Adrian
It started with the mirror.
Not the old kind—the tall one bolted to the back of my dorm closet, cracked at the bottom like someone had tried to kick their reflection out of it.
No. It was the one in the abandoned observatory above the old east wing. The one that shouldn't have existed anymore. The one they said had been removed after the incident last year.
But it was there. And it knew me.
I didn't go looking for it. Not really. I was following Rhea.
I saw her disappear past the chemistry labs during fourth period, slipping through a door that should have led nowhere. By the time I reached it, it was gone—the hallway folded in like it was never there.
But something was left behind.
A single line scratched into the floor.
> "Not all mirrors reflect. Some remember."
---
Rhea
He was getting too close.
Not just physically. Emotionally. Pattern-wise.
I watched him through the vent in the observatory wall, my breath fogging the edges of the panel as he stepped into the room I thought I'd locked. His reflection greeted him before he reached the mirror's edge.
But it wasn't right.
It moved too slow. It blinked too fast. It smiled when he didn't.
> "You shouldn't be here," I whispered.
But he couldn't hear me.
The mirror did.
The next morning, I woke up in bed.
No library. No Rhea. No dust or books or stitched mouths.
Just the sound of the morning bell clanging through the cold air and the faint sting of sweat at the back of my neck.
A dream. That was the easy answer.
But the mark beneath my collarbone burned.
And there was dust on the soles of my feet.
I didn't see Rhea all day.
Not in the hallways. Not in the courtyard where she usually disappeared into that shadowed edge of the hedge maze. Not even in Calculus, where she sat two rows behind me and never raised her hand but always turned in perfect work.
It was like she'd never been there.
Like the night never happened.
But I knew better now. Knew what it felt like when reality bent and something older than truth bled through the cracks.
I spent most of the afternoon staring at my notebook. The page in front of me was covered in that symbol again—over and over, tighter each time, like my hand had been trying to draw something out of itself. Circle. Slash. Curve. Deeper. Again.
The Lock.
Rhea's voice came back to me in pieces.
> "Children like you."
> "They didn't find you… they made you."
I flipped through every page of the notebook like I was hoping for answers to bloom in the margins.
What I found instead was a page near the back—one I didn't remember writing on.
It wasn't in my handwriting.
But it was mine.
> "Do not trust the mirrors."
I stared at it.
Then I looked up.
The classroom had emptied.
Somewhere between page three and page twenty-one, I'd lost time again.
I didn't go to my dorm. I didn't want to be alone in a room with mirrors.
So I went to the gym building, slipped past the doors with the broken lock, and climbed the stairwell to the top floor—the one they'd closed off after the accident no one ever talked about.
The windows up there were all boarded. The lights were long dead. It smelled like dust and mildew and time.
And she was there.
Rhea stood in front of the old wall-length mirror in the ballet studio, her reflection not quite matching her movements. Her hand lifted slowly, trailing her fingertips along the cracked glass—but in the mirror, her hand stopped.
Didn't move at all.
I felt the chill before I even spoke.
"You lied."
She didn't turn around.
"I said a lot of things," she murmured. "Which one do you mean?"
"You said they erased who I was. Hid it beneath the floorboards."
Her gaze met mine in the reflection now—sharp, calm, endless. "They did."
"But you didn't tell me why."
She turned then, fully facing me. The mirror behind her shivered. "Would it have mattered?"
"Yes."
Rhea exhaled. Walked toward me again. This time, slower. Like she didn't want to scare whatever part of me still believed this could all be undone.
"They broke you," she said quietly. "You were never supposed to wake up. Not like this. Not so soon."
"What was I?" My voice was hoarse. "Before."
She tilted her head. "You were a weapon."
The word landed like a fist.
"No," I whispered.
"You were trained," she said. "Conditioned. Built. Not from birth—no, that would've made you predictable. They used pain. Silence. Chemicals. Triggers."
I backed up.
"You killed someone, Adrian. When you were ten."
I stopped breathing.
"You weren't supposed to remember it. But it's coming back, isn't it?"
I saw blood again.
A room with no ceiling.
A scream that didn't stop.
"I was a kid," I whispered.
"You were a test."
My hands were shaking.
I wanted to run.
