Elena tumbled through the mirror-like falling through oil.
No light. No sound. Just pressure—like a thousand voices whispering behind her eyes. She landed hard on what felt like glass and slowly stood up.
It wasn't a room.
It was a replica.
The facility is perfectly mirrored. Inverted.
The hallways stretched at impossible angles. Gravity flickered—walls became floors, ceilings opened into stairwells that led nowhere. Everything shimmered like a heatwave. And it was empty.
No people. No noise. No Davis. No Reznik.
Just her.
And them.
She saw them in flashes—copies of people she knew, their features slightly off. Eyes too bright. Limbs too long. Smiles too still.
They walked the halls with casual confidence, like they belonged.
She heard whispers.
"She's here."
"The original."
"She must be unmade."
_ _ _
Elena ran.
She navigated twisted corridors, every step retracing a memory she didn't know she had. School classrooms with bleeding clocks. A childhood home where the windows were bricked shut. The hospital room where her father had died—only this time, he turned and smiled at her.
None of it was real. And all of it was hers.
Finally, she reached the heart.
A circular chamber of mirrors.
Each one showed a different version of her life. In one, she was married. In another, she had no scars. In one, she died as a child.
In the center stood a version of herself in a black coat—expression serene, hands clasped.
"You're Elena too?" she asked.
"No," the double said. "I'm the first. You are the echo."
"That's not true."
The First Elena stepped forward. "Then why did you come here? Why did you follow the mirror?"
"To stop this."
"You are this."
They collided.
It wasn't a fight of fists—but of memory.
Flashes of their lives blended—one clinging to love, the other to survival. One remembered the truth. The other, freedom.
But there could only be one.
Elena gritted her teeth. "I am the one who endured. I remember the pain. That's how I know I'm real."
The First flickered.
And cracked like glass.
_ _
Elena stumbled back into her world.
She was alone in Room 313. The mirror lay shattered, its surface bleeding black smoke.
Outside, snow fell again.
The facility was quiet. No Reznik. No Davis. No one.
She walked out into the snow, footsteps the only sound.
Behind her, the mirror whispered:
"You will never be sure which one returned."