The first thing I noticed about the rebel city was the noise.
Not the clean hum of corporate towers or the silence of their abandoned ruins—but layered noise. Hammering. Children laughing. Generators sputtering. Arguments spilling from makeshift markets.
It wasn't just a hideout. It was alive.
We stepped through rusted gates welded from scrap. Banners fluttered overhead, stitched from stolen cloth. I felt eyes on me—hundreds of them—measuring the metal body that wasn't fully man, wasn't fully machine.
Some faces held awe. Others, fear. A few, hatred.
Lira leaned close and whispered, "Don't react. They don't trust outsiders easily. Especially ones like you."
Especially ones like me.
---
Helen led us deeper. Her voice carried command even here.
"Keep close. No wandering. The city looks chaotic, but it's fragile."
She wasn't wrong. The streets twisted through collapsed districts, houses stacked on ruins, pipes snaking like veins above our heads. Everything patched, everything stolen, everything breathing on borrowed time.
Yet… there was pride here. Rebels walked with heads high. For all their scars, they belonged.
I did not.
---
They gave us a room in the eastern block—bare walls, cracked floors, a view of the broken skyline. Lira dropped onto a cot, exhausted. Helen stayed at the door, barking orders to runners.
I drifted toward the window.
And froze.
In the glass pane, my reflection didn't move with me.
It stood straighter, claws flexed. Watching. Waiting.
---
I turned sharply. Nothing. The reflection mirrored me again, normal.
But the itch in my circuits told me it hadn't been normal. Not at all.
---
Life in the rebel city was supposed to ground us. That was Helen's argument. "They need to see we're more than fighters," she told me one night over stale rations. "We're building something worth bleeding for."
She believed it. Maybe the others did too.
But for me, the city only deepened the fracture.
Mirrors were everywhere—shiny metal stalls, black windows, puddles on the ground. Each one threatened me with wrongness. Sometimes I caught a lag in the movement. Sometimes a smirk that didn't belong.
And once… I saw an entire street filled with rebels cheering, saluting me as if I were their leader.
But when I blinked, it was gone.
---
Lira noticed. She always noticed.
"You barely sleep," she said one evening, sitting beside me on the roof. Neon fires crackled below, rebels telling stories and singing songs that carried into the night.
"I can't," I admitted. My claws clenched against my knees. "Every time I close my eyes, the reflections bleed through. They're waiting."
She studied me. Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"Waiting for what?"
I didn't answer. Because the truth clawed too deep.
Waiting to take my place.
---
The next day, a celebration broke out in the main square. A supply raid had succeeded. Food, fuel, medicine—all won from the Corp.
Drums pounded. Rebels danced. Children chased each other through alleys. For a moment, it almost felt human again.
Helen stood on a platform, raising her rifle high.
"Tonight, we prove the Corp can bleed!" she roared. The crowd howled with her.
I stood in the back, half-hidden. Watching.
And in the black glass of a nearby tower, I saw another version of the celebration. The rebels weren't cheering—they were screaming. Flames devoured the city. Helen lay on the ground, lifeless. Lira's hands were bound in chains.
And I… I stood above them all, a tyrant cloaked in steel.
---
The vision faded. My hands shook.
Was it the future? Another thread? Or just madness clawing deeper into me?
I stumbled away from the square, breaths ragged, circuits buzzing hot.
That's when I heard it.
"Choose."
The voice echoed from every window I passed. Each reflection mouthed the same word.
"Choose."
---
I ran.
Through twisting alleys, past rebel guards, into a forgotten sector of the city where ruins still ruled. Finally I collapsed against a cracked mirror standing alone in the rubble.
My reflection tilted its head. Delayed. Wrong.
"Why me?" I demanded. My voice cracked between flesh and machine. "Why are you haunting me?"
The reflection's lips moved, but the sound came from everywhere at once.
"Not haunting. Splitting."
I staggered back. "Splitting what?"
"You. Every path. Every choice. Every outcome. This city is not just theirs—it is yours, in one shard or another. In one, you save them. In another, you burn them. In another…"
The reflection smiled.
"You never came here at all."
---
I smashed the mirror with my claws. Shards rained down, each one catching a different version of me. Dozens of Kierans staring back.
Some grinned. Some wept. Some screamed without sound.
I fell to my knees, dizzy.
This city wasn't a refuge. It was a crucible.
And the fracture was widening.
---
When I returned to our block, Helen was waiting. Her eyes searched me—sharp, suspicious.
"You vanished during the celebration."
I swallowed.
"I needed… air."
Her jaw tightened.
"You're hiding something. Whatever it is—it's going to get people killed."
Before I could answer, Lira stepped in.
"He's not the danger," she said firmly. "The danger is coming for him."
Helen's gaze shifted between us, hard and unreadable. Finally, she spat out:
"Then make sure it doesn't come for my city."
---
That night, I stood at the window again.
Below, the rebels laughed, danced, loved. Building a fragile world of their own.
In the glass, my reflection stared back—smiling wider than I ever could.
And behind it, the city burned.