At 2:14 a.m., the security camera showed Claire Morgan leaving her apartment building.
At 2:16 a.m., it showed her leaving again.
The problem was that Claire was still inside her apartment.
She was standing in front of the camera system when the night guard played the footage back.
Claire had moved into the Briarwood Apartments three days earlier. The building was an old six-story block with narrow corridors, broken lift buttons and a security desk that was usually empty after midnight.
She had chosen Apartment 5C because it was quiet and close to her new job.
On her third night, she woke to the sound of someone dragging a heavy object across the hallway outside her door.
The noise stopped beneath her apartment.
Claire checked the clock.
2:13 a.m.
She waited for footsteps, a knock or the sound of an elevator.
Nothing came.
Then her phone vibrated.
A notification from the building’s security app appeared on the screen.
Motion detected: Fifth-floor hallway.
Claire opened the live camera feed.
The hallway outside Apartment 5C appeared on her phone. The image was gray and grainy, but the corridor was empty.
Then a woman walked into the frame.
She was wearing Claire’s gray sweater.
She had Claire’s hair.
She stopped directly outside Apartment 5C and looked at the camera.
Claire backed away from the screen.
The woman raised one hand and placed it against Claire’s apartment door.
The feed froze.
When it returned, the hallway was empty.
Claire did not sleep.
At 7:30 a.m., she went downstairs and found the night guard asleep in his chair. His name tag said Evan.
Claire showed him the footage.
Evan watched the recording twice.
“That camera has been broken for months,” he said.
“It sent me a motion alert.”
“The app glitches.”
“Who was the woman?”
Evan looked at the screen again.
“I don’t know.”
Claire asked him to check the entrance camera. If the woman had entered the building, there should have been another recording.
Evan opened the file.
At 2:14 a.m., Claire walked through the lobby doors and left the building.
Claire stared at the screen.
The woman in the footage was wearing the same gray sweater Claire had been wearing in her bed.
“I never left,” Claire said.
Evan did not answer.
At 2:16 a.m., the camera showed Claire leaving the building again.
This time, the woman stopped beneath the lobby light and turned toward the camera.
Her face was blurred.
But Claire recognized the silver ring on her right hand.
It was Claire’s ring.
She had been wearing it when she woke up.
Evan closed the file.
“Maybe the clock is wrong,” he said.
“By two minutes?”
“Maybe.”
Claire returned to Apartment 5C and searched every room. Nothing was missing. The windows were locked. The front door had remained secured from the inside.
At noon, she called the security company.
The technician said the building’s camera system had not recorded anything that night because the storage drive had failed two weeks earlier.
“There is no footage,” he told her.
Claire sent him the files from the app.
After a long silence, he asked, “Who else has access to your account?”
“No one.”
“Change your password.”
That evening, Claire found a second phone notification.
Motion detected: Apartment 5C.
The time was 2:14 a.m.
The notification had been received twelve hours before the event.
Claire stared at it until the screen went dark.
She slept with a chair against the door.
At 2:13 a.m., the dragging sound returned.
This time, it moved from the elevator toward her apartment.
Claire held her breath.
A shadow appeared beneath the door.
Then a woman whispered from the hallway.
“Claire, you left something inside.”
Claire’s phone lit up.
The security app showed the fifth-floor hallway.
A woman in the gray sweater stood outside Apartment 5C.
Her face was still blurred.
Claire moved closer to the peephole.
The hallway outside was empty.
She looked at the phone again.
The woman on the screen was standing directly against the door.
Claire whispered, “Who are you?”
The woman slowly lifted her head.
Her blurred face became clear.
It was Claire.
The woman on the screen smiled.
Then Claire heard her own voice from the hallway.
“Open the door.”
She ran to the bathroom and locked herself inside.
The door handle of Apartment 5C began to move.
Once.
Twice.
Then the building intercom rang.
Claire answered without thinking.
Evan’s voice came through the speaker.
“Claire, you need to come downstairs.”
“Is someone outside my apartment?”
“Which apartment are you in?”
“5C.”
Evan paused.
“There is no Apartment 5C.”
