The Omission Index, Ch 15: Summer of Me Pt. 3

Somewhere in the deepening Santa Cruz shadows, the real Chloe was a fading psychic whisper, while her imposter, a masterpiece of stolen normalcy, walked free, leaving Hale with the unsettling task of hunting a truth that now wore a beloved face.

The immediate aftermath of the transformation in the cypress grove had been a controlled chaos. Liam, utterly bewildered and increasingly upset by Hale's and Kwan's calm questions about the "attacker" he swore he'd seen, had been gently separated from the imposter "Chloe" by local police. They were fed a carefully fabricated SHEPARD story about a possible gang-related assault and a witness needing protection. The imposter, playing the role of the concerned, slightly traumatized girlfriend perfectly, had expressed a desire to go home, to rest. Her performance was unwavering even under Hale's intense, probing gaze.

The SHEPARD team gathered again in their anonymous van. The air was thick with the metallic smell of Reid's equipment and the sour tang of adrenaline. They had two urgent, simultaneous priorities: track the imposter to understand their patterns and when they might discard the identity, and find the real Chloe before the sedative wore off completely, or before the Shapeshifter, or their A.G.I. associates, decided she was too dangerous to leave alive.

Hale closed his eyes, pushing past the loud noise of the boardwalk's evening crowds, the blare of music, the shouts of vendors, the overlapping mental noise of a thousand everyday dramas. He needed to find that whisper, Chloe's terrified, suppressed consciousness. It was faint, almost drowned out by the vibrant, confident, false aura of the imposter "Chloe." According to Knopff's discreet tail, she was currently leading Liam back towards what they assumed was Chloe's apartment.

"The real signature is weak, heavily suppressed," Hale murmured, his fingers pressed to his temples. "Drugged, disoriented… terrified. There's a residue, a trail, from the cypress grove. It leads… inland. Away from the coast. Towards the hills, more isolated." He focused harder, sifting through the mental static. "There's a strong overlay of fear, and… a strange, sickly sweetness. Like artificial flowers. And… damp earth. A cellar? Or somewhere underground?"

Reid, hunched over his console, checked Hale's impressions against local maps and recent unusual energy readings his long-range sensors had picked up around the time of the abduction. "Got a cluster of older, isolated properties up in the Bonny Doon area, Hale. Some with basements, old wine cellars. There was a faint, quickly fading polymorphic energy spike logged from a private road up there about thirty minutes after your reported incident. Could be our suspect's dumping ground, or a temporary holding spot for the original."

"Knopff, you and I will take that," Hale decided. "Kwan, you and Reid keep a discreet watch on the imposter 'Chloe' and Liam. We need to know their movements, their routine. If they try to move the real Chloe, or if the imposter starts to… fall apart, we need to be ready. Finding the original is paramount. The longer she's under, the more damage could be done, mentally and physically."

The drive up into the Bonny Doon hills was a tense, silent journey. Knopff navigated the narrow, winding roads with practiced ease. The headlights cut through the growing fog that often rolled in from the coast at night. The air grew cooler, smelling of pine and damp redwood. Hale kept his senses extended, searching for that faint, desperate whisper. It grew slightly stronger as they went higher, guiding them.

Reid's pinpointed coordinates led them to a secluded, slightly run-down rental property. It was a cabin set back from the road, surrounded by dense trees, its windows dark. No lights. No sound, except for the drip of moisture from the roof and the distant sigh of the wind through the redwoods.

"This feels right," Hale said. The mental signature of Chloe's fear was now a touchable, chilling presence, mixed with that strange, artificial sweetness he'd detected earlier. "She's here. And she's alone, I think. The suspect's main focus, their energy, is with the imposter, back in town."

Knopff killed the engine, and they approached on foot, moving like shadows through the misty darkness. The cabin had a small, padlocked cellar door around the back, half-hidden by overgrown bushes. Hale knelt, touching the cold, damp wood. Chloe's terror was a raw, screaming wound in the mental atmosphere here, almost unbearable. He could also sense the lingering imprint of the Shapeshifter - that cold, judging focus, the uncaring efficiency of stowing away an inconvenient object.

"She's in there," Hale confirmed, his voice grim. "And terrified."

With a series of faint clicks, unnaturally loud in the silence, Knopff dispatched the old, rusty padlock with a set of specialized picks. He pulled the heavy wooden door open, revealing a set of steep, narrow stone steps leading down into pitch blackness. The smell that wafted up was sickly sweet, a mixture of damp earth, mildew, and that same artificial floral scent Hale had sensed. Air freshener. A pathetic attempt to mask the cellar's natural smells, or perhaps something worse.

