No one spoke.
The old tape recorder kept turning.
The reel made a faint grinding sound.
Click.
Click.
Like some old organ slowly beating in the dark.
After the man on the recording finished saying, “I’m back,” he fell silent.
But the silence wasn’t quiet.
There were many sounds in the background.
Suppressed sobbing.
Metal striking metal.
Wheels rolling across the floor.
And someone in the distance, repeating numbers over and over.
“One.”
“Two.”
“Three…”
Several seconds passed after each number.
As if waiting for someone to respond.
The recording continued.
“Four.”
“Five.”
“Six.”
The voice was gradually drawing closer.
It wasn’t the person on the recording moving toward the microphone.
It was the number itself, as if crossing twenty-nine years one step at a time and walking into Room 402.
Jason Huang stood in the doorway, gripping his arms tightly with both hands.
“Turn it off.”
No one moved.
“Officer Lin.”
His voice began to shake.
“Turn off the recording.”
Ethan Lin stared at the spinning tape.
“Why?”
“It’s counting people.”
“Who?”
“Us.”
The words had barely left his mouth when the voice on the recording called out:
“Seven.”
There were seven people in the room.
Ethan Lin.
Jason Huang.
And five backup officers.
Everyone instinctively looked around.
There were indeed only seven of them in the old living room.
“Eight.”
The recording spoke again.
One of the officers immediately said, “There’s no eighth person here.”
Ethan Lin whipped his head around.
“Don’t answer.”
The officer froze.
“I just—”
From deep inside the room came an exceedingly faint sigh.
All the flashlights swung toward the source of the sound at once.
A narrow passage stretched behind the living room.
Two doors stood at the end.
One bedroom.
One bathroom.
The bathroom door was half open.
The light inside was off.
The flashlights could illuminate only the doorframe, not the deepest part of the room.
“Eight.”
The voice on the recording said it again.
This time, a woman answered from inside the bathroom.
“I’m here.”
The five officers instantly drew their guns.
“Police!”
“Come out!”
Jason Huang’s face went deathly pale.
“Don’t call her out.”
“Shut up.”
The armed officer kept his eyes fixed on the bathroom.
“Hands on your head! Come out slowly!”
No one appeared.
Only the sound of water dripping from the faucet.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The counting continued on the recording.
“Nine.”
The woman in the bathroom answered:
“I’m here.”
“Ten.”
“I’m here.”
“Eleven.”
“I’m here.”
She answered every time a number was called.
Her voice was exactly the same.
But its location kept changing.
The first answer came from the bathroom.
The second came from the bedroom.
The third came from outside the door behind them.
Someone in the hallway said, “I’m here.”
The officer standing at the back spun around.
There was no one outside Room 402.
But a trail of bare footprints had appeared in the dust on the floor.
The footprints extended from Room 404.
They stopped outside the door.
There was no sign of them leaving.
“Twelve.”
The voice on the recording called out the number.
This time, no one answered.
Everyone held their breath.
They waited nearly ten seconds.
Then laughter suddenly came from the tape.
It wasn’t a woman’s laughter.
It was a child’s.
“One is missing,” the child said.
“Someone hid their name.”
Jason Huang’s face grew even worse.
Ethan Lin noticed his reaction.
“You know what that means?”
Jason Huang shook his head.
But his eyes had already given everything away.
He knew.
At least, some part of him knew.
Ethan Lin didn’t press him.
The recording continued.
The counting voice stubbornly refused to say thirteen.
Instead, it began repeating itself.
“Twelve.”
“Twelve.”
“Twelve.”
With every repetition, the temperature in the living room dropped a little lower.
Their breath gradually turned into white mist.
The white sheets covering the furniture in the corner began to sway faintly.
It wasn’t wind.
It was as if people were hiding beneath the sheets.
One.
Two.
Three.
Every piece of covered furniture slowly began to bulge.
Two feet extended from beneath a chair.
The outline of shoulders appeared behind a cabinet.
Beneath the sheet on the sofa, three human shapes sat side by side.
They didn’t pull off the sheets.
They merely faced the tape recorder.
And waited in silence.
“Twelve.”
The tape called out the number again.
The figure on the far left of the sofa raised its head.
A man’s voice came from beneath the sheet.
“I’m here.”
The figure in the middle answered as well.
“I’m here.”
The one on the far right said, “I’m here.”
The three voices were different.
Male and female, of different ages.
But whenever they said “I’m here,” their tones gradually overlapped.
In the end, they became the same person’s voice.
Ethan Lin’s voice.
“I’m here.”
All five officers looked at him.
Ethan Lin himself had not spoken.
Yet the three figures on the sofa continued using his voice.
“I am Ethan Lin.”
“Case designation: 13-044.”
“I am the thirteenth.”
Ethan Lin drew his service pistol.
