The hall was silent.
Elena stood at the center of the chamber, floodlights glaring down, illuminating her pale face. In front of her sat a dozen military and intelligence officials behind a long, steel table. At the head, General Orlov, eyes sharp and still as stone.
"Agent Elena Volkov," he said, voice echoing off the chamber walls. "This is your final debriefing. Do not lie."
"I haven't lied," she replied, her voice flat. "I don't need to."
She opened the classified file. Pages filled with chaotic notes, scanned images of the compound, black-and-white photos of the mirror.
"I was there," she said. "I went through. No one else came back. And what returned with me was... not human."
There was a long pause.
A woman in a gray uniform leaned forward. "We have no scientific model for what you're describing. Are you claiming the mirror is a portal?"
"No." Elena's eyes were empty. "It's not a portal. It's a predator."
Some of the officials exchanged uneasy glances.
"A predator?" Orlov repeated.
"It doesn't need to move. It reflects. It watches. And when the moment is right—it replaces."
Orlov cleared his throat. "What is your professional judgment on what should be done with it?"
Elena didn't blink.
"Seal it. Bury it. Burn everything that touched it. And then pray that's enough."
A chill swept the room. No one spoke.
Then, faintly, from the speaker system—
A static whisper.
"…still here…"
The screen behind Elena flickered to life. A live feed from the containment vault. The mirror in Chamber 313-A.
It was pulsing.
And in its reflection: not the room, but the faces of every official now seated, staring back—
Smiling.
---
Epilogue: Awakening
Later, in the debrief, Elena sat with a psychologist, her hands clenched in her lap.
"It felt real," she said. "The cold. The death. The copies. I remember it."
The psychologist took notes. "Dreams can be deceptive. Especially under stress. Your exposure to the mirror's low-frequency resonance field could've induced a shared hallucination."
"But we weren't under long enough," she insisted. "And there were details—things I couldn't have imagined."
He gave her a patient smile. "Sometimes, the mind tells us stories it needs to tell."
Elena said nothing.
When she returned to her quarters, she unpacked her gear.
At the bottom of the bag—a journal.
Her heart skipped.
She hadn't brought one.
She opened it. Just one phrase, written on the first page:
"You haven't woken up yet."
Behind her, in the mirror above the sink—
Her reflection smiled.
But she hadn't.