Darkness.
Not the kind that lives under your bed or behind closed doors.
This darkness breathed.
It pulsed with an intelligence Harper could feel pressing against her skull. Her heartbeat was an alarm, too loud in this space of nothing.
But Harper didn't back down.
Not anymore.
She knelt slowly and picked up a shard of broken mirror. It shimmered with something beyond reflection -- it held memories.
Hers. Katherine's. Jamie's.
Morgan's how? why?
Did i drag Morgan too? No way
Flickering across the glass like static on an old VHS tape.
Flash ..Katherine..
In the shard, Harper saw Katherine — standing where she had just stood. Same room. Same silence.
But Katherine had cried.
She whispered,
"I'm not like them. I can't forget."
A black figure stood behind her, shadow without shape.
It placed a hand on her shoulder.
And then Katherine vanished from the reflection –replaced by Harper's own face.
Not this Harper. A version of her with hollow eyes and a stitched mouth.
Harper dropped the shard. It hissed as it hit the ground, then dissolved into smoke.
The room changed.
No longer a box of mirrors — now a corridor. Narrow. Endless. And on either side, doors.
All labeled:
HARPER QUINN – VERSION 001
HARPER QUINN – VERSION 002
HARPER QUINN – VERSION 003
It went on. Versions of her, rewritten, repurposed, reshaped.
One door had a glass panel. She peeked in.
Inside: a Harper who wore perfect makeup, perfect posture, smiling like she'd never seen a dead body or screamed in a hospital hallway.
This version stood in front of her classmates, giving a presentation. Perfect. Applauded. Empty.
Harper turned away, sickened.
Another door creaked open on its own.
Version 019.
Inside, she saw her — the real her — straining against a mirrored wall, pounding her fists until her knuckles split.
Blood smeared the glass.
That version turned to Harper and whispered, "Burn the script."
She didn't walk to it — the corridor shifted around her, bringing her to a silver panel. A keypad.
Nine digits.
She didn't think.
She typed K A T H E R I N E.
Access granted.
The door slid open like a vault.
Inside was a room full of screens. Thousands. All showing different versions of students.
Morgan. Jamie. Mia. Herself.
Every student at Bellridge — rewritten, looped, frozen. One screen labeled "ARCHIVE: ERASURE" showed Jamie's locker, permanently empty, timestamped every ten seconds.
She found one labeled:
"KATHERINE QUINN: LAST ORIGINAL."
Harper touched it.
A video played. Grainy. Black-and-white.
Katherine stood at a podium in what looked like an abandoned auditorium.
She said only one sentence:
"They only win if we stop remembering."
The screen flickered — and then cracked.
Smoke poured from the back.
A voice – the same as the one from the recording – echoed around her.
"System breach. Reset initiated. Glitch identified. Termination required."
Harper smiled grimly.
"Good," she whispered. "Let them come."
Back at Bellridge, things shifted.
Ms. Clove's library caught fire. No cause found.
Morgan found her house surrounded by silver-eyed birds who wouldn't stop watching.
Students reported deja vu loops—entire conversations repeating with exact precision.
And Jamie's locker?
It flickered.
One student swore they saw a hand reach out through the cracks in the metal.
She took the notebook. Wrote three names.
Katherine. Jamie. Morgan.
Then added a fourth.
Harper – Not a Copy
She flipped to the next page.
"I'm not the glitch. I'm the virus.
I'm not the rewrite. I'm the reboot.
You wanted silence. I'm the scream."
She signed it with her full name.
Then stood.
The control room began to melt around her, mirrors reforming from the walls, whispering:
"You will forget. You will forget. You will forget."
But Harper shouted back:
"I will make them REMEMBER."
And for the first time…
The system hesitated. Harper took her chance and ran away..