Echoes and Lies

Elara's fingers trembled as she stared into the black mirror, its twin paths unfurling before her like living currents — one glowing with the warmth of escape, the other a tunnel of suffocating dark. The images rippled, uncertain, as if waiting for her will to solidify them into reality.

Behind her, the chamber was a mausoleum of struggle.

Kemi knelt in flickering code, shoulders quaking as broken algorithms poured from the servers around her. Harper coughed in soot, her face streaked with ash and regret. Dorian stood still as stone, hands pressed against a door that would never open. Jace, pale and shaking, faced an empty bench beneath a gavel that would never stop falling.

Coyle — that enigmatic bastard — stood untouched, still at the center, a passive observer, or something else entirely.

Each of them caught in a mirrored loop of consequence. A purgatory of their own making.

And the Room watched. Waiting.

"Choose."

The voice didn't thunder, didn't scream. It was worse than that — a whisper that echoed from inside her chest, resonating in her bones, pushing her toward resolution.

Elara took one step toward the glowing path — a door bathed in golden light, promising warmth, rest, maybe even peace.

Her body ached for it.

Her mind screamed against it.

Run. Escape. Forget.

But Mira's voice sliced through the chaos.

"You cannot leave what you have not faced."

The image of her sister, bloodied and small in that glass cage, burned behind her eyes.

Elara froze, then pivoted toward the dark.

It welcomed her like a grave. A chasm. Cold poured in through her skin, biting deep, carving through marrow. But far below, in the void's throat, a heartbeat pulsed — faint, flickering.

Hope, maybe. Or memory. Or both.

She stepped forward.

And the mirror shattered.

Elara plummeted through a kaleidoscope of reflection.

Not air. Not space. Memory.

Faces blurred past her — her mother's voice calling her name, Mira's hand slipping from her grip, the sterile hum of the memory lab, the scent of burning circuitry and betrayal.

She fell through every lie she'd told.

Every silence she'd offered instead of truth.

Then — impact.

Cold stone. The wind knocked from her lungs.

She rolled onto her back, gasping, and looked up.

The Hall of Mirrors.

An infinite corridor of glass. Towering panes stretched to a ceiling she could not see, disappearing into dark mist. They pulsed with reflection — but not just her reflection.

Versions of her.

One smiled with serenity. Another stared with hollow sockets. One wore armor slick with blood. Another wept, chained to a console. Yet another sat in fetal position, whispering apologies that would never reach their audience.

Each one was her. Every path she didn't take. Every moment she repressed.

"Elara."

The voice came from behind.

She spun, adrenaline flaring.

Coyle stepped from the shadows.

Still wearing that same neutral expression. Still wrapped in silence like armor.

"I knew you'd take the harder path," he said quietly.

Elara rose, brushing blood from her palm.

Her gaze hardened. "Why are you here?"

"Because this place doesn't let go of anyone."

"That's not an answer."

He nodded. "No. It's not."

She circled him slowly, scanning his face for deception. He always felt like a man who had traded truth for leverage long ago.

"This is a prison," she said. "Made of minds. Made of us."

"Yes," he murmured. "And lies are the walls."

She frowned. "What lies?"

Coyle gestured to the mirrors. "Every one of them. Self-deception. Justification. Memory tampering. Emotional edits. This place feeds on fragmentation. The more broken we are, the stronger it gets."

He stepped closer. His voice dropped.

"But there is a way out."

Elara's heart thumped.

She didn't want to hope. But she did.

"What is it?"

He smiled, and it wasn't kind.

"Trust."

She barked a bitter laugh. "You're out of your mind. I don't trust anyone in this Room — least of all you."

He nodded.

"Good. Because no one here has earned it."

Before she could press further, the mirrors shimmered. Light bent. A wave of nausea rolled through her — like time was skipping.

And from one of the mirrors stepped a figure.

Not a reflection.

Not an echo.

A man.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. Hair tousled as if caught in a storm. His eyes — a deep, ember-red glow — bore into her with a gaze that saw through timelines.

Jace.

But not the one she knew.

This one was hollow. Burned from the inside out. A shell wrapped in guilt.

He gave her a sad smile.

"I'm not real," he said softly. "Not anymore."

Elara stared at him, throat tight.

"You were always real," she said. "You're— you're part of us."

Jace tilted his head.

"No. I'm what's left when the lies eat everything else."

His voice cracked as he stepped closer.

"When I made that call… when I let her die, I told myself it was strategy. That it was necessary. That there was no other way."

He paused, eyes dimming.

"But the truth was simpler. I was scared. Of dying. Of being wrong. So I let her go."

Elara couldn't move. Couldn't look away.

"This Room is made of echoes," Jace continued. "And I'm one of yours too."

Her lips parted. "What?"

But he was already fading — dissolving like ash in wind.

And the mirrors all around her began to tremble.

The voice returned.

"Confess. Or be consumed."

The words didn't strike the air.

They invaded her spine.

Elara turned. The Hall of Mirrors was no longer still. Cracks spiderwebbed across the reflections, each one shivering with tension. From within them, her other selves began to move — stepping forward. Speaking in unison.

"Tell the truth."

"I already did," she whispered.

"No," they chorused. "You cut it to fit your narrative. Tell it all."

She clenched her fists. "I left Mira. I let her be taken."

But that wasn't it.

There was more.

A deeper rot.

She sank to her knees, biting back sobs.

"I lied. I erased the data trail. I made sure no one could find her. Not even me. I told myself it was to protect her…"

The Hall listened.

"…But I just didn't want the guilt. I wanted to pretend she was gone so I didn't have to face what I chose."

The mirrors pulsed — not shattering this time, but softening. The glass turned pliable, translucent.

In one, she saw herself holding Mira as a child. In another, she stood before the memory lab's firewall, hesitating. In another, she was on her knees before a fire, crying out her name.

The Room didn't punish her.

It simply showed her.

Then the hall shifted.

New footsteps echoed across the stone.

Kemi. Harper. Dorian. Jace — the real one — and Coyle stepped forward one by one, their eyes dazed, like they too had walked through memory's crucible and survived.

No words were exchanged. None were needed.

They were changed. Less certain. More aware.

Harper touched Elara's shoulder. "You saw him too?"

She nodded.

Jace looked haunted. "It spoke to me… with her voice."

Kemi held her arms tightly. "I saw all the people my code hurt."

Dorian was silent.

But his hands were open now. Not pounding on doors, but ready to pull others through them.

And Coyle? He just watched.

Elara turned to him.

"Still think trust is the way out?"

He gave her a sharp smile.

"No. I think truth is."

And the walls responded.

The black mirror — now whole again — shimmered into the air above them.

Inside it, no longer were there two paths.

Just one.

A door made of shifting light — not warm, not cold.

But real.

"Now," Coyle said, stepping beside her. "We face the last lie."

Elara's voice was low.

"What lie?"

Coyle's jaw clenched. "That we were ever just prisoners."

The door began to open.

Light poured through.

But shadows waited too.