Chapter Text
The alarm chimes 7 AM. Morgan jolts back and his pen rips through the diagram.
At this point the alarm is more for the sake of routine than an actual wake up call. No one sleeps much anymore. He can’t remember the last time he’s had anything other than an unplanned micronap at his desk. The dreams always come unbidden when his eyes close. The blackness of empty thought gives way to something darker, something deep and unfathomable that reaches out to grab him. The pen is gone when he reaches for it. The mug casts no shadow. He grabs the wrench from the hook above the work bench and swings it into the mug without thinking. Coffee splatters across the drawing. The ink leeches and bleeds until it’s hard to tell what kind of mechanism was supposed to be inside the new neuromod. Just outside of his vision, a shadow slips under the doorway. He pops open a can of Kafe Karsk and leans back in the chair. The blackness is always there on the peripheral, reaching out and raking its claws against the most vulnerable parts of his mind. It wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t get closer every time he shut his eyes.
He finishes the can in four gulps and celebrates a new record for coffee drinking speed.
---
The alarm chimes 7 AM and Morgan throws the crushed can at it. Coffee spirals out behind the can like the tails of a kite. It falls with the kind of suffocating slowness he’d expect of microgravity, but not his office.
“I drank that.” He swipes his fingers through the coffee dripping off the edge of the desk. There’s an empty can beside his hand. Finished in four gulps, he thinks with dry amusement. He pulls another can out of the mini-fridge by the desk and puts a note on it reading ‘not empty’ along with the time, 7:04 AM. The can comes with him to the computer desk. The diagram is ruined and, honestly, he doesn’t have the energy to start a new one. He hasn’t had the energy since he got back from earth, since he came back home to find it filled with Typhon and all of his research effectively destroyed. The full inbox has been a testament to that. But it isn’t full. The flashing screen tells him about three new emails instead of the over a hundred that should have been there.
Morgan clicks through them, writing down the date of the replies for each one. They span just under a week. The most recent was this morning and it’s already been responded to by Dr. Park. His finger is on the mouse button when he hears glass shatter. One of the empty mugs lies in pieces on the floor. The four ‘not a mimic’ notes on it are still securely adhered to the rim.
“Synaptic damage,” he whispers. “Neuromod installation and removal can cause phantom memories and hallucinations. It’s well documented. Lack of sleep makes it worse.”
The mug doesn’t move when he picks it up. The pieces clink into the trash recycler compartment and remain there, along with the broken mug from yesterday. He hesitates at the button. The darkness slips behind his eyes and pulls him back. He scoops up the rest of the mugs, some still with coffee in them, and throws them all into the recycler. Every can on his desk and everything that he doesn’t remember, completely remember, bringing into the workshop with him finds its way into the recycler’s input. When he finally hits the button he gets enough fabricator cubes to make an entire arsenal.
---
The alarm screams 7 AM and Morgan screams with it.
“Whatever kind of test this is, I want it called off!” His hands shake at his sides and his body shudders into something that isn’t quite himself. He can almost hear the sound of Bellamy’s pen scribbling away as he tries to force the Typhon-like appendages back into arms. The Kafe Karsk in the mini-fridge is untouched. The notebook with the new Neuromod he’s been working on for who knows how long is ignored. Morgan walks straight to the projection of a window and slams the wrench into it. He can hear alarms going off as the glass finally shatters.
The face on the other side of the glass isn’t Bellamy. Another Morgan Yu stares at him with a picture perfect look of professional distress.
“What are you?” He whispers. The sound of security rushing in drowns out his voice. The other Morgan doesn’t move. It just stands there, smiling at him with too many teeth that are too white. It doesn’t move when the gas starts filling the room. Doesn’t move when the station security finally shows up. His fingers tighten around the wrench and he makes a desperate lunge at the imperfect copy.