Hale went down first, his Maglite cutting a sharp beam through the oppressive darkness. Knopff followed, his larger frame a reassuring presence at Hale's back. The cellar was small, cold, its stone walls wet with moisture. In the far corner, huddled on a pile of dirty canvas sacks, was Chloe.

She was bound loosely with rope. Her red-gold hair was matted and damp, her face streaked with tears and dirt. She was conscious, barely. Her eyes were wide and unfocused, reflecting the beam of Hale's flashlight with a wild, animal-like terror. When she saw them, a small, choked whimper escaped her lips, and she tried to shrink further into the corner, her body trembling violently.

"Chloe?" Kwan's voice, surprisingly, was already there. Hale realized with a start that Kwan, having expected this, was patched into their comms from his surveillance position. His voice was now being relayed through Hale's earpiece, calm and soothing. "Chloe, my name is Ezra. We're here to help you. You're safe now."

Hale knelt slowly, keeping his movements gentle, no threat. He could feel Kwan's projected empathy, a warm, calming wave trying to push through Chloe's terror. "It's okay, Chloe," Hale said, his own voice low and steady. "We're getting you out of here."

Knopff efficiently cut her bonds while Hale kept talking, his senses tuned to her fragile mental state. Her aura was battered, broken. The vibrant joy he'd sensed earlier was now a dim, flickering ember. The overlay of the Shapeshifter's mental invasion was still there, a faint, greasy residue that made his own skin crawl. The confusion, the drugging, the sheer terror of the abduction - it had all taken a terrible toll.

As Knopff gently helped her to her feet, Chloe swayed, her legs barely able to support her. Kwan, his voice a constant, reassuring presence in Hale's ear, began to guide her with simple, calming instructions. Hale, meanwhile, did a quick mental sweep of the cellar. His hand brushed against the damp stone walls, the rough canvas sacks. He felt the lingering imprint of the Shapeshifter's cold efficiency, their utter lack of empathy for the terror they were inflicting. He also picked up the distinct, quickly fading signature of another individual - likely the A.G.I. operative who had helped in Chloe's abduction and transport while the Shapeshifter was busy with the transformation. They were professionals, organized, leaving as little trace as possible.

Getting Chloe out of the cellar and back to the relative safety of their van was a slow, difficult process. She was weak, disoriented, and prone to sudden fits of trembling and choked sobs. Kwan's remote presence, channeled through Hale, was invaluable, a steady, calming influence that gradually began to break through her terror.

The drive back down the winding mountain road was tense with new purpose. Chloe huddled in the back seat wrapped in a SHEPARD emergency blanket, while Hale coordinated with Reid and Kwan via secure comm. The imposter was still maintaining the charade, but time was running short. Hale felt a grim satisfaction. One part of the hunt was over. The whisper in the shadows had been found. The other part, confronting the predator who wore her face, who was even now weaving a web of stolen intimacy around an unsuspecting Liam, was still to come. And that would be the far more dangerous, far more unsettling dance.

***

The address Reid had traced for "Chloe's apartment" - the one the imposter was currently living in with Liam - was a charming, slightly run-down Victorian conversion overlooking Monterey Bay.

Its brightly painted gingerbread trim was a cheerful lie.

They'd kept a discreet watch for hours after Chloe's rescue. Reid's tech monitored for any unusual energy signatures. Kwan provided updates on Chloe's fragile condition at a secure SHEPARD medical facility. Liam, according to the local police units still cooperating, had reported "Chloe" acting a little strangely - more intense, almost too affectionate. He'd blamed it on the stress of their earlier "dizzy spell" and the police questioning that followed. He was, by all accounts, still completely fooled.

The decision to move in had been made when Hale, mentally tuned to the imposter "Chloe's" vibrant, stolen aura, sensed a subtle shift. It was a faint dimming, a hint of the restlessness he now recognized as the sign before the Shapeshifter discarded a personality. The fantasy was beginning to fall apart. They were running out of time.

Knopff took the back, covering the fire escape and alleyway. Reid remained in the van, ready to use countermeasures or provide technical support. Hale and Kwan approached the front door. The scent of night-blooming jasmine from a nearby trellis was almost sickeningly sweet in the cool night air.

