The announcement came during second period.
"All students report to the auditorium immediately. This is a mandatory assembly."
No one questioned it. No one asked why the teachers looked pale or why Principal Morrow's voice cracked over the speaker like it hadn't in decades.
Harper's stomach twisted.
She knew she hadn't triggered this.
Someone – or something – had.
She grabbed Morgan's wrist before she could fall into line with the others.
"This isn't normal," Harper whispered.
"Nothing here is," Morgan replied.
The entire school gathered in the auditorium. Hundreds of students filed into rows like chess pieces. Too quiet. Too obedient.
Harper scanned the crowd. Eyes vacant. Posture rigid.
Only a few students looked unsettled. Morgan. Eli. A freshman girl Harper had seen crying in the hallway near the old west wing while coming during the assembly.
They were the ones remembering.
The cracks were spreading.
The stage lights flicked on.
Principal Morrow stepped forward. Except... it wasn't quite him.
His eyes glitched — too slow to blink. His mouth moved a fraction ahead of his words.
"We are gathered," he began, voice too smooth, "to discuss the recent breach in protocol who is doing this WE NEED ANSWER."
A screen lowered behind him.
It displayed Harper's notebook page.
"I'm not the glitch. I'm the virus.
I'm not the rewrite. I'm the reboot.
You wanted silence. I'm the scream."
Her handwriting. Her name.
Harper stood up.
"Yeah. I wrote that.."
Gasps rippled through the auditorium.
Morgan clutched her arm. "Are you sure?"
Harper's eyes burned. "If I don't speak now, we all vanish in alphabetical order.And you know everything Principal Sir u are just not speaking"
She walked down the aisle slowly, every step echoing like a drumbeat.
The stage lights blinked — flicker. Flicker. Flicker.
The system was trying to destabilize her.
But Harper Quinn was past being afraid.
She took the mic from Morrow — who froze, mid-glitch, mouth twitching like static trying to form a scream.
She faced the sea of students.
"You feel it, don't you?" she said. "That hollow tug in your chest. That sense something's off."
Silence.
Then murmurs.
She continued. "You forget things that mattered. Faces you should've known. Jamie Lorne the old one. Katherine Quinn. Half of you had classes with them."
More murmurs. A few students straightened. Confused. Alarmed.
"They told us we're just tired. Just distracted. But we're not. We're being rewritten."
She held up the notebook. "This school has a script. One we're forced to follow. Smile. Obey. Forget."
Harper took a breath.
"But we don't have to."
Suddenly, the screen behind her flickered.
Footage of Jamie appeared. Then Morgan. Then Harper.
All versions of them — distorted, corrected, smiling when they shouldn't.
The system's voice boomed:
"Disruption detected. Reset required. Beginning purge protocol—"
"NO!" Harper screamed.
The lights exploded above her. Students shrieked.
The screen shattered, raining sparks.
Then… the emergency lights kicked in.
A red glow bathed the room.
And someone in the crowd stood up.
"...Jamie?" Harper whispered.
It was him.
He looked confused. His hand trembled as he touched his own face, like he wasn't sure it was really there.
"I remember," he said hoarsely. "You… you made me remember."
Dozens of students stood now, eyes wide, gasping, weeping, as names and moments rushed back.
The freshman girl clutched a bracelet. "My brother gave me this. He—he went here. He…"
Voices rose like thunder.
"They erased my cousin."
"My sister disappeared mid-year."
"I had dreams about a door. Room 13A."
And at the center of it all: Harper.
Holding the notebook like it was a blade.
"I'm not afraid of mirrors anymore," she said. "I'm not afraid of you."
Behind her, Morrow twitched once, violently — then collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
And in the silence that followed, the walls shivered.
Cameras blinked back to life.
The windows – once clouded – now showed the real sky.
Reflections began cracking in the hallways.
Room 13A's door creaked open, on its own.
And somewhere deep in the system, a warning flashed:
"ERROR: Version Harper-Current no longer compliant.
Status: Uncontained anomaly."