Chapter 86 The Mirror Trap

Chapter 86 The Mirror Trap
The giant theater went dead silent. The thousands of people who had been screaming for my death froze. They didn't see me anymore. They saw their own faces staring back at them from the walls of my prison. The cracks in the floor turned into fractures in reality. As the glass shattered, the images in the theater began to glitch. The people in the seats started to lose their color, turning into flat, grey, paper-like shadows.

Internal monologue hit me like a physical weight. They aren't real. They were never real. They were just part of the feed. They were the ones who kept me in the box, and now I’m the one holding the hammer. If they aren't real, then their fear isn't real. Only the anger matters. Only the truth matters.

The author stood up, his wine glass slipping from his fingers and smashing on the stage. He wasn't smiling anymore. His face was twisted, his skin looking like wet, peeling wallpaper. "You don't understand what you're doing, Elara! If you break the reflection, the whole world goes dark!"

"Good," I said. My voice didn't shake. I didn't care about his world. I didn't care about his wine, his theater, or his fans. I cared about the cage.

I drove the silver knife deep into the mirror wall again. CRACK.

A massive piece of glass fell toward the author. He tried to scramble away, but he was too slow. The glass hit him, and instead of cutting him, it absorbed him. He vanished into the mirror, his face trapped behind the surface, his hands beating against the glass from the inside.

"Help me!" he screamed, but his voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well. "I'm the one who writes the script! I'm the one who decides!"

"You aren't the writer anymore," I said, walking toward the center of the pit. "You're just an character."

I turned my back on him. I didn't need to kill him. Watching him rot in his own mirror was a better ending than he deserved.

I looked up at the theater. The people were gone. The seats were empty, dusty, and rotting. The whole building was a fake. It was a rotting carcass of a story that had been told too many times.

I felt a sudden pull at my waist. I looked down.

A small, warm hand was clutching my shirt.

"Mommy?"

I spun around. Julian was standing there. He wasn't a baby, and he wasn't a grown man. He was seven years old, his hair gold, his eyes bright and clear. Leo and Elias were standing right behind him. They looked perfect. They looked real.

But I knew better.

I didn't reach out to touch them. I backed away.

"You're not them," I said. My heart felt like it was being squeezed in a vice. "You're just another trick."

"Mommy, it's us," Leo said, his voice trembling. "We found the way out. We just had to walk through the glass."

They looked so real. I wanted to run to them. I wanted to hold them until the world ended. But I saw the wire running from Julian’s neck, a thin, silver thread that disappeared into the ceiling.

"You're the ones who were in the tanks," I whispered. "You're the ones who were supposed to be the perfect assets."

"Does it matter?" Julian asked, stepping closer. His eyes flashed with that cold, golden light again, the light of the anchor code. "If we're the ones you love, why do you care if we're made of code? We're here. We're warm. We're yours."

I looked at the silver knife in my hand. I looked at my children.

The author, the version of him inside the mirror, started to laugh. "Pick one, Elara! Save the ghosts of your kids, or break the mirror and lose them forever! This is the ultimate choice! The readers will love this!"

I was trapped. I knew it was a setup. If I hugged them, I would be hooked back into the system, forced to play the role of the mother until I died. If I killed them, I would be breaking the only things that kept me sane.

I looked at the author in the mirror. Then I looked at my boys.

"You think you've given me a choice?" I asked the room.

I walked up to Julian. I looked him in the eyes. He didn't blink. He was waiting for my move.

"I love you," I said to him.

Then, I turned the silver knife and stabbed it into the mirror behind him.

The mirror shattered.

The image of the boys flickered. Their skin started to turn into long, black lines of ink. They didn't scream. They didn't cry. They just dissolved into the air, turning into mist.

The room went completely quiet.

I was alone in the pit.

I started to laugh. It wasn't a happy laugh. It was the laugh of someone who had lost everything and found that it didn't hurt as much as they thought it would.

"Is that all you have?" I shouted at the empty theater. "Is that all the pain you can write?"

I heard a heavy, metallic sound. A hatch opened in the floor, and a man walked out. He wasn't the author. He was a soldier, but he wasn't wearing an ink-tube. He was wearing my face.

He pulled off a mask, revealing a scarred, grizzled face, the face of a man who had fought in a thousand wars.

"You did good, Elara," he said. "But you missed the point. You didn't break the game. You just finished the first level."

He pointed to a staircase behind me. It went up, and up, and up, into a blinding white light.

"The real author isn't in a study," he said. "The real author is waiting at the top. And he’s not going to be as kind as the man in the mirror."

He stepped aside.

I looked at the stairs. I had no weapons left. I had no strength left. But I had my memory. And that was enough.

I started to climb. I didn't look back. I didn't care about the theater. I didn't care about the feed. I just kept my eyes on the white light at the top.

I reached the final step, and the light vanished. I was in a small, white room. In the middle of the room sat a single, plain wooden chair.

And sitting in the chair, with his back to me, was my father.

"Sit down, Elara," he said, not turning around. "We need to talk about why you were created."