Behind The Reflection: Study attempt 1

This is part 11 of 12. The FINAL PART will be released Thursday at 3:00pm.

We finally found one.

After months of failure and false alarms, the police force had finally recovered a missing person—alive, conscious, and seemingly unharmed. I, Officer Marcus Hale, was leading the patrol that found him.

He was walking along the side of the road just outside the city limits. Pale as death. His skin was stained in strange patterns—gray, almost like burn marks, but with a texture closer to ash.

We pulled over immediately. He didn’t resist. Just stared at us as we approached, his eyes cloudy but calm, as if he thought he wanted this.

Back at the department, paramedics gave him a full check-up. We contacted his family. It felt like a win. Something clean. Something good.

Detective Isaac Gutenberg was assigned to his case. It only made sense he’d be the one to speak to the victim first. You’ve got to understand something about Isaac however, he was one of the best. Somehow, he could just look at a person and know their innocence. He didn’t always explain it, but time and time again, he called it right. Almost like he could peer into a person’s soul.

But the moment he walked into that room, everything changed.

He froze in the doorway. Just stared at the man sitting across the table.

Then, after what felt like a full minute of silence, he forced a polite smile and said, “You’ve been missing for quite a while now. Caused quite the project looking for you. Where have you been hiding for twenty years?”

The man didn’t answer.

He just leaned back in his chair, stared up at the ceiling, and whispered to himself.

“Huh.”

That was it. That one word. That one reaction.

It shattered whatever calm Isaac had been holding onto.

He spun around, walked out of the room, and pulled the rest of us into the hallway like we were about to conduct a raid. Tension boiled off him in waves.

I glared at Detective Isaac, expecting an answer—something—after he’d abruptly pulled us all from the room. He spun around, locked eyes with me, and said, “Shouldn’t he be older?”

I frowned, thrown off by the question.

He continued, more agitated now. “He went missing twenty years ago. According to his police file, he should be forty-five years old.”

I paused, suddenly unsure. We never really had the clearance to dig too deep into old case files—that’s part of a mandate instituted way back in 3021. Something about preserving the objectivity of lower-level officers. So I hadn’t seen the victim’s original age.

“But look at him,” Isaac pressed, pointing back toward the room. “He’s no older than twenty-three. I guarantee it.” I glanced at the others. Silent glances passed between us—shrugs, raised brows, half-smirks. Maybe Isaac was finally losing it. It wouldn’t be impossible. He took on more stress than anyone else on the force. Saw more twisted stuff in a year than most of us saw in a lifetime. Maybe he just mixed up two different missing persons cases. Maybe he was just… tired.

That’s when the door opened behind us—and she walked in.

The victim's wife.

Isaac straightened, tense as a coiled spring. “No one moves,” he said quickly. “Just watch. Let’s see how this plays out.” i was shocked by the carelessness of that decision, if he truly believed something to be wrong, he cant just volunteer a civilian to be his guinea pig.

Nevertheless, We crowded around the one-way mirror in silence as she stepped into the room, face stiff with skepticism. She looked at the man—her husband, supposedly—and froze.

Her expression said it all.

She didn’t recognize him. Not the way a wife should.

And God help me, he looked younger than her.

Way younger.

She appeared to be around forty or so. And if Detective Isaac was right—if he hadn’t completely lost his mind—then the man sitting in that room should’ve been forty-five.

She stepped closer, hesitating. You could see the disbelief on her face, the years catching up with her all at once.

Then, cautiously, she spoke.

“Thomas? Is that you?”

He smiled. A soft, almost nostalgic smile.

“Yeah,” he said. “Funny... I haven’t heard anyone say my name without rage or hatred in—”

He stopped mid-sentence.

And for just a second, I swear to God, he looked directly through the one-way mirror. Not just in our direction—at Detective Isaac. Like he knew exactly where we were standing.

Then he turned back to his wife, that odd smile still lingering.

“—Twenty years?” he finished, like he was trying to pass a test he hadn’t studied for.

His wife blinked back tears. “Either way, it’s been too long. Why do you look like you did in college?”

He opened his mouth to answer.

But before a single word could leave his lips, the door behind us burst open.

Men in suits—serious, silent, and completely out of place—marched into the hallway and ordered us away from the mirror.

The men in suits didn’t wait. They stormed into the interrogation room with urgency, reaching for handcuffs like this man—this missing person we’d just found—was some kind of threat.

But before they could lay a hand on him, his lawyer burst through the door like a tidal wave.

I called her the moment we brought him in, just following protocol. She wasted no time. In an instant, she was in their faces, slamming down documents, shoving legal jargon down their throats with the kind of fury only a lawyer could conjure.

What followed was a chaotic blur of shouting, papers, threats, and phone calls. But in the end, the suits backed down. They couldn’t take him. Not yet.

And just like that, the man was free to go.

So he left with his wife.

Turns out, she had never moved on. Never remarried. Twenty years missing, and she’d waited.

It should have been a happy ending. A miracle, even.

But as I stood in the empty hallway, watching them walk out of the station together, hand in hand like no time had passed at all…

I couldn’t shake this feeling.

Like I’d made a terrible mistake.

Like I had just helped something go home that should’ve never been allowed to leave.

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. This is part 11 of 12, so if you are interested in how this story continues, hit subscribe. And all stories are better to talk about with friends so please share the story. thank you again, hope to see you soon.

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