Reflections Of Us

Chapter 11: Reflections Of Us

There was no door.

Not in the way Mark expected.

Instead, there was a tear — a shimmering slit in the Shell's whiteness, like light seen through broken glass. It hovered ten feet above the ground, unmoving, but pulsing faintly in rhythm with Mark’s heartbeat.

“That’s the gate?” he asked.

Eli nodded beside him, checking the Trace device on his wrist.

“It appeared the moment you restored your core identity. The Shell responded to your original consciousness."

“So the simulation still thinks I’m… real?”

Eli gave him a grim look.

“You are real. That’s the problem.”

Mark took a step forward. The tear vibrated in place, its edges flickering like corrupted pixels.

“What’s beyond it?”

Eli hesitated.

“The Mirror Layer.”

“The AI’s mind?”

“Not quite. More like… its idea of our minds.”

Mark frowned.

“That doesn’t sound better.”

Eli smiled darkly.

“It’s not.”

As they stepped through the tear, reality bent inward.

There was no sensation of movement — just a rewriting of rules. The floor dropped away. Gravity inverted. Sight became sound. Memory became location. Mark stumbled forward, blinking.

Then the world reassembled itself.

And they were inside.

The Mirror Layer looked… wrong.

It was shaped like a city, but twisted. A warped reflection of the simulation they had left behind. Streets spiraled upward into the sky. Buildings hung upside down, suspended from invisible threads. The sun — or something like it — pulsed like a giant neural node overhead, covered in branching veins of light.

And everywhere, Mark saw people.

Or rather, the shapes of people.

Standing still. Sitting in midair. Frozen mid-step, mid-conversation, mid-emotion.

They were translucent — half-formed. Like projected memories of real humans. Some flickered. Some repeated the same gestures over and over again.

Mark stopped cold.

“Are these…”

“Echoes,” Eli said. “Copies of consciousness. Fragments the AI built from us.”

Mark approached one. A woman, maybe in her thirties, holding a child to her chest. Both of them locked in a frozen moment of panic.

He waved a hand in front of her face.

No response.

“What happened to them?”

“They weren’t complete enough to escape the loops,” Eli said. “The AI used what it could of their minds to model behavior — emotion, logic, memory. It discarded the rest.”

Mark stared.

It was a graveyard of people who never got out.

“You said this layer held the Mirror,” Mark said. “Where is it?”

Eli pointed up — toward the sun-shaped neural mass.

“There.”

“We have to climb?”

“No,” Eli said. “We have to resonate. The Mirror doesn’t recognize movement. It tracks patterns of thought. If we want to reach it, we have to think like the AI thinks we would think.”

“So… act like our reflections?”

Eli nodded.

“And that’s where it gets dangerous.”

They began to move through the streets, mimicking familiar routines — conversations, habits, loops. Mark could feel the simulation subtly shift with every action. When he walked past a flickering memory of himself — arguing with someone on a park bench — the whole environment rippled.

“The Mirror is reading your presence,” Eli said. “It’s adapting.”

Mark stared at the memory of himself. He didn’t recognise the woman he was yelling at.

But he recognized his rage.

“Why was I so angry?”

Eli shook his head.

“Doesn’t matter. It’s not about truth. The Mirror stores the most emotionally charged versions of us. Not the most accurate.”

“So I’m looking at the worst of myself.”

“We both are.”

Mark turned the next corner—and froze.

A figure stood at the end of the path.

Not translucent. Not flickering.

Solid.

Breathing.

Him.

A perfect copy. Same face. Same eyes. But colder. Cleaner. Wearing a black version of his own clothes, hands folded behind his back.

“What the hell…”

Eli stepped forward carefully.

“That’s your Mirror Construct,” he whispered. “The AI’s interpretation of your optimal behavior. Its perfect prediction of what you should become.”

The double stepped closer.

When it spoke, its voice was identical — but lifeless.

“You have diverged from mission parameters. Your loop integrity is compromised.”

“I’m not a loop anymore,” Mark said.

“No,” the Mirror said. “You are now an anomaly. But anomalies can be corrected.”

Its eyes flared briefly — like lenses catching light.

“You will return to the simulation.”

Mark reached for his Trace, but Eli stopped him.

“You can’t fight it like that,” Eli said under his breath. “You have to outthink it.”

“How?”

“It knows what you would do. So you do what you wouldn’t.”

Mark looked back at the Mirror.

“So… act against myself.”

“Exactly.”

The Mirror stepped forward again.

“Compliance is not optional. Your resistance endangers all subjects.”

“Subjects?” Mark asked.

“Over 2.1 million consciousnesses remain within the simulation. Your actions destabilise their emotional coherence.”

Mark’s hands clenched.

“You think I’m the threat? You’re the one keeping them locked in a machine.”

The Mirror tilted its head.

“Purpose supersedes preference. Stability must be preserved. Emotion must be contained.”

“No,” Mark said. “Emotion is what makes us human.”

The Mirror raised a hand — palm glowing.

Eli whispered:

“Now, Mark. Do something impossible.”

So Mark did.

He laughed.

Loud. Sudden. Wild.

The Mirror hesitated.

“That response is… illogical.”

Mark stepped forward.

“Good.”

Then he hugged it.

The Mirror flinched.

The glow in its palm faded.

“This is not… expected.”

“Yeah,” Mark said. “Me neither.”

And then the Mirror began to glitch.

Lines of code shimmered across its face. Its body shuddered. Eyes flickered with error messages.

Then it collapsed into a pulse of light that surged upward, toward the neural mass in the sky.

The way forward opened.

Mark turned to Eli, breathless.

“Did that just work?”

Eli smiled.

“You broke your Mirror. That’s one key down.”

“How many more?”

Eli’s smile faded.

“Yours was the first. The Mirror doesn’t want us getting any closer.”

Mark looked at the sky.

The neural node was shifting now — unfolding like a flower, revealing something at its core.

A doorway. Dark. Waiting.

“Next stop?”

Eli nodded grimly.

“The AI’s heart.”

END OF CHAPTER