The Brother’s Face

Ani had long since stopped searching crowds for her brother’s face. Three years was enough time for the instinct to dull, to sink into the ache she carried only in quiet moments. Still, on the subway platform that Wednesday morning, when the man turned his head just slightly, she nearly dropped her coffee.

It wasn’t just the cheekbones or the dark hair in need of trimming. It was the tilt of the jaw, the way his shoulders slouched against the metal pole, even the small scar at the edge of his eyebrow — an echo of the one Arthur had gotten when he toppled off his bike at ten years old.

Her chest tightened. The crowd pushed and surged. She stepped forward before she could think better of it.

“Arthur?”

The man’s head snapped toward her. His eyes were brown, not gray. But in the split second before his expression hardened, she saw something flicker — recognition, as though he knew her.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, his voice rougher than Arthur's. Then he turned his body away, shielding his face.

The train screeched into the station. He boarded, and she followed without meaning to. Her pulse hammered, a whisper in her mind insisting she should stop, but her feet carried her after him.

For two stops they stood near each other.

He didn’t look at her again, though once she caught him checking the reflection in the glass, confirming her gaze was still on him.

At the third stop, he suddenly pushed through the doors just as they were closing.

Ani surged after, catching them with her hand at the last possible second. She spilled onto the platform, nearly colliding with him.

The man’s eyes widened. Then he muttered something she couldn’t quite catch — her brother’s name? — before bolting up the stairs two at a time.

Ani followed, breathless, almost afraid to lose sight of him. The station’s fluorescent lights flickered overhead, casting long, jerking shadows. He didn’t look back until he reached the street. When he did, there was no mistaking it- the look wasn’t fear. It was warning.

And in that instant, Ani knew two things at once-

1. That man wasn’t Arthur.

2. But he knew what had happened to him.

Ani stood frozen on the sidewalk as the man disappeared into the crowd. Her breath came in shallow bursts, the echo of his warning glance etched into her mind.

Not Arthur. But he knew something.

She dug her phone from her bag and snapped a photo just before he vanished around the corner. Blurry, half-turned, but enough.

That night, she pulled the photo onto her laptop. Zoomed in, sharpened it. A stranger’s face stared back, but one detail made her stomach twist. Around his neck, half-hidden under his collar, was a chain. A chain with the same pendant she had given Arthur on his seventeenth birthday.

Her heart lurched. Coincidence? Theft?

Or proof?

Sleep didn’t come. By morning, her search had begun. Reverse image lookups.

Threads on obscure forums. The name Ryan Agran surfaced — an alias, maybe. A record of petty thefts, sealed juvenile charges. And an address, half a city away.

She shouldn’t have gone. She knew that.

But by late afternoon she was standing across the street from a decrepit building whose windows were covered in plywood.

Her phone shook in her hand as she zoomed in on the entrance.

Then he appeared. The man. Carrying a plastic bag, glancing over his shoulder before slipping inside.

Her body moved before her mind caught up. She followed.

The hallway reeked of mold and cigarette smoke. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.

A door at the far end clicked shut just as she reached it. Heart pounding, she pressed her ear against the wood.

A voice. Not his. Someone else’s. Low, commanding.

“…she shouldn’t have seen you.”

Then his voice, urgent, almost panicked-

“I didn’t plan it. She came up to me. She thought I was him.”

Ani's skin turned to ice.

The other voice again, sharper this time-

“Then you’d better make sure she keeps thinking he’s dead.”

A shadow shifted under the door.

Footsteps moved toward it. She stumbled back, too loud, her shoe scraping against the warped floorboards.

The knob rattled.

Ani ran.

Ani's lungs burned as she burst into the street, shoving past strangers who muttered protests. She didn’t stop running until she reached the corner café two blocks away.

She collapsed into a chair, fumbling with her phone, hands shaking so badly she almost dropped it.

She played the recording back. She hadn’t even realized she’d hit record, but her thumb must’ve brushed the button in the hallway. The audio was grainy, muffled, but clear enough-

“…she shouldn’t have seen you.” “I didn’t plan it. She thought I was him.” “…make sure she keeps thinking he’s dead.”

Ani's stomach twisted. This wasn’t her imagination. Something had happened to Arthur — something hidden, orchestrated.

She uploaded the file to a private drive.

For a moment she just stared at it, pulse hammering. Then she noticed the café’s free Wi-Fi name- OrpheusNet.

Her breath caught. Orpheus. She hadn’t thought about that in years. Author used to scribble the word in his notebooks, margins filled with strange sketches and phrases he never explained. She’d asked once what it meant. He’d just smiled and said, “A doorway. Some doors you don’t come back from.”

She Googled it now, fingers trembling.

Results were scattered — an old Reddit conspiracy thread, a half-buried news article about missing persons, an obscure academic blog. But the same name kept surfacing- The Orpheus Collective.

