The rain followed us all the way back to the precinct, like it didn't want to let go. By the time we reached the steps, the sky was bleeding pale light, and my coat felt heavy enough to sink me. Mara hadn't said much since we left Vale Street. She just drove — both hands white on the wheel, eyes locked forward, jaw tight.
The kind of silence that meant too much thinking.
I kept replaying the scene. The mirror gone, the prints in the dust, the reflection that smiled. Every rational part of my brain kept trying to stitch those moments into logic, but nothing held. A missing mirror could be theft. A vanishing body, though… that wasn't something you could file under property crime.
When we entered the homicide unit, the air smelled of burnt coffee and printer ink. A few night-shift officers looked up — the kind of looks you give people who come back from something strange. I ignored them and went straight for my desk.
"Ward."
Chief Harlow's voice always came like a door slamming shut. He was standing near the case board, sleeves rolled, tie undone. "You and Kade pulled Locke's case?"
"Yes, sir," I said.
His eyes darted between us. "I'm already getting noise from upstairs. The coroner's team says there was no body."
"There was," I said. "Then there wasn't."
He pinched the bridge of his nose. "That's not an answer I can put in a report."
"I'll have something better soon."
"Do that. Because if this turns into another Bellview situation, I'm cutting both of you loose from field work."
Mara stepped in then, voice steady but sharper than mine. "Sir, we've got leads. Locke's research, personal recordings, and a potential link between his psychological experiments and the condition of the scene. We're following it up."
Harlow's expression said he didn't buy it but wanted to. "Keep it quiet. No leaks to press, no speculation. And for God's sake, get some rest."
He walked off before we could lie about doing that.
The case file spread across my desk looked wrong under fluorescent light. I flipped through the photos again — Locke's study before we touched it, the distorted angle of his body, the cracked mirror. In the corner of one image, just behind my own shoulder, was something like motion blur. A distortion in the air, bending the light.
I rubbed at the photo, half expecting it to change under my thumb. It didn't.
When Mara finally spoke, it startled me.
"Do you ever think," she said quietly, "that we're too good at ignoring what's right in front of us?"
I looked up. She was staring past me, at the window's reflection.
"Ignore what?" I asked.
"The impossible."
I didn't sleep. The hours after a case always hollowed me out, but this time it was different. I kept seeing my reflection grin when I closed my eyes. I kept hearing Locke's voice from the tape — 'Don't look at the mirror.'
By the time morning hit, I'd stopped pretending.
The first thing I did was pull Locke's academic history. His final published paper was six years ago: 'Cognitive Dissociation and the Reflected Self: A Study of Mirror Response in Traumatized Subjects.' The abstract read like a riddle — experiments involving altered reflections, induced hallucinations, and something he called "subjective displacement."
There was a name repeated throughout the paper: Dr. Adrian Voss, a co-researcher. Still alive. Still working at an abandoned university annex up north.
I dialed Mara.
She picked up on the first ring. "You didn't sleep either."
"Wouldn't want to break tradition," I said. "Pack your bag. We're going to see a man about a mirror."
By the time we hit the outskirts of the city, the rain had turned to mist. The road coiled through trees that leaned too close to the windshield. The kind of quiet that pressed against the car windows.
Mara drove this time. I watched the blur of gray woods slide past and tried to ignore how every reflective surface — the windshield, the chrome of the gear stick, even my watch face — seemed to shimmer faintly at the edge of vision.
"Voss worked with Locke on cognitive distortion therapy," she said. "I read the file you sent. Experimental hypnosis, mirror rooms, tests on perception under trauma. Sounds like something that shouldn't have gotten past ethics review."
"It didn't," I said. "They shut him down. He kept working privately."
She gave a dry laugh. "Of course he did."
The mist thickened. The GPS lost signal, but the road eventually spilled into a gravel path that ended before a brick building half-swallowed by vines.
The sign by the gate read: UNIVERSITY OF HILLSDEN – PSYCHOLOGY ANNEX (Closed 1998).
The gate was open.
Inside, the hallways smelled of dust and chemical rot. Our flashlights cut through the dark, revealing faded motivational posters and long-abandoned lab rooms. The walls were lined with mirrors — warped, cracked, some covered with sheets.
