Rhea didn't recognize the other two faces.
They appeared only for a second—ghostlike fragments in the shattered reflection, distorted and pale, but unmistakably human. One was a man, older, with silver-rimmed glasses and burn scars across his jaw. The other was a woman, her expression blank, but her eyes bright with static. Her hair floated as though she were underwater. Both faces hovered behind Nine's like sentinels, half-formed and watching.
Lex, still on his knees, gasped. "She's not alone," he said again, this time weaker, as though some part of him had glimpsed the truth and could barely hold onto it. "They're… backups. She wasn't a singular mind. She's a colony."
Rhea's skin went cold.
Kaia, barely awake, murmured in her arms, "They were left behind. Fractals."
Rhea leaned close. "Kaia, who are they?"
But the child didn't answer. Her eyes were already closed, her small hand clutching the edge of Rhea's coat. Rhea turned to Lex, whose eyes flickered now—violet, then white, then normal again. The light was fighting within him. He looked up at her like a drowning man.
"I don't know how long I can keep them out," he whispered. "They're not just memories. They're… programs. Each one designed to survive failure. And I think they've found a way to merge through me."
Rhea helped him up, every muscle in her body trembling, mind racing with fragments of her own time inside Eden's system. She knew what the Cartwright Group had done, what they'd stored. But this—this was worse than she feared.
"They weren't just building one consciousness," she said aloud, more to herself than anyone else. "They were building generations of them. Backup minds. Experimental archetypes. Prototypes of Nine, in case she failed."
She looked at the mirror again.
But it was just a mirror now—cracked, harmless. The faces had vanished.
Still, Rhea didn't feel relief.
Because deep inside, something told her: those other minds were waking up too.
And the one with the glass-rimmed eyes? He had looked directly at Kaia.
And smiled.