But I couldn't stop listening.
"Why do you know all this?" I asked, voice shaking. "What are you, Rhea?"
She walked up to me, placed something cold in my hand. A photo. Folded. Old.
I opened it.
Two children. A girl with her mouth stitched shut.
And me.
Smiling.
"She was my sister," Rhea said, her voice flat now. "You were the last one who saw her alive."
Silence.
I looked up slowly.
"You came here to get revenge."
She didn't deny it.
Instead, she reached for me, pressed her fingers to the place where the mark burned beneath my collarbone.
"I came here," she said, "to wake you up."
And as she touched me, everything broke open.
Not memory.
Not yet.
But the wall inside me cracked—and the thing behind it smiled.
The thing inside me didn't speak.
Not with words.
It remembered.
And that was worse.
Rhea's touch was gone, but the heat of it remained. Like a brand. My hands trembled around the photo—creased and grainy, but undeniable. That was me. Standing behind the girl with the sewn lips. Smiling like I didn't know what pain was.
Or like I'd already learned.
I dropped the photo.
"I don't remember that," I whispered.
"You will."
I looked up sharply. "Why? So I can hate myself? Is that what you want?"
"No," Rhea said softly. "I want you to know yourself. Even the parts they buried. Especially those."
The mirror behind her had gone dark—no longer a reflection, but a surface of black glass. My own face no longer stared back at me.
Only the outline of a door.
No handle.
No hinges.
Just the faintest crack running down its center.
"Why me?" I asked her. "Why not destroy me and be done with it?"
She stepped back, her expression unreadable. "Because you're not just the one who ended it. You're the one they built it for."
The black door in the mirror flickered.
And then it opened.
A sound tore through my skull—high and wrong and mechanical. I staggered back. But Rhea didn't move. Her eyes never left mine.
And through the mirror, I saw it:
A white hallway. Endless. Fluorescent lights that buzzed like flies. Blood smeared on the tiles. A girl running barefoot. My voice, somewhere behind her.
Calling her name.
But I didn't remember the name.
Only the sound of it breaking.
I grabbed the ballet bar to steady myself. My lungs felt like they were being squeezed from the inside.
"I don't want this," I choked.
"No," Rhea said. "But you need it."
The mirror glitched. Static raced across its surface.
The hallway blurred.
Then, suddenly, it changed.
And I was looking at my dorm room.
Now.
Empty.
Except for the boy standing in the middle of it.
Me.
But not me.
His eyes were wrong.
Empty.
His arms hung too straight. His smile looked like it had been stapled on.
My blood ran cold.
"That's what they left behind," Rhea said. "The part of you that follows orders. That doesn't ask questions. That stays quiet and perfect."
"I'm not like that," I snapped.
"You were."
The mirror shimmered again.
And this time, I saw something else:
A small room.
Metal walls.
A steel table bolted to the floor.
A pair of gloves.
And a child—me, again—sitting cross-legged with a blank expression.
Hands painted red.
I stumbled back, but there was nowhere left to run. The mirror wasn't a mirror anymore. It was a window. A warning. A memory too long silenced.
The floor beneath me creaked.
I looked down.
A hatch.
Wooden. Old.
Familiar.
Beneath the floorboards.
"No," I muttered. "No, I'm not ready."
Rhea reached for the hatch.
And when she opened it, something inside me screamed.
Not out loud.
But inside. Deep. Ancient.
A scream I'd once buried.
I dropped to my knees.
Fell through.
---
The room below had no doors.
No windows.
Just stone.
And light that came from nowhere.
I was alone.
But I wasn't.
Chains clinked behind me.
A child's voice whispered:
> "You said we were safe now."
I turned.
But there was no one there.
Only a symbol carved into the wall. Fresh. New.
Circle. Slash. Curve.
My mark.
And I remembered.
Not the whole thing.
Not yet.
But enough.
The feel of steel under skin.
The girl they told me to hurt.
And the way I did it without asking why.
The tears that came after.
The voice that said, Good. Again.
I fell to the floor.
Breathing in dust.
Tasting blood.
Above me, the hatch creaked shut.
And I knew—I knew—
I wasn't getting out of this room until I remembered everything.
And maybe not even then.