He aimed it at the sofa.
“Everyone back into the hallway,” he said.
Jason Huang was the first to retreat.
The other officers maintained their vigilance and withdrew slowly.
The figures on the sofa did not pursue them.
They merely turned their heads beneath the sheets, following the group’s movement.
The counting voice on the recording finally changed.
“Thirteen.”
This time, countless answers rang out inside and outside Room 402 simultaneously.
“I’m here.”
The voices came from the walls.
The ceiling.
The floor.
Beneath the furniture.
Even from everyone’s radios and phones.
“I’m here.”
“I’m here.”
“I’m here.”
The voices layered over one another.
As if dozens of people were trapped in the same narrow space, fighting to prove that they were the thirteenth.
Ethan Lin’s phone vibrated in his pocket.
He didn’t take it out.
Yet the screen lit up on its own.
Through the fabric, its white glow clearly revealed a line of text.
Identity verification in progress.
The next second, every white sheet covering the furniture in Room 402 slid off at once.
There was no furniture underneath.
And no people.
Only rows of old iron beds.
A human-shaped figure was strapped to each bed.
They wore yellowed patient gowns.
White cloth bags covered their faces.
A designation had been written on each bag’s forehead in black ink.
01.
02.
03.
All the way to 12.
The final iron bed was empty.
A number 13 placard hung at its head.
Its restraints had already been undone.
They still swayed faintly beside the bed.
The entire room, Room 402,
was no longer an abandoned apartment.
The mottled walls had turned dark green.
Old fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling.
The air was thick with the strong smell of disinfectant and burning.
Ethan Lin stared at the scene before him.
He did not step back.
One of the officers couldn’t help murmuring, “Is this… a hospital?”
The patient closest to the door, Number 01, suddenly moved.
It slowly turned its head.
From behind the cloth bag, it looked toward the officer who had spoken.
“This isn’t a hospital.”
A dry, hoarse voice came from beneath the bag.
“This is where names have stayed.”
The gun in the officer’s hand began to tremble.
“What does that mean?”
Ethan Lin immediately shouted, “Don’t ask it questions.”
It was already too late.
Patient 01 tilted its head to one side.
“You want to know?” it asked.
The officer clenched his teeth and didn’t answer.
“You want to know.”
Patient 01 confirmed it on its own.
“So you’re the new Number Twelve.”
Cold sweat broke out across the officer’s forehead.
“I’m not.”
Ethan Lin turned sharply toward him.
Another answer.
Another denial.
The officer still seemed unaware that every interaction with these voices might be completing some kind of confirmation.
Patient 01 began to struggle.
The straps binding its limbs creaked.
“You say you’re not.”
“Then who are you?”
The officer did not respond.
But his radio suddenly crackled to life.
It was his own voice.
“Officer number 5472.”
“Name: Zhang Boxun.”
“Age: twenty-six.”
Zhang Boxun’s face changed drastically.
He reached for the radio to shut it off.
But the device continued playing automatically.
“Current position: patrol officer, Heping Precinct.”
“Address: Xinzhuang District, New Taipei City—”
“Turn it off!”
Zhang Boxun yanked the radio down and smashed it against the floor.
The plastic casing cracked.
The battery flew out.
Yet the radio kept speaking even without power.
“Father: Zhang Zhenghong.”
“Mother: Xu Yufang.”
“Younger sister: Zhang Yating.”
It recited the names of his family members one after another.
Zhang Boxun completely lost control.
“Shut up!”
He raised his gun and aimed it at the radio.
Bang!
The gunshot exploded through the narrow space.
The bullet shattered the device.
Every voice stopped.
Only a buzzing like tinnitus remained.
Several seconds later, the patient lying on the first iron bed spoke softly in Zhang Boxun’s voice:
“My name is Zhang Boxun.”
From the second bed came the same words.
“My name is Zhang Boxun.”
The third bed.
The fourth.
The patients on all twelve iron beds began repeating his name at once.
“My name is Zhang Boxun.”
“My name is Zhang Boxun.”
Zhang Boxun’s face was filled with terror.
He staggered backward.
“No.”
“That’s not me.”
The twelve voices asked in unison:
“Then who are you?”
Zhang Boxun opened his mouth.
Ethan Lin rushed forward and punched him in the abdomen.
Zhang Boxun doubled over in pain.
The words about to leave his mouth were cut off by force.
“Get him out.”
Ethan Lin shoved him toward the officers behind him.
“Cover his mouth.”
“Don’t let him say anything else.”
Two officers immediately seized Zhang Boxun.
One took off his jacket, tore away a strip of lining, and stuffed it directly into Zhang Boxun’s mouth.
All twelve patients on the iron beds turned their heads.
There were no eyes beneath the cloth bags.