Kwan knocked, a polite, quiet sound. After a moment, the door opened, and there "she" was. The imposter "Chloe." She was wearing a soft, silk robe. Her red-gold hair was artfully messy, her smile a beacon of warm, welcoming home life. She looked utterly, convincingly, content. The picture of a woman deeply in love, secure in her perfect world.

"Yes?" she asked. Her voice was a perfect, musical imitation of the real Chloe's, though perhaps with a richer, more confident tone than the young woman actually possessed.

"Ma'am," Kwan began, his voice gentle, firm, his SHEPARD ID already in his hand. "We're federal agents. We need to speak with you and Mr… Liam, is it? About an urgent matter."

"Chloe's" smile faltered, just for a fraction of a second, a tiny, almost unnoticeable crack in the flawless facade. Hale felt it mentally too - a flicker of surprise, then a sharp, cold spike of alarm beneath the stolen warmth. "Federal agents? Is… is everything alright? Has something happened?"

Liam appeared behind her then, his expression curious, concerned. "Honey, who is it?" He saw Hale and Kwan, the grim set of their faces, and his own smile faded. "What's going on?"

This was the critical moment. Hale stepped forward, his gaze locking with the imposter's. He let his own mental senses PUSH, with a focused, undeniable pressure, a direct challenge to the stolen personality. He projected the raw, terrified echo of the real Chloe, the one they'd found bound and broken in the damp cellar - a psychic accusation more damning than any spoken word.

He felt the imposter recoil, a violent, internal flinch. The warm, loving aura of "Chloe" flickered, wavered, like a faulty hologram. For a split second, Hale saw something else in those eyes - the cold, predatory intelligence of the Shapeshifter, mixed with a dawning, cornered fury.

"Liam, darling," the imposter said. Her voice was suddenly a little too bright, a little too brittle. "Perhaps you should wait in the living room. This sounds like… official business." She was trying to isolate him, to maintain control of the story.

"No," Hale said, his voice flat, firm. "Liam stays. He needs to hear this."

The imposter's composure finally shattered. The carefully crafted mask of Chloe distorted. A slight lengthening of the jawline, a flicker of unnatural light in the eyes, the red-gold hair seeming to lose some of its shine, becoming duller, less vibrant. The stolen personality was fighting to hold, but Hale's mental assault, combined with the natural instability of the long shift, was proving too much.

"What… what is this?" Liam stammered. His gaze darted between Hale and the woman he thought was Chloe. A look of utter, horrified disbelief dawned on his face as he registered the subtle, terrifying changes. "Chloe? Your… your face…"

"It's not Chloe, Liam," Kwan said gently, stepping forward to place a reassuring hand on the young man's arm, ready to support him when the full, devastating truth hit.

The Shapeshifter - for it was undeniably them now, the illusion of Chloe rapidly breaking down - let out a hiss, a sound that was nowhere near human. The borrowed grace, the stolen charm, all of it was burning away, revealing the raw, desperate, and now enraged creature beneath. "You have no idea what you're interfering with!" they snarled. Their voice shifted, becoming deeper, harsher, losing Chloe's musical quality. Their features began to blur, to ripple, like a reflection in disturbed water.

"We know exactly what we're dealing with," Hale countered. His own mental defenses were fully up, bracing for the unavoidable backlash. The air in the small hallway grew thin, tasting of ozone and static. "The fantasy is over."

The Shapeshifter lunged with a final, desperate mental assault, a wave of sickly sweet, artificial romantic feeling washing over Hale. It was designed to confuse, to disarm, to appeal to some buried sentimentality. But it was too late. The illusion was broken, the mirror shattered.

He met the mental assault with a cold, focused wave of his own. He projected the stark, undeniable truth: the image of the real Chloe, terrified and alone in the cellar; the faces of Sarah Miller, James Keegan, Diya Raathi, their lives emptied out; the endless, gnawing emptiness at the core of the Shapeshifter's own being.

The mental backlash was immediate, violent. The Shapeshifter screamed, a raw, pained sound, as their stolen personality, their precious, perfect fantasy of being Chloe loved by Liam, was ripped away by the brutal collision with reality. Their form shook, shifting rapidly, cycling through a horrifying mix of features - a flash of Jake Riley's sun-bleached hair, a hint of Sarah Miller's frightened eyes, a dozen other fleeting, half-formed identities - before collapsing inwards, shrinking, solidifying into something… else. Something small, pale, and utterly, wretchedly, alone.

Liam stared, his face slack, his eyes wide and unfocused, trying to reconcile the woman he loved with the dissolving thing before him.

