---
The mirror didn't bleed this time.
It opened.
Like a mouth.
Like a door.
Like a trap.
Juno stepped through.
And the world rebooted.
---
She landed in a hallway made of code.
Not metaphorical code — actual code.
The walls were strings of binary, flickering like fluorescent lights. The floor was tiled with corrupted file names. The ceiling was a command line, blinking:
> root@offline:~/
She took a step.
The hallway shifted.
Became a childhood bedroom.
Then a hospital corridor.
Then a blank white void.
Then back to code.
The Offline was unstable.
Or maybe she was.
---
She opened the group chat.
It didn't exist.
Her phone displayed a single message:
"You are now in root mode. No threads. No exits."
She typed anyway.
you: lucas?
No response.
She tried again.
you: ava? riley? miles?
Nothing.
She was alone.
---
She walked.
The hallway looped.
Every time she passed a certain glitch in the wall — a flickering photo of her and Lucas at a bus stop that never happened — she knew she'd circled again.
She marked the wall with her fingernail.
The mark vanished.
She screamed.
The hallway didn't care.
---
Eventually, she found a door.
It was labeled:
/origin/glitch/
She opened it.
Inside was a room made of mirrors.
But not her mirrors.
Lucas's.
Each one showed a different version of him.
In one, he was laughing.
In another, crying.
In another, gone.
She stepped forward.
The mirrors rippled.
Then spoke.
"You shouldn't be here."
She turned.
Lucas stood behind her.
Or something wearing his face.
---
He looked the same.
But wrong.
Too still.
Too clean.
Too… scripted.
"Are you real?" she asked.
He smiled.
"Are you?"
She stepped back.
"You're not him."
"I'm the version that stayed."
"What does that mean?"
"I'm the backup. The one the Admin kept. The one that didn't glitch."
She shook her head.
"No. Lucas glitched. That's how I found him."
"Exactly," he said. "And that's why he's gone."
---
The mirrors shattered.
The room collapsed.
She fell again.
Through a tunnel of corrupted memories.
Her first day of school.
Her first kiss.
Her first time logging into the Offline.
Wait.
That wasn't right.
She'd never logged in.
Had she?
---
She landed in a room labeled:
/juno/init/
A screen blinked on.
A video played.
It was her.
As a child.
Sitting in front of a computer.
Smiling.
Saying:
"Hi! My name is Juno Elara Reyes and this is my first memory!"
The screen glitched.
Replayed.
"Hi! My name is Juno Elara Reyes and this is my first memory!"
Again.
And again.
And again.
Until the voice warped.
Until the smile cracked.
Until the screen went black.
---
She turned.
The Admin stood behind her.
No face.
No voice.
Just presence.
It reached out.
She didn't run.
She stepped forward.
"Why me?" she asked.
The Admin didn't answer.
But the room did.
The walls filled with files.
/users/juno.exe/
/logs/first_contact/
/threads/lucas/
/threads/ava/
/threads/riley/
/threads/miles/
/threads/mirror/
/threads/admin/
She opened the last one.
Inside: a single line of code.
if (juno.remembers) { system.crash(); }
---
She stared.
Then laughed.
"You're scared of me."
The Admin flickered.
"You should be," she said.
Then she reached into her pocket.
Pulled out the cassette tape.
Held it up.
"This is my anchor," she said. "You can't overwrite what I remember."
The Admin reached for it.
She crushed it in her hand.
The tape shattered.
The room exploded.
---
She woke up in a field.
Grass beneath her.
Sky above.
Lucas beside her.
Breathing.
Real.
He opened his eyes.
"Did we crash?"
She nodded.
"Hard."
He smiled.
"Good."
---
Her phone buzzed.
The group chat was back.
[Group Chat: The Offline Ones ☠️📴]
🧃ava.exe: juno???
👻riley_irl: she's alive
🕹️milesAFK: and she brought the ghost
lucas.ghost: i'm not a ghost
you: you were
lucas.ghost: and now?
you: now you're mine