Category: Stories

On the night of her twelfth birthday, Mira locked her bedroom door, took a deep breath, and waited.

The tingling started in her shoulder blades first, a sensation like static electricity beneath her skin. Then came the stretching, the unbearable itching, the pulling—until, with a flutter of feathers, her wings unfolded in the moonlight.

They were delicate, almost translucent, veined with silver like frost on a windowpane. She ran her fingers along the feathers, just as she had on every birthday before this one, marvelling at them. She had never dared to use them.

But tonight was different. Tonight, she was done waiting.

She pressed her palms against the windowsill and hoisted herself up. The village was quiet, roofs bathed in silver, the lake beyond glistening like liquid glass.

She stepped off the ledge.

For a moment, she fell—panic surging through her—before instinct took over. Her wings caught the wind, lifting her, carrying her higher, higher, until the village became a scattering of candlelit windows.

Mira soared.

She dipped low over the rooftops, skimmed her fingers through the treetops, let the night air rush against her skin. She laughed, wild and breathless, tasting freedom in the wind.

But she really shouldn’t be here, she thought. Suddenly, there was a sharp tug between her shoulders. Her wings trembled—her body seemed heavier. She gasped, trying to keep herself aloft.

She spiralled downwards.

The lake rushed towards her. But just as she braced for impact, something—someone—caught her.

She landed not in water, but in warm, steady arms.

A boy, no older than she was, held her effortlessly, hovering in the air. His wings, large and dark, glistened in the moonlight.

“You shouldn’t have done that so soon,” he said, but there was no anger in his voice.

“They’re not mine, are they?”

He shook his head. “No. But that doesn’t mean you can’t borrow them.”

“What do you mean?”

The boy smiled, lifting her higher, back into the open sky. “You are meant to have them only on special days.”

His grip loosened, but this time, Mira didn’t fall.

The wind lifted her, cradled her, as if recognising her now. Her wings, although borrowed, felt lighter, stronger—hers. Truly hers, for now.

She stretched her arms, tilted into the breeze, and soared.

Below, the lake rippled in silver patterns. Above, the stars shone brighter than ever. And beside her, the boy flew.

“Come on,” he said. “Race you to the clouds.”

Mira grinned—and flew faster.

The last batch of artificial skin had been printed at the lab, the machines sterilised, the lights dimmed. The biofabrication unit—Model Z-9, the pride of Genetico Labs—was in sleep mode, its nutrient reservoirs refilled, its synthetic gel cooling under its protective casing.

But as Nathan reached the lift, a soft whirr stopped him.

He turned back. The printer was running.

A mistake, surely. A delayed command in the system queue, a leftover job from the day. He sighed, walked back to his terminal, and tapped at the screen.

No active print job. No queued processes. The machine wasn’t supposed to be running.

And yet, inside the sealed chamber, the print head moved, extruding a fine stream of bio-ink. Layer by layer, a shape began to form. It wasn’t an organ. Not tissue grafts, nor synthetic muscle.

Nathan squinted at the structure. It was… smooth. Rounded.

He checked the material logs. The machine wasn’t using the standard polymer scaffold. It had switched—by itself—to human-grade collagen. The finest tissue-printing substrate available. The kind used to make replacement hearts and livers.

The shape was taking form now. A curve. A ridge. And then—

A nose.

He pressed the emergency halt button. The printer ignored him.

Instead, it picked up speed, layering tissue faster than should have been possible; the texture smoothed, pores appearing, the faintest lines of natural wrinkles. Then the next piece took shape—a cheek. A mouth. The suggestion of an eye socket.

Nathan scrambled to shut off the power manually. He ripped open the side panel, reached for the main switch—

“Don’t.”

Nathan froze.

The voice hadn’t come from the intercom. It hadn’t come from the lab’s speakers.

It had come from inside the printer.

The printed face was almost complete now—beneath faint traces of microvasculature, fine nerve endings still forming, the lips trembled, as if struggling to find the right shape.

An eye socket began to fill.

A glossy layer of bio-gel formed over it. And from that gel, something moved.

Nathan watched, transfixed, as the eyeball printed itself in real-time. Blood vessels threaded into place like ivy, the iris shading in pale increments. The lens formed last, clear and bright.

Then it blinked.

And it looked at him.

The face was… familiar.

It was his face.

Not a perfect replica—something was off. The skin was too smooth, the expression wrong. And the mouth—his mouth—curved into a shape Nathan had never made.

The voice came again, softer now.

“More.”