Yet they tracked Zhang Boxun’s departure with perfect precision.
“He’s gone,” Patient 01 said.
“The name is still here.”
Patient 02 continued, “Leave the name behind.”
Patient 03 said, “The person can leave.”
Patient 04 said, “The name can’t leave.”
The words passed from one figure to the next.
Until Patient 12 spoke.
It did not continue the previous sentence.
Instead, it said, “The thirteenth is empty.”
The entire ward fell silent.
All the cloth-covered faces turned toward Ethan Lin at once.
The restraints on the empty Number 13 bed suddenly lifted on their own.
Snap.
Snap.
All four straps slapped down onto the mattress.
As if someone were hitting the bed, inviting him to lie down.
Jason Huang stood outside the door and said quietly, “It doesn’t see you as a tenant.”
Ethan Lin didn’t turn around.
“Then what does it see me as?”
“It wants you to fill the thirteenth position.”
“Why me?”
Jason Huang stared at the empty bed.
That strange, bewildered look appeared in his eyes again.
“Because you’ve lain there before.”
Ethan Lin finally turned around.
“What did you say?”
Jason Huang was frightened by his own words.
“I don’t know.”
He pressed a hand to his temple.
A sentence suddenly appeared in my head.
“Like a memory.”
“But it isn’t mine.”
Ethan Lin looked toward the Number 13 bed.
There were many scratches on the metal rail at its head.
He moved two steps closer.
His flashlight shone across them.
They weren’t random marks.
They formed a name.
It had been scratched away so many times that only the faintest strokes remained.
Lin.
Cheng.
The final character was completely illegible.
Jason Huang stood in the doorway.
“Is that your name?”
Ethan Lin did not answer.
He reached toward the scratches.
The instant his fingertip touched the metal, a memory surged into his mind.
It wasn’t a blurry image.
It was an indescribably vivid physical experience.
He was lying on Iron Bed Number 13.
He was very young.
His wrists were so thin they could almost slip through the restraints.
The light overhead was blinding.
Someone nearby was crying.
A masked doctor stood at the foot of the bed, holding a roster.
“Final confirmation,” the doctor said.
“Anyone who hears their name must answer, ‘I’m here.’”
A child’s voice came from Bed Number One.
“I’m here.”
Number Two.
“I’m here.”
The numbers continued one by one.
Every child answered.
Until Number Twelve had finished.
The doctor looked at him.
But did not call out a name.
He only asked, “Do you still remember who you are?”
Young Ethan Lin did not answer.
The doctor stepped closer.
“Good.”
“Number Thirteen doesn’t need a name.”
“You only need to remember everyone else’s.”
The scene abruptly changed.
The blinding white light became flames.
Black smoke poured into the ward.
An alarm rang out.
Someone undid his restraints and shoved a kraft-paper file into his arms.
That person’s entire body was burning.
Their face was impossible to make out.
Yet with their final strength, they told him, “Don’t let it know that you remember.”
“Leave this place.”
“Live as a person.”
“Don’t be a file again.”
The memory ended there.
Ethan Lin jerked his hand back.
His breathing grew heavy.
A charred mark had appeared in the palm of his right hand.
As if what he had touched wasn’t a cold iron bed,
but a piece of red-hot metal.
“Captain Lin?”
The officer behind him noticed something was wrong.
Ethan Lin clenched his hand.
“I’m fine.”
“What did you see?” Jason Huang asked.
“Not sure.”
It was a lie.
Ethan Lin rarely lied at a scene.
He remembered those images.
And he knew they weren’t hallucinations.
At least, not entirely.
The patients on the twelve iron beds began to laugh softly.
“He remembers.”
“Number Thirteen remembers.”
“It can’t know.”
“But it already knows.”
Patient 12 spoke the final sentence.
As soon as the words fell, something slammed into the wall at the end of the ward.
Boom.
The impact was heavy, as if something enormous behind the wall had crashed into the concrete.
Boom.
A second impact.
Cracks appeared across the dark-green wall.
There were no bricks behind them.
Only pitch-black darkness.
Deep inside that darkness, countless voices called out names.
All of them belonged to people Ethan Lin had once known.
His deceased father.
His mother.
His police academy instructor.
Victims he had failed to save in past cases.
Those voices called to him one after another.
“Chengyu.”
“Ethan Lin.”
“Captain Lin.”
“Come back.”
The twelve patients began struggling at once.
The iron beds shook violently.
“It’s awake!”
“Close the door!”
“Send Number Thirteen back!”
“Don’t let him out!”
“Don’t let him remember!”
All the voices dissolved into chaos.
The crack in the wall widened.
A hand reached out from inside.
It was not a human hand.
The thing was made of countless overlapping fingers.
Each finger bent in a different direction.
There were no fingernails at the tips.
Instead, each fingertip bore a tiny human face.
