The mirror doesn't reach with fingers.
It reaches with the shape of me that's always been a half-second ahead, like the ghost you see in the corner of your eye when you turn too fast. The room tilts, the lights smear, and for one heartbeat I'm not standing in the chamber anymore; I'm standing in the space my reflection usually keeps for itself.
I suck in air so hard my ribs complain. "No," I croak, and the word fogs the glass on both sides of reality.
The red under my sternum answers with its own pulse (no heartbeat, just a reminder). It doesn't ask what I want. It asks what I'm willing to lose.
A hand clamps my shoulder and yanks me backward like I weigh nothing. Mara. Her grip is small, ridiculous, and absolutely unbreakable. She spins me until her eyes are the only thing in focus.
"Look at me," she says.
I do. The mirror hates losing the staring contest and sulks.
"Breathe with me. In four. Hold two. Out six."
We breathe. The air tastes like burnt copper and old storms.
Kwan is right behind her, grinning the kind of grin that belongs in a lab notebook labeled "do not open until apocalypse." Tablet up, magnifying lenses clipped on like he's about to autopsy God. Sato blocks the doorway, rifle low but ready to argue. Rey looks like he's trying to decide whether to puke or pray.
Down in the chamber, the bone-light thing (my thing) has floated higher, bobbing like it's waiting for me to finish being dramatic.
"Containment's drifting," Kwan says, voice cracking with joy. "No, syncing. It's treating him like true north."
"Use smaller words," Mara says, never taking her eyes off me.
"It's taking the fastest route home," Kwan says. "And home is currently wearing his face."
Mara's jaw does that thing it does when the world is being stupid. "We guide it," she decides. "Our way."
She points at the hatch that leads straight into the chamber (the one she literally told me never to open five minutes ago).
"You're kidding," I say.
"Temporary promotion," she says, and slaps a thin metal band around my forearm. It bites cold. "If anything goes above the red line I just drew in my head, this drops you like a bad habit."
"Super comforting."
"Super motivating," she corrects. "You pick it up, you put it down where I say. You do not take advice from anything that looks like you but forgot to bring your scars."
The mirror smirks with my mouth.
Rey's already spinning the manual wheel. The hatch sighs open like it lost a bet.
I look at Mara. "If I say stop—"
"We stop," she says. "I already promised."
I step through before I can chicken out.
The chamber swallows sound. Even the alarms sound embarrassed to be here. The bone-light thing rises to meet me like we're slow-dancing at a funeral.
Up close it's worse than beautiful. It's inevitable. Angles that shouldn't fit, colors that hurt in good ways. It hums a note I feel in my teeth.
Mara's voice comes through the wall speaker, thin but steady. "Talk to me."
"Heart's pretending it's normal," I say. "Good enough."
"Keep pretending."
I walk slow. The map in my head keeps offering shortcuts that would fold the room like origami and probably everyone in it. I like. I stick to the boring path.
The cradle waits underneath—black ring, tiny lightning fingers ready to hug. I can see exactly where the thing wants to sit.
"Roll fifteen, pitch three," Mara says, calm as surgery.
I do. The hum sweetens.
"Down two centimeters, no rush."
I lower."
I lower.
The mirror appears inside the lattice, wearing my face like a tailored suit.
We're aligned, it says without moving its lips.
"Aligned like a broken bone?" I ask.
Aligned like a key that finally found the right tumor.
"Define we."
You who stay. We who come. Cost assessed in memories, in definitions, in the parts of you that still think "person" is a permanent condition.
It slides the apple-laughter memory across the table like a bartender sliding back a bad tip. I almost grab it. The edges fuzz, already forgetting.
Mara's voice cuts through. "Ryo, you're drifting. Stay in your skin."
The band on my arm blooms ice-cold. Warning shot.
I tuck my free hand behind my back so it can't join the party.
The thing in my palm wants to be everywhere at once. It knows my lifeline better than I do.
"Waste," the mirror sighs. "You're wasting potential."
"Potential's overrated," I mutter. "I'm fond of not exploding."
You don't have to stay small.
"Small keeps people breathing," I say, and push the lattice the last millimeter home.