Knopff was there in an instant, moving with surprising speed. He secured the now quiet, sobbing Shapeshifter with specialized restraints designed for shapeshifters. The fight, what little there had been, was over.

Hale let out a breath that scraped in his throat. The mental strain left him feeling scoured, exhausted, and something else - the smell of artificial flowers now triggered a wave of nausea, an unwelcome reminder of the Shapeshifter's desperate hunger.

He looked at Liam, whose world had just been irreversibly, horrifically, turned upside down. The price of stolen love was always paid by the innocent. And the echoes of this particular, brutal ballet would haunt the quiet corners of Santa Cruz for a long, long time.

***

The creature that Knopff now held firmly on the floor of Chloe's - the real Chloe's - charming Victorian apartment looked nothing like the vibrant young woman, or like the sun-kissed surfer Jake Riley, or indeed like any single, clear human form Hale had ever seen.

As the last bits of the stolen "Chloe" personality had been violently stripped away by Hale's mental counter-attack, the Shapeshifter's form had twisted through a series of quick past identities before unraveling in a more basic, painful way. It was as if their very cells, so good at copying, had for a moment forgotten what they were supposed to be when no longer actively pretending to be someone else.

Now, huddled and trembling in Knopff's strong grip, they were… pitiful. Small, almost childlike in size, though their exact age was impossible to guess. Their features were unclear, almost blurred, as if their true face had been worn smooth by too many changes, or perhaps had never fully formed in the first place. Their skin was a pale, almost see-through grey, their hair a mousy, nondescript brown, thin and limp. There was an unnerving lack of symmetry to their face, a slight unevenness that hinted at a constant, unstable change. They were the opposite of the vibrant, idealized people they so desperately craved and so skillfully became. This was their base state. A blank canvas. An empty container waiting to be filled by the light and life of others.

Liam had been quickly, gently, guided into another room by Kwan. His choked sobs and horrified, disbelieving questions were a muffled, painful background noise to the scene unfolding in the hallway. Reid was already at work, his sensors quietly whirring, taking basic readings of the Shapeshifter's unique, unstable biology.

Hale knelt, ignoring the faint, sharp smell of ozone and mental distress that clung to the subdued figure. He needed to understand. He reached out with his senses and plunged into a storm of raw want.

A void of absolute loneliness. A scream without a mouth. Then the flash-bang of becoming-the sun on Jake Riley's skin, the easy triumph on the waves. The warmth of Chloe's hand in Liam's. This time it's real this time this time. Then the tiny, maddening flaw. A word spoken wrong. An imperfect glance. The borrowed skin becoming a cage. The rush fading to a gnawing itch, and the void flooding back, colder and deeper than before. Above it all, a single, primal terror: to be seen. To have the mirror turned inward and find nothing there.

He saw flashes of their past, a blur of fleeting identities, stolen moments, discarded lives stretching back years. Their drive was a desperate, endless hunger. A tragic, fundamental flaw in their being made them a parasite, a creature that could only survive by consuming the emotional essence of others. They were a living embodiment of unfulfilled desire - for the experience, for the idealized, unattainable perfection of love and belonging.

The terror of being unmasked, of being seen for the empty thing they truly were, was the final, overwhelming wave. It was the fear of the void itself, the ultimate destruction of their carefully built, though borrowed, realities. To be captured, to be studied, to be contained… it was, for them, a fate worse than death. It was the end of the becoming, the end of the dream.

Hale pulled back, his own mind aching, a dull throb of shared despair echoing within him that he couldn't seem to shake. He looked at the small, trembling figure now identified from a faded, almost featureless driver's license Knopff had found in their discarded jacket pocket as "Robin Ashby" - a name as bland and indistinct as their true form.

Robin Ashby. A creature of infinite potential for mimicry, yet with no true self to call their own.

***

The SHEPARD safe house, a sterile, functional box overlooking a less glamorous stretch of the Santa Cruz coastline, felt like a waiting room to nothingness. Robin Ashby, heavily sedated and secured in a specialized shapeshifter containment unit, was gone, already on their way to Blackwood Sanction, another unusual specimen for SHEPARD's scientists to dissect and study.