The printer whirred faster.

Below the face, a throat began to form. The hint of shoulders.

Nathan reached and flicked the switch.

Then—

The intercom crackled.

“You left me unfinished.”

Nathan ran to the lift.

The doors dinged.

He rushed inside, hammering the close button. The last thing he saw, before the doors slid shut, was the printer chamber’s glass bulging outward—distorting, warping—

And his own face, pressed against it, smiling at him from the other side.

The Neural Horizon implant was supposed to be safe. That’s what the sales pitch promised: an advanced cognition enhancer that would let you simulate choices, branching out into alternate timelines to assess different outcomes. A way to explore “versions” of yourself—who you’d be if you had said yes instead of no, if you had taken that job, if you had moved to that city. It was just supposed to be a simulation. A thought experiment. Not real.

I stumbled into the bathroom, squinting in the bright light. The mirror reflected a me that wasn’t quite right. I was leaner, tanner. I had a small scar on my cheek I didn’t recognise. And yet, I still felt like me—except for a deep, gnawing wrongness, a sense that the person in the mirror was someone else entirely.

I grabbed my phone, scrolling through my messages, my photos. Work emails from a company I’d never applied to. Gym selfies, even though I hadn’t worked out in years. The unfamiliar name of Rachel appearing over and over.

I knew what had happened. I had been using the implant too often, jumping between too many simulated versions of myself. But this… this wasn’t a simulation. I had crossed over. I had replaced a version of myself that wasn’t me.

I shut my eyes. The implant had a failsafe—a way to reset. I had read about the protocol but never tried it. A command embedded in my thoughts.

I focused, forming the words in my mind like a mantra: Return to Origin.

Nothing happened.

I tried again. Return to Origin.

No response. No shift. No reset. The implant wasn’t letting me go back.

The longer I stood there, the more I realised the truth: I had no proof this was even a jump. No proof that I was still the original me. Had this happened before? Had I replaced another version of myself, over and over, each time thinking this was the real one?

I checked my call history. My last outgoing call was to Rachel.

I dialled the number. She picked up on the first ring.

“Hey” she said, her voice warm, familiar, real. “You okay? You’ve been being a bit weird.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I just… I just wanted to hear your voice.”

She laughed. “Well, I’m right here. Same as always.”

Except I had never met her before now.

I glanced back at the mirror. The scar on my cheek. The person staring back at me.

How many times had I done this? How many versions of me had I erased?

Rachel was still talking, but I barely heard her. My reflection was already beginning to disappear.

The last message I see on my phone before everything fades: Version Deletion Complete.

Dr Elena Vasquez floated in the cramped confines of Orbital Research Station K-27, securing herself with a thigh strap as she checked her reflection. The station had no proper mirrors—glass was a hazard in microgravity—but a sheet of polished metal had been bolted to the far wall for convenience.

Elena squinted at her reflection. It lagged. Not by much—just a fraction of a second—but enough to notice.

She turned her head left. The reflection followed.

She turned right. The reflection obeyed.

She lifted her hand—slowly, deliberately. The mirror Elena did the same, but the movement felt… delayed, like a glitch in an old video feed.

“Must be tired,” she muttered.

She unstrapped herself, pushing off towards her sleeping quarters.

A faint sound echoed through the station. A tap.

Elena paused mid-air.

Another tap.

It came from behind her.

She turned her head slowly.

The mirror… the sound was coming from the mirror.

The metal had no reason to make noise—no heat fluctuations, no structural stress, nothing that could produce a sound like that.

She hovered in front of it, staring herself down.

The reflection stared back.

She lifted a hand to touch the surface.

The reflection smiled.

Elena did not. Her own face remained frozen in horror, but the mirror version of her curled its lips into a slow, deliberate grin. Suddenly the smile dropped—like a mask slipping, the muscles of its face resetting into a blank, unreadable expression.

Elena recoiled, shoving herself away from the mirror. She twisted in midair, crashing against the opposite wall, scrambling for something—anything—to hold onto.

The reflection didn’t follow her movement. It stayed in place, staring out from the glass. Watching.

Then, impossibly, it lifted a hand and knocked.

A slow, deliberate tap, tap, tap. From the other side.

This wasn’t real. This wasn’t real. She turned away from the mirror and pressed the emergency comm button on her wrist. “Control, this is Vasquez. I—I need a systems check on Module Three. I think—I think I’m experiencing a hallucination.”

Static. Then:

“Dr Vasquez.”

A voice. Familiar. Hers.

