The first time I saw her, I thought it was a glitch.

The second time, I realized it was me — before they erased me.

...----------------...

The morning bell doesn’t ring. It screams.

A long, metallic screech that vibrates through your teeth and into your bones. It wakes you like a slap, not like a whisper. Nothing in this place whispers.

I sit up, legs over the cot. The mattress is thin, barely a layer of foam over steel. The walls around me are the same dull gray as every other surface — institutional, inhuman. There are no windows. No clocks. No sense of time except for the regulated sounds: doors locking, vents hissing, boots on metal.

Routine begins. Like every other day.

Like it’s always been.

Like it always will be.

...----------------...

I am Model SR-08. Female. Class B.

Behavioral tag: compliant.

That’s all I know. That’s all I’m supposed to know.

Every replica in this facility has a code. Not a name. Names belong to them — the Originals. The real ones. We’re just shadows cut from their silhouettes. Some of us are here because we broke programming. Some because our hosts didn’t want us walking around anymore. Some of us were made to bleed, suffer, die — in place of someone too powerful to fall.

But me?

I don’t know why I’m here. Only that I’ve always been here.

Until now.

...----------------...

We line up in front of the wash stations. Thirty of us, all girls, all identical in posture, silence, and shaved-down humanity. I brush my teeth, like always. I avoid the mirror, like always.

We aren’t supposed to stare too long.

But something’s wrong with the reflection today.

It’s small at first. A flicker. A ripple across the glass like a screen glitching in and out of signal. I blink. She blinks — but not at the same time.

And then I see her.

Not me — her.

Her hair is longer. Looser. Her skin isn’t pale like mine. It glows faintly gold, lit from somewhere I can’t see. Her eyes are sharp. Alert. Alive. They’re crying — not with tears, but with something louder.

Recognition.

I freeze. Toothbrush mid-air. My hand trembles. This isn’t allowed. I’m supposed to move on, rinse, report, repeat. But I can’t. I’m stuck. My eyes glued to hers.

She leans closer. So do I. But she’s faster. Slightly.

She mouths something.

“You are.”

My body jolts. Something stirs inside me. A memory — not fully formed, just a sensation.

A scent.

Sandalwood cologne.

Warm arms.

Piano keys beneath my fingers.

A girl in a red dress spinning under soft lights.

None of it belongs here.

None of it belongs to me.

...----------------...

“SR-08, step away from the mirror.”

The voice is automated. Cold and genderless. It echoes from the ceiling like God without the kindness.

I obey. My feet feel like lead, but I turn. My eyes flick back once.

She’s still there.

Watching me like she knows exactly who I am — and what I’ve forgotten.

Then the hiss.

I feel it before I hear it. The sudden tightness in my chest. The way the air gets heavier.

Neuro-fog.

They use it when someone glitches. When a replica shows signs of residual memory. A quick-release gas that numbs the nervous system, slows the brain, wipes the edges of thought.

I drop to my knees. The floor is freezing.

A scream tries to form in my throat, but never makes it out.

My last thought before the blackout isn’t mine.

It’s hers.

“Wake up.”

...----------------...

When I come to, the lights are dim. My room again.

Everything looks the same.

Feels the same.

But I’m not.

Something stayed with me.

A flicker behind the eyes. A burn beneath the skin. A voice, clear and impossible:

“Sera.”

That name.

It’s not in my file.

It doesn’t belong to any model.

But it feels like mine.

Like I used to wear it before they took it away.

...----------------...

Later, I sneak a glance back at the mirror.

She’s gone.

Just me now — the pale, quiet girl with eyes like erased tape.

But behind that reflection, I feel it.

A version of me they couldn’t fully kill.

A girl with a life stolen and rewritten.

A ghost of the original.

And suddenly, I know:

They made a mistake.

They left something behind.

Me.

The real me.

And I’m waking up.

I used to think mirrors lied.

But now I know — the real lie was me.

...----------------...

The glitch didn’t go away.

If anything, it’s growing louder.

Not in sound, but in silence.

In static that hums behind my eyes when everything else is still.

In how my body remembers things my mind doesn’t.

The weight of a necklace I’ve never worn.

The way my fingers twitch like they once played music.

A habit of folding paper cranes, though I don’t know what they mean.

They erased everything — but not well enough.

...----------------...

We’re taken to Block B today. A different wing of the facility. We don’t ask why.

Replicas aren’t meant to ask questions.

I keep my head down, movements sharp, obedient. But inside, I’m screaming. Not from fear — from friction. From something inside me trying to claw its way out.

We pass another corridor. Its doors are black instead of gray. Marked EX-PRIME. Disposal Units.

My chest tightens. I know what those are.

The failed replicas.

The ones that remembered.

The ones who refused to forget.

I swallow hard. My mouth tastes like metal.

We enter a wide chamber lined with chairs and cables. “Cognitive Sync Simulation Lab,” the sign reads. The Originals call it empathy training. I call it what it is — infiltration. They load memories into us, test how well we imitate the source. The better you sync, the longer you live.

I sit. They strap a neural band to my temple. Cold. Tight. The lights dim.

Then it begins.

A face appears — hers.

Seraphina Rowe.

She’s laughing on a yacht. A real one. Her hair dances in the ocean wind. Her friends — real friends — call her “Sera.”

