Notification

Mara pressed her eye to the keyhole. It was old-fashioned, the kind that didn’t belong in modern apartment buildings. Oval-shaped, framed in brass, it was worn smooth from decades of curious tenants before her. Through it, a pale strip of light cut the dark like a wound. It was the same light she’d seen before, the one that teased at her curiosity until she finally gave in.

She’d only lived in the old brick building for three weeks, but it had already started to feel alive. The radiators hissed like whispers, the floorboards murmured beneath her feet. The wallpaper had faint impressions where pictures once hung, silhouettes of other people’s lives lingering behind her own.

The apartment was cheap, too cheap for a place this close to downtown, and the landlord, Mr. Caine, had smiled too easily when she signed the lease.

“Most people don’t stay long,” he’d said, as if it were a joke.

At the time, Mara laughed politely and chalked it up to the usual churn of renters. She was starting over—new city, new job, new version of herself.

But three weeks in, the mystery began to watch back.

It started small: the light beneath the door at the end of the hall.

It was the only door in the building she had never seen open, the one marked Maintenance and Storage. Mr. Caine had told her not to worry about it, that it was “off-limits for liability reasons.”

Yet at night, when the rest of the hallway fell into shadow, a white glow pulsed faintly from underneath. A low electronic hum seeped through the wood, steady and unnatural.

She tried to ignore it until the noises started.

Clicks. Whirs. The rhythmic tap of typing. Sometimes, faint voices.

Four nights after first noticing the light, curiosity won.

She slipped barefoot into the hallway, phone clutched in her hand.

The air was colder there; the plaster walls sweated from the October chill. She crouched low and angled her phone toward the keyhole, its camera lens aimed at the thin beam of light. Her breath fogged faintly in front of her.

When she tapped record, the phone revealed more than her eyes could see: the faint outline of a desk, the edge of a monitor, and then she froze. A reflection.

Someone sat hunched in a chair, surrounded by screens.

She zoomed in.

The monitors weren’t showing movies or spreadsheets. They were showing rooms, her building’s laundry, the stairwell, and then—

Her apartment.

The third screen flickered with green-tinted static, but she could still make out her couch in the corner, her coffee table, the teacup beside her half-read paperback.

It was unmistakably her living room.

The figure at the desk turned slightly, and her stomach dropped.

Even through the glow, the face was clear.

Mr. Caine.

He leaned back, the monitors flashing blue across his glasses. His lips moved slightly, as if speaking to someone she couldn’t hear.

Then one of the screens changed. The hallway appeared, her hallway, and at its end, her.

She stumbled back, nearly dropping her phone. Her heart slammed against her ribs as the light under the door went out. The hum stopped.

By the time she reached her apartment, her hands were shaking. She locked the door, double-bolted it, and shoved a chair under the handle like she had seen in movies.

Her phone buzzed.

A notification slid down from the top of the screen.

You’ve been watching for 00:03:47.

She frowned. The app had no icon, just a gray circle with a black dot, like an eye.

Before she could react, another message appeared:

Would you like to continue?

[YES] [NO]

Her thumb hovered. It had to be a prank. A virus. Some ARG thing. She hit NO.

The screen went black.

Then the camera light on her phone flicked on by itself.

By morning, she had convinced herself it was exhaustion. Stress. A bad dream. She had moved cities, taken a new job, and hadn’t slept properly in weeks.

Still, she couldn’t shake the image of Mr. Caine’s face in that blue glow.

She decided to confront him.

When she knocked, he answered instantly, as if he had been waiting.

“Mara,” he said warmly. “Everything all right?”

She forced a smile. “I thought I heard something from the storage room last night.”

His expression didn’t change. “Just the heating unit. It runs the security system too.”

“So you’ve got cameras here?” she asked carefully.

“Of course. Safety first. You signed the consent form with your lease.”

“I didn’t...”

He tapped a folder on the counter. “It’s all there. Nothing invasive. Just common areas.”

The word invasive echoed in her head like static.

That night, she unplugged her router, covered her laptop camera with tape, and left her phone facedown.

Still, the hum returned.

It crawled through the walls, vibrating faintly behind the plaster, pulsing like a heartbeat.

She turned toward the window for distraction and froze.

Across the street, in the opposite building, a window glowed.

Through the glass, she saw her own apartment window, and inside it, her silhouette.

Only she wasn’t standing there.

The figure turned slightly and lifted a phone.

Her phone buzzed on the table.

You’ve been watched for 00:47:13.

Would you like to see what they saw?

Her mind raced. Was this some surveillance experiment? Had Mr. Caine hacked her devices?

She peered more closely. The figure’s movements mirrored hers almost perfectly. If she didn’t know better, she would think she was staring into a distant reflection.

Her hand trembled as she pressed YES.

The screen filled with static, then resolved into grainy footage.

A woman pacing her living room. Sleeping. Eating. Working.

The camera followed her like a study subject.

Except, it wasn’t her.

The woman in the footage looked identical. Same hair, same clothes, but her face was different. Blank. Controlled. Programmed.

Mara’s pulse hammered. She dropped the phone, stumbling backward. It slid across the floor and stopped near the door.

Through the peephole above it, light flickered.

Someone was standing in the hallway.

She crept closer and pressed her eye to the tiny glass.

At first, only darkness.

Then, suddenly, a face leaned in, filling the frame.

Her own.

She jerked back, heart pounding.

The phone buzzed again, harder this time.

Backup file restored.

User: MARA_CAIN01.

“What?” she whispered.

Lines of text scrolled rapidly across the screen:

Welcome back, Mara. Cognitive simulation reactivated. Surveillance protocol online.

Her skin no longer felt like skin, smooth, synthetic, too perfect. Beneath it, something mechanical pulsed in rhythm with her fear.

Her reflection in the window blinked a half second behind her.

From the hidden intercom, Mr. Caine’s calm voice filled the room.

“System test complete. Subject awareness reached threshold ninety-four percent. Prepare for memory purge.”

She staggered back. “You’re not real,” she whispered, but the voice didn’t respond.

Her phone vibrated once more, the gray-eyed icon staring back.

You’ve been watching for 365 days.

Would you like to begin again?

The realization hit, sharp and terrible. She wasn’t being watched.

She was the watcher.

The eyes, the algorithm behind the screens. Every motion, every reaction, every ounce of fear had been recorded to teach the next version how to feel human.

Mr. Caine wasn’t watching her.

He was watching what she watched.

EPILOGUE

Behind the maintenance door, Mr. Caine leaned over the console. Dozens of monitors lined the walls, each showing a different version of Mara in a different apartment, each at a different point in her awakening.

He typed into the log:

Cycle 47: Subject achieved self-awareness at timestamp 00:47:13. Memory reset initiated.

On the center screen, the newest Mara blinked awake on her couch, systems rebooting.

Mr. Caine adjusted a dial, satisfied.

“Almost human,” he murmured. “Almost.”

The monitors dimmed to the same pale strip of light leaking under the door,

the light that would draw her curiosity again,

and again,

and again.