The real Chloe, after extensive medical and initial psychological questioning by Kwan and a SHEPARD trauma specialist, had been reunited with her frantic parents. Her memory of the abduction and the transformation was mercifully blurred by the drugs and the sheer trauma, though Kwan had warned her recovery would be long and difficult. Liam, her boyfriend, was a shattered wreck, struggling with a betrayal so deep, so surreal, it had shaken the very foundations of his reality. He was now under SHEPARD's careful "witness management" program - scheduled for guided memory consolidation sessions that would gradually reshape his experience into something more palatable. His official statement had already been finalized and sealed. The truth, as always, was too bizarre, too terrifying for the public.

Hale stood by the window of the safe house's common room, watching the grey morning light break over the Pacific. The mental residue of the case clung to him like sea mist - the sickly sweetness of Ashby's manufactured romances, the raw terror of the victims, the deep, aching emptiness at the core of the shapeshifter. He felt drained, hollowed out in a way that went beyond simple tiredness. The intensity of the direct mental read on Ashby had left its mark, a shared echo of their desperate loneliness that lingered like a bruise in his mind.

Kwan entered the room, carrying two mugs of coffee, his face etched with a familiar weariness. He handed one to Hale. "Chloe's on her way back to her family up north. They'll have a SHEPARD contact keeping an eye on her progress. Liam… he's going to need a lot of therapy. He keeps asking if any of it was real, if 'Chloe' ever truly loved him." Kwan sighed, taking a sip of his coffee. "How do you even begin to answer that?"

"You don't," Hale said quietly. "You let the official story take hold. You let time do its work. Eventually, it'll become a strange, bad dream he once had." He knew it was a cold comfort, a SHEPARD platitude, but it was the only one they had to offer.

Knopff came in, looking like he'd wrestled a bear and barely won, which, in a way, he had. "Ashby's secure. Transport's clean. Cromwell's already got a team sanitizing every location they used. By tomorrow, it'll be like they were never here." He grunted. "Except for the folks whose lives they tore apart."

Reid followed, datapad in hand. "Initial analysis of Ashby's base form suggests a highly unstable cellular structure, even without active transformation. It's possible their natural state is this… lack of definition. The mimicry isn't just a skill; it might be a biological need, a way to achieve temporary stability." He looked troubled. "And about the A.G.I. connection - I've analyzed that sedative injector we found at the cypress grove. The compound was military-grade, a custom neurochemical cocktail that's not available on any market. Not something Ashby could have obtained on their own. They were being supplied, supported, maybe even studied without their knowledge."

"Another layer of puppet masters," Hale mused, the thought adding another layer of bleakness to the case. "Using Ashby as an unknowing field experiment."

The four of them sat in silence for a moment, the weight of the case settling around them. It had been a successful operation, by SHEPARD standards. The anomaly was contained. The public remained unaware. The human cost, the invisible scars left on Sarah Miller, James Keegan, Diya Raathi, and now Liam and Chloe, felt immense.

"This one… this one felt different, Tom," Kwan said finally, his gaze distant, fixed on the restless ocean. "The others had a reason, however twisted. Greed. Power. This was just… need. Pure need. How do you explain to a man that the woman he loved was a reflection? That he was just a mirror she was using to feel real?"

Hale nodded slowly. He understood.

He'd felt it, directly, in the raw, unfiltered flood of Ashby's mind. The desire wasn't for power, or control, or even physical sensation in the usual sense. It was a desire for being, for experiencing the idealized essence of love and connection that their own nature denied them. A tragic, parasitic existence.

"SHEPARD will study Ashby," Reid said, his voice carefully neutral. "Try to understand the mechanism, the limits of the transformation. Maybe find a way to stabilize them, or… neutralize the ability."

"Or weaponize it," Knopff added, his tone cynical.

Hale didn't respond. He knew both were possibilities within SHEPARD's practical, often ruthless, calculations.

His responsibility, as he saw it, was to ensure the victims, the human collateral damage, were handled with as much care and discretion as the system allowed. He'd already put in a formal request for extended psychological support for Liam and Chloe, and for SHEPARD to monitor the previous victims for any long-term mental decline. It was a small gesture, easily overridden, but he had to try.

He thought of Molly Hayes, back in Appalachia, her quiet courage, her simple, unwavering empathy. He wondered, briefly, what she would make of a creature like Robin Ashby. Probably just see another lost, broken soul, he suspected.

As they prepared to leave Santa Cruz, the sun cast a brilliant, almost mocking light over the picturesque coastline. Hale watched the waves break, the case settling inside him as a series of sensory ghosts. The sickly sweetness of a stolen kiss. The damp chill of a cellar. The hollow ache of an empty soul. For Robin Ashby, the so-called Summer of Me was over.

***