in a smile.
A smile equal parts mockery and farewell.
Ethan stood frozen, heart caught on one idiotic question:
—If that really had been Carl, had he just killed a phantom, or a friend?
The void's whisper lingered:"Truth never mattered. What mattered… was what you chose to believe."