Claire felt the room tilt.
She looked at the apartment number beside the front door.
It read 5B.
She stepped into the hallway.
The corridor looked different. The wallpaper was older, the lights were dimmer and the door across from hers had been replaced by a blank wall.
The bathroom door behind her slammed shut.
Claire ran downstairs.
Evan was standing at the security desk, pale and shaking.
He held an old building plan in his hands.
The fifth floor showed four apartments.
5A.
5B.
5D.
5E.
There was no 5C.
“What is happening?” Claire asked.
Evan pointed to a newspaper clipping attached to the plan.
Twenty-two years earlier, a tenant named Claire Morgan had disappeared from Apartment 5C during a building evacuation.
The apartment had been removed from the floor plan afterward.
The name beneath the photograph was exactly the same as hers.
Claire stared at the picture.
It showed a younger version of herself standing beside the lobby elevator.
The same silver ring was on her hand.
The same small scar appeared above her left eyebrow.
“I’m not her,” Claire whispered.
Evan looked at the entrance camera.
The screen showed the lobby doors.
At 2:14 a.m., Claire entered the building.
At 2:16 a.m., Claire left.
At 2:18 a.m., Claire entered again.
This time, she was carrying a suitcase.
Evan turned toward her.
“Where did you get that?”
Claire looked down.
A black suitcase stood beside her feet.
She had never seen it before.
Its lock clicked open.
Inside were clothes, photographs and a yellow envelope with her name written across it.
Claire opened the envelope.
The letter inside was written in her own handwriting.
Claire, if you are reading this, you have already moved in for the second time. Do not trust the camera. Do not trust Evan. Most importantly, do not let yourself leave at 2:16.
Claire looked up.
Evan was no longer behind the desk.
The lobby was empty.
The entrance doors were locked.
The cameras turned one by one toward Claire.
Every screen showed the same image: Claire standing in the lobby with her suitcase.
Then a second Claire appeared beside her.
The second woman leaned close to the first and whispered something.
Claire could not hear the words, but she saw her own lips form the sentence.
“Tell her the apartment is waiting.”
The elevator bell rang.
The doors opened.
Inside the elevator stood the woman from the footage.
She wore the gray sweater and Claire’s silver ring.
Her face was no longer blurred.
She looked exactly like Claire, except her eyes were completely black.
Claire backed toward the locked entrance.
The woman stepped out of the elevator.
“Which one of us do you think is real?” she asked.
Claire tried the door handle.
It would not move.
The camera screens flickered.
On every screen, the date changed to the day Claire had first moved into Briarwood Apartments.
The woman with black eyes pointed toward the elevator.
“You left something inside.”
Claire looked at the elevator mirror.
Her reflection was not standing beside her.
It was standing inside Apartment 5C.
The reflection lifted one hand and placed it against the glass.
A message appeared across the nearest security screen:
MOTION DETECTED: APARTMENT 5C.
Claire heard the dragging sound again.
This time, it was coming from inside the elevator.
Evan’s voice whispered through the lobby speakers.
“Claire, if you are still downstairs, don’t let her out.”
The elevator doors began to close.
The woman with black eyes smiled and stepped backward into the darkness.
Claire ran forward and forced her hand between the doors.
The doors opened again.
Inside the elevator, the woman was gone.
Only the black suitcase remained.
Claire looked down at it.
The lid was open.
Inside, beneath the clothes, was a security badge.
The badge belonged to Evan.
On the back, someone had written a date.
Tomorrow.
At 2:16 a.m.
Claire heard the lobby doors unlock.
She turned toward the entrance.
A woman in a gray sweater walked into the building.
She looked exactly like Claire.
The woman stopped beneath the lobby light and smiled at the camera.
Claire’s phone began recording by itself.
On the screen, a notification appeared:
Motion detected: Apartment 5C.
Then the phone showed the live hallway feed.
Claire watched herself leave the building at 2:14 a.m.
At 2:16 a.m., she watched herself leave again.
At 2:18 a.m., a third Claire appeared at the entrance.
This one looked directly into the camera and whispered:
“Which one of us will you let inside?”
