Chapter 5: Shattered Reflections
813 Words
Isabella’s Point of View
They say mirrors don’t lie—but they do. They tell you stories your mind is willing to believe. They show you who you were, who you are, and sometimes… who you fear becoming.
The mirror above the sink trembled under the weight of my stare. My reflection was pale, haunted, eyes swollen from sleep I hadn’t taken. I touched my lips—still bruised from the kiss I’d shared with Ethan. The Ethan who bled. Who loved. Who might not be real.
I didn’t know who to trust anymore.
Not even myself.
Downstairs, the house was quiet, but my nerves buzzed. The chill of last night’s revelations had yet to fade. I kept seeing them—those tanks. Eight versions of him. One missing. And the way his skin had healed in front of my eyes, like something not born of this world.
But he’d held me. Protected me. Loved me.
And when he said he chose me—that felt more real than any version of the man I once loved.
I wrapped my robe tighter around myself and stepped into the hallway. The smell of scorched electronics still clung to the air from the gas incident, and beneath it all… blood. The intruder’s. His double’s. Maybe his clone’s.
I made my way to the surveillance room.
Ethan was already there. Shirtless, bruised, scrolling through footage. His back was tense, knotted with anger and purpose. He didn’t hear me enter.
“I didn’t sleep either,” I said softly.
He turned, startled. “You should be resting.”
“You should be answering more questions.”
He nodded slowly. “We have bigger problems. The other me… the one at your father’s grave… he left something behind.”
He handed me a flash drive.
“What’s on it?”
“I haven’t opened it yet. I wanted you here first.”
We inserted the drive into the terminal.
A single video file.
I clicked it.
Grainy footage played: a dark corridor, metal doors, and someone—another Ethan—speaking to a man in shadows.
“The girl is the key,” the shadowed man said. “Her DNA completes the serum. Without her, the clones collapse within months.”
I felt my stomach drop.
“They’ll try to protect her,” the shadow man added. “Even Number Three. Especially him.”
The video ended.
My mouth went dry. “They… want to use me?”
Ethan stood still, fists clenched. “No one will touch you.”
“You said you don’t know if you’re one of them—what if they made you to be close to me? To get what they need?”
He stepped forward. “Then let me prove I’m not. Let me burn every lab they built. Let me tear down every part of this nightmare.”
He grabbed a tablet and pulled up a map. “I traced the signal from the cryo-lab’s security panel. It led to a site outside the city. Remote. Abandoned on paper, but active underground.”
“We go there,” I said.
“You don’t have to—”
“I do. If this is about me… if I’m the key… then I won’t sit behind walls and wait to be captured.”
His jaw flexed. “Then we go.”
The journey was silent. The kind of silence that comes before a storm.
He drove. I stared out the window, watching the trees blur into shadows.
I thought about the Ethan I once knew—the man I was supposed to marry. He was kind, strategic, deeply protective. But even he kept secrets. When he vanished, I told myself it was sabotage. Or politics.
Now I feared it was science.
The car jerked to a stop. We had arrived.
A rusted factory stood like a corpse under the gray sky. Its windows were shattered, its gates chained—except someone had broken them recently.
We entered.
Ethan moved ahead, gun raised. I followed, heart pounding.
The corridors inside were lined with dust—except for fresh footprints.
“We’re not alone,” he said.
We reached a chamber. Monitors buzzed, cables snaked across the floor. In the center—another tank. Empty.
And beside it—a girl.
She looked exactly like me.
My heart stopped.
She opened her eyes, dazed, blinking.
Then she smiled. “You found me.”
Ethan raised his weapon.
“No,” I said. “Don’t.”
She staggered forward. “I’m Isabella. The real one.”
My blood turned to ice.
“What?”
“She’s lying,” Ethan said.
“I remember everything,” the girl said. “The fire. The project. They cloned me too. You’re the duplicate. You were made to test him.”
She pointed at me.
“You’re not Isabella.”
- Writer
