Chapter 14: Into the Mirror
There's something haunting about the road at 3 a.m.
The way the world feels suspended, like a held breath. Streetlights blink slower. Even the shadows seem too tired to dance.
And somewhere between one blinking milestone and the next, I realized I was afraid.
Not of the mission.
Not of the men who'd threatened us, or the secrets we were about to face.
But of what we might find if we were right.
Because if Isha really was alive, if she was in The Mirror...
Then we hadn't just failed her.
We'd abandoned her.
The coordinates Karan had given us led to Himachal Pradesh — high up, beyond the tourists and tea gardens, into the kind of mist that doesn't burn off by morning.
We'd taken his warning seriously: "The Mirror's entrance doesn't look like anything. That's the point. But once you're in, you'll know."
A lovely, reassuring note to take into possibly hostile territory.
Rohan rented a beat-up Maruti van and disguised the server equipment in old fruit crates. I hacked into local traffic towers to scrub our license plate from camera checkpoints.
And somewhere along the way — between strategy sessions and stolen glances — we stopped pretending this was just business.
We were tangled. Connected.
Not just by the case.
But by each other.
"Look," Rohan said, slowing the van as we turned onto a gravel road that wasn't on the map. "Do you see that?"
There was a fence. Faint. Half-buried in moss. No gate.
A small sign hung from one of the posts: Private Property. Restricted Access.
"So subtle," I muttered. "Almost like they want us to ignore it."
Rohan smirked. "Shall we trespass professionally?"
Inside the forest, it got darker fast.
We parked behind a thicket, strapped the gear to our backs, and moved on foot.
Branches cracked under our steps. The air smelled of pine and secrets.
I kept looking over my shoulder.
Finally, we saw it.
An old British-era cottage. Crumbling. Vines growing over shattered windows.
But as we stepped closer, I realized something wasn't right.
The glass in the window wasn't broken. It was mirrored — from the inside.
Rohan tapped it.
It shimmered.
A biometric scan flickered briefly.
And then… the door clicked open.
The inside of The Mirror was nothing like the outside.
Cold metal floors. LED strip lights embedded in the ceiling. Security cameras that turned and followed us like hawks.
Rohan whistled under his breath. "Some 'abandoned cottage.'"
We moved quickly. According to Karan, there was a central AI core somewhere underground. That would hold logs — visitor records, personnel data, surveillance footage.
But every door we passed was locked.
Until we found one open room.
And what was inside stopped me in my tracks.
It was… a bedroom.
Sterile. Clean. Bed made. A single window — mirrored, of course.
On the desk: A familiar photo.
Isha and me. From college.
I stepped closer.
She'd drawn a circle around my face. Written one word in the corner:
Trust.
I blinked, tears threatening.
"She knew we'd come," I whispered.
Rohan touched my hand. "And she waited."
We kept going.
Finally, we reached a staircase.
Down.
Deeper.
The air got colder. Lights dimmer.
At the base of the stairs was a sliding metal door with a fingerprint scanner.
Rohan pulled out the cracked server drive we'd extracted from Apex.
"Time to test if they use the same protocols," he said.
He connected a cable, typed furiously, and the scanner flickered green.
The door opened.
And inside… was a woman.
She stood at the far end of the room. Long braid. Lab coat. Thin. Paler than I remembered.
But her eyes lit up when she saw me.
"Aanya?" she said.
My breath caught.
"Isha."
The reunion was a blur.
Tears. Laughter. Disbelief.
I hugged her so hard I thought I'd break her.
Rohan stood back, letting us collapse into the moment.
She looked at him finally. "You brought her here?"
He nodded. "We both came."
Isha studied him. "So you finally figured it out."
He blinked. "What?"
"That you're in love with her."
The silence was comically long.
I blushed so hard I almost combusted.
"Isha!" I hissed.
She just grinned. "Some things even captivity can't make you miss."
Once we recovered from the emotional whiplash, Isha began explaining.
"They couldn't kill me. I knew too much. But I wouldn't cooperate. So they isolated me. Made me… disappear."
"For how long?" I asked, voice cracking.
"Six months. Maybe more. I lost count. But I had time. I hacked parts of the system. Hid logs. Created a breadcrumb trail. I hoped… one day…"
"That we'd find you," I whispered.
She nodded.
"And now that you're here… we have a shot at taking them down."
We worked through the night.
Isha uploaded internal logs to Rohan's device.
I scrubbed metadata, encrypted escape routes.
And in those precious stolen hours underground, something changed between us.
Not just in our mission.
But in us.
Rohan reached over once, brushing my hair back as I worked, his fingers lingering.
I looked up. He didn't say anything.
He didn't need to.
His eyes said it all.
And somewhere in that cold steel facility, I knew—
I'd fallen, completely.
The next morning, we made our escape plan.
A fake alert in the system to trigger a lockdown drill.
Isha would slip out with us, disguised in a security uniform.
It almost worked.
Almost.
Until the final door.
"Identification," the guard demanded.
Rohan handed over the forged pass.
The scanner beeped red.
The guard raised an eyebrow. "You're not in our system."
Crap.
Isha whispered, "I've got one chance to override the cameras. Five seconds, tops."
Rohan didn't hesitate.
He punched the guard square in the jaw.
The man went down like a sack of betrayal.
I stared. "Okay then."
"Romantic getaway," Rohan said, grabbing my hand. "Let's go!"
We ran.
Through corridors. Up stairs. Out into the forest.
Sirens wailed behind us.
But we didn't stop until we reached the van.
And even then — only to breathe.
Later, back in Delhi, as we sat on the safehouse rooftop watching the city wake up, Isha turned to me.
"You're still writing everything down?" she asked.
I nodded. "It helps me understand it."
She smiled. "Then write this, too — I didn't survive because I was smart. I survived because I wasn't alone."
I looked at Rohan beside me.
And for the first time, I let myself believe that maybe, just maybe… this was the beginning of something more.
Something real.
End of Chapter 14