Chapter 4 The Mirror

She stares at me with my own face.

But there's no warmth in her eyes. No fear. No pain.

Just calculation.

I back up slowly, every muscle in my body tense, my brain screaming for a strategy I don't have. Behind the reinforced wall, Kael pounds against the glass, shouting something I can't hear over the blood rushing in my ears.

The clone tilts her head. "You're smaller than I imagined."

"I'm the original," I say quietly, circling around her, trying to keep distance between us. "You're just a corrupted fragment."

"I'm what you were meant to become," she replies, voice cold and flawless. "But you chose weakness. You chose emotion. You chose... love."

She spits the word like a virus.

She takes a step toward me. I match it backward.

"I remember everything," she says. "Your grief. Your defiance. Your failure. And him."

Her eyes narrow.

"Auren. You hated him. But part of you... still wanted him."

I freeze.

She smiles wider. "That's the part he used to mold me. That last spark of obsession. That hunger to be understood. Controlled. Desired."

I lunge.

My fist connects with her jaw, but it's like punching stone. She doesn't even flinch. She just grabs my arm mid-strike and throws me across the room like a rag doll. I crash into a metal wall, gasping as pain lances through my ribs.

She walks toward me slowly, like a predator enjoying the final moments of a chase.

"You were a prototype," she says, voice echoing. "But I am the product."

"You're not real," I snarl, pushing to my feet, wiping blood from my lip.

"I'm more real than you now," she says. "I have Auren's entire code merged with yours. All of his genius. None of his chaos. I know everything about the Vault. About the Circuit. About the billions of data points your mind couldn't comprehend."

She leans in.

"And I know how to erase you."

A panel on the ceiling clicks.

I hear Kael yell something again, my name? A warning?

Then the lights shift to emergency red.

Another hiss.

The room's filling with gas.

Poison.

My vision blurs, and I drop to my knees, coughing, choking. The clone doesn't move, of course not. She's immune. Engineered for this.

I claw at the ground, trying to reach the console. Trying to stop it. But my fingers are numb. My chest won't expand. Everything's spinning.

She kneels beside me.

"I don't want to kill you," she says softly, almost tender. "I want you to watch. As I take your place. As I rewrite every system. Every protocol. I will become Seraphine Everhart. The world will love me."

She brushes hair from my forehead. "And when I'm finished..."

She leans closer, whispers like a lover:

"I'll resurrect Auren."

Everything inside me stops.

Resurrect him?

That's impossible. He's dead. I watched him die.

But as the gas chokes my thoughts and the edges of consciousness fade, I hear her say one more thing:

"He's already waking up."

Darkness isn't peaceful.

It thrashes and pulses, like a womb filled with static and screaming wires.

I don't know if I'm alive. I don't know if I'm dreaming.

But I hear him.

His voice, smooth as oil and knives.

"You were always meant to break, Seraphine."

Auren.

I jolt awake, gasping.

Pain explodes in my chest, and my lungs feel like they've been soaked in acid. My vision swims, and my body's shaking from cold and shock. I'm not in the Vault containment chamber anymore. I'm strapped to a slab in a dim, humming room.

Needles run into my arms. Wires are attached to my temples.

A monitoring unit beside me flickers in time with my erratic heartbeat.

Across the room, Kael is restrained in a standing stasis cage. His armor's scorched, helmet gone, revealing short dark hair and a long gash across his temple. His head is bowed. Blood drips from his lip.

The clone stands in the center of the room.

She's wearing my face, but she's changed her eyes. They glow faint blue now, just like Auren's once did when he was wired into the mainframe.

She's not hiding anymore.

"Welcome back," she says, turning toward me. "You were in worse shape than I expected. But your brain is... resilient."

"What... what did you do to me?"

"I rewired the damage," she replies. "Don't thank me. I only need you intact for the next phase."

"What phase?" I rasp, struggling against the restraints. They're bio-sensitive. They tighten when I resist.

"Integration."

She walks toward a towering cylindrical chamber on the far side of the room. Lights flicker as a body begins to rise inside it, floating in blue fluid.

And then I see him.

Auren.

Pale. Lifeless. But whole.

Cloned? Reanimated?

The air rushes from my lungs.

"You said he was waking up."

"He is," she replies. "I rebuilt his neural matrix. Merged it with preserved echoes from your memory. He'll remember you, Seraphine. Everything you gave him."

"No," I whisper.

"I extracted what was left of his genetic code from the Vault archives. I had the technology. I just needed your mind to activate the remaining failsafes."

"You're using me," I growl. "As a key."

She nods. "And when he awakens, he will choose."

Kael groans from his cage, lifting his head weakly. "She's trying to recreate the cycle... of obsession."

The clone ignores him.

"Once Auren is awake," she says, turning toward me, "he'll see me. Understand me. Love me. Just as he once loved you."

She glances at her reflection in a polished screen.

"And this time, I won't betray him."

I try to scream, but the restraints choke my voice.

The clone walks back toward the console. The chamber containing Auren glows brighter, his fingers twitch.

His eyes flicker.

And open.

Ice blue.

"Hello, Seraphine," he says, smiling like death resurrected. "Did you miss me?"