Chapter 13 - The Other Ethan
Ethan removed the watch.
Gray titanium.
Black face.
Military issue.
Not unique.
But uncommon.
Voss enlarged the footage.
Same scratched bezel.
Same missing marker at the two position.
Ethan looked down.
His watch had that exact damage.
“How?”
Voss asked.
Ethan remembered.
Three months earlier, the watch disappeared during a business trip.
Hotel gym.
He reported it missing.
Two weeks later, it arrived anonymously at his office.
He assumed someone had found it.
Now he understood.
Someone had borrowed it.
Copied his life.
Returned it.
The shadow identity was no longer confined to documents.
Someone was constructing a physical Ethan.
Claire had warned them without realizing it.
The restrained man in Eleanor’s video.
The person using Ethan’s ring.
The gray suit.
The watch.
The staged evidence.
Voss searched facial-recognition logs from the mansion.
Two separate biometric entries existed under Ethan Mercer.
One at 11:41.
The real Ethan.
Another at 10:52.
Ethan stared.
“Someone with my face entered before me?”
“Not necessarily your face. The system may have been manipulated.”
But Lily had seen an older man.
Claire had been escorted.
Someone had worn Ethan’s watch.
The house contained multiple actors.
Voss accessed the lower security archive.
A file appeared.
SUBJECT ELIAS.
Video.
They played it.
A man sat in darkness.
His face invisible.
Then he stepped into light.
Eleanor covered her mouth.
Lily was asleep.
Thank God.
The man looked almost exactly like Ethan.
Not perfectly.
Older around the eyes.
Slightly different nose.
But close enough that a distant camera—or a terrified witness—could be fooled.
Ethan stared at another version of himself.
The man spoke.
“My name is Elias Mercer.”
Ethan felt cold.
The administrative identity had become a person.
Elias explained nothing else.
The recording ended.
Nathan whispered:
“That’s impossible.”
Voss disagreed.
“Identity programs sometimes attach synthetic records to real intermediaries.”
“No. Look at him.”
Nathan moved closer.
“He looks like us.”
Ethan did not want to say what both brothers were thinking.
Family.
They searched Thomas Mercer’s private records.
A sealed medical file appeared.
Ethan expected another conspiracy.
Instead, something painfully ordinary.
Thomas had another son.
Born before Ethan.
Mother:
MARIA BENNETT.
Ethan looked at the surname.
“Bennett.”
Claire’s surname.
Nathan whispered:
“No.”
The child’s name had been redacted.
Thomas paid support through a private trust.
The boy disappeared from records at age eight.
Ethan felt the entire story folding inward.
Claire had not randomly met him in college.
Her family and his may have been connected long before.
Was Claire related to the unknown son?
Had she married Ethan knowingly?
Was their marriage another engineered event?
The questions multiplied faster than answers.
Then Voss found the unredacted birth certificate in a secondary archive.
Child:
ELIAS THOMAS BENNETT.
Ethan stared at the screen.
His father’s first son.
His half-brother.
Alive somewhere.
Using the administrative identity Thomas later gave Ethan.
Or perhaps the identity had never belonged to Ethan at all.
Perhaps JANUS was built to transfer Elias’s life onto Ethan’s records.
A speaker crackled.
Everyone looked upward.
The same distorted voice returned.
“Very good.”
Ethan stood.
“Elias?”
A soft laugh.
Then:
“You always were slower than Claire.”
Ethan’s hands clenched.
“Where is she?”
“Safe.”
“Show me.”
A monitor activated.
Claire appeared.
Alive.
Seated in another room.
No restraints now.
She looked directly into the camera.
“Ethan.”
His knees nearly weakened.
Eleven years.
One word.
His name.
“Claire.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“Where are you?”
She looked to someone outside frame.
Then back.
“You need to stop looking for Elias.”
“Why?”
“Because Elias didn’t build this.”
Ethan stared.
“Then who did?”
May you like
Claire whispered:
“I did.”
