THE MIRROR AND THE GHOST
637 Words
Sarafina couldn’t breathe.
Not because she was tired, or because they’d snuck past four levels of Vatican security to reach the sub-archives.
But because her uncle’s words still rang in her head.
> “You weren’t his only creation.”
She’d known secrets. Had lived her whole life around them. But this?
This wasn’t a secret.
It was betrayal coded in blood.
“Do you think he meant a clone?” Noemi asked softly as they crept down the spiral stone staircase. “Or…?”
“I don’t know,” Sarafina whispered. “But if there’s someone else like me, I need to know who they are. Why they were hidden. And why Dante knew before I did.”
She hated how much that last part stung.
---
Below, in the chamber.
Dante stood still.
The girl’s eyes were locked on his, glowing faintly under the pale light. She looked… wrong. Not because she was broken — but because she was perfect. Too perfect. Engineered.
A mirror polished until it no longer reflected anything real.
“You remember me,” he said.
She tilted her head. “I remember him.”
His breath caught. “Lucetti?”
She nodded. “He used to read to me. Dante and Beatrice. He told me I was his afterthought.”
His jaw clenched. “He lied.”
She laughed — a bright, chiming sound that didn’t match the darkness around her.
“I’m not mad, you know. He chose her to live in the sun. And me to grow in the dark. Balance, he said.”
Dante moved closer. “What do you know about Project Silence?”
“I am Silence,” she said.
And in that moment, he believed her.
---
Back with Sarafina.
The door to the archive chamber loomed ahead — ancient, iron-wrought, sealed with the Lucetti family crest. A lion’s head.
She placed her hand on the lock.
It clicked open.
Noemi gave her a look. “Blood recognizes blood.”
Inside, the room was lit only by a single data node. A voice-triggered terminal.
Sarafina stepped closer. The screen flickered to life.
> ACCESS GRANTED.
IDENTITY: PRIMARY SIGMA.
FILE OPENED: SUBJECT_03 “ALBA”
She blinked. “Alba?”
Noemi read quickly. “She’s not just another version of you. She’s older. First, actually. A test model. Buried. Forgotten. Until now.”
Sarafina’s stomach twisted.
“And Dante knew.”
---
Dante turned toward the door.
He could feel her coming before he heard her boots.
Sarafina stepped into the room like a storm breaking glass. Her eyes went first to the girl — Alba — and then to him.
Silence thickened between them.
Alba’s voice cut the tension. “So this is your sun-child.”
Dante didn’t speak.
Sarafina, breath steady, finally asked, “What is she?”
Alba smiled sweetly. “I’m what you could’ve been — without mercy. Without choice.”
Sarafina’s fists clenched.
“Why is she here?” she asked Dante.
“She was awakened six days ago,” he said. “After your father’s failsafe system detected a breach in the Silence code.”
Sarafina narrowed her eyes. “That breach was me.”
He nodded. “Exactly.”
Alba stood, chains rattling. “You were the storm. I was the thunder waiting after.”
Dante looked between them, something unreadable in his expression.
“We don’t have much time,” he said. “Because Alba wasn’t the only thing that woke up.”
Sarafina turned sharply. “What else?”
“The hunters,” he said. “The ones who built Silence before your father tried to dismantle it.”
Outside, the alarm began to wail.
Alba just smiled.
And Sarafina finally understood:
She wasn’t standing across from a girl.
She was standing across from her shadow.
- Writer
