Dead man surviving .. survival chance 0.002

Chapter 9 – Split Paths

And when Rayn looked at the others… They looked away.

Something cracked inside him. Not loudly. Not visibly. Just a quiet fracture, like a mirror hairline-fracturing under pressure. Rayn didn't speak. He only nodded, once, like he understood what none of them were brave enough to say aloud.

Jun stood, her stance stiff. "We're restraining him."

Cole gave a sharp, silent nod. He already had the cuffs in hand, metal clicking together like teeth.

Rayn didn't move. His eyes drifted to Milo—the second Milo, the one they still hadn't explained. He was standing beside a flickering emergency light, eyes darting between Rayn and the others.

Jun approached slowly, as if not to spook him. "Rayn, don't fight this. We need time to figure things out."

He gave a thin, humorless smile. "That's all I've ever tried to do."

Jun didn't answer. She reached for him—

And then the second Milo shouted: "He's right!"

Everyone froze.

Milo stepped forward, hands trembling. "I remember what he does. The Merge… the static… the screaming faces. There was a version of Jun that wasn't our Jun. You said something to me—Rayn—in that place, and I remember it."

Rayn turned sharply to him. "What did I say?"

Milo met his eyes. "'Keep walking. No matter what you hear.'"

Rayn swallowed. He hadn't told anyone that. Not even Jun.

Cole stepped in front of Jun protectively, aiming his rifle between the two. "This doesn't prove anything."

"It proves everything," Rayn snapped. And then he moved.

He lunged for Milo, grabbing his arm, and the two bolted through the hall. Shouts rang out behind them.

"Rayn!"

"Get back here!"

Footsteps thundered. Rayn turned a corner and slammed the emergency bulkhead shut behind them. It would hold. For a minute, maybe.

They ran.

---

Rayn and Milo slipped through an old side exit Rayn remembered from his first scavenging run. It took them into the lower maintenance tunnels—unmapped, unguarded.

The air smelled like rust and mold. The lights above flickered weakly, casting long shadows. Their footsteps echoed.

Rayn spoke between breaths. "Where are we going?"

"There was a suburb," Milo said. "North of the ridge. We avoided it because of mimic activity. But something's drawing me there."

Rayn slowed. "You feel it too?"

Milo nodded. "Like a memory I never had. But it wants us to see it."

---

They emerged into the open hours later. Night had fallen, but the moon hung low and enormous, bathing the land in pale blue light. The ruined suburb stretched before them—cracked streets, collapsed houses, skeletal remains of lives before.

But something was off.

The mimics were there.

Everywhere.

Hundreds of them, maybe more. Standing. Watching. Not attacking.

Rayn froze. "They're just… staring."

Milo stepped beside him. "Do you feel it? Like we're being… expected."

Rayn took a slow step forward.

One mimic twitched.

Not aggressively. It lowered itself, as if bowing.

Another followed.

Then another.

Soon, a hundred of them were lowering their heads.

Rayn's skin crawled. "They're not attacking us. They're revering us."

Milo whispered, "Or recognizing us."

They walked cautiously through the crowd. The mimics never moved to stop them. Some even parted the way.

Rayn tried not to meet their empty eyes.

---

They found the church near the heart of the suburb. Its bell tower was collapsed, and the stained-glass windows were shattered. Nature had tried to reclaim it, vines crawling up the walls.

Rayn paused at the threshold. The air felt colder here.

"Inside," he said.

The doors creaked open.

The pews were splintered. The altar was cracked. Dust hung in thick beams where moonlight pierced the holes in the roof.

But what caught Rayn's breath was the far wall.

A mural.

Burned into the stone itself. Not painted. Burned.

It showed a figure standing above a crowd of mimics. Cloaked. Scarred. A spear in one hand, and in the other—a broken mask.

The figure… was him.

Rayn stepped closer. His hands trembled.

"What is this?" Milo whispered.

Ryan didn't answer.

Because he couldn't.

The wall seemed to pulse faintly. As if remembering.

Below the mural, a line of writing, half-erased:

HE WHO SPLIT THE THREAD WILL RETURN.

Rayn touched the stone.

It was warm.

Something behind the wall stirred.

He stepped back instinctively, heart pounding. The warmth from the mural lingered on his fingers—like skin, not stone. The carved image of himself, burned into the church wall, almost seemed to pulse with life now. Even Milo—his Milo—stood frozen beside him, eyes wide.

Then, a faint sound echoed behind them. The creak of a floorboard. A dragging step.

Rayn turned, fists clenched.

An old man stood in the shattered doorway of the church. His eyes were covered with a stained cloth, and deep scars etched across his face like cracks in old marble. He wore a patchwork coat, threadbare and far too large for his thin frame. In one hand, he held a crooked walking stick, in the other, a rusted bell—silent.

"I felt it," the man whispered, voice like dust. "You touched it. The Key has returned."

Rayn didn't speak. Neither did Milo.

The old man tilted his head slightly. "You don't know yet. But you will. It always starts with forgetting… then remembering too much."

He stepped forward, moving between the pews of the ruined church like he'd walked the same path a thousand times.

Milo broke the silence. "Who are you?"

