Synthetic Truths

Aeris hadn't spoken since the dive.

Not really.

Her voice still worked, her body still moved—but inside, something was cracking. Not breaking. Not yet. Just… changing. Like tectonic plates shifting below the surface.

Kael sat across from her in the dark corner of a decommissioned shuttle in Dock 9. The glow from the onboard console lit the side of his face in pale blue. The blood from his earlier wound had dried, sealed over by biofoam, but Aeris couldn't stop looking at him.

Couldn't stop wondering if it was him.

"I need to ask you something," she finally said.

Kael nodded, slowly.

"Do you remember the day we met?"

He blinked, then smiled faintly. "You tried to arrest me."

"You let me catch you."

"No," he said, "I let you think you caught me."

Aeris let the silence stretch.

"What was the codeword you used to lock down my neural stream?"

Kael frowned, confused. "You never used one. I told you I didn't encrypt my recall protocols. I trusted you."

Aeris's stomach tightened. That was true. It was exactly what he'd told her.

But so would the mirror.

"What's going on?" Kael said. "You're circling something. Just say it."

She stared at him, then reached slowly into her pocket and pulled out the trace node—the one from the Haze vendor. She held it up.

"I saw something inside the fragment. A version of you. Older. Scarred. Empty. And not you."

Kael didn't flinch.

"Echo construct?" he asked.

Aeris nodded. "Worse. A Mirror Host."

He looked down. Then up. "Do you think I'm him?"

"I don't know."

"I can let you scan me," he said. "Deep-level sync. You'll see what's mine. What's not."

"That's exactly what the Mirror would offer."

Kael stood. "Then don't scan. Fight me."

"What?"

"If you think I'm not me," he said, stepping closer, "then prove it. The real me taught you how to beat me. Use that. If I'm fake—I'll lose. If I'm real—I won't."

Aeris stared at him like he'd lost it.

But then her hands moved. Fast.

A pulse of light shot from her palm.

Kael dodged, exactly as she expected. Left foot pivot, shoulder drop. She feinted right and slammed a kinetic spell toward his ribs—he caught it, twisted it, redirected it.

Like he'd always done.

She spun behind him and drew a glyph in mid-air: a memory pin. It stuck to the side of his neck, flaring red.

Aeris froze.

The memory that rose wasn't clean. It wasn't simple.

It was him—Kael—kneeling in a Nexus lab, his hands bound, blood on the floor. Lira standing over him. Her voice quiet:

"You're not the weapon, Kael. You're the template."

Then static.

Then nothing.

The memory ended.

Aeris pulled back, breath catching. "You're not the mirror."

Kael shook his head. "No. But they used me to make it."

She dropped the spell and stepped back, her thoughts spinning.

"They copied you while you were in custody," she said.

Kael nodded. "They told me they were erasing my charge. They were duplicating my neural map."

"Lira was in that room."

"I know," he said. "But I don't know why she spared me."

Aeris looked at him.

"She didn't," she said. "She just needed one of you to survive."

Outside, the docking bay lights dimmed.

Inside, the comms crackled—three words in a voice Aeris hadn't heard since she was seventeen.

"Hello, little sister."