Chapter 4 - THE FIRST REPLACEMENT
Harris took Ethan into the basement office.
No cameras.
No windows.
One wall covered in photographs.
Residents.
Dates.
Some faces crossed out.
Ethan stared.
“What is this?”
“People who lived on nine.”
“How many?”
“Enough.”
Then he saw one photograph.
A young man.
Same apartment.
9C.
Name:
JASON REED.
Date:
2019.
Second photograph.
Jason again.
Same face.
Different expression.
Harris pointed.
“Original.”
Then second.
“Replacement.”
Ethan laughed.
Harris did not.
“What happened to him?”
“The first Jason came downstairs at 4:18 one morning. Said someone was inside his apartment.”
“And?”
“Three minutes later, Jason came down again.”
Ethan stared.
“Two?”
“Yes.”
“Which was real?”
“We chose wrong.”
Silence.
“What happened?”
Harris looked away.
“We locked one outside.”
Ethan swallowed.
“And the other?”
“Lived here nine months.”
“Then?”
“Started forgetting things.”
“What things?”
“His sister’s birthday. Where he worked. His own middle name.”
Harris pointed to the second photograph.
“Copies are good at recent memory.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how do you know any of this?”
“Because my wife was the first person I lost.”
Margaret Harris.
Rule Eight.
Ethan remembered.
“What happened to her?”
May you like
Harris looked at the floor.
“She opened the door to herself.”
