The Version That Was Never Chosen
For the first time in what felt like weeks, Lira woke up without a trace of fear.
No whispers.
No messages.
No strange reflections.
Just quiet.
Too quiet.
She sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the wall like it might flicker again. But it didn't.
The flip phone remained shut. Dead.
Its blank screen reflected a girl who looked calm… but felt completely hollow.
She touched her wrist. Her face. Her own breath.
Everything felt real.
And yet… she didn't.
---
School looked the same.
The sky was clear. The halls were loud. The world moved on.
Reva was already waiting in front of the class, grinning wide like nothing strange had ever happened.
"You look kinda alive today," she teased.
Lira smiled back, faint. "Maybe I finally slept."
"Or maybe someone rebooted you in your sleep," Reva laughed, then softened. "Seriously. You okay?"
Lira hesitated for half a second. Then nodded.
"I think so."
Reva leaned in a little, voice quieter now. "If you ever wanna talk... I'm still here."
"I know."
And she meant it.
Because deep in her chest, behind the stillness and silence, Lira still remembered.
The Terminal.
The Versions.
Alina.
The choice she made.
And the system's final whisper:
"Did you really choose?"
---
The day passed.
Teachers lectured. Students whispered. Bell after bell dragged time forward.
But Lira felt no connection to any of it.
Not because the world had changed.
But because she no longer belonged to it entirely.
It was like she'd been pulled back into reality with missing pieces.
Like her shadow no longer matched her shape.
At lunch, she walked toward the courtyard... just for air. Just to be alone.
And that's when she heard it.
Someone behind her:
"Alina?"
She turned.
A boy she didn't know was standing a few steps away, blinking at her.
"I... sorry. You're not… Alina?"
Lira stared at him.
"No. I'm Lira."
The boy hesitated, clearly confused. "Weird. You look exactly like her."
Lira forced a smile. "Probably just a coincidence."
She turned around quickly and walked away, heart thudding faster.
But inside her head, something clicked.
He saw someone else. Someone who looked like her. Someone named Alina.
And suddenly... she wasn't sure anymore who she'd left behind in that white room.
Because what if the version she thought she'd erased...
...was already here?
Watching her.
Living beside her.
Waiting.
***
Lira sat alone in the far corner of the library, hidden between the shelves no one visited. Old encyclopedias gathered dust around her. Everything felt heavy. Like the air itself was filled with unspoken warnings.
The boy's voice still echoed in her head.
Alina.
It shouldn't have hit her that hard.
She had chosen. She had survived.
That should've been the end.
But now, she wasn't so sure.
She reached into her bag and pulled out the old book.
For a while, she stared at it. Then slowly flipped to the back pages.
Something was there.
A loose sheet of paper, like it had always belonged... except she knew it hadn't been there yesterday.
It wasn't handwritten this time.
It was formatted like an email.
Lux Internal System — Alert Notification
[SUBJECT_05 DETECTED]
Status: Unstable
Environment Breach: Partial
Recommendation: Monitor SUBJECT_04 for cognitive interference
She read it three times, eyes darting across every word.
Subject 05.
There's another one?
After me?
And worse...
Monitor Subject 04.
That meant her.
The system wasn't gone.
It was just… watching.
Waiting.
She slammed the book shut and shoved it back in her bag.
Her breathing was uneven. She stood quickly, ready to leave.
But just before reaching the exit, her phone buzzed.
Not the flip phone.
Her normal phone.
One message.
No sender. No timestamp. Just a single line of text:
"Do not approach Subject 05. No version has survived contact."
Lira's pulse spiked.
This wasn't from the system.
This wasn't Reva.
And it wasn't from her.
Someone... or something... outside the system was sending her a warning.
---
Back in the hallway, she tried to blend in.
But the further she walked, the more her senses turned inward.
That pulling sensation was back.
The feeling that something was tracking her... not with footsteps, but with memory.
At the foot of the stairwell, she froze.
A figure was standing under the shadows.
Too tall for a student.
Too still for a person.
Wearing a perfectly pressed school uniform that looked like it belonged in a brochure, not real life.
The face… wasn't visible.
But the presence...
Lira felt it instantly.
Not human.
Not her.
And yet… something in its posture mirrored her own.
The moment their eyes met, if those hollow sockets could even be called eyes... Lira knew:
Subject 05 was awake.
And it wasn't here to survive.
It was here to replace her.
***
That night, Lira didn't sleep.
She couldn't.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw shadows with her face.
Versions of herself smiling with teeth too white, eyes too still.
At 2:34 AM, she sat on the floor beside her bed, knees pulled close, the flip phone resting cold in her palm.
It hadn't turned on since the Terminal.
But now...
The screen blinked once.
Then again.
And then… a voice.
Not through the speaker.
Not from the room.
From somewhere deeper.
Inside her mind.
"Lira?"
She stiffened. Her breath caught.
She knew that voice.
"If you're hearing this… it means the real me isn't coming back."
Reva.
Not the Reva who joked in class.
Not the one who wore too much perfume and talked too fast.
This voice was different.
Worn.
Tired.
Scared.
"I don't know how long I've been stuck here. Or if anyone else is still awake. But I remember enough to warn you."
