The rain wouldn't stop.
It poured over the city like it was trying to drown the truth.
Matthew Hale stood in the ruins of his old apartment. The walls were bare now. Scorched. Holes where cameras once lived. Everything useful had been gutted, burned, or taken. His past — stripped clean.
The world thought he was a disgraced cop, a broken man clawing at ghosts.
But the ghosts were real.
And one of them lived in him.
He holstered his gun. Checked the second clip. Clicked the safety off. He wasn't just preparing for a fight. He was becoming the fight.
The war had shifted. Blackstar thought they were pulling the strings — but tonight, he would cut every last one.
Across the city, Red was laying low, setting up digital noise — false chatter, burner pings, cloned signals. Enough to make the agency scramble. Enough to give Hale a head start.
"Once you go up there," Red had said, "you're not coming back the same."
Hale had looked him dead in the eye.
"I don't want to come back at all. Not until this is finished."
Upstate New York
Location: UNKNOWN
02:14 AM
Black Hollow didn't exist on any map.
A chain-link fence, rusted and overgrown, wrapped the compound like barbed wire around a secret. Beyond it: a cluster of dark buildings. Concrete. Military-style. No lights. No guards on patrol. Too quiet.
He cut through the fence. Slid through the gap.
Every step inside felt familiar… but wrong. Like echoes of someone else's life playing in the walls.
He reached the main building — a concrete bunker with no windows. Just a reinforced steel door. A keypad blinked red.
Until he stepped closer.
Then it turned green.
ACCESS GRANTED.
Hale froze.
They were expecting him.
The door hissed open.
Inside: flickering lights. White-tiled halls. Mirrors on every wall. Cameras tracking every move.
And then—
a voice from the speaker system, smooth and familiar, calm as death:
"Welcome home, Ghost."
Hale stepped back, weapon raised — but the door slammed shut behind him. Locked. Trapped.
He spun as footsteps echoed down the corridor.
Then came the sound of another door opening.
And a woman's voice:
"You shouldn't have come here alone."
He turned — and saw her.
Charlie's "sister."
Only now… she wasn't pretending.
No fear. No hesitation. Her posture, her tone — it all screamed control.
"You were always going to come back," she said. "This place made you. And now it'll decide what you become next."
Hale raised his gun.
"Don't," she said. "You're not ready for what's down there."
She stepped aside, revealing an elevator at the end of the corridor. Its doors were already open.
"Basement level. Project Marionette. The real files. The real you."
"Why help me?" Hale asked, cold.
She smirked. "I'm not. I'm just delivering the last move."
He stepped past her. Into the elevator.
As the doors closed, she said one last thing:
"They didn't just rewrite you, Hale… they cloned you."
Darkness.
The elevator descended.
Deeper.
And then—
DING.
The doors opened.
Hale stepped out—
—and came face to face with himself.
Not a mirror.
Not a trick.
A man who looked just like him… staring back.
"Hello, Ghost," the double said. "I've been waiting."