"This guy really leaned into the décor," Mara muttered.
A voice echoed down the corridor: "You're trespassing."
We turned at once.
A man stood at the far end, tall, thin, wrapped in a stained lab coat. His hair was white and wild, his eyes too bright.
"Dr. Adrian Voss?" I asked.
He smiled like he'd been expecting us. "Detectives. You're late."
He led us to a room that might once have been a lecture hall. Now it was a graveyard of old equipment: reels, screens, fragments of broken glass.
Voss gestured to two chairs. "You're here about Samuel. I told him this would happen."
Mara frowned. "That what would happen?"
He ignored the question, pacing slowly. "He was obsessed with the notion that consciousness reflects itself imperfectly — that what we see in mirrors isn't us, but a construct, a copy that remembers every emotion we repress. He believed if one stares long enough, the copy begins to remember more than the original."
I felt my stomach tighten. "You're saying he thought reflections were alive."
Voss chuckled softly. "Alive is a simple word for something older than us."
Mara leaned forward. "He mentioned something on a recording — that the mirror was trying to 'come through.' What did he mean?"
The old man's eyes flicked toward one of the covered mirrors. "He wanted to prove that trauma opens the mind to what lies between. He didn't understand that the mind is a door, and once it opens, it doesn't close."
He pulled away the cloth.
The mirror beneath was smooth, clean — too clean for this ruin. I saw my own face reflected in perfect clarity. No cracks. No distortion.
Voss whispered, "He called it the Echo Surface. The first of its kind. He made others after, smaller ones. Portable. Contagious."
"Contagious?" Mara repeated.
He nodded. "Once you see your echo, it never forgets you."
For a moment, I thought I saw motion in the reflection — just a flicker, like my hand moved twice. Then the mirror pulsed, a faint ripple of light spreading across it.
Voss stepped between us, panicked. "Don't look too long! It learns from you!"
The pulse stopped. My heart didn't.
Mara grabbed my arm. "We're leaving."
Voss didn't stop her. "You can leave," he said. "But you'll bring it with you. You've already looked."
His voice followed us down the hall, a rasping echo:
"Once you're seen, you belong to it."
We didn't talk until we were back in the car.
Mara broke first. "You saw that ripple, didn't you?"
"I saw the light shift."
"That wasn't light."
I didn't argue.
The drive back felt longer. Every reflection in the car seemed too deep, like looking into still water instead of glass. Mara checked the rearview mirror twice, then a third time, then stopped altogether.
At one point, she whispered, "It blinked."
"What?"
"The reflection of my eyes. It blinked after I did."
I forced myself not to look.
By the time we reached the city, night had fallen again. The precinct's windows glowed like dull lanterns in the fog.
Harlow was waiting near the entrance. "Good timing. Forensics finally found something at Locke's place."
"What kind of something?" I asked.
He handed me a folder. Inside were photographs of a hidden compartment behind Locke's desk. Inside it — dozens of small, circular mirrors, each etched with symbols like the frame from the study. And on the back of every one, written in fine black ink: 'I see you.'
Mara exhaled. "Great. We're dealing with a dead psychologist who made cursed souvenirs."
I looked closer at the symbols — one of them matched a carving I'd seen in the university's hallway.
"Voss's work," I said.
Harlow frowned. "Who?"
"Another researcher. Still alive. Said Locke was experimenting with something called the Echo Surface."
Harlow tapped the folder. "Whatever it was, it's spreading. One of our evidence clerks just reported her mirror fogging up — in a locked storage room."
We spent the next hours combing through Locke's files, trying to map connections. Most of it read like madness — studies on visual distortion, trauma loops, self-recognition thresholds. But buried in the notes was a line underlined twice:
The mirror remembers what the mind forgets.
I leaned back, rubbing my eyes. "He wasn't just studying reflection. He was trying to imprint memory onto it."
Mara looked up from her notes. "You think he succeeded?"
"His reflection smiled."
That shut us both up.
I didn't realize I'd fallen asleep at my desk until the dream started.
The precinct lights had dimmed, the world too quiet. I stood alone in the hallway, water dripping from the ceiling even though it wasn't raining. My reflection waited at the end of the corridor. Same coat. Same face. But its eyes were black, and when it spoke, the voice came from everywhere.
