Mara Ellison didn't fall asleep. She plunged.
One second she was lying rigid in the motel bed, staring at the discolored ceiling, the echoes of Sheriff Monroe's half-confession still ringing in her ears, the weight of it sitting heavy on her chest. Her mind buzzed with questions she didn't have answers for. The next, she was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere that wasn't a dream, but wasn't real either.
A cold, sterile hallway stretched out before her, narrow and concrete, bathed in the sickly glow of flickering emergency lights. Her boots echoed against the floor, too loud in the silence. The air tasted faintly of bleach and something sharper, more metallic. Her breath came short, the chill settling deep in her chest.
The penitentiary.
No. Not again.
She tried to stop walking, tried to feel her body, to force her legs to obey, but they moved anyway, dragging her forward. Her pulse thudded in her temples, but the dread wasn't just from the strange place. It was from knowing this place. She'd walked this hallway before. More than once. It was the first thing that had ever truly terrified her, and now it felt as real as ever.
Her throat tightened, and she forced herself to breathe, every inhalation colder than the last.
The door ahead of her buzzed open with a sudden, sharp sound, and without thought, she stepped inside.
The observation room.
The walls were still the same dull, grimy gray, the glass as cracked and cloudy as she remembered. The table in the center had chipped edges, worn from years of use. The fluorescent lights above hummed, their flickering rhythm filling the empty space with a constant, mechanical noise. The security camera in the corner turned with a low whine, its lens following her as she entered. She had no choice but to walk forward. Every step, every movement felt... wrong.
Her stomach lurched when she saw her.
Leila Quinn. Alive, but wrong.
She sat in the same plastic chair where Mara had last seen her—cold, still, the lines of her body stiff and unnatural. Her skin had gone an ashen gray, her lips a muted, unnatural blue. Her face was lifeless in the way of someone who hadn't truly lived in years. But it wasn't her dead body that made Mara's blood run cold—it was the smile. That cold, too knowing smile.
"Agent Ellison." Leila's voice sounded too calm, too level for someone who should have been long gone. "You took too long."
Mara froze. Her throat closed. She tried to speak but found her words stuck somewhere deep, too far down to reach. Her chest felt tight, as though the air itself had turned into something suffocating. She reached for her throat, but there was no sound, no air, only the burning sensation that clawed up from her lungs.
The smell. Bleach. Blood. Something ancient and wrong.
"You left me there," Leila continued, her voice never wavering. The bandages around her wrists were soaked, blood seeping through, staining the white cloth. "You knew they were watching. But you still walked away."
The words cut through Mara, each syllable like a blade. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest. She didn't know what to say. Didn't know how to explain the feeling of helplessness she'd carried with her for so long. She had known. She had walked away, even knowing there were eyes everywhere, even knowing she should have stayed.
But how could she have known? How could she have predicted what had happened?
But there was no time for the thoughts to settle. Before she could think, she turned to leave, only to find the door was gone. Solid, smooth wall. No handle, no way through.
Her pulse spiked. Panic clawed at her throat as she pressed her palms to the cold glass. "Leila... I didn't know—"
"You did."
The words hit her like a punch to the gut. Mara's stomach flipped, nausea rising in her throat.
Behind Leila, something moved. Something that wasn't a person. A shadow—no, not a shadow. A silhouette, darker than darkness itself, impossibly tall, made of shifting, twisting forms. Its limbs were branching, like roots, or veins, stretching, reaching out in all directions, twisting in on themselves as though they were alive. The air thickened around her, the feeling of something ancient, something far older than the prison walls, pulling her closer.
Leila didn't turn. Didn't flinch. She just sat there, as though everything that was happening was simply part of the plan, like she expected it all to play out this way.
"It showed me everything. Your thoughts. Your failures," Leila said, her voice distant, as though she were speaking of something so trivial, so inconsequential.
The mirror behind her cracked with a sound that was too loud, too sharp. The crack spread, running through the glass like the spread of poison. The fractures pulsed, growing wider, deeper.
And then Mara screamed.
