Chapter 27 · The Mirror Flesh

"Stop moving, or I'll carve that smug look right off your face," the man said.

He didn't just look like me. He was me. Same jagged scar running through the left eyebrow, same dirt-smudged tactical gear, same cold, dead stare. The only difference was the knife in his hand—a serrated obsidian blade that hummed with a low, violet frequency.

I backed away, my boots crunching on the shattered glass of the incubation chamber. "You're a glitch. A leftover. You shouldn't even exist in this loop."

"I'm the version that didn't hesitate," Mirror-Kael spat. He stepped forward, the blade slicing through the air with a hiss. "I'm the one who stopped pretending he cared about the collateral damage. You're just a sentimental waste of a reset."

I lunged, swinging a heavy piece of reinforced plating I'd ripped from the wall. He didn't dodge. He mirrored the movement perfectly, his own scrap of metal clashing against mine with a spark that blinded me for a split second.

"You think you're the only one who learned how to steal?" he sneered, his voice a distorted echo of my own. "I've been watching you, Kael. Every death. Every pathetic little struggle. You're getting slow."