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056

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The moment their boots landed on the familiar cold metal floor, a silence fell over the room like a thick shroud. The tunnel behind them sealed the past; what lay ahead could very well define their future. Xeno straightened his coat, brushing off the dust and sediment from the crawl through the tunnel. Stanley, ever alert, remained one step behind, his eyes roving — calculating, anticipating.

Xeno exhaled slowly, stepping forward into what was once the central command hub of their base. The heart of all their old operations. Wires dangled from the ceiling like skeletal vines. The walls bore burn marks and scorched paint, remnants of a fight long past. Terminals blinked softly with half-functioning screens, an eerie glow casting shadows over the quiet ruin.

"You think they're around?" Xeno asked under his breath, walking past a broken lab bench where one of his old schematics still clung to the surface.

Stanley didn't answer. He'd stopped mid-step, shoulders squared, spine straight, like a soldier hearing the distant whistle of a mortar shell. Xeno turned slightly to look at him—then followed his gaze.

Stanley's eyes were dark. Focused. Locked.

Xeno looked ahead.

Standing several feet across the room, cast in the sickly light of a flickering overhead fixture... were them.

Their copies.

Silent. Still. Waiting.

Xeno's mouth tightened slightly. A familiar unease coiled in his stomach, but his voice came smooth and dry. "Well... guess that answers that," he muttered, the hint of a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"You have returned," Xeno's mimic said calmly. He looked nearly identical — same silver streaks in his dark blond hair, the same calculating sharpness in his eyes. But there was a stiffness to his expression, an absence of warmth, like an imitation rendered without a soul.

Stanley didn't say a word. His mimic stood beside Xeno's, holding his sniper rifle casually, posture perfect — a mirror of Stanley himself, down to the tilt of his head and the steady rhythm of his breath.

Two sets of men. Two sets of ghosts.

"You've learned to crawl back," Xeno's mimic continued. "I find that inefficient. Your reentry was predictable. I had calculated three potential pathways. The tunnel was the highest probability."

"Then you should have blocked it," Xeno shot back coolly, stepping slightly to the side, his body turned but hands still open. His voice betrayed no fear. "Maybe you're not as advanced as you think."

Stanley's mimic shifted his footing, finally speaking in a gravel tone that unnervingly echoed the real Stanley. "I was told to wait. You'd come back. You were always too stubborn to leave things behind."

Stanley didn't flinch.

"That's rich, coming from a glorified bootleg," he muttered, raising his rifle a fraction of an inch.

The mimics didn't move.

"We are superior," Xeno's mimic said smoothly. "We do not feel fatigue. We do not falter. You... are temporary. Imperfect."

Stanley's hand twitched near the trigger. Xeno simply tilted his head, expression unreadable.

"And yet... here we are. You're not attacking. You're not even trying to finish what you started. So what are you waiting for?"