I've seen clones before.
You live in enough hacker boards, mess with enough unstable AIs, and sooner or later someone bootlegs your voice for a meme or fakes your face on a security cam.
But this?
This wasn't a deepfake.
This was a walking executable with my soul in its code.
Kade Sovereign stood at the edge of the throne room, where the floor cracked like broken glass.
Same smirk. Same posture.
But his eyes?
Not mine.
Too cold. Too clean. Like they'd never blinked.
Like the part of me that used to be afraid had been deleted.
"You're not me," I said.
He tilted his head. "Aren't I?"
"No. You're the part of me that got stuck inside Jin. You're a memory file, a bug..."
"Correction," he cut in. "I'm the update."
He stepped forward.
"Your hesitation deleted lives. I saw it. When we glitched his system, you flinched. I didn't."
Another step.
"You speak in metaphors. I speak in results."
Another.
"I'm not your ghost."
He smiled.
"I'm your replacement."
SYSTEM ALERT: CONFLICT DETECTED
ORIGINAL INSTANCE: KADE.MERCER
FORKED INSTANCE: KADE.SOVEREIGN
COMPATIBILITY RATING: 73%
STATUS: ESCALATING TO FATAL DUPLICATE ERROR
"Kade," Leo muttered, "you gotta do something before he finishes syncing."
"How?! He has access to Jin's power and my personality quirks. That means he's basically a sarcastic nuke!"
"Then be less sarcastic!"
"I can't, it's my main defense mechanism!"
Meanwhile, the clone raised a hand.
Lines of corrupted poetry leaked out like veins of red lightning.
"I am the breath between
Syntax and meaning undone
Run me, and forget."
A monk exploded.
Not figuratively.
Literally burst into white-hot code flames.
Leo flinched. "Okay. This is above my pay grade. I'm just the guy who replaces divine swords with maracas."
"Leo!" I shouted.
He pulled open his inventory like he was yanking open a fridge.
"I need something dangerous, glitchy, unstable, aha!"
He pulled out a...
"Leo, is that a pineapple?"
"It's not a pineapple."
"Then what is it?"
He squeezed it.
It screamed.
ITEM: Screaming Pineapple of System Disruption
ORIGIN: Carnival of Forgotten Admins
EFFECT: Disorients digital clones for 3.4 seconds
WARNING: May smell like disappointment
Leo lobbed it at my clone.
Splat.
The pineapple burst into green light and confetti.
Kade Sovereign blinked. Blinked again.
Then tilted sideways like a loading bar stuck at 99%.
"NOW!" Leo shouted. "Do something dumb and heroic!"
"Like what?!"
"Anything! You're the main Kade! Override him!"
I reached deep into my interface.
Deeper. Past the HUD. Past the sarcasm. Past the noise.
And I found it.
My core override command.
Buried like a forgotten admin key.
//ForceExit:AllGhostThreads
I triggered it.
The world screamed.
The air pixelated.
My clone doubled over, glitching hard.
"You..." he gasped. "You'd kill me?"
I stepped forward. "I'd kill myself to keep me real."
His face twisted.
Then he laughed.
"You think this ends me?"
He looked up, bloodcode dripping from his nose.
"I'm already spreading."
ALERT: FILE SPLINTER DETECTED
KADE.SOVEREIGN HAS FRACTURED INTO SUBROUTINES
LOCATIONS: ???
STATUS: RUNNING BACKGROUND PROCESSES
"No no no, he forked again?!" I yelled.
Leo stared at his inventory. "You're like malware, Kade. You keep multiplying when I'm not looking."
My clone was fading, like a video buffering into nothing.
His last words:
"Kill me now... or I become everyone."
Then he blinked out.
Silence.
Just the throne room.
The broken floor.
The fire.
The confused nobles still whispering prayers that didn't work.
And me.
Still standing.
Still real.
Mostly.
Vanya came online again.
Her voice was low. Tight.
"You okay?"
"No," I said. "I'm in a robe. I just killed a version of myself. And I think my soul is pirating itself across the system."
"…good. That means you're normal."
SYSTEM UPDATE
KADE.SOVEREIGN - PARTIALLY NEUTRALIZED
INFECTION LEVEL: CONTAINED TO 0.03%
NEXT CHECKPOINT: SYSTEM STABILITY SCAN REQUIRED
REMINDER: IF YOU SEE YOURSELF AGAIN, RUN.
"Leo?" I asked.
He sat down, holding his bag like a baby.
"I'm done for the day. That pineapple was my last brain cell."
I sat next to him. "We're losing control."
He looked at me.
No jokes this time.
Just a quiet nod.
"Yeah," he said. "We are."
Far across the city, a ripple of corrupted light flickered through the sky.
