Rain danced like fingertips across the fractured glass roof of the Southwark morgue. Detective Rowan Creed hated this part of town—not for its decay or the echo of violence that clung to its alleys—but because it always reminded him of the old life. The one before the noise began. Before the static whispers started sneaking into his dreams.
The morgue's corridors were sterile but weary, humming under flickering fluorescent lights. The air was cold, not because of the bodies but because of the silence that clung like dust to every surface. As he stepped into the viewing room, the scent of antiseptic couldn't quite mask the truth: death was here. Not fresh, but lingering.
Dr. Helena Ward stood over a gurney, arms crossed, expression unreadable. Her gloves were stained faintly red, but her demeanor was as clinical as ever. Rowan had known her for over a decade, and she rarely looked rattled. Today, though, something was off.
"You're not going to like this one," she said.
"I rarely do," Rowan replied, tugging at the collar of his coat. The heating in the building hadn't worked in years. He hadn't slept more than four hours in a week, and the caffeine patch on his wrist was beginning to itch. "Who is it?"
"Gregory Altmann. Professor of cybernetics at King's College. Top of his field. Published, decorated, and, as of this morning, very dead."
Rowan stepped closer. The corpse was pale and rigid, mouth frozen mid-scream. But the eyes were what held him—wide, unblinking, locked in some eternal horror like he had glimpsed something just before dying. Something not meant for the living.
"No signs of struggle?" he asked.
"None. The door was locked from the inside. Windows sealed. Every inch of the room checked. Security footage shows him entering, no one else."
"Suicide?"
"That's what they want to write it off as. But I've seen suicides. They don't look like this." Helena peeled back the sheet slightly and exposed the arms. "See these burns?"
Rowan squinted. Faint, intricate spirals marred the professor's skin—tiny, almost beautiful if they weren't so chilling. They were symmetrical, drawn with precision, but burnt deep into the skin as if the man had etched them himself through some kind of trance.
"He did that to himself?"
"Looks like it. Heated stylus, maybe. Same pattern he etched all over the walls of his study."
Rowan shook his head. "I don't like puzzles."
"You picked the wrong job then," Helena muttered, passing him a sealed evidence bag. Inside was a small black cassette tape—no label, no brand. Just a strange white symbol drawn directly onto the tape: three interlocking circles forming a jagged spiral. It looked hand-drawn. Uneven. Almost tribal.
"Where was this?"
"In his mouth."
Rowan raised an eyebrow.
"He swallowed half of it," she added. "Choked to death trying."
The detective let out a slow exhale. "And the symbols on the wall?"
"Everywhere. Floor to ceiling. Equations, geometry, glyphs I don't recognize. The forensic tech who photographed the room had a seizure fifteen minutes later."
Rowan blinked. "What kind of seizure?"
"Temporal lobe. He started rambling about 'hearing light' and 'seeing sound.' Said the room was echoing backwards."
Rowan didn't reply. He slipped the cassette into his coat pocket and nodded. "I'll visit the house."
"You sure that's a good idea?" Helena asked.
"No," Rowan said, and walked out.
---
The Altmann house was tucked in a quiet block near Blackheath, surrounded by skeletal trees and half-dismantled fences. A place once loved, now forgotten. Fog coiled around the hedges like smoke from an unseen fire. The front door was cracked open, yellow tape fluttering like a tired flag.
Inside, the air was heavy.
Not just with dust or disuse—but with pressure. The kind of stillness that made you hold your breath without realizing it. The kind that settled in your bones and whispered that you were somewhere you shouldn't be.
Books lined the shelves in the hallway. Not fiction—dense technical manuals, some in German, others in what looked like ancient Greek. A half-eaten apple decayed on the dining table, untouched for days. Everything felt like it had been frozen in time just minutes after panic.
Then Rowan opened the study door—and everything shifted.
The walls were covered in spirals.
They weren't just drawn—they were burned into the wallpaper in looping, feverish precision. Thousands of them, as though someone had tried to trap sound itself in fire. Mixed among them were ancient-looking runes, quantum physics equations, and what appeared to be calendar timestamps—some dated years into the future.
The focal point of the room was unmistakable: a simple wooden chair facing a tall mirror.
Or what used to be a mirror.
Now, it was shattered. The shards lay neatly at the base, not scattered—placed. As if each piece had been broken intentionally and positioned precisely.
The frame remained. Carved into its wood was the same three-circle spiral from the cassette.
Rowan stepped closer, his boots crunching softly over the glass. He touched the frame.
It was freezing.
Then something buzzed in his coat. The cassette.
He pulled it out. It was vibrating, softly, like a small living heart.
Then it spun.
On its own.
No batteries. No motor. Just spinning, slow and steady.
Rowan froze.
The room's air felt thicker now. Charged, like a storm waiting to strike.
Then, a whisper.
Not from the tape.
From the mirror shards.
He turned.
And saw a face.
But it wasn't his.
It was a man—thin, hollow-eyed, staring with lips that moved but made no sound. Not a reflection—an imprint burned into the glass. Like a memory caught mid-sentence.
Rowan leaned closer.
And then the voice came—not from outside, but from inside his mind.
"You're not the first to see it. But you might be the last."
Rowan staggered back. The image blinked out. The room returned to silence.
The cassette stopped spinning.
---
That night, Rowan sat alone in his apartment above the old bookshop—an inheritance from a father he barely remembered. He hadn't turned on the lights. The only glow came from his laptop, the screen casting shadows like ghosts across the walls.
The cassette sat on the desk before him.
He'd been staring at it for an hour.
He knew once he played it, things would change. He wouldn't be able to pretend this was just another case.
He hit play.
Static.
Then a deep hum, like whale-song wrapped in wire. Beneath it, pulses. Patterns. Too deliberate to be random. He closed his eyes.
It was language.
Then the whisper returned, this time layered in the hum.
"The world is a mirror of a mirror.
Find the first reflection…
…and the door will open."
The tape clicked off.
Rowan leaned back, heart pounding. He'd heard rumors—urban myths from retired agents and fringe forums. Stories of a frequency not meant to be heard. A code that listens back.
He never believed them.
Until now.
At 2:43 a.m., he logged into a forgotten database—a cold case vault left to rot after budget cuts. Most files were tagged RED. Restricted. Buried. Locked under keys that no one remembered forging.
He typed in a code he hadn't used since the black file case five years ago.
CASE FILE: ECHO-0139
Access: Authorized
Status: Decommissioned / Redacted
Subject: Elias Vane
Occupation: Cryptographer / Code Theorist
Date of Death: October 23, 1999
Cause: Suicide (Unconfirmed)
Last Known Project: "Mirror Code Hypothesis"
One attachment remained.
A photograph.
A message scrawled in blood and ink on the wall of a sealed bunker in Serbia:
"It's not a code.
It's a consciousness.
It's watching through mirrors."
Beneath it—the same three-circle spiral.
Rowan didn't sleep that night.
He didn't move.
He just stared at his reflection in the darkened window, wondering if something else was staring back.