Lira held the phone tight.
"The one that came after you… Subject 05… isn't part of the original system."
"She's made of pieces. Fragments. Mistakes."
"She doesn't want a body. She wants to become the only voice."
Silence.
Then:
"If you see her… don't talk. Don't listen. She can mimic."
"Even me. Even you."
And then the message cut off.
Abrupt.
Like someone... or something... didn't want Reva to finish.
The screen dimmed.
But before it shut down, a second voice whispered, not from the phone, but from behind her.
"Are you sure that was Reva?"
Lira jumped, spinning around.
No one was there.
Her room was empty.
Except for the mirror.
Her reflection stared back. Same hair. Same eyes.
But this time…
it smiled first.
***
The next morning, Lira didn't go to class.
Her feet followed something else...
something wordless and instinctive.
She didn't know where she was going, but every step felt like déjà vu. Like she'd already walked this path in a dream she couldn't remember.
Past the west hall.
Through the rusted fence behind the storage building.
Down into the abandoned sub-basement the school never acknowledged.
And at the end of a long, narrow hallway…
A door.
Small. Metal. No signs. No lock.
But etched faintly across its surface, barely visible:
MEMORY RESIDUE ROOM
Her hand trembled as she reached for it.
A voice whispered in her mind.
"You've come too far to stop now."
The door opened by itself.
---
The room inside was colder than expected. And too quiet, like the air had weight.
No lights.
No sounds.
Just one massive mirrored wall at the far end.
But it didn't reflect the room.
It reflected something else.
A different space.
On the other side of the mirror stood versions of herself.
One curled into a ball, shivering.
Another with empty eyes, mumbling soundlessly.
Another banging her fists against an invisible wall.
And another… laughing with a face twisted in joyless ecstasy.
Lira couldn't move.
Each of them wore her skin.
Each of them felt… real.
Discarded realities.
Aborted timelines.
Choices that were never allowed to fully form.
And at the center, facing her directly... was someone who wasn't her.
Not exactly.
Reva.
But not the Reva she knew.
This Reva had hollow eyes and a smile that didn't blink. Her head tilted slightly, like a puppet waiting for orders.
Then, she moved.
Toward the glass.
Her voice came not from her lips, but from all around the room.
"I don't remember who I was."
"But I remember wanting to stay alive."
Cracks spread across the mirror.
Hairline fractures at first, then jagged splits, like pressure was building from the other side.
"You picked a version. Left the rest."
"But now… I get to choose."
The mirror pulsed.
Dark red fluid began to drip from its edges. Not blood. Not paint. Something else.
Something ancient.
Something wrong.
"I am the sum of what you abandoned."
"I'm not a subject. Not an experiment."
"I'm the version no one wanted."
And then, in bold white letters across the fractured glass:
MERGE PROTOCOL FORCED INITIATED
SUBJECT_LIRA_4 vs UNREGISTERED_ENTITY
Lira stumbled backward, breath shallow.
She wasn't looking at a reflection anymore.
She was looking at a door.
And it was about to open.
***
The mirror cracked.
Once.
Twice.
Then shattered with a silent burst of light.
But instead of breaking apart, it opened... like a doorway splitting space itself.
Lira stumbled back, shielding her eyes.
Her breath caught in her throat as the coldness flooded in, not air, but presence.
A shape stepped through.
Not her.
Not Reva.
But something built from them both... stitched from fragments of fear, regret, rage, and desire. An echo with a body. A shadow with bones.
"You don't get to be the only version anymore."
The words came from the Entity's mouth.
But the voice...
It was hers.
Too perfect. Too familiar.
Like hearing a thought spoken aloud by someone else.
The flip phone in Lira's pocket vibrated violently.
She pulled it out. The screen lit up.
Two options.
[MERGE ALL VERSIONS]
[REJECT ENTITY: PRESERVE PRIMARY SELF]
Her hands shook.
Not because she didn't know what to choose...
But because she was no longer sure who was choosing.
And the Entity was smiling.
"You think you have control. But I was born in the moment you doubted yourself."
"I am every aborted decision. Every suppressed memory. Every echo that refused to die."
The options on the screen glitched.
The letters scrambled.
[MER_E]
[P__SERVE]
And then... new text appeared, burning across the screen:
"PRIMARY CONSCIOUSNESS CONTESTED."
"SELECTION RIGHTS COMPROMISED."
The choice was being overridden.
The Entity took a step forward.
The world trembled.
---
Suddenly...
Black.
---
When Lira opened her eyes, she was alone.
She stood in a white void. No ground. No sky. No time.
Just her.
And four other silhouettes surrounding her.
Each wore her face.
But each was different.
One was afraid.
One was cold.
One was angry.
One… was hollow.
And they all spoke at once.
"We're not gone."
"We're not dead."
"We remember."
"We demand a vote."
In the center, a table appeared.
On it, the flip phone.
Still glowing.
A new message pulsed across the screen:
"MERGE PROTOCOL HALTED. FINAL DECISION MUST BE UNANIMOUS."
One by one, the other Liras stepped closer.
The Entity wasn't outside anymore.
It was inside.
And now, the only way forward...
was together.
Or not at all.
***