“Please don’t turn around.”

Her breath hitched.

In the silence, she heard it move.

Something shifted behind her—smooth, fluid, like a body unmoored from gravity.

Right. Behind. Her.

And then—

Nothingness. K-27 was still.

Cal wakes to the smell of coffee. The morning light filters through his blinds, golden and warm. It should feel familiar, safe. It doesn’t.

He stands, expecting the usual stiffness in his back. But his body feels… different. Lighter. Taller? A vague unease coils in his stomach, but he shakes it off and heads to the kitchen.

A woman stands by the counter, pouring coffee. She turns and smiles.

“Morning, babe,” she says, placing a mug on the table.

Cal stops cold.

She’s beautiful. Soft brown eyes, dark hair. A face he’s never seen before in his life.

“Who… who are you?”

Her smile falters. “Very funny. You always do this before coffee.”

“I’m serious. Who the hell are you?”

Her brow furrows. “Cal, are you okay?”

His name. She knows his name.

His eyes dart around the apartment. It looks right. His sofa. His books. His jacket slung over a hook next to the door. But the pictures on the wall—

A framed photo of himself, arm draped around her. Another of them laughing at a beach he’s never visited.

Something in his mind crackles, like an old TV struggling to hold signal. A static-laced tone tickles the back of his skull:

“It’s catching up on you.”

The doorbell rings. Cal flinches.

The woman—his wife?—moves towards the door.

“Don’t,” he blurts.

She hesitates, confused. But it’s too late—she had unlocked the door, and now it opens.

A man stands on the threshold. Late forties. Suit and tie. Cold, assessing eyes. He holds a small, sleek tablet in one hand.

“Calvin Voss,” the man says smoothly. “You’re experiencing residual inconsistencies. A side effect of a mid-cycle rewrite.”

Cal’s breath is shallow. “Rewrite?”

The man glances at the woman. “Please step aside, ma’am. Your husband is overdue for a stabilisation update.”

She hesitates, then looks at Cal. There’s something almost… robotic in the way her concern flickers into place. As if she, too, is running on some kind of script.

Cal backs away. “What the hell is going on?”

The man speaks calmly. “You opted for an identity revision. New life, new memories. But sometimes the mind resists. Think of it like a software bug.”

A red notification flashes on the tablet screen:

SUBJECT CALVIN VOSS – INTEGRATION FAILURE DETECTED. RESET REQUIRED.

Cal’s pulse surges. They’re going to erase him. Again.

“Run,” the voice in his head insists.

He doesn’t think. He moves—bolting past the woman—his fake wife—through the door. The suited man shouts, but Cal is already sprinting down the hall.

He has to remember.

Has to stay real.

Behind him, a voice crackles from the tablet’s speaker, calm and clinical:

“Subject non-compliant. Initiating reset.”

The world halts.

And Cal is waking up to the smell of coffee.

Cal’s eyes open to darkness. His room, silent. But something feels… wrong. His limbs are heavy, unfamiliar. He flexes his fingers—stiff, reluctant to obey.

He swings his legs off the bed. His feet touch the floor, but the sensation is dulled.

He stands, wobbling slightly. A sharp pain jolts through a knee he never had a problem with before.

He staggers to the bathroom and flips on the light. His reflection stares back. His face. His eyes. But something about them is… vacant.

Something moves inside him. A deep, twisting sensation, like his nerves are unspooling. He grips the sink, fighting nausea. Then, a sound—low, guttural—bubbles from his throat.

A voice, not his own.

“I’m still here.”

The room blurs. Cal’s breathing turns ragged.

“You don’t remember, do you?” it says.

His hands shake as he tries to steady himself. “Who—who are you?” His own voice sounds foreign, distant.

“Your night tenant,” the voice confirms. “They never told you, did they?”

A sharp pulse of static pain erupts in his skull. Flashes of memory—not his, but someone’s. A neon-lit clinic. A clipboard with a name, redacted. A smiling doctor—with “Maximised Efficiency, Minimum Waste” printed on his badge.

And then, the realisation slams into him—cold, brutal, undeniable.

His body isn’t his alone.

He clutches his chest. His heartbeat pounds beneath his ribs, but it feels… stretched thin.

“They lease you out at night,” the voice says. “To those who can afford it.”

Cal stumbles backwards. His own mind, invaded. His body, divided.

“Don’t worry,” it says, with something like hunger. “You get the day. I take the night. Fair trade, isn’t it?”

Cal tries to call for help. But his mouth isn’t his anymore.