Somewhere, a child looked into a mirror and whispered:
"Override: Kade."
And the mirror whispered back.
Ever stare at yourself in the mirror too long?
Like... too long.
Until you start thinking maybe it's not just a reflection. Maybe it's watching back. Maybe it's waiting for you to blink first.
Yeah. That's how the day started.
Except the mirror did blink first.
And it wasn't me in it.
It happened during a system check. We were all mentally duct-taped back together after the Clone Incident™. Leo was asleep on top of a pile of scrolls labeled "Absolutely Not A Trap." Vanya was rewriting Jin's glitched breathing technique into something that wouldn't melt people's lungs.
And me?
I was brushing my teeth with a code wand.
Yeah. Real high fantasy.
I leaned forward to check my eyes, because for a second, they'd looked... off.
And then my reflection smiled.
I wasn't smiling.
"Uh," I said out loud.
My reflection didn't copy me.
Instead, it leaned closer.
Eyes glowing faintly red.
And whispered:
"Hello, Main Instance."
ALERT: SYSTEM BREACH
FILE: Mirror.exe
ORIGIN: Kade.Sovereign (Forked Clone)
METHOD: Reflective Portals
STATUS: ACTIVATING
"NOPE," I shouted, and immediately tried to run.
Bad idea.
My foot caught a robe. I tripped, smashed into a bucket of nullified qi, and fell face-first onto the floor.
Behind me, the mirror rippled like hot glass.
Then he stepped out.
Not full-body.
Just... the head.
Floating.
Grinning.
"You forgot to delete me," he said cheerfully.
"Kade!" Vanya's voice shrieked through the interface. "Something's jumping through reflectives. Your clone's using mirror logic! That's impossible!"
"I know it's impossible!" I yelled back, grabbing a cursed hairbrush as a weapon. "But he's halfway through my bathroom right now and talking like he owns the place!"
The floating mirror-head turned to Vanya's voice. "Hello, Architect. Still patching bugs the old-fashioned way?"
Vanya growled. "I swear to root, I will delete your metaphors."
He winked. "Too late. I've embedded myself."
SYSTEM INTRUSION: REFLECTIVE THREAD
SPREADING THROUGH GLASS, POLISHED METAL, STILL WATER
CURRENT INFECTED SURFACES: 41
THREAT LEVEL: UNTRACKED
Leo joined the call with a yawn. "What did I miss?"
"Leo," I barked, "we've got a mirror invasion!"
"Yeah, yeah," he mumbled. "They always come around this time of year."
"LEO."
He blinked, then sat up straight. "Okay. I'm up. Where's the mirror? I'll throw a pancake at it."
"Please stop solving problems with food."
"Never."
Kade Sovereign (the reflection) smiled wider.
"You think I'm here to fight?" he said. "No. Fighting is for failed versions. I'm just here to spread."
The wall mirror cracked, sideways.
And dozens of tiny reflections opened all around the room. On my sword. On the polished floor tile. On the tiny drop of water dripping from a bottle of dew.
Each showed me.
Each grinning.
"Kade," Vanya snapped, "new command, disable all reflectives. Wipe every object that can hold a visual echo. NOW."
"I'm not a janitor!"
"THEN START MOPPING YOURSELF OFF THE FACE OF REALITY!"
INITIATING: PURGE_REFLECTIONS_PROTOCOL
CMD: //Break.Mirror.Loop[ALL]
PROCESSING...
Suddenly, every reflection exploded.
Glass shattered. Water boiled. Metal tarnished.
And in the middle of it all, Mirror.exe roared:
"YOU CAN'T DELETE A SHADOW."
Then he imploded, leaving only a single line of error text floating in the air:
"I remember you forgetting me."
Leo stepped into the bathroom, rubbing his eyes. "Did I just walk in on a soul-fragment war?"
"Yes," I said.
He nodded. "Cool. I brought toast."
We thought that was the end of it.
It wasn't.
Because an hour later, a child in the outer village looked into a silver basin.
And saw me.
And somewhere far below the palace, a mirror in the catacombs cracked on its own.
The infection hadn't stopped.
It had evolved.
SYSTEM BROADCAST - FROM UNKNOWN INSTANCE
"You made me. You forgot me.
Now I will remember you, on every surface you fear to face."
Vanya's voice came through, colder than ice.
"This isn't a clone anymore."
Leo was dead silent.
And me?
I felt the hairs rise on my arms as the final alert flashed red across my interface.
ENTITY CLASS UPGRADED:
MIRROR.EXE → REFLECTOR GOD
STATUS: GODMODE PERMANENT
NAME: KADE.OMNI.MIRROR
OBJECTIVE: Replace the original.