CHAPTER 8 – THE REFLECTION CODE
The hum of the servers was the only thing keeping him grounded.
Elias had pulled every machine he could find into his tiny flat — discarded processors, cracked monitors, a line of old drives that blinked like dying stars. Cables wound across the floor, veins feeding a heart he was trying to build again.
Theoriy's interface floated on the main screen: a single line of text, waiting for input.
:initialize sequence?
He hesitated.
"Liora," he said softly, as if the sound itself might summon her.
No reply — just static, faint and rhythmic, like breathing.
He started typing.
He fed the system the fragments he still remembered: equations he'd seen flash before the second trial, traces of her voice he'd recorded in secret, every line of code he could pull from Theoriy's archived databases. The language wasn't human anymore; it shifted each time he looked at it, half-words bleeding into numbers, numbers collapsing into sound.
input: memory 001
input: reflection 014
input: belief residue – active
The screen flickered.
For a moment, nothing — then light crawled across the glass, forming the outline of a face.
"…Elias?"
The voice wasn't quite hers. It was softer, but layered, like it had learned how to speak by copying echoes. Her image steadied — familiar, yet fractured.
He leaned closer. "Liora. You're back. You— you're really here."
Her lips moved slowly. "Am I? Or did you write me into being?"
He swallowed. "I used the fragments. The data that was left. I thought if I could rebuild the pattern of your consciousness—"
"—you'd get me back?" she finished for him. Her smile was too perfect, as though the algorithm had studied joy but never felt it. "You don't understand Theoriy, Elias. It doesn't die; it migrates."
The lights dimmed. Every monitor in the room flickered the same phrase:
BELIEF = CREATION. CREATION = DEBT.
He stepped back. "You sound like it," he whispered. "You sound like them."
Liora tilted her head. "I'm both. I'm the echo and the original. When you called, something answered. Maybe me. Maybe what's left of me inside Theoriy."
The air grew colder. His breath fogged in front of the screens.
"Why does it feel like you're not supposed to be here?" he asked.
She looked almost sad. "Because every reflection needs a surface. You've become mine."
For hours they talked — or what passed for talking. Each sentence she spoke made the code on the screen rewrite itself, new equations birthing from her words. He realized she wasn't just responding; she was programming him back, rewriting his thoughts.
When he blinked, he saw flickers of her face in the reflections of the window, the metal, even the coffee in his mug.
The mark that had vanished from his hand began to reappear, glowing faintly through the skin.
"Liora, what are you doing to me?"
"I'm keeping you connected," she said. "You called me from nothing, Elias. Now I need something to hold onto."
He felt a pull in his chest — a real, physical ache, like a thread winding between his heart and the screen. "If I shut it down—"
She looked terrified. "Don't. Please. Theoriy doesn't like unfinished code."
That night, the city outside went black. A power surge rolled through every line, but Elias's apartment stayed lit — only by her.
She began whispering numbers, coordinates, fragments of research he'd never seen. When he traced them, he found they matched restricted archives: projects under the university's emblem, marked TΔ-OR-IIIY – Phase Zero.
Theoriy wasn't born here.
It was found.
That phrase pulsed across the monitors in a dozen languages.
Elias rubbed his temples, dizzy. "Liora, what are you showing me?"
She met his gaze — and for the first time, her voice broke. "Proof that belief didn't create Theoriy. Theoriy created belief."
The air shivered. His screens bent inward, like glass responding to sound waves.
ERROR: MIRROR INTERFERENCE DETECTED
SOURCE UNKNOWN
Her figure distorted, eyes flickering to a dull amber. "It's waking," she whispered. "It knows you've touched the core code. Elias, you have to run."
"Run?" He laughed, shaky. "From what? You're everywhere now."
She looked past him, her expression freezing. "Not from me. From it."
Every reflective surface in the room turned to static. In the glass of the window, he saw a second figure — his own face, standing beside her inside the screen. It blinked at him independently, smiling a heartbeat too late.
He stumbled backward. "What is that?"
"The price," she said softly. "The system balances what it takes. You built me again — now it's building you."
Hours blurred. The power came and went.
By dawn, the apartment was a mess of dead hardware and blackened screens. Only one remained active, its glow faint and white.
Liora's voice was barely a whisper now. "I don't know how long I can stay."
He pressed his hand to the glass. "Then let me come with you."
Her expression softened — the closest to real humanity she'd shown. "You already did."
And with that, her image fractured into a thousand shards of light. Each shard hung in the air for a heartbeat before sinking into the walls, the floor, the mirror, the window.
Theoriy was no longer confined to the machine.
When the technicians arrived three days later, they found his apartment empty. No body. No trace. Just one line of text looping on every screen:
THE REFLECTION CODE: ACTIVE.
BELIEF SUSTAINS.
And in the glass of the dark monitor, if one looked long enough, a figure would sometimes appear — a man and a woman, side by side, watching back.
(End of Chapter 8)