[4] - A Vessel's Purpose

Stellar threw herself against the giant mirror. She was a moth beating against a windowpane, a ghost in a white machine. She screamed until her voice was raw, but the glass did not yield. She was trapped on the wrong side, a spectator in her own life.

On the other side of the impossible glass, the thing that wore her face was clumsy. It stumbled around her penthouse, pulling clothes from the wardrobe. It held up a silk dress, then a leather jacket, its head cocked like a bird examining a strange seed. It pulled on a sweater, then tossed it aside with a guttural sound of displeasure. It rolled on her bed, a grotesque parody of girlish delight.

Stellar turned from the mirror and ran. She ran in one direction across the endless white plain. She ran until the giant mirror was just a distant, shimmering square. There was nothing else. No walls, no doors, no end. She was not hungry. She was not thirsty. She could not sleep. She was a mind suspended in a featureless void, completely and utterly alone.

Her physical body, however, was not alone. The entity, now in control, was exploring. It found her phone on the nightstand. It picked it up, turning the sleek rectangle over in its hands. It was confused. It poked at the dark, cracked screen, its frustration mounting. It let out a low growl and hurled the phone at the ceiling. It struck a light fixture with a crack of breaking plastic and glass. The room plunged into semi-darkness, lit only by the city lights outside. The phone clattered to the floor, its screen now a spiderweb of fractures.

Stellar gasped from her white prison. It could do real damage now. Not just to her reputation, but to the perfect vessel she had worked so hard to maintain. The entity paused, looking at the broken device. A low, wet chuckle escaped its throat. It was happy about the destruction.

"Stop!" Stellar screamed, her voice a faint echo in the vastness. "Don't hurt it! That's my body!"

The entity paused, its head twitching slightly in her direction. It could hear her. It simply did not care. It dismissed her with another growl and picked up the phone again. It stared at the cracked screen, its expression unreadable. Then, with a sudden, violent motion, it smashed the phone against the floor again, a growl of pure disappointment rumbling in its chest.

What was it looking for? Stellar watched, her terror momentarily displaced by a flicker of her old, analytical mind. It wasn't just breaking things. It was searching.

It picked up a heavy ceramic lamp from the bedside table. It smashed the base against the edge of the bed, then picked up a shard of the broken bulb. It held the glass up to its eyes, peering through it. It made those same guttural sounds, as if speaking to the fragment. Then it threw the shard away, dissatisfied.

Its gaze fell upon the penthouse's huge, floor-to-ceiling window, offering a panoramic view of the sleeping city.

It grinned, a wide, terrible stretching of the mouth. It picked up a chair and, with a sound of pure glee, swung it into the glass. The window exploded outward in a shower of glittering fragments.

The entity waded through the broken glass, picking up the largest, sharpest piece. It began to make sounds again, a low, crooning murmur directed at the glass in its hand. It was trying to communicate.

Stellar, horrified, finally understood. It was looking for a reflection. A better one. It wanted to complete itself.

It looked at the giant mirror on the wall, the one Stellar had cried into. It thought for a moment, and its grin widened further, splitting the perfect face like a crack in porcelain. It wanted to put itself back together.

Stellar started screaming again, banging her fists on her side of the mirror. She tried to pry at the broken edges, but her fingers just slid uselessly over the surface, leaving smears of blood from where her nails had broken.

The entity, in the real world, seemed to hear her desperation. It looked up at the giant mirror in the white room, the one Stellar was trapped behind. It banged its own forehead against the glass, laughing that silent, horrible laugh.

Then the huge mirror shattered.

It didn't just break. It came apart like a puzzle box, thousands of silver shards falling to the white ground in a chiming, discordant rain.

Stellar gave up. She slumped to the floor, the glittering pieces all around her. This was her fate. To watch her life be unmade.

The entity picked up the largest shard from the broken window. It looked at its own left arm. Stellar looked at her own left arm, the one that belonged to her consciousness, here in the white. She watched as the entity raised the sharp glass like a blade. It was not going to cut something else. It was going to cut her.

The entity pressed the glass shard against its forearm and began to cut, deep and purposeful. A choked scream caught in Stellar's throat. She looked at her own arm, the one she could feel and move. And as she watched, the skin began to crack. Not like a cut, but like porcelain. Then, with a sound like ice breaking on a frozen lake, her left arm shattered. It didn't bleed. It broke into pieces, as if the entity was not made of flesh, but of something more fragile.

The entity picked up the original broken hand mirror. Then, it did something unspeakable. It bit down on the new shard of glass it had cut from the window. Its mouth filled with blood, dripping down its chin. But it didn't stop. It worked the bloody shard into a gap on the mirror's frame. It poured its own blood over the seam, a thick, dark paste that sealed the new piece into place.

It looked at the mirror, now slightly less broken, and its face was a mask of pure, twisted joy.

Stellar could only watch in silent horror. Her left arm was gone, replaced by a numb, absent space.

Then, a shadow moved against the city lights outside the broken window.

A man jumped through the jagged opening, landing in a controlled roll on the floor. He stood up, his form silhouetted by the moon. He was dressed for a war against reality itself. A white, multi-layered jacket. Tactical cargo pants. In his right hand, a strange, modular gun with a sleek, retro-futuristic design.

The entity stopped, annoyed by the interruption. It squinted at the man.

The man pulled a device from his pocket with his left hand. It looked like a rugged, old-fashioned walkie-talkie that had been redesigned by someone from the future.

The man spoke into the device, his voice a deep, calm monotone that cut through the chaos.

"This is Sven, Conservator 017-X-SV, beginning procedure to contain AMG-1875."