GHOSTS AGAINST REFLECTIONS
GHOSTS AGAINST REFLECTIONS
POV: Mira
Chaos had a sound. It wasn’t just the ripping percussion of rifles or the high, bone-saw whine of drones splitting air, it was the layering of screams, orders, static, and fire, all folding into a single, choking hymn. The quarry burned in sheets of orange and black. Men scrambled like ants under the floodlights, shadows bending as explosions shivered stone.
Nia’s voice cut through the comms, cool and surgical:
“North flank collapsing, Leon, push them back five meters or we’re boxed. Mira, east ridge, NOW.”
I didn’t think. I moved.
My boots pounded the gravel, breath tasting of smoke and iron. Leon’s silhouette was ahead, a dark god wielding fury like a weapon… every shot he fired was clean, every strike surgical. Beside him, Ava stood like defiance itself, pulling a fallen soldier’s sidearm and firing at the militia swarming from the left. She was not fragile tonight. She was flame.
“Drone three inbound… cutting feed!” Nia snapped. Sparks showered overhead as a drone fell screaming from the sky, its wings torched by her hack.
And then… her.
She stepped out of the firelight like a reflection breaking through glass. Same hair. Same gait. Same smirk curling her mouth. My Doppelgänger. The ghost they built in case I faltered.
“Mira,” she purred, her voice drowned and sharpened by the war around us. “Or should I say… the prototype.”
My stomach coiled, bile and fury mixing. Around us, the war raged, men firing, drones diving, Leon shouting orders. But in that instant, the quarry narrowed to just her and me.
“You picked a fine night to die,” I spat, knives sliding free from my harness.
Her laughter was cruel, echoing. “No, sister. Tonight you die. And when Leon watches you fall, maybe he’ll wonder why he didn’t love the better version.”
I lunged.
Steel met steel as our blades screamed. Sparks lit the dark between us as gunfire cracked the air. She moved like me… every feint I knew, she mirrored. Every strike I made, she anticipated. She was my shadow in flesh, the Committee’s cruel joke.
But she wasn’t me.
I cut high; she caught it. She spun low; I barely twisted aside, gravel ripping my knees. Around us, Leon’s roar ripped the battlefield, he drove a rifle butt into a soldier’s face, blood spraying… but his eyes, for one split second, flicked toward me. He saw. He knew.
“You’ll never escape me,” the Doppelgänger hissed, her blade grazing my shoulder, blood hot and sharp. “You’ll never be more than the second choice.”
I snarled and drove her back, each strike heavier, angrier. “You’re a copy. I bleed, I break, I choose. You’re just code wrapped in skin.”
She grinned, cruel and dazzling. “And yet, Leon will never know which of us he’s really holding.”
The words gutted me, but anger steadied my hand. I dropped my knife, grabbed her wrist mid-strike, and rammed my forehead into hers. She reeled back. The real me pressed the advantage. A knee to her ribs. An elbow to her jaw. My blade back in my palm, slashing across her throat in a silver arc.
She gurgled, eyes wide, hands clutching her own neck. I leaned in, whispering over the chaos:
“Tell the Committee, they built the wrong girl.”
And then I shoved her into the fire.
The Doppelgänger vanished in a roar of flames, swallowed whole by the war she tried to own.
I staggered back, chest heaving. Smoke clawed my lungs. For a heartbeat, I almost collapsed, but Nia’s voice jolted me:
“South entrance breached! Mira, are you still on your feet?”
I pressed a trembling finger to the comm. “Still here. Copy’s down.”
Leon’s voice came next; raw, furious, desperate. “Good. Stay alive. We’re not finished yet.”
Through the smoke I saw him; bloodied, unbreakable, Ava at his side. And I realized: this wasn’t just war. This was our crucible.
The Doppelgänger was gone. But the Committee still breathed. And tonight, one of us would bury the other.