The mango's black core throbbed like a heartbeat that wasn't hers. Each pulse made the world around Leila flicker — light, dark, light, dark — like someone was flipping reality on and off. The air tasted like copper. Somewhere behind her, a siren wailed, then cracked into silence.
The first reflection hit the ground without a sound. No splatter, no scream — just a ripple through the pavement, like dropping a stone into water. The second one didn't fall. It crawled out of the mirror. Her face. Her hoodie. But wrong. Its joints bent backward, its head tilting too far as it sniffed the air. Its grin didn't belong to anything human.
Leila stumbled back, clutching the mango core as if it might save her. It was warm now. Almost… alive.
A whisper slid across the air, threading between the crackling static.
"We're late," her voice said. But not her voice.
"You're late."
The thing wearing her face moved closer, every step reversed — heel first, then toe — like someone rewinding reality.
Around her, the dozen Leilas began to peel themselves out of the sky. One wore a lab coat stained with something dark. Another had no eyes, just black seams stitched shut. The tallest one floated inches above the ground, head tilted like a marionette.
Leila's pulse matched the mango's. A thought pressed into her skull, not spoken but inserted:
You were chosen because you broke the rule first.
"What rule?" she whispered.
The sky answered. It laughed — not with one voice, but with all of hers, layered into a chorus of wrong.
Then came the twist.
The original Leila — the one standing on the cracked pavement, still breathing — wasn't real. She felt it as the mango core burned through her palm and filled her veins with cold static. Memories collapsed: skipping class, stealing fruit, running. All fabricated. A decoy.
The real Leila was above, in the mirror world, watching her like a puppeteer.
Her reflections turned their heads in unison. The one with the sewn eyes opened the seams, revealing a void behind them — a swirling, endless dark.
The mango in her hand whispered one final truth:
"You're not chosen. You're bait."
Then the ground beneath her folded upward like a page in a book, and Earth — both of them — screamed.