Mirror Mirror
586 Words
Zara didn’t sleep.
She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, her mind replaying every moment with Korede like a broken reel. His silence. His resignation. That photo. It haunted her—not because of what it showed, but because of what it revealed.
She had laughed. Really laughed.
And she couldn’t remember why.
The next morning, she arrived at the office earlier than usual. The building felt colder. The receptionist avoided eye contact. The silence was heavier.
Korede’s desk was empty.
Not just cleared—erased. No files. No notes. No trace. It was as if he’d never existed.
She walked into her office and sat down, staring at the skyline. The city moved without her. The world spun. But something inside her had stopped.
She opened her laptop and pulled up the internal server. She typed in Korede’s employee ID. Access denied.
She frowned.
She tried again. Same result.
She called IT.
“I need access to Korede’s files,” she said.
There was a pause. “Ms. Adeyemi… those files were encrypted. We don’t have clearance.”
She blinked. “He was my assistant.”
“Yes, ma’am. But his clearance level was… higher.”
Zara’s grip tightened on the phone. “Higher than mine?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She hung up.
Something was wrong.
She opened the company’s founding documents. The original investors. The board. The patents.
One name kept appearing.
K. A. Systems.
She clicked on it.
No profile. No photo. Just a signature.
Korede’s.
Her heart stopped.
---
Across the city, Korede stood in a dimly lit room filled with screens. Neural maps pulsed on the walls. Data flowed like rivers. He stared at the simulation—Zara’s world. Her decisions. Her emotions. Her memories.
All mapped.
All shaped.
She had been the perfect subject. Her ambition made her predictable. Her arrogance made her malleable. She thought she was building a company. She didn’t know she was living inside one.
He hadn’t meant for it to go this far.
Originally, it was a test. A neural architecture experiment. Could a subconscious mind shape a conscious world? Could trauma be externalized into reality?
Zara had answered that question.
She had built an empire on his pain.
And now, she was waking up.
---
Back at Adeyemi Tower, Zara paced her office. She opened Korede’s transition file again. This time, she noticed something she hadn’t before—a folder labeled “Echo.”
She clicked.
Inside were recordings. Audio logs. Her voice. Korede’s voice. Conversations she didn’t remember.
> “You don’t see me,” Korede had said.
> “I don’t need to,” she had replied.
She flinched.
There were dozens of files. Each one a moment. A memory. A fracture.
She clicked on another.
> “Why do you stay?”
> “Because I believe in you.”
> “That’s not enough.”
> “It’s all I have.”
Zara’s chest tightened.
She had dismissed him. Over and over. And he had stayed. Not out of weakness. But out of hope.
She opened the final file.
It was a video.
Korede, sitting in a dark room, speaking to the camera.
> “She’ll never know. Not really. But maybe she’ll feel it. Maybe one day, she’ll look in the mirror and see the cracks. And maybe then, she’ll understand.”
Zara closed the laptop.
She walked to the mirror.
She stared at herself.
And for the first time, she didn’t see power.
She saw pain.
- Writer
