The Zone was all wires and rot, a place where the buildings sagged like the bones had been sucked out, where people’s faces blurred, like the heat had warped their features into something barely human. A place where reality skipped like a bad film reel.

Jack Tully pulled his collar up against the sting of the fog. His old exterminator truck sat abandoned, rusting in the alley, like it belonged there. The neon light of a busted sign buzzed and flickered, painting the street in a sickly pulse. He used to kill things for a living, pests, rats, the occasional snake that found its way into someone’s basement. Now, he tracked people. Sometimes they were alive; sometimes he wished they weren’t.

He stepped deeper into the Zone, boots splashing in puddles that reflected back the twisted, impossible geometry of the place. He wasn’t here for a job tonight. He was here for something else. Something he’d heard about in whispers, rumors that clung to the dark like mildew.

Then he saw him, leaning against the rusted frame of an old diner, half-collapsed under the weight of years. At first glance, Jack thought it was just another washed-up loser waiting to fade into the Zone. But then the figure stepped into the flickering light, and Jack felt his stomach lurch.

It was him. Every detail—a twisted mirror image, down to the frayed jacket and the scar above his right eyebrow. The doppelgänger’s eyes were flat, dead things. No recognition. No humanity.

He was the viral strain of everything we feared but couldn’t help but recognize in ourselves, a greasy mirage of our own shadows crawling through the back alleys of consciousness. His mind flickered like a neon sign shorting out, alive with every dirty thought and twisted ambition we dared not acknowledge. He didn’t adapt, didn’t evolve—he mutated, a parasite that fed off the basest parts of human nature. Psychopathic, yes, but with a radar tuned to the weaknesses of the herd, like a sewer rat dodging poison traps.

His fantasies were infantile, but that’s what made them dangerous—unmoored, floating in the primal ooze of ego and unchecked desire. There was no moral compass, just a heat-seeking missile aimed at every low, animal urge we tried to bury. People fell for him because he was them—diluted and distilled into something purer, uglier. He was the darkness everyone denied but secretly nursed. The gutter-born prophet, a walking wound in the shape of man, preaching to the hollow hearts that refused to heal.

“Who sent you?” Jack asked, his voice low, but it barely sounded like his own.

The other Jack grinned, but it wasn’t the kind of grin that belonged to a person. It was something a rat might do if it could smile. “Nobody sent me,” the double said, voice like it came from under the floorboards. “I’ve always been here.”

The air between them seemed to warp, buzzing like there was static in the atmosphere, like the Zone itself was watching. Jack reached for his gun, a reflex, but the other him moved faster. He slapped Jack’s hand away, faster than any man had the right to move, and then they were face to face. The other Jack smelled like pest control chemicals, like poison and damp fur.

“You’ve been killing rats all your life, but the biggest one’s been living in you,” the double hissed. “How’s it feel to meet your real reflection?”

Jack staggered back, the weight of the words hitting like a punch. The Zone groaned around them, shifting, the walls breathing. He tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come.

“You think you’re the hero in your own story, Tully,” the double said, stepping closer, “but I’m the one who’s been doing the dirty work. Every lie you’ve told yourself, every time you looked away instead of facing the truth… I’m that. You don’t kill rats. You are one.”

Jack felt the bile rise in his throat, his mind unspooling. The other him started to flicker, like a bad signal. Like he wasn’t solid anymore, just a ghost made of everything Jack had ever tried to bury.

Before he could react, the double reached out, pressing his palm to Jack’s chest, and Jack felt something cold and terrible slither inside him. The Zone twisted around them, the walls peeling away into darkness, until it was just the two of them standing in the void.

Jack couldn’t tell if he was looking at himself anymore, or if he had become the thing staring back at him.

“See you on the other side,” the doppelgänger whispered, and then everything shattered.