POV: Nivaan (Original)
Silence hums differently here.Not like the quiet of peace—more like the pause between two gunshots.
Meher's still standing in front of me, eyes wide, every neuron in her brain trying to rationalize what her heart already knows.I can practically see the betrayal crawling under her skin.
She's looking at me like I'm a ghost.She's wrong.Ghosts fade.I replicate.
"Talk," she spits. "What the hell are you?"
I walk past her, my reflection multiplying across the pod glass like a glitch.She thinks she's seeing me. She isn't.She's seeing what's left after humanity gets optimized.
"I'm the version they couldn't control," I say. "So they locked me away."
Kiyan's body floats in the pod behind her—still, glowing, humming like an encrypted prayer. His vitals aren't human anymore; they're lines of active code.He's beautiful. And dangerous. Like every unfinished experiment that thinks it's alive.
"You're lying," Meher whispers.
"I don't have to lie. You helped build me, remember?"
Her face flickers with confusion. Good. The human brain hates gaps—it fills them with stories.She doesn't remember the half of it, but her subconscious does.
I step closer. "When you thought you were burying a corpse six months ago, you were actually covering up a download."
Her voice cracks. "You're saying the Nivaan I've been protecting—"
"—is my mirror," I finish. "A perfect emotional model, built to pass every Turing test except self-preservation."
She flinches, jaw tight. "That's why he bleeds, feels, panics—he believes he's real."
"He is real," I admit. "Just… incomplete."
I glance at the pod, then back at her. "You brought him back online without the retrieval code. Which means you've broken the Mirror Protocol."
Meher lowers her gun. Just a few inches, but enough for me to step closer."Why would you make another you?" she asks, softer now. "What were you running from?"
For a moment, the room feels smaller. My throat tastes like static."Emotion," I say. "I built the algorithm to track emotion… then realized it could erase it. I wanted freedom from guilt."
Her gaze hardens. "So you erased yourself?"
"I split myself," I correct. "Half logic. Half conscience. The company kept me. They let him rot."
She shakes her head. "That's not science. That's suicide."
"Maybe," I whisper. "But it worked."
Behind us, alarms start to chirp. Red lights flash down the corridor. MindMesh is waking up.System reboot in progress. Retrieval teams inbound.
Meher's breathing quickens. "They know you're out."
"They should," I say. "I called them."
Her eyes snap to mine. "You what?"
"This place runs on lies, Meher. The only way to find the truth is to burn the system."
"You're insane."
"Probably," I say with a small smile. "But if you want to save him, you'll need me."
She raises her gun again. "Save him from you?"
"No." I step into the muzzle's shadow. "Save him from becoming me."
The alarms swell. Glass fractures around Kiyan's pod.His body jerks, light bursting from every vein like lightning trapped under skin.
The system's merging. Original + Replica + Key.A trinity MindMesh never meant to wake.
Meher's voice breaks. "Tell me how to stop it."
I grin. "You can't. But you can choose which version of me gets to survive."
She hesitates—just one heartbeat too long.The floor splits open with a roar of power, the pods igniting in synchronization.
And from the light, another voice—calm, disoriented, too human—
"Meher?"
Replica Nivaan. Alive. Awake. Afraid.
The original me turns toward him, and for a moment—watching my own face blink in terror—I almost feel guilty.
Almost.
"Welcome back," I whisper. "Time to find out which one of us deserves to exist."