The sound filled her ears, but there was no escape. It was silent, her mouth moving but no sound breaking free. The mirror cracked down the center, splitting into jagged pieces. She could see her reflection on the other side, but it wasn't her—it wasn't her. It was the version of her she'd left behind, the girl who had stood in that forest all those years ago. Seventeen. Covered in blood. Knees trembling in the mud.
That night.
The cracks in the mirror twisted, slithering like something sentient, and then—it smiled. The reflection, the twisted version of herself, smiled.
And then Mara screamed.
She woke up gasping for air.
Not in the observation room. Not in the penitentiary. Not in any place that had meaning.
She was standing, no longer tangled in the stiff motel sheets. The fog had settled thickly around her, curling in the air like a living thing, unwilling to let the day rise. Her breath came out in a white cloud, mixing with the chill that filled the air, clinging to her skin like wet paper. The forest was silent, deathly so. The trees loomed over her, stretching high into the thick gray sky.
The trees.
Something was wrong with them.
Some of them—no, all of them—had faces.
They weren't carved or painted into the trunks. No. The faces had grown there. Twisted, contorted, mouths sealed shut in a scream, eyes half-closed, frozen in terror. The expressions of agony were so real, so tangible, it made Mara's skin crawl.
She staggered backward, her boots crunching against the ground. Her foot hit something solid, and she whirled around to find the source.
A mirror.
Cracked. Embedded in the soil, its edges frayed and jagged. It reflected her face. But not her now. Not the woman who'd spent too many nights in her car, hunting through broken case files. Not the woman who had seen too much. No. It reflected her as she had been. Seventeen. Bloodied. Staring at herself in the forest. The remnants of a life torn apart.
That night.
The static hissed from the cracked mirror, white noise that filled the space around her. Then, her reflection blinked. Her younger self.
And then, it smiled.
Mara's body went rigid, her heart hammering in her chest. The blood drained from her face, her limbs trembling violently, unable to move.
She screamed—this time with sound, with breath—but it came out as nothing but a choked gasp. She couldn't tear her eyes away from the smile that twisted on her reflection's face.
And then—
Mara woke again.
This time, back in the motel room. Her heart was still hammering, her chest tight with panic, her body slick with sweat. The sheets were a tangled mess around her. Her throat ached, and her breath came in ragged gasps, too sharp, too real. Her eyes stung, her nails digging into her palms, the skin torn from her own fingers as she tried to hold herself together.
But she wasn't alone.
Footsteps.
Slow. Measured.
The sound echoed from the next room. Mara reached for her sidearm, her hand trembling as she slid it from the bedside table. She pressed her back against the wall, her breath holding in her throat. She waited.
The footsteps stopped. Then came the knock.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Three distinct raps against the floorboards.
She crouched down, pressing her ear to the floor.
Silence.
Then a whisper. Soft. Deliberate.
"You left me."
She froze. The words crawled down her spine, ice cold and heavy.
Her laptop sat open on the table. The files she'd been reviewing—Samantha's case files—were on the screen. But something was wrong. Each image was distorted. Overexposed. Faces blurred. The trees… they stretched like veins in every photo. The landscape twisted, like something was pulling it, bending it, turning it into something it shouldn't be.
A new file blinked on the screen. reflection.mov.
She clicked it.
The video loaded, and the first thing she saw was the motel mirror. Her own reflection staring back at her.
Then, it moved.
Her eyes. They blinked. Then—they smiled.
Mara slammed the lid of the laptop closed, her pulse thudding in her ears.
Outside, the sky was bruised with the first hints of dawn. Her phone still had no signal. Her breath trembled as she lit a cigarette with shaking hands, the smoke curling up into the air like it, too, was escaping from something.
She needed to leave. Just for a day. To clear her head. To breathe.
But the moment the thought formed, her phone buzzed in her pocket.
A message.
No number. No sender.
Just a photo.
A tree. Massive. Old. Its bark peeled back like skin. And there, nailed into the center of the trunk, was Samantha's necklace.
Beneath it, words were etched into the wood.
WE NEVER FORGET.
Mara's hand trembled around her phone, her knuckles turning white.
She wasn't going anywhere.
The forest was calling her back.
And this time, it knew her name.