Zhang's fingers slipped on the last rusted rung—not from sweat, but because the metal briefly turned to paper beneath his grip, the edges fluttering like the torn leaf of a book. He hauled himself onto the rooftop just as the campus clock struck three for the second time that hour, its chimes warping into static halfway through.
Lin stood perfectly still near the eastern ledge, her blazer sleeves rolled to expose forearms mapped with fresh equations written in what looked like dried blood. But it was the figure beside her that froze Zhang's breath in his throat: himself. Same leather jacket, same stance, same slight tilt of the head that he'd practiced in mirrors before important scenes. Except the copy's skin had the waxy sheen of a mannequin, and when it turned toward him, the afternoon sun passed straight through its torso. No shadow.
"Took you long enough," the double said, its voice layered with Zhang's own inflections but underpinned by something mechanical—like a voice actor reading lines phonetically.
Lin didn't look up from the notebook she was scribbling in, the pen digging deep enough to tear holes in the paper. "He's not the one who was late." Her glasses reflected the equations crawling up the double's neck like tattoos. "The narrative expected you seventeen minutes ago."
The double smiled. A strip of its cheek peeled away, revealing pulsing code beneath. "Funny thing about expectations." It stepped closer to Zhang, its boots leaving no prints on the rain-damp concrete. "They're just someone else's stage directions."
Zhang's hand flew to his pocket—the Zippo was gone. In its place, he found a brokerage statement dated tomorrow, the numbers inverted and bleeding upward. "What the hell is this?"
Lin finally looked up. Her pupils were dilated black, swallowing the irises whole. "An audition." She nodded toward the double. "He's what the story wants you to be."
The copy spread its arms in a mockery of Zhang's signature charismatic pose from Chapter Eleven. Its jacket melted into a tailored suit mid-gesture, then a lab coat, then the tattered hoodie he'd worn during his poverty arc—cycling through every version of him that had ever been written. "I'm the you that survives the edits," it said.
A gust of wind tore through the rooftop. Zhang stumbled back as the double's form flickered—for one horrifying second, he saw himself strapped to a hospital bed, electrodes burrowing into his temples while faceless figures adjusted dials labeled *CHARACTER COHERENCE*. Then it was gone, replaced by the smiling copy again.
Lin's notebook hit the ground with a wet slap. The pages were sodden with ink still spreading, forming words that hadn't existed when she'd dropped it: *THE EDITOR IS COMING*.
The double's head snapped toward the roof access door. "Too late." Its voice lost all pretense of humanity, collapsing into a single frequency that vibrated Zhang's fillings. "They're already here."
Zhang followed its gaze. The door handle was turning—not clockwise or counterclockwise, but *inward*, as though someone was pulling from a dimension where directions worked differently.
Lin wiped her bloody equations onto her slacks. When she grasped Zhang's wrist, her fingers were colder than the void behind the double's eyes. "Last chance," she whispered. "Do you want to be the hero..."
The door burst open.
"...or the error?"
Between one blink and the next, the double was simply *gone*—not vanishing, but *unwritten*, its absence leaving a afterimage of perfect protagonist proportions burned into Zhang's retinas.
From the doorway, three figures stepped onto the rooftop in perfect synchronization. They wore identical gray suits and featureless masks, each moving with the unsettling precision of automated punctuation. The lead figure held a pen that dripped liquid eraser fluid.
Lin exhaled sharply. "Ah." Her grip on Zhang's wrist tightened. "The proofreaders."
The nearest mask tilted toward them. Where a mouth should have been, a zipper parted to reveal rows of shifting letters that formed a single word:
**REDACT.**
Zhang's vision went white. The last thing he heard was the sound of pages tearing.