The Wrong Reflection

The chill of damp concrete seeped through the thin mattress, a familiar discomfort that usually anchored Anais to the waking world. Tonight, it failed. Her eyes snapped open not to the muted glow of the pre-dawn sky filtering through the grimy window of her dwelling, but to the suffocating darkness of a watery abyss. The phantom ache, a searing cold deep in her lungs, clawed at her throat. She gasped, a ragged, unproductive sound, her hands instinctively flying to her chest, expecting the crushing weight of water. Nothing. Only the rough weave of her sleep tunic and the faint scent of stale recycled air.

She lay still, heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. The memory, or whatever it was, lingered. A violent thrashing, the panicked urge to break the surface, the inexorable pull of something dark and heavy dragging her down. It wasn’t her memory. She knew that with a certainty that vibrated through her bones. She’d never been a swimmer, never even been near the polluted depths of the Basin. Yet, the sensation of drowning, the desperate fight for air, felt as real as the ache in her lungs.

Anais pushed herself up, her limbs heavy, protesting the abrupt, violent awakening. The cramped room offered little solace. Stacked synth-crates formed makeshift furniture, a salvaged datapad lay dormant on a warped plank, and the single window was too small and too coated with the city’s perpetual grime to offer more than a faint grey smudge of the sky. This was her life. Her small, unremarkable existence within the Stacks, the city's labyrinthine underbelly.

But the unease persisted, a cold, uninvited guest. It wasn't just the dream. It was the residue of it, a phantom pain that mimicked drowning, a subtle disorientation that made the familiar angles of her room seem slightly off. She swung her legs over the side of the mattress, her feet finding the gritty floor. A shiver traced its way up her spine, not entirely from the chill. She needed to anchor herself, to find the solid ground of her own routine. The thought of the communal wash station, the sting of the harsh cleansing spray, the predictable greyness of the nutrient paste – it was a comfort, a return to the known. She dressed quickly, the familiar fabric of her worker’s tunic a small, grounding weight. The ache in her lungs had receded, leaving a dull throb, a persistent question mark in the quiet of her mind.

The communal wash station was a cavernous, echoing space, lined with rows of dented chrome spigots and stained ceramic basins. The air hung thick with the chemical tang of disinfectant and the faint, cloying scent of damp synthetics. Anais splashed frigid water onto her face, the shock a welcome jolt, attempting to scrub away the lingering phantom sensation of drowning. It was a futile effort. The memory, or whatever invasive fragment it was, clung to her like a shroud.

She reached for the worn, chipped mirror above her basin, her fingers brushing against the cool, damp surface. Just ordinary Anais stared back – tired eyes, a smattering of freckles across her nose, hair pulled back in a practical knot. The Archival Guild had dismissed her, branded her unstable. But this was the face of someone who filed data, who catalogued forgotten histories, not someone who drowned in nightmares.

Then, the world flickered.

The hard, pragmatic lines of her own face wavered, blurring like heat haze. For a dizzying instant, the reflection wasn’t hers. A stranger’s eyes, sharp and defiant, blazed from the glass. A mouth set in a stubborn, challenging line. A jaw that spoke of an unyielding spirit. This face was unfamiliar, yet it carried an intensity that felt unnervingly potent, a stark contrast to her own hesitant gaze. It was a face that had seen fire, that had fought battles Anais couldn’t fathom.

Anais’s breath hitched. Her hand, still resting on the mirror’s edge, trembled. This wasn’t just a trick of the light, a hallucination born of exhaustion. It was a visceral wrongness, a glitch in the very fabric of her perception. Her Scribe implant, the neural interface that connected her to the vast City Archives, was supposed to be her lifeline, her tool. Now, it felt like an invading presence.

She recoiled, snatching her hand back as if burned. The alien face vanished, replaced by her own again, pale and wide-eyed. The incident lasted mere seconds, a fleeting, terrifying distortion. But it confirmed the unsettling whispers that had begun in the night, the intrusive thoughts, the phantom sensations. Something was deeply, fundamentally wrong. And it was inside her.