Rumors of a group that recruited brilliant, desperate young people. Vanishings written off as runaways. Experimental tech. Mind control. Even whispers about rewriting memory.

She scrolled faster, her throat dry. In a forum post from 2019, someone listed initials of recruits. Near the bottom- A.S.

Arthur Shmulevsky.

Her hand went cold around the phone.

Before she could think, a notification flashed across the screen- Unknown device attempted access to your drive.

She shut the laptop. Heart in her throat, she scanned the café. Everyone looked ordinary — students, office workers, tourists.

But someone had tried to intercept her recording.

And when she glanced at the street outside, her blood ran colder.

The man — the not-Arthur — stood across the road, watching. Not running this time. Waiting.

For her.

The man didn’t cross the street. He just stood there, arms folded, gaze locked on her.

Waiting, patient, like he knew she couldn’t sit still.

Ani grabbed her bag and ducked out the café’s back exit, slipping into an alley that reeked of rot and motor oil. She didn’t stop until she reached the metro station, fumbling through the turnstile. Her reflection in the plexiglass barrier startled her- wild-eyed, pale, a stranger.

Back on the train, she forced her breathing to steady and pulled out her laptop again. This time, she turned off Wi-Fi, digging deeper offline. She found the blog she’d seen earlier — the one run by a self-proclaimed “digital archaeologist.” The latest post, dated just a week ago, made her skin crawl-

The Orpheus Collective is real. Think DARPA, but off-books. Not government.

Private. Global. Their work is predictive cognition — rewiring how the brain processes choices. Perfect soldiers. Perfect spies.

Perfect disappearances.

The post went on, scattered with screenshots of patents linked to shell companies. Neural interface devices.

Data-mining programs masked as fitness apps.

Ani scrolled until she froze. A photo.

Blurry, zoomed-in from security footage.

But unmistakable. Arthur, walking into a nondescript building with two men in dark coats.

She clapped a hand over her mouth. He was alive.

The train screeched to a stop. Passengers jostled, but Ani didn’t move. Her mind raced.

If Arthur had been taken, if he was inside this Orpheus program — then that man wasn’t just a coincidence. He’d been planted in her path.

A soft chime broke her thoughts. A new file appeared on her desktop. She hadn’t downloaded it. No notification, no permission request. Just a folder named- LOOK CLOSER.

Her fingers hovered over the trackpad.

Against her better judgment, she clicked.

Inside was a single video. Grainy, black and white. A bare room, a chair bolted to the floor. Someone strapped into it — head bowed, electrodes across their temples.

The figure raised his face.

Arthur.

And behind him, blurred but unmistakable, stood the man she’d chased.

The screen went black. Then words appeared, one line at a time-

STOP DIGGING. ORPHAN YOURSELF.

THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING.

Ani snapped the laptop shut, heart pounding. Around her, the train’s windows had turned to mirrors in the dark tunnel. And for the first time, she wondered how many of the passengers reflected beside her were real — and how many were watching.

The train emerged from the tunnel, sunlight flashing against the windows.

Ani's reflection was swallowed by the glare, but she could still feel the weight of unseen eyes.

When the doors opened, she slipped out with the crowd, weaving through bodies until she found herself in the city’s older quarter — narrow streets, brick facades, cameras at every corner. Too many cameras.

She needed help. But who? The police?

She pictured herself walking into a precinct, sliding the laptop across the desk.

My brother’s alive, he’s trapped in a secret program, and strangers are planting files on my computer. They’d smile politely, take her statement, and she’d vanish into a holding cell — or worse, get handed right back to the people chasing her.

Her phone buzzed. Unknown number.

She froze.

A text. You’re making this harder. Then, seconds later- Check the bench.

Ani turned slowly. At the bus stop down the block, a lone bench sat in the shade.

Something small rested on it- a manila envelope.

She almost laughed — how cliché. But her hands wouldn’t stop shaking as she crossed the street and picked it up. Inside were photographs. Dozens of them. All of her. Walking to work. Buying groceries.

Sleeping in her apartment window with the curtains half drawn.

She dropped the stack, bile rising in her throat. On the back of one photo was a scrawled message in black marker-

You’re not chasing us. We’re pulling you in.

Her stomach turned to stone.

A voice behind her, low and steady- “You shouldn’t have come this far.”

She spun. The man. The not-Arthur. Close enough to touch now, eyes unreadable. He didn’t raise a weapon. He didn’t need to. His presence alone was threat enough.

Ani's pulse pounded in her ears. “Where is he?” she demanded, surprising herself with the steadiness in her voice. “What did you do to Arthur?”

The man studied her a long moment.

Then he leaned closer, so only she could hear.

“He volunteered.”

And just like that, he walked past her, vanishing into the stream of pedestrians.

Ani stood trembling, the envelope heavy in her hands. For the first time, a far more terrifying thought crossed her mind—

What if her brother hadn’t been taken at all? What if he had chosen this?