Lena didn't scream.
She stared at the photo inside her mirror cabinet taken from the angle she was still standing in. Her reflection blurred in the glass, as if reality itself was glitching.
She turned slowly, scanning the room. The bathroom window was closed. Curtains drawn. No sound. No shadow.
But someone had been here.
Moments ago.
Jay rushed in. "What happened?"
She showed him the photo, her voice a whisper. "It was here. When I opened the cabinet. Taken just now."
He didn't question. He didn't doubt.
Instead, he opened the vent above the shower, pulling down a tiny black object.
A hidden camera. Blinking red.
Jay crushed it in his hand.
"They're inside, Lena. In your house."
She pressed her hand to her mouth. "How long…?"
"Too long."
They tore the place apart. And found four more cameras.
One in the bedroom lamp. One under the kitchen table. One inside the bookshelf. Another, terrifyingly, in the vent above her bed.
Every moment. Every kiss. Every conversation they had all been watched.
Recorded.
Studied.
Lena backed into a corner, her mind reeling. "They've been in my life before I even knew it."
Jay sat on the floor beside her. "They were never after just me. They were after you. Your mind. Your grief. Your patterns. They studied your love."
That night, Lena opened the encrypted folder on her laptop one Jay had hidden with data recovered from the facility.
And what she found made her heart stop.
A file labeled: "Project Mirrorman."
Inside images. Screenshots. Profiles. Reports.
It wasn't about duplicating Jay.
It was about creating a version of him that Lena would love more.
A better Jay.
One who wouldn't run when things got hard.
One who said the right things, always smiled, always knew what she needed.
They had tried to replace her Jay with the ideal Jay.
And when she didn't fall for it… the experiment failed.
Jay sat silently beside her, staring at the screen.
"They wanted to see if love could be manipulated. If the perfect partner could be engineered."
Lena's hands shook. "They used us as a test."
Jay looked up, eyes dark. "Then let's break their experiment."
As they prepared to leave the house for good, Lena received another message.
Unknown number.
"We're not done, Lena.
Project Mirrorman has already begun again.
And this time… it won't need your permission."
Lena stared at her reflection in the hallway mirror, her voice barely a whisper.
"If they want to play with fire… let's burn it all down."
She turned to Jay.
"Are you ready?"
He nodded.
"Then it ends where it began."