A low thrumming sound, barely perceptible at first, vibrated through the grimy tiles beneath her feet. It was a sound that had become all too familiar in the Stacks – the deep, guttural growl of Chronomancy Division skimmers. It was growing louder, a mechanical predator closing in. Anais’s heart leaped into her throat, the unsettling vision in the mirror momentarily eclipsed by a more immediate, physical dread. The wash station, usually a place of shared, silent routine, was about to become a trap.

The low thrum escalated into a palpable vibration, a bass note resonating not just in the concrete floor but in the very marrow of Anais’s bones. Heads snapped up from hunched shoulders throughout the communal wash station. A collective gasp rippled through the confined space. Outside, the distinct whine of skimmer engines, sharp and predatory, cut through the pre-dawn hush. It wasn't the distant murmur of routine patrols; this was a focused descent, a net being cast.

Panic, a scent as acrid as the recycled air, began to bloom. Faucets were wrenched shut, metal basins clattering. Figures scrambled, pushing past each other in a frantic bid for their cramped dwellings. Anais, still trembling from the mirror’s betrayal, found herself propelled forward by the surge. A burly man with a stained tunic shoved past her, his breath ragged. “Division!” he rasped, his eyes wide with a fear Anais was rapidly beginning to understand.

She was swept into the narrow alleyway that served as the main artery of their block, a human tide pulling her along. The sky, still a bruised purple, was now crisscrossed with the flashing crimson strobes of Chronomancy Division transports. Their metallic hulls gleamed, impossibly vast and menacing against the grime-streaked ferro-concrete. The skimmers weren’t just flying over; they were descending, their powerful downdraft kicking up dust and debris, forcing people to shield their faces.

A voice, amplified and distorted, boomed from unseen speakers mounted on the skimmers. "This is a mandatory block-wide sweep. Cooperate fully for immediate processing. Non-compliance will result in severe escalation." The words were cold, devoid of humanity, a clinical pronouncement of her doom.

Anais’s instinct, raw and untamed, took over. It was a primal urge to flee, to vanish. She darted away from the main thoroughfare, her gaze sweeping the familiar-yet-suddenly-alien architecture of the Stacks. A narrow, rusted ladder, bolted precariously to the side of a residential block, offered a potential escape route upwards. She hadn't climbed anything like that in years, not since… since when? The thought was a fleeting spark, instantly extinguished by the roar of an approaching skimmer.

Without conscious thought, her hands found purchase on the cold metal rungs. Her body moved with an unnerving grace, her feet finding footholds with an impossible certainty. She scrambled upwards, the familiar ache of exertion absent. The clatter of her boots on the metal seemed deafening, but the skimmers’ roar drowned it out. Below, the panicked shouts of the crowd receded, replaced by the sharp, crackling commands of the Division agents as they began to fan out, their heavy boots echoing on the ground. Anais pulled herself onto a narrow walkway, her breath coming in ragged gasps, not from exertion, but from sheer, stupefied astonishment. This wasn't her. This wasn't how she moved. Yet, here she was, effortlessly scaling a sheer wall.

Anais hauled herself onto the narrow walkway, her muscles singing a song of exertion she didn’t recognize. Her hands, slick with a faint sheen of rust and sweat, felt strangely powerful, her grip absolute. Below, the cacophony of the Division sweep was a growing wave, punctuated by the sharp, metallic bark of orders. She risked a glance down, her stomach lurching not from the height, but from the alien certainty of her own movements. The rusted ladder had been bolted to the sheer face of the block, a precarious artery of access, and she’d ascended it like a spider, her limbs extending and contracting with an unnerving, fluid efficiency.

A beam of crimson light, originating from a hovering skimmer, swept across the walkway just ahead. Anais instinctively flattened herself against the grimy ferro-concrete, pressing her body into the cold, rough texture. She could feel the vibrations of the skimmer’s engine through the soles of her worn boots, a low thrum that resonated in her bones. The air tasted of ozone and something metallic, the sharp tang of deployed energy shields. She held her breath, the frantic thumping of her heart a drumbeat against her ribs, a sound amplified in the sudden, tense silence.

"Sector Gamma clear," a distorted voice crackled from the skimmer’s external speaker, the words sharp and devoid of any warmth. "Proceeding to Delta."

