The lights are already on when you enter.

Not the warm, golden glow of Lex’s office — no, this room hums with clinical white fluorescence. Everything gleams in sterile silver and steel, from the polished tile under your feet to the glass pod at the room’s center. Machines murmur softly behind the walls, alive with quiet menace. Surveillance eyes you from every corner — red dots blinking, watching, recording. So does he.

Lex is standing beside the containment chamber, posture immaculate as always, hands clasped neatly behind his back. He doesn’t look at you right away. His eyes are locked on the figure inside the pod.

They shift inside it — the other you.

Their face is yours. Your mouth. Your hands. But too still. Too calm. Their eyes are open but don’t blink. You’re used to your reflection lying to you — in mirrors, in memories, in the eyes of strangers — but this... this isn’t just a reflection.

It’s a statement.

Lex finally turns to acknowledge you, slow and precise, like a king addressing a servant whose timing was barely tolerable. His expression is unreadable. Controlled. His suit is black today — dark as a scalpel’s handle, the lines of the fabric sharp enough to wound.

“You arrived faster than expected,” he says, voice quiet but razor-sharp. “Curious. I didn’t think urgency was one of your more developed instincts.”