"You brought me back."
I tried to move, but my body wouldn't listen. The reflection tilted its head.
"Do you know what happens when you stare long enough?"
I woke to a scream.
Not mine.
Mara was standing by the break room window, coffee spilled across the floor, breathing hard. Her face was pale.
"It was there," she said, pointing. "In the glass. Watching."
I joined her, but the window only showed rain and streetlights.
"Mara—"
"I'm not crazy," she snapped. "It was me. But not me."
I wanted to tell her I believed her. I did. But the words felt heavy in my throat.
Then I saw it.
Just for a heartbeat — our reflections in the glass. Mine normal. Hers… smiling.
Elias
The glass trembled. Just slightly — like something beneath it was breathing. Then it stilled.
Mara stood frozen, her reflection still smiling faintly long after her real face had gone pale.
I reached out, pressed my hand to the window. The surface was cold enough to sting. Our reflections overlapped — hers with that awful, patient grin, mine with a faint flicker at the jawline like a second mouth trying to form.
Then the smile vanished. Everything went still again.
Mara stumbled back, nearly slipping on the spilled coffee. I caught her wrist.
"Hey," I said quietly. "Look at me."
She did, eyes wide. "It's learning," she whispered.
"What?"
"It's copying more accurately. Before, it lagged. Now it's anticipating."
I wanted to tell her she was wrong, that this was sleep deprivation and too many horror stories blending with guilt and adrenaline.
But I'd seen the grin too.
We sealed the break room. Harlow didn't like it — thought we were losing it — but the chief had seen enough strange things to let us have the benefit of the doubt. He told us to take a few days off. We didn't.
Back at my apartment, I covered every mirror I could find. Bathroom. Closet door. The framed one by the hallway that my ex insisted made the space "feel bigger."
Now it just made it feel haunted.
Mara called that night.
"You still up?"
"Yeah."
"I've been going through Locke's files again. Found something." Her voice was shaking, low. "He kept referring to 'the observer's key' — something about an object that stabilizes the reflection boundary. I think that's what Voss was hiding. Maybe that's why the ripples stopped when he stepped between us and the mirror."
"So he's got something that can control it."
"Or contain it."
"Then we need it."
A long silence. Then she said softly, "It looked like me, Elias. But when it smiled… I could feel it smiling inside me. Like it was waiting for me to acknowledge it."
"Mara—"
"I'm not losing my mind."
"I know."
Another pause. "Don't look at any reflections tonight."
Then the line went dead.
Sleep didn't come. Every faint noise felt amplified — the hum of the refrigerator, the creak of floorboards as the building cooled. I kept thinking of the way her reflection had moved first.
At some point near dawn, my phone buzzed again.
A message from Mara.
"Meet me. University annex. He's gone. Bring flashlight."
No punctuation. No hesitation.
The roads were empty when I drove north again. Fog smothered the trees. The closer I got, the quieter the world became — no wind, no birds, no sound but the tires rolling over wet gravel.
When I reached the annex, Mara's car was parked out front, engine off. Her driver's door hung open.
"Mara?"
No answer.
I followed the sound of dripping water through the hallways. The flash of my light caught shards of glass scattered like teeth across the floor. The mirror room door stood half-open.
Inside, the Echo Surface was cracked — spiderweb fractures spreading across the center, black lines pulsing faintly like veins. And on the floor beneath it, a notebook lay open.
Locke's handwriting.
"Once seen, the echo cannot be unbound. But a mirror that breaks does not destroy the reflection — it frees it."
Then a noise. Soft. Behind me.
I turned — light sweeping over the doorway. Nothing.
"Mara?" I called again.
A whisper answered.
"Elias."
The light flickered.
She stood by the far wall, half in shadow.
"You came," she said.
"Of course I came. You texted—"
"I didn't."
Her voice was flat.
"What do you mean?"
She stepped into the light. Her eyes were dark, rimmed red, exhausted. "I never sent that message. My phone's been dead since last night."
My throat went dry. "Then who—"
We both turned toward the mirror at once.
There were two reflections of her. One standing beside me. One standing behind me.