--
The alarm sounds 7 AM. Morgan doesn’t get out of bed. There aren’t words in any human language for how exhausted he is--not even German, which he thought had a phrase for everything. He sits up in bed to inspect the strangely empty room. His TranScribe has two messages. One is from Alex: “Meeting Reschedule”. It’s the kind of boring message he’d expect to find in the beginning of a test, full of business talk and Alex’s cliched assurances that everything would still go according to plan even if Tuesday’s 9 AM meeting was postponed until Thursday. Morgan briefly considers throwing the TranScribe across the room.He gives it a test throw in the air before catching sight of the second message. “Subject Alpha: Possible Mirror-Neuron Rejection” sent by one Dr. Morgan Yu. April 4th 2036, 4 AM.
“I never sent this,” Morgan whispers. But, in the back of his mind, doubt is already taking shape. He doesn’t remember it being April. He doesn’t remember which Neuromod he’s on or which experiment he’s in. There’s a chance, however slim, that he wrote this. The journal covered in coffee stains has notes on a hybridization project, a last ditch effort to implant mirror-neurons into a Typhon in case everything went very wrong very fast. “Sleep deprivation. I’ve been working on Project Cobalt nonstop.”
He takes a deep breath, holds it, and exhales. This would be the perfect time for some of those ‘grounding’ meditations his mother insisted would help him focus on school work. He remembers exactly none of those exercises. The air tastes stale as he tries to focus on his breathing. It tastes like a supply box that’s been closed too long during the flight from earth to Talos and he fights not to choke on it.
The message on the TranScribe starts playing as soon as his fingers brush against it. Morgan sits down on top of the kitchen counter and watches the icon that should be him, but isn’t.
“Subject Alpha is displaying an astonishing amount of memory between tests, Dr. Park. We need to keep a closer eye on the wiping procedure to make sure we don’t have another security breech if he gets spooked again. I’m worried that the ongoing deviations in personality and behavior are a sign of something bigger. So far the subject has been pretty stable, though he’s shown below-average empathy during the most recent tests. The sudden aggression could be indicative of delayed mirror-neuron rejection. If that’s the case, we’re going to have to go back to the drawing board.”
The message ends on a low note. The experiment isn’t working right. But there isn’t an ongoing experiment. Project Cobalt hasn’t taken off yet. Morgan has the early stages of the planning notes on his desk, covered in canned coffee, and nowhere near ready for testing. He stalks over to the desk and double checks, then triple checks, the contents of the journal. The subject matter is right. The date is off.
“January.” Morgan holds the stained paper closer and squints, just to be sure he hasn’t misread. “January 21st. Possible Mirror-Neuron Implantation.”
He flips through the pages to the end, making sure there are no more recent entries that he hasn’t found. It’s blank. Everything after January is completely empty. A hundred pages of coffee stains and hastily written dates. Nothing too unusual. It isn’t until he circles back around to the earlier entries that he realizes there was something after January, a few blank pages act as a buffer for ‘Notes’ before February should have started. The pages are missing, cut out with surgical precision. Morgan keeps his expression neutral and sits down to the unfinished neuromod. Whoever is watching him is waiting for him to mess up and he’s not going to.
The image of the Other Morgan takes shape in his mind. The one with too-perfect teeth and an aggravatingly full beard. The one on the TranScribe. The one on the other side of the glass. Whatever is going on, he needs to come up with a plan before he does anything.
Morgan Yu works at his desk until lunch time, eats instant udon and a can of tea, then chases it with coffee. He works with laser-guided focus and eats a late dinner. He doesn’t write down the last few day’s events in code, disguised as encrypted specs for the neuromod. He doesn’t feign sleep and wait to see if April 4th restarts some time during the simulated night. He acts exactly like Morgan Yu is supposed to act and prays that that’s what the observers see.
The problem occurs before reset. Morgan fell asleep in spite of the coffee. It isn’t something he’s proud of. He jolts awake to the feeling of being watched. A shadow stands at the foot of his bed, emanating TV static and leaking ink upwards. Every fiber in his body is screaming to go for a wrench, for a GLOO gun, for something but he can’t move. The phantom hovers above him before coalescing into a person. Into him. The other Morgan Yu sits down at his table and looks through his journal. He focuses on keeping his mind empty. If it doesn’t hear his thoughts it can’t find the notes. If it ignores him and tomorrow is April 5th, there might be a chance to escape this fucked up test.