Chapter 3

I lay on the stretcher, watching the ceiling race backward, my heart full of despair and fear.

I knew I was innocent.

But every piece of evidence pointed straight at me.

I wondered, 'Who the hell was that killer with my face?'

At the station, they took me straight into an interrogation room.

The interrogation chair had been modified. My hands and feet were strapped down, and a blinding lamp glared in my face.

"Name," Captain Thunder said.

"Alex Carter," I answered.

"Age."

"Twenty-eight."

"Occupation."

"Unemployed... I used to be a delivery driver."

The police captain sitting across from me was the same SWAT captain from before. His last name was Thunder, and everybody called him The Tiger. He held an unlit cigarette in his hand, tapping it lightly against the table.

"Alex Carter, talk. How'd you pull off those three home invasion murders?"

"Captain Thunder, I told you already, I didn't do it. I'm paralyzed. How would I kill anybody?"

"Surveillance doesn't lie." Captain Thunder turned the laptop around. A video was playing on the screen.

In the video, a man in a black hoodie was clinging to the outer wall of the eighteenth floor like a gecko. He moved fast, light, and strong. Every flip and jump looked packed with power.

Then he turned and looked straight at the camera.

That face was mine.

But I noticed one detail.

The "me" in the video had empty, lifeless eyes, like some... puppet on strings.

"Captain Thunder, look at his eyes!" I pointed at the screen and shouted. "That's not me. Or at least, not me when I'm conscious!"

Captain Thunder narrowed his eyes and leaned in for a closer look.

"The eyes?" He frowned. "Yeah... something's off. Like sleepwalking? Or hypnosis?"

"I don't know!" I said urgently. "But I really didn't kill anybody. And I've been stuck in bed for three years. How the hell could I train myself into that?"

"Which brings us to another possibility." Captain Thunder shut the laptop, leaned forward, and the pressure in the room spiked. "Maybe your paralysis was fake. Maybe you've been secretly training for three years to commit these crimes."

"That's impossible!" I shot back. "I've had countless tests at the hospital. X-rays, MRIs, and EMGs all proved my spinal cord was severed. What, did I fake the hospital too?"

Captain Thunder went quiet.

Of course he knew the hospital records couldn't be fake, especially not from a place as authoritative as Central Medical Institute.

"Then there's only one possibility left." Captain Thunder's voice dropped, carrying a chill with it. "You have a twin brother."

"I'm an only child," I said weakly. "My parents died years ago. I don't have any relatives."

The interrogation room fell dead silent.

It was a total dead end.

Every piece of evidence pointed to me, yet my paralysis gave me the perfect alibi.

"Alex Carter, I'm asking you one last time." Captain Thunder stood up and planted both hands on the table. "Where were you at two a.m. tonight?"

"In bed, asleep."

"Any witness?"

"My caregiver took the night off, so no."

"Exactly." Captain Thunder gave a cold laugh. "No alibi, and the evidence chain is complete. Alex Carter, you're in deep trouble. If you don't start talking, you're looking at the death penalty."

Right then, the interrogation room door was pushed open.

A young policewoman stuck her head in. "Captain Thunder, forensics found something new!"

Captain Thunder walked out. A few minutes later, he came back.

But this time, his face had changed.

The hard confidence from before was gone, replaced by confusion and... a trace of fear.

He sat back down and stared at me like he was trying to see through my skin.

"Alex Carter... what the hell are you?"

"What happened?" My heart dropped.

"Forensics ran a frame-by-frame analysis on the surveillance footage." Captain Thunder's voice shook a little. "They found something insane. When that 'you' climbed over the railing, there was a bizarre tear in the thigh muscle."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that 'you' had a torn thigh muscle. Like... like a puppet that had been forced together and was being dragged into motion by some outside power."

Captain Thunder swallowed hard.

"And there was a tiny black dot on the back of the neck of that other version of you. Once they zoomed in, they realized it was a needle mark."

I thought, 'A needle mark?'

Something hit me all at once.