The cradle kisses it with tiny lightning hugs. A soft chime dings—exactly the sound an elevator makes when it decides you're worth the trip.
The world inhales.
The mirror flickers, annoyed but not beaten. We'll talk again.
The band on my arm goes warm—permission granted to keep existing.
I step back. My legs remember they have opinions and threaten to quit.
Mara is already at the ladder, hand out. I take it. She hauls me up like I'm luggage she refuses to lose.
In the gallery, the alarms downgrade to sulking amber. Kwan looks like he just watched the birth of a religion and wants to baptize everyone immediately.
Mara ignores him, studies my face. "What'd it try to steal?"
"My definition," I say.
"Did it get it?"
"Only the rough draft."
She huffs something that might be a laugh. "We'll red-pen the hell out of it."
Sato slings his rifle. "Anything feel… gone?"
I check. The apple-laughter spot is still hollow, but the edges are sore like a bruise, not a hole. "I kept my name," I say. "Ryo."
"Good enough for today," she says.
We get maybe four seconds of relief.
Then the intercom crackles: "Street-level sensors picking up multiple new signatures at the original breach. Unclassified. Recommend immediate response."
Mara's face goes from tired to weapon in one heartbeat. "Sato, Rey—delta route. Kwan—vault, now."
She looks at me. "You're with me. Don't touch anything unless I say. Don't argue with me or gravity."
"Which one's worse?"
"Today? Gravity."
We move.
The corridor is already half panic, half paperwork. People jog with the focused panic of folks who've seen the training videos. Nobody bumps Mara; the hallway parts like it's scared of her.
Elevator ride feels like falling upward. Doors open to heat and sirens and the smell of hot tar.
The street is trying to eat itself again. The old scar from the first fight is glowing like a bad tattoo. Around it, reality is getting wrinkles—three, four, five little folds where the air looks embarrassed to exist.
Things step out.
Same flavor as the one I killed, but these feel… polite. They turn toward me like I'm a street sign they've been looking for.
The red in my chest lines up like iron filings to a magnet.
Mara's hand finds my sleeve. "If they want you, we disappoint them."
"Working on it," I say.
The map redraws itself with me as the only dot that matters. Every path wants to funnel straight into those things.
So I do the stupid thing.
I step forward.
Not toward them—into the one spot on the map where none of the lines cross. The blind spot.
The first thing stumbles without moving. The second's fingers twitch like bad reception. The third just watches, hungry.
I lift my hand and close it around the idea of a wall.
Not a real wall. A boundary. The kind you draw in the air when you're a kid and the dark is too big.
The third thing smiles with pure intention and walks straight at me.
The mirror inside slides its hand over mine. Boundary, it reminds me.
"Cost?" I ask.
Already paid, it says, and the apple-laughter memory flickers like a bulb about to die.
I don't let go.
I push.
The third thing steps sideways into a pocket that shouldn't exist and the pocket closes behind it like a mouth that changed its mind.
The first two screech silently and fold back into their wrinkles like bad origami. The street seam zips shut with a hiss.
My knees pick that moment to unionize and strike.
Mara catches me before the pavement does.
"What did you just do?" she asks, soft.
"Put it in timeout," I mutter.
Kwan skids up, breathless. "You created a temporary bounded subspace—"
"Timeout," I repeat.
Mara almost smiles. "News is gonna love you."
"I vote we skip that part."
"Too late," she says, hauling me upright. "Congratulations. You're officially my headache."
"What was I before?"
"A maybe," she says. "Now you're a definitely."
The mirror inside me settles, quiet for once.
Somewhere the shortest path just got a lot longer.
Mara slings my arm over her shoulder. "Come on, hero. Let's go find a definition of home that still fits you."
I lean on her because I'm allowed to, and because the red finally shuts up long enough for me to hear my own pulse.
"Ryo," I say, tasting the weight.
"Yeah," she answers. "Still got it."
Behind us, the city pretends it didn't just watch a kid redraw the map with a sharpie made of stubborn.
Ahead, the red waits patiently for the next question.
I keep walking anyway.