The crimson beam continued its sweep, inching away from her position. Anais didn’t move until the sound of the skimmer began to recede, its oppressive presence thankfully withdrawing. She pushed herself upright, her eyes scanning the labyrinthine network of walkways, service conduits, and access ladders that comprised the upper levels of the Stacks. Each junction, each shadowed alcove, was a potential hiding place, a possible escape route. And she knew them all. Not with her mind, not consciously, but with a deep, intuitive certainty that felt both comforting and terrifyingly foreign.

She moved then, not with the desperate scramble of a civilian fleeing in panic, but with the calculated grace of someone navigating familiar terrain. Her weight shifted, her body bending and twisting to avoid protruding pipes and dangling wires. She found a shadowed alcove behind a massive ventilation unit, its metallic casing humming with a low, steady drone. From this vantage point, she watched as two Division agents, their polished obsidian armor gleaming under the perpetual twilight of the Stacks, moved methodically along a lower walkway, their energy batons held at the ready.

Their boots echoed, each impact a sharp report against the metal. They spoke in clipped, efficient tones, their words lost in the general din, but their purpose was clear: to sweep, to secure, to find. Anais’s gaze followed their progress, her mind cataloging their patrol patterns, their blind spots. It was an analytical process, dispassionate and precise, a stark contrast to the wild terror that had seized her moments before. She felt a strange detachment, as if observing herself from a distance, a spectator to her own escape. This intimate knowledge of the Stacks’ vertical maze, this uncanny ability to anticipate the movements of her pursuers—it was as if she had lived this moment countless times before, though the memory offered no such context. The only certainty was the thrilling, terrifying ease with which her body responded. She was a ghost in the machine, moving through the Stacks’ skeletal frame with an agility that defied her own lived experience.

The low hum of the ventilation unit was a constant thrumming in Anais’s ears, a sound that should have been alien but felt unnervingly like a familiar lullaby. She’d scrambled into this shadowed space, this narrow aperture in the Stacks’ grimy exterior, with a speed that belied her usual hesitant nature. The crimson beam of the Division skimmer had been a finger of light probing the metallic labyrinth just moments ago, and she’d reacted with an instinct so deep it felt imprinted on her very bones. Now, pressing her back against the cool, ribbed metal of the shaft, she listened.

The metallic clang of boot soles on grated walkways had faded, replaced by the distant, muffled shouts of the Chronomancy Division. They were still searching, their organized sweep a relentless tide against the Stacks’ chaotic geometry. But they weren’t here. Not *here*.

This shaft, it was too small for a full patrol. Barely wide enough for one person, hunched over, to shuffle through. Dust motes danced in the faint shafts of light that bled in from the wider network of conduits outside, illuminating a path slick with condensation and smelling faintly of ozone and something else—something like old earth. Anais didn’t recognize the scent, yet a phantom echo of it, a ghost of memory, whispered at the edges of her awareness. It felt… like a shortcut. A place one would go to vanish.

She took a tentative step forward, her worn boots finding purchase on the damp metal. The air was thick, close, pressing in on her from all sides. It wasn't just the physical confinement; it was the way the darkness seemed to swallow sound, to muffle the frantic thumping of her own heart. Her breath hitched, a shallow, ragged thing in the confined space. She could feel the rough texture of the shaft walls grazing her shoulders, the damp chill seeping through her thin tunic. Every shift of her weight, every creak of the metal beneath her feet, felt amplified, a betrayal in this fragile sanctuary.

Why did she know about this place? There was no logical reason. She’d lived in the Stacks for years, navigating its public arteries, but this… this was a hidden vein, a secret artery. The thought sent a fresh wave of disorientation through her. It was like trying to grasp smoke. One moment she was Anais, the disgraced Archivist, a woman adrift in a storm of her own mind. The next, she was something else, something that *knew* these shadowed paths, that understood the language of escape etched into the city’s very architecture. The certainty of her own identity, already fractured, felt like it was splintering further with every shallow breath she took. She was free, for this moment, from the Division’s immediate grasp, but trapped in a new kind of cage: the unsettling realization that her own mind was no longer entirely her own.