"I am the Witness," the man said. "I see what others refuse to. I speak what the towers no longer do. I remember what the world tries to erase."

He stopped a few feet from Rayn, unseeing eyes staring straight into him. "And you… You are the Split One. The one who shattered the line."

Rayn felt a chill crawl down his back. "I didn't do anything."

The Witness smiled faintly. "That's what you always say. Every time."

---

They sat inside the broken church while the wind howled through empty windows. The stained glass was shattered, but the remnants still painted strange colors across the floor whenever the sun pushed through the clouds.

The mural on the wall—Rayn's face carved in black stone—watched them silently.

"I don't understand," Rayn said finally. "Why is that there? Why me?"

"Because you're the beginning," the Witness said. "And the end. The thread was meant to be one… clean… line. But you tore it. And now the mimics aren't hiding. They're waiting."

"Waiting for what?" Milo asked.

The Witness leaned forward. "For the Last Gate to open. The final breach. The point of no return. And only the Key can do it."

Rayn shook his head. "I'm not a key. I'm not anything."

"You weren't. Not before the Merge. Not before the recursion fractures." The old man's voice grew distant. "But when the line split, it needed a fixed point. A constant. That's you."

Rayn felt sick. "You're saying I caused all this?"

The Witness said nothing.

Outside, something moved past the broken window—slow and silent. A mimic. Then another. But they didn't approach. They only lingered. Watching.

"They don't attack you?" Milo asked, eyes on the shadows.

The Witness gave a small, tired nod. "They can't. Not here. Not to me. Not while the Thread-Splitter remains unfinished."

Rayn stood, pacing. "I need answers, not riddles. What am I supposed to do?"

The Witness pointed toward the mural. "You touched the stone. That means the Gate has already begun to stir. But it cannot open without your acceptance. That's what they're waiting for. That's why they're not attacking. They believe you will lead them."

Rayn laughed bitterly. "Lead mimics?"

"They do not see themselves as you do," the Witness said. "They remember. Pieces. Echoes. Not all of them want chaos. Some want escape. Others want unity. But all of them look to the one who split the path."

Milo stood beside Rayn. "We need to leave. This is too much."

But Rayn didn't move.

He was remembering the things he saw during the Merge. The other versions of himself. The fractured timelines. The whispers that spoke in his own voice. Was this what they meant? That he was some kind of… fixed point? A key to some greater event?

And what if Jun was right?

What if he wasn't their Rayn anymore?

The Witness rose slowly, leaning heavily on his cane. "Go to the tower," he said. "The old relay station. Northwest of the ruins. That's where the Gate will open. That's where you'll have to choose."

Rayn frowned. "Choose what?"

But the Witness only turned toward the altar and knelt, bowing low before the mural.

"Go," he whispered. "Before it follows you here."

---

They left the church as the sky darkened. The sun was bleeding behind gray clouds, and the wind had turned sharp. The mimic presence around the ruins remained strange—calm, deliberate. They stood still as statues on rooftops, in alleys, beside broken cars.

They didn't follow.

They only watched.

Rayn and Milo moved quickly, sticking to collapsed buildings and overgrown streets. The suburbs were in ruins—abandoned for years, maybe decades. Ivy crawled through windows. Cars were half-swallowed by the earth. Everything was broken, but quiet.

Too quiet.

At one point, they passed a collapsed school. A playground still stood outside, rusted swings creaking in the wind. A single mimic sat in the middle of the slide. Not moving. Just staring.

"I hate this," Milo muttered. "It's like they're in mourning or something."

"They're waiting," Rayn said.

"For me."

---

They found shelter in a wrecked corner store as night fell. Shelves were half-empty, but the walls still had faded posters—products, missing people, government warnings. A broken radio lay on the counter, its antenna twitching like it still wanted to speak.

Milo lit a flare for warmth.

"Do you believe him?" he asked.

Rayn sat against the wall, exhausted. "I don't know. But I don't think he was lying."

"You really think you're the reason this is happening?"

Rayn looked at his hands again. No black veins. No mimic skin. But still not… normal. He remembered how the mural had pulsed with heat under his touch. How the mimics didn't even flinch when he passed them.

"Maybe I wasn't supposed to survive the Merge," he said quietly. "Maybe that's what went wrong."

"Or right," Milo said, trying to smile. "You're still you. Right?"

Rayn didn't answer.

Because he didn't know.

---

That night, he dreamed.

He was standing on a cliff made of glass, staring at a sky that burned like oil. Fire spread across the horizon—slow, unstoppable. The sun was cracked in half, bleeding molten light. And in the center of it all stood a tower, impossibly tall, with a door at its base glowing red.

The Gate.

Something moved behind him. Another Rayn.

No—three of them. All watching. All silent.

And behind them—mimics.

Hundreds. Thousands. Waiting.

The voice returned, low and rumbling, echoing through his bones.

"The Key must turn."

He woke up gasping, sweat running down his back.

Across the store, Milo sat up too.

"You dreamed it too?" he asked, pale.

Rayn nodded

slowly. "The burning sky?"

Milo nodded.

Rayn looked out the broken window.

In the distance, the top of a tower blinked red.

---

End of Chapter 9