My name.

I feel nausea twist in my gut. This isn’t training. This is a mockery. They’re making me watch the life I could’ve had — the one I was made to copy, to shield, to replace.

She blinks at the camera. Her lips part. And then, she says something that snaps everything in me.

“They made her for me, you know. My little shadow. So if someone tries to kill me — they kill her instead.”

She smiles.

I scream.

But not out loud. Just in my head. My body stays still, like it’s supposed to. But inside, something explodes.

A thousand broken glass memories.

A crash.

A siren.

Blood on white marble.

Hands dragging me away.

Needles.

Codes.

The lab.

I rip off the neural band. My breath comes in short, sharp bursts. A guard steps forward. I brace myself for the blow.

But it doesn’t come.

Instead, I hear a voice. Calm. Curious.

“You glitched.”

I turn. A boy leans against the wall — no uniform, no tag. His eyes, sharp and unreadable, scan my face like he’s seen it before.

He holds up a clipboard. Then flips it shut.

“SR-08. Class B. Stable until now. Strange.”

I narrow my eyes. He’s not a guard. Not a replica either.

He smirks.

“Name’s Jin. Cognitive engineer. Technically.”

I don’t respond.

He walks closer, steps slow and confident, like he’s testing how close he can get before I flinch. I don’t.

Instead, I look at him straight on.

And something in his gaze flickers. Just for a second.

Recognition.

...----------------...

“You remember something, don’t you?” he says quietly.

My pulse spikes. I say nothing.

He crouches to my level. Voice lower now.

“Don’t lie. I’ve seen what they do to the ones who start remembering. You should be dead already.”

I clench my jaw.

He leans closer, his breath warm. “Which means… they missed something.”

Then, softer — almost like regret:

“They always do.”

...----------------...

That night, I lie awake.

The name Seraphina loops in my mind like a wire around my throat. I know her. I was her. No — I am her, stripped down, rewritten, rebooted.

I’m the prototype.

The insurance policy.

The perfect replica.

But they made a mistake. A tiny, irreversible one.

They let me live.

...----------------...

And now, I will remember.

Every stolen piece.

Every hidden truth.

Every reason to destroy her.

Because the only thing more dangerous than a glitch…

…is a glitch that learns how to lie back.

They erased me from the world.

But not from him.

...----------------...

The next day, Jin’s not there.

No clipboard. No cryptic gaze. No questions.

Just the sterile silence of the facility and the weight of being awake in a world that wants me asleep.

I try to focus. Move like they expect me to. Breathe like the others. Smile without teeth.

But the storm in my head keeps getting louder.

And I can’t stop wondering:

Who the hell is he?

He knew my ID.

He knew I glitched.

He looked at me like he knew me.

Not the version they programmed.

But me — before all this.

...----------------...

Later that evening, I’m taken to Med Block 4. Routine neural mapping, they say.

But it’s not routine. Nothing is anymore.

The room is colder than usual. Two guards outside. One inside.

And him.

Jin.

He’s sitting behind a reinforced glass panel, facing the monitor, typing something.

He doesn’t look up when I enter.

“Sit.”

His voice cuts through me. Calm, cold — calculated. Like he’s someone else now.

I sit.

A mechanical arm lowers the neural band onto my head. My fingers twitch.

He finally looks at me — and there it is again.

That flicker.

Of something he’s not supposed to feel.

...----------------...

“You shouldn’t be here,” I whisper.

“I could say the same.”

He presses a few keys. Data floods the screen. My scan. My profile. My fabricated life.

“SR-08. Wiped twice. Memory core re-synced six months ago. You’re not supposed to have identity recall.”

I don’t answer.

He leans back in his chair.

“Why do you think they wiped you again?”

The question hangs heavy.

I didn’t even know I’d been wiped twice.

...----------------...

“Something went wrong,” he continues. “A sync error during a field test. You started mimicking the Original too well.”

His fingers tap the desk. “They thought you believed you were her.”

I look up sharply.

He meets my eyes.

“And the worst part?” he says softly.

“You did.”

...----------------...

Flashes slice through my brain.

A piano. A red ballroom. A scream.

Gunfire. My hands, covered in blood.

...----------------...

“Was it real?” I ask.

He watches me for a long time.

Then, almost reluctantly: “Some of it.”

I grip the edge of the table.

“I need to know who I was. Before all this. Before they broke me.”

He stands.

Walks to the edge of the glass.

And for the first time, something fractures in his voice:

“I remember you, Sera.”

My breath stutters.

“You weren’t a copy. Not always. You… you used to be someone else.”

...----------------...

He reaches into his pocket.

Pulls out a folded square of origami. A crane.

My throat tightens.

“I didn’t fold that.”

He nods. “You did. Two years ago. You left it in Lab B, after the fire.”

Fire.

My mind reels.

There was a fire.

That was real?

“You saved me that night,” he says. “You didn’t even know me. But you pulled me out.”

My voice trembles. “I don’t remember.”

“You will.”

He slides the crane through the crack in the glass.

And for a moment — for a split second — I feel human again.

...----------------...

When I return to my cell, I unfold the crane.

Inside is a message. Scrawled in sharp ink, unmistakably mine.

“They made me forget.

But I left pieces.

Find them.”