The faces opened their mouths.
Together, they shouted, “Ethan Lin.”
Ethan Lin raised his gun.
He fired three times in succession.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
The bullets disappeared into the crack.
There was no sound of them striking flesh.
Only the rustle of paper being torn.
A mass of charred documents drifted out of the crack.
Every sheet bore his photograph.
Different ages.
Different identities.
Some showed him as a detective.
Some as a doctor.
Some as a patient.
There was even a baby picture.
But every file’s name field said Ethan Lin.
The dates of birth were all different.
“Get out!” Ethan Lin ordered.
The officers began evacuating Room 402.
But Jason Huang remained where he was.
He stared at one of the drifting documents.
“Wait.”
He bent down and picked it up.
The photograph on the document was not Ethan Lin.
It was Jason Huang.
The name field also said Jason Huang.
But the person in the photograph wore a patient gown.
Date of photograph:
March 13, 1998.
The real Jason Huang hadn’t even been born yet.
“This is me,” he murmured.
“No.”
“This person isn’t me.”
A note appeared at the bottom of the document.
Substitute identity generated successfully.
Memory implantation complete.
Estimated service period: fourteen days.
Jason Huang saw the final line.
The color drained from his face.
“Fourteen days…”
He finally understood why that number had always existed in his mind.
It wasn’t because someone had told him.
It was because that had always been the expiration period written into him.
The thing behind the wall let out a low growl.
The restraints on all twelve iron beds snapped at once.
The patients sat up.
Features gradually emerged beneath the cloth bags.
The first face was Zhang Boxun’s.
The second was Jason Huang’s.
The third was Ethan Lin’s.
The faces behind them began changing rapidly as well.
Each one became the likeness of someone present.
They were choosing.
They were mimicking.
Ethan Lin grabbed Jason Huang by the shoulder.
“Get out.”
“But this document—”
“Take it.”
Jason Huang stuffed the document inside his clothes.
They retreated into the hallway.
After the last officer crossed the threshold, Ethan Lin kicked the door.
Bang!
The door to Room 402 slammed shut.
He immediately fastened the old lock on the outside.
Violent impacts came from inside.
The door bowed outward.
“This lock won’t hold!” an officer shouted.
“It doesn’t need to hold for long.”
Ethan Lin looked toward Room 404.
“Everyone downstairs.”
“What about 404?”
“Seal it off.”
“We’re not going in?”
Ethan Lin stared at the open door at the end of the hallway.
The light inside was still bright.
A table, a bed, a refrigerator.
It looked like the most ordinary rental unit.
But he knew by now.
This wasn’t a room.
It was more like a space that constantly reassembled itself according to the identity of whoever entered.
If they went in now,
it would only give the thing more people to use.
“Fall back first,” he said.
The group began moving toward the stairs.
Ethan Lin walked at the rear.
As he passed Room 404, a phone began ringing inside.
It wasn’t Jason Huang’s phone.
It was the ringtone Ethan Lin had set exclusively for Claire Su.
He stopped.
His own phone was in his pocket.
There was no incoming call.
The ringing came from beneath the bed in Room 404.
After ringing three times,
a woman answered.
“Hello?”
Claire Su’s voice.
“Chengyu.”
“I’m already inside the apartment.”
Ethan Lin looked toward the stairs.
Claire Su was not among the group ahead.
“Where are you?”
Only after the question left his mouth did he realize he had responded.
Claire Su inside Room 404 gave a small laugh.
“I’m behind you.”
Ethan Lin did not turn around.
He drew his gun.
Then spun and charged into Room 404.
The room was empty.
The phone beneath the bed was still ringing.
He crouched and shone his flashlight underneath.
An unfamiliar phone lay beneath the bed.
The screen showed that it was on a call with “Ethan Lin.”
And beside the phone,
curled up in a ball, was a woman.
Long black hair.
A light-colored blouse.
It was Claire Su.
Her eyes were tightly shut.
Her mouth had been sewn closed with black thread.
Both hands clutched a kraft-paper file.
The cover read:
The Thirteenth Case Investigation Unit.
Ethan Lin reached for her.
Just as his fingertips were about to touch her shoulder,
his real phone suddenly vibrated in his pocket.
Claire Su had sent him a message.
I’m still in the car at the corner.
Don’t trust the me you see.
Ethan Lin looked beneath the bed.
The Claire Su inside had already opened her eyes.
The corners of her sewn-shut mouth slowly curled upward.
The black threads snapped one by one.
Blood ran down her lips.
In Claire Su’s voice, she asked, “How did you know?”
“That the one outside was the real me?”
The door closed behind Ethan Lin.
Click.
The lock engaged by itself.
On the table, the blank notice card began displaying a line of text again.
Before moving in, confirm that you are moving in alone.