Elena blinked.
The wind was gone. The snow. The blood. The mirrors.
She stood in Room 313, her hand inches from the glass.
Around her stood Davis, Reznik, and two other agents. No one moved. No one breathed.
The mirror was black. Smooth. Empty. A void.
A technician's voice crackled in her earpiece. "You seeing what I'm seeing?"
Elena turned slowly. No blood. No broken glass. No screams.
No evidence of what she had just lived through.
But the feeling—the weight in her bones—remained.
She looked at Davis. "How long have we been standing here?"
He checked his watch, frowning. "A few seconds. We just started the scan."
"No," she whispered. "It's been days."
Reznik raised an eyebrow. "You alright?"
"I… I don't know."
The mirror pulsed faintly. A flicker of movement danced across its surface—just for an instant.
A reflection not quite hers.
Davis reached out to touch the glass.
"Don't—" Elena started.
But his fingers made contact.
Nothing happened.
Just a faint echo in the room—like distant laughter.
The room's lights flickered.
And then all was still again.
---
Epilogue: Awakening
Later, in the debrief, Elena sat with a psychologist, her hands clenched in her lap.
"It felt real," she said. "The cold. The death. The copies. I remember it."
The psychologist took notes. "Dreams can be deceptive. Especially under stress. Your exposure to the mirror's low-frequency resonance field could've induced a shared hallucination."
"But we weren't under long enough," she insisted. "And there were details—things I couldn't have imagined."
He gave her a patient smile. "Sometimes, the mind tells us stories it needs to tell."
Elena said nothing.
When she returned to her quarters, she unpacked her gear.
At the bottom of the bag—a journal.
Her heart skipped.
She hadn't brought one.
She opened it. Just one phrase, written on the first page:
"You haven't woken up yet."
Behind her, in the mirror above the sink—
Her reflection smiled.
But she hadn't.
The End.
Epilogue: The Glass Archive
Deep beneath an undisclosed research center, a vault door hissed open.
Inside: rows of containment chambers. Each one holds a single object—mirrors, glass shards, windows, polished steel panels. Every surface was carefully cataloged, sealed, and watched.
A man in a lab coat walked through the rows, tablet in hand. He paused at one chamber marked 313-A.
The glass inside was dull, cracked—but pulsing faintly.
He read the notes:
>>Subject shows intermittent activity. Residual personality data is unclear. Origin: Unconfirmed.