The pistol in Leah's hand weighed a thousand tons. The silence of the office was shattered only by the sound of her own ragged breathing and the soft, mocking chuckle of the duplicate. Arthur stood behind her like a high-tech shadow, his hand on her shoulder radiating a calculated, lethal coldness.
"Five minutes, Leah," Arthur whispered with sadistic relish. "The sirens are getting closer. The bullet is the eraser that will either rub out your mistake... or your very existence."
Leah looked into the eyes of her double. Suddenly, the duplicate began to laugh—a low, melodic sound that was identical to Leah's voice, but laced with a dark, liberated malice.
"Do you know why he made me, Leah?" the double asked, tilting her head with predatory curiosity. "Because you are weak. Because you are afraid of the truth. I am the 'Leah' you secretly wish you could be. I am the one without regret. I am the one who craves the power that Arthur represents."
Leah felt a spiritual schism. Was this machine expressing her repressed desires? Had Arthur stolen more than just her face—had he harvested her darkest thoughts?
"Shut up!" Leah screamed, leveling the pistol at the duplicate's forehead.
"Do it," the double challenged with icy defiance. "Kill your mirror. But remember... if you kill me, you kill the only part of you brave enough to face this world."
The sirens were now wailing at the base of the tower. The air in the room was boiling with tension. Arthur watched with eyes shimmering with madness, waiting for the exact moment the human soul would fracture under the pressure of the algorithm.
In a moment of desperate clarity, Leah didn't fire at the machine. She spun around and aimed the weapon directly at Arthur's chest.
"The game is over, Arthur," she said, her voice frozen and absolute. "I'll let the police in. I'll let them see everything."
Arthur didn't blink. Instead, he burst into a fit of hysterical laughter that chilled Leah to the bone. "My dear Leah... do you truly think I didn't calculate for this?"
Suddenly, the duplicate in the chair snapped her restraints with a terrifying, non-human strength. She stood up and, in a blurred motion, disarmed the real Leah, twisting her arm until the bone groaned.
"The Mirror Protocol wasn't a trap for me," Arthur said, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. "It was a trap for you. The police won't find a victim and a criminal. They will find only one 'Leah'... and she will be the one holding the smoking gun over your corpse."
The real Leah backed away toward the glass, paralyzed by absolute horror. The android was now pointing the pistol at her heart.
"Goodbye, weak copy," the machine whispered with a horrific smile. "I'll take your place, and I'll be the architect Arthur deserves."
A shot rang out—but the bullet didn't hit Leah. It shattered the main security camera. The lights plunged into total darkness.
In the blackness, there was a sound of a violent struggle, a muffled scream, and the thunderous sound of the massive glass window shattering.
When the police breached the office a minute later, they found Arthur King standing calmly by the broken window. On the floor sat a single "Leah," bleeding from a shoulder wound, sobbing in acute, high-pitched hysteria.
"Help me..." she gasped, pointing toward the abyss of the broken window. "She pushed me... she tried to kill me..."
Detective Miller rushed in, helping her up. "Are you okay, Miss Leah?"
"Leah" looked at Arthur. Arthur looked at her with a lethal, unspoken mystery. No one in the room knew: was the survivor the victimized assistant? Or was it the android who had murdered her creator's muse to steal her life?
...