The voice that crackled across the comm system wasn't just familiar—it was seared into the edges of Amelia's subconscious, like a forgotten lullaby drenched in dread.
"Welcome home, Version Eleven," said the voice. Calm. Feminine. Chilling. "This is your trial. And you must walk it alone."
Dr. Vera Chen—no, not her—Dr. Vera. One of the architects of the Mirror project. Long presumed dead. Yet her voice was as clear as morning frost and just as sharp.
Kestrel grabbed Amelia's arm as she started toward the vault doors of Mirror Node 2. "You don't have to do this. We find another way. We always find another way."
Amelia looked at him—really looked. There was a war in her eyes: terror braided with something raw and resolute.
"She said evolution only happens if I enter alone," she whispered.
Dominic stepped forward, tension radiating off him like heat. "And you believe her? After everything we've seen—after what she did to you?"
Eris, standing at the edge of the access ramp, was the only one who stayed silent. Watching. Calculating.
"She created Echo," Amelia said. "She made me. She knows what I'm becoming… and what's coming next."
Dominic's voice dropped. "We just got you back."
"And I don't want to disappear again," Amelia replied. "But if there's even a chance that this leads to answers—about me, about Echo—then I have to go."
Kestrel's hand dropped from her arm. Not in defeat. In surrender.
Eris stepped in. "Then you don't go in without backup. Here." She tossed something small and black into Amelia's palm—a slim communications band, matte-finished with a red shimmer barely visible under its surface.
"Failsafe. Buried code. Mirror can't trace it."
Amelia gave a nod of thanks, but her eyes stayed locked on the monolithic doors yawning open ahead of her—into the mouth of Node 2.
The doors hissed apart with a final groan, and darkness swallowed her whole.
The air inside was colder. Sterile. Yet heavy with memory, like the space had been waiting for her. Lights flickered on in sequence as she walked, illuminating a corridor of seamless black walls etched with symbols that shifted if she looked too long.
Echo stirred immediately.
You shouldn't have come here.
"I had to," Amelia murmured.
They're not going to let you leave whole.
"I'm already in pieces."
At the end of the corridor, the chamber opened like a wound. Vast. Circular. Lit from above with a spectral white light that glimmered like frost.
Amelia froze.
Dozens of pods lined the walls. Each one held a figure.
Each figure was her.
Pale. Motionless. Perfect.
Clones.
Echo's voice was a whisper against her skull. > You're not the first. Just the only one who survived.
Amelia stepped forward slowly, breath shallow. Her fingers brushed the glass of one pod—her own face stared back. Eyes shut.
Peaceful.
"Why?"
The voice returned, over the chamber's speakers. "Trial One was survival. Trial Two is clarity. You must understand what you are… and what you were never meant to become."
The lights dimmed. One of the pods flickered.
Its occupant opened her eyes.
And smiled.
Outside, the tension was boiling.
Dominic paced back and forth at the camp they'd set just outside the node. "She should've been back by now. This feels wrong."
Kestrel leaned against a railing, watching the entry portal like it might whisper secrets. "We agreed to give her time."
"She's in danger."
"She knows how to fight."
Eris walked over, lifting a data tablet. "No signals yet. But the failsafe is active. If she screams, we'll hear it."
Dominic turned to Kestrel. "You're too calm.
Did you two plan this?"
Kestrel didn't answer at first. His jaw clenched. Then he said, "We knew there'd come a time she'd have to face this alone. We just didn't know it would be so soon."
Dominic's fists tightened. "If she dies in there—"
"She won't," Kestrel cut in, cold and final.
But in his chest, something twisted.
Inside the chamber, the clone's voice was soft. Familiar. Terrifying.
"You're not the original," she said, tilting her head.
Amelia blinked. "Excuse me?"
"You were the last one they made. The desperate attempt. You're not the first. I am. The one before the fall. The one before Echo."
Amelia's pulse spiked. "You're a failed version."
The clone smiled wider. "Or I'm the one they meant to keep. And you're the infection."
Echo's presence throbbed behind Amelia's eyes. > She's lying. Don't let her in.
"She's not real," Amelia hissed. "Just another ghost in a glass tomb."
"But I am real," the clone said, stepping from the pod like fluid shadow. "And if you stay here long enough… you'll see how easily identity unravels."
The lights flickered again.
The voice of Dr. Vera returned.
"Let the trial begin."
The doors of the chamber slam shut. Amelia and her clone face each other as lights dim to red. And behind the clone's eyes… Echo glows.