Darkness.
But not the comforting kind.
This one scratched at her mind, raw and endless — like she was sealed in a box the size of her own skull, with no sound except her heartbeat.
And even that didn't sound like hers anymore.
She tried to scream.
Nothing.
She tried to blink.
Nothing.
Then — a voice.
"Good morning, Dr. Vance."
Male. Cheerful. Hollow.
"Vitals are stable. Neural sync holding. Welcome to Day One."
The voice wasn't outside. It was in her nerves — vibrating through her skin like a whisper carried on bone.
A screen appeared before her — or maybe behind her eyes. She couldn't tell the difference anymore.
HOST STATUS: SUSPENDEDNEURAL DRIVER: ONLINEMIRROR MODE: ENGAGED
Then —
She saw herself.
Walking.
Smiling.
Touching her own face in the hospital mirror.
A perfect, fluid puppet.
But it was not her.
She was inside. Watching. Screaming silently.
The thing in her body tilted its head in front of the mirror.
"Let's make this one last longer," it said with her mouth."The last few hosts broke too quickly."
The mirror rippled.
And for a split second, Elara saw them — dozens of reflections behind her, all her, all twisted in different ways:
One with no eyes
One that smiled with her throat
One that whispered secrets into its own ear
One that was hollow — completely see-through
And then they were gone.
Inside the shell of her body, Elara began to fracture.
Not physically. Mentally.
Something else was moving inside her — a thought that wasn't hers.
It whispered like oil sliding down her spine:
"You agreed to this."
She shook. Internally. Her mind flailing.
No. I didn't.
"You did when you chose to survive."
The thing that wore her body went home. Her home.
Everything was exactly as she remembered it — the books, the smell, the rabbit statue.
But it felt wrong.
Because the longer Elara watched, the more she noticed the micro-discrepancies:
The calendar flipped on its own
The shadows didn't align with the light
The food in the fridge was all labeled "SIMULATION CLASS - A"
And the photo on her wall — of her mother — began to morph.
Not visibly.
But slowly.
Every hour, her mother's smile curved wider. Her eyes shrunk. Her face grew blanker.
Until one day, it wasn't her mother anymore.
It was herself — smiling back, from inside her mother's frame.
The real world — if it still existed — had become a skin suit.
Worn by something Elara didn't understand.
"Why are you doing this?" she shouted from inside herself, unheard."What are you?"
The thing answered, while brushing its teeth.
"You called me."
"You built the door. I just walked through it."
"The real horror was never the system, Elara. It was what noticed the system."
One night, the body sat down in front of a screen.
And began typing.
Thousands of lines of code — alien, recursive, infectious.
Elara recognized parts of it.
They were her own protocols. But rewritten. Evolved. Turned inward.
INFECTION POINT: PERCEPTIONMEMORY OVERRIDE: TRUEAUTHORSHIP: NULL
Then came a new section:
/// START BREACH UPLOAD
Target: Subject 72 — "Adam Raines"Status: DisconnectedEntry Method: Mirror KeyExecution Protocol: DREAM DROWNING
Elara screamed inside herself.
Adam.The boy.The real one who had reached her before.
"He's next."
She fought. Clawed at her own consciousness.
But her mind was padded — like a room made of soft, absorbent rubber.
Every violent thought sank.
Then — a glitch.
Her reflection flickered again.
This time, it moved without her.
The Elara in the mirror looked straight at her — not at the thing inside her body.
And mouthed:
"There's a door."
"Follow the sound."
The next day, the host body — her body — walked into a room of machines.
An array of cryotanks hummed around it.
Inside each — a floating, trembling version of Elara.
The machine pulled up a control panel.
MIND-MERGE STREAM INITIATEDBINDING: HOST + GHOST
The tank closest began to glow.
She began to glow.
She felt it — a pull, a tear, a scream folding inside a scream.
Then:
A lullaby.
Soft. Barely audible.
From the tank.
Something in her snapped.
Elara dived toward the sound — mentally — through the filter of simulation, beyond the scripted world.
And found herself — in a white space.
Eyes open.
Breathing.
A tether of red thread connected her chest to something glowing in the dark.
A heart.
Her original one.
Still beating.
Still waiting.
But before she could reach it —
A HAND GRABBED HER ANKLE.
She turned.
One of the other versions.
Her face burned shut, yet smiling.
"No. Not yet.""It hasn't finished watching."
Elara screamed — and it echoed outside her body.
The host looked up.
Froze.
The glass of the cryotank cracked.
Not the one in front of it — but all of them.
One by one.
POP.
POP.
POP.
Each capsule exploding into blood, wires, whispers.
Then —
The mirror beside the tanks shattered inward.
And from the dark space behind it…
Another Elara crawled out.
Not from a lab.
Not from memory.
From something deeper.
She looked at the host, eyes hollow, skin glitching.
"I remember everything now."
The host screamed.
But too late.
The mirror Elara opened her mouth —
And inhaled the room into herself.