The house was quiet again.
Too quiet.
Three days had passed since the escape, since the explosion that took The Cell down in a blaze of fire and steel, since Dave's last words echoed in her ears like a final breath.
Bertha hadn't asked a single question since that night. She never mentioned Dave again—because she never knew him to begin with. To her, he was just another name on the long list of Emma's "drama." She made her thoughts clear with every eye roll, every sarcastic comment, every loud sigh when Emma didn't do something fast enough.
"Whatever mess you got into, keep it out of my house next time," she'd muttered that morning while watering her half-dead plants.
Emma didn't argue. She was too tired.
Instead, she tried to slip into her normal routines. She and Nathan walked to school together again, though both of them felt like strangers in the halls. Nothing about tests and lunchtime gossip mattered after what they'd survived. And no one around them would ever know.
On Wednesday afternoon, Emma sat alone at the kitchen table, tracing circles into a coaster with the tip of her finger. The clock ticked loud against the silence. A weak sun filtered through the blinds. She hadn't moved for like fifteen minutes.
In front of her, a mug of coffee had long gone cold.
She didn't notice. She was thinking about the mirror.
Earlier that day, she'd walked past the mirror in the hallway and seen something—or someone. A flash of motion. A shimmer like heat over pavement. She turned back, heart pacing, but nothing was there. Nothing but her own reflection and the shadows behind her.
She told herself it was stress. Lack of sleep. Maybe even grief.
But part of her knew better.
She felt it again now—something just out of reach. Like someone watching from inside the walls.
Nathan arrived around six, tapping softly on the back door the way he always did now—like someone still expecting danger.
Emma let him in wordlessly. He noticed the untouched coffee
"You okay?" he asked.
She nodded, then shook her head. "I don't know. I think I'm seeing things."
Nathan tensed, stepping closer. "Like what?"
"Reflections. And the face of one particular girl.
He didn't laugh. He didn't scoff or tell her she was imagining it. That was why she had told him.
"What if your powers aren't completely gone?" he asked.
"I thought when the building blew, it all ended. That I was normal again."
Nathan sat beside her. "Maybe not. Maybe it's like… a scar. Something that stays even after the wound heals."
Emma stared at the mug. "It doesn't feel like a scar. It feels like something trying to come back."
Silence fell between them.
And then the lights flickered.
Once. Twice.
Emma froze. "Did you see that?"
Nathan looked at the ceiling. "Yeah."
They waited. No sound. No footsteps. No wind. Just the low hum of the fridge and the ticking of the old wall clock.
Emma stood slowly, moving toward the hallway.
The mirror was still there.
She approached it cautiously, the way someone might approach a sleeping animal. Her own reflection greeted her—tired, pale, eyes ringed with shadows. But as she leaned in—
There. Behind her shoulder.
A girl. Small. Freckles. A yellow hairpin holding her hair back.
Emma gasped and spun around.
She turned back.
The mirror was empty—just her again.
Nathan came up behind her, eyes wide. "Did you see anything?"
Emma nodded slowly.
Nathan's voice was quiet. "You think it means something?"
Emma swallowed hard. "I think… whatever I was connected to—it's not done with me yet."