The second one smiled.
Mara
The moment I saw it — the second me — something inside me cracked. The reflection tilted its head, perfect and wrong at the same time. Its movements were deliberate, delayed by half a breath.
Then it spoke. My voice, but threaded with static.
"You called us here."
Elias moved between me and the glass, gun drawn, though what that could possibly do against a reflection, I didn't know.
"Stay back," he said, his voice shaking.
The reflection's smile widened.
"He won't stop it. He's already seen himself."
Elias froze. "What does that mean?"
"You brought it from the house," it said. "The moment you touched the photo. Every reflection since then is watching. Waiting."
Something shifted behind the cracked glass — a faint shimmer like light passing through water. Then the fractures began to spread outward, splitting with soft, wet sounds.
"Elias," I whispered. "It's coming through."
He grabbed my arm. "Run."
We bolted down the hallway, the sound of shattering mirrors echoing behind us — a hundred glass throats breaking open at once.
We didn't stop until we were outside, rain cutting through the fog. The building behind us flickered, faint lights pulsing from within like a heartbeat.
Elias leaned against the car, catching his breath. "What the hell was that?"
"I think," I said, "Locke succeeded."
He looked at me. "In what?"
"Making a doorway."
Lightning flashed across the sky. For a split second, I saw it — our reflections in the car windows, but the rain didn't touch them. They just stood there, perfectly still, smiling.
Elias
We drove without speaking for miles. I don't even remember turning onto the highway. The storm followed us, but it wasn't the rain that made me keep glancing at the rearview mirror — it was what I thought I saw every time the lightning flashed.
Our reflections weren't matching anymore.
Mara looked forward; hers stared at me.
At the next stoplight, I took the mirror and angled it upward, away from us. She didn't even question it.
When we reached the city, I pulled into an old parking structure near the river. The concrete dripped, the air thick with damp.
Mara sat there, shaking. "It's spreading," she said. "Whatever it is, it's not bound to one mirror anymore."
I rubbed my face. "If that's true, we can't fight it by avoiding glass forever."
"Then how?"
I thought of Voss's words — 'The mind is a door.'
"Maybe we close it from the inside."
She stared at me. "You mean… face it?"
"Something like that."
"You're insane."
"Probably."
A long pause. Then, quietly, "Let's find Voss again. He started this. He'll know how to end it."
Mara
We never made it that far.
Halfway across the bridge, the car's dashboard went dark. The engine died without a sound.
"Elias?"
He tried the ignition. Nothing.
Outside, the city lights flickered — one by one — until everything went black. Only the river glowed faintly below us, reflecting a sky full of lightning without thunder.
And in that glow, I saw them.
Dozens of reflections standing on the water, all facing upward. Ours among them.
Then, from somewhere deep in the dark, came a voice. Mine again, but hollow.
"You shouldn't have looked."
The windows misted over. The glass rippled. Something pressed from the other side — fingertips, pushing outward.
Elias shouted, slammed his fist against the door, but the locks clicked shut on their own.
tap tap tap
The sound came from behind the windshield.
tap tap tap
I turned. My reflection's face was pressed against the inside of the glass, smiling upside down.
"Elias," I whispered, "it's inside."
He drew his gun — a useless instinct — and the barrel fogged instantly, frost creeping along the metal.
The reflection mouthed something, words I couldn't hear. Then I realized it wasn't mouthing — it was syncing.
It was speaking the same words I was saying.
Perfectly.
Simultaneously.
Like it had caught up.
Then the windshield cracked.
Elias
Everything happened at once.
The glass burst outward — a wave of cold and light slamming into the car. I threw my arm in front of my face, but in that flash, I saw it — hundreds of faces layered over ours, all reflections breaking free.
When the light faded, the bridge was empty.
No cars. No rain. Just silence.
I stood in the middle of it, breathing hard, the city gone dark behind me.
"Mara?" I called.
No answer.
Only my echo.
"Mara?"
I turned toward the sound.
A mirror — a fragment of the windshield — lay on the ground. My reflection inside it smiled, lips moving just before mine did.
"You're next."
Then it went still.
And in the distance, from the fog, came the faint hum of something turning on.