"I... I just forgot for a second," I stammered, scrambling to pick up the ice pack and pressing it firmly to the back of my neck. "My head is pounding."
"Yeah, well, it's going to pound harder if we don't get some coffee in you before class," Victor said, checking the watch on his wrist. "Come on. Grab your jacket. We're going to The Grind."
The Daily Grind. We had a coffee shop with the exact same name on my campus. Tori and I had just been sitting there twenty minutes ago. A tiny, fragile thread of normalcy. I nodded, looking around the messy room for outerwear. I spotted a faded, patch-covered denim jacket slung over a desk chair and grabbed it. It fit perfectly across my broad shoulders, smelling faintly of cedar and mint.
Following Victor out of the apartment was an exercise in awareness. Every step felt calculated. The hallway was similar to the off-campus apartments back home, but the details were slightly skewed. The wallpaper was a garish, geometric green instead of faded yellow. The carpets smelled of stale tobacco smoke instead of cheap lemon cleaner.
But the real, visceral shock hit me when we stepped out onto the street.
The air was crisp, lacking the miserable, biting drizzle of my October afternoon. But that wasn't what made my breath catch in my throat. It was the windows. The cars. The storefronts.
Everything was reflective.
In my world, society had spent two decades aggressively eradicating glare. Buildings were built with matte materials. Cars had dull, textured finishes. But here, the world practically sparkled under the overcast sky. A massive billboard across the street was encased in clear, shining glass. The cars lining the sidewalk had highly polished, tinted windows that threw back distorted reflections of the street.
I stared openly at my reflection in a parked sedan's window as we walked past. Oliver stared back, looking pale, tired, and utterly terrified.
"Stop checking yourself out," Victor grumbled, elbowing me sharply in the ribs. The physical contact was jarring, but I rolled with the impact. "You're still ugly, man."
"Mirrors," I blurted out, unable to contain the shock. "There are mirrors everywhere."
Victor stopped walking abruptly and turned to look at me, his thick brow raised. "Okay, that's it. We're skipping coffee. We're going to the campus clinic. You are definitely concussed. What are you talking about? Of course there are mirrors. What, did you expect the world to suddenly go lifeless overnight?"
I swallowed the rising panic. I couldn't act crazy. If I wanted to survive long enough to figure out how to get back to my own body, in my own universe, I had to play the part of Oliver Anderson perfectly. Whatever that entailed.
"No," I forced a laugh. It sounded deep and hollow. "No, sorry. Just a weird headache. The light is bothering my eyes."
Victor stared at me for a few seconds longer, clearly unconvinced, but he finally sighed and started walking again, his pace slightly faster. "Whatever. Just keep your head down and let me do the talking today. Chloe is supposed to meet us there."
My blood ran cold. The street noise faded into a dull buzz.
Chloe.
In my reality, I had a step-brother named Cole. He was deeply depressed, perpetually angry, and subtly manipulative toward his girlfriend, Penny. If Victor was the Mirrorverse equivalent of Tori, then Chloe was...
"Chloe?" I asked, trying desperately to keep my voice casual, though it cracked slightly on the second syllable. "Is she... is she okay?"
Victor shot me a dark, sideways glance. "Is she okay? Since when do you care? She's been a total menace since she moved in with you and your step-mom. I still say you need to put a bolt on your bedroom door, man. The way she looks at you... it's unnatural. It freaks me out, and I don't even live there."
A wave of intense nausea washed over me. "Unnatural?", i repeated.
My step-brother Cole treated me like an annoying roommate he hated. He barely acknowledged my existence unless he needed cash. But if the dynamic was flipped here, and amplified by whatever twisted rules that governed this world... I remembered the heavy cast-iron frame in Oliver's bedroom. The empty space. I hadn't seen a lock on that door.
"Right," I muttered, shivering despite the denim jacket. I shoved my hands deep into the pockets, desperate for warmth. My fingers brushed against a small, metallic object buried in the lint. I pulled it out.
It was a lighter. Heavy, polished silver, with a familiar crest deeply engraved on the side. A crest I had just seen drawn in my father's hidden notebook back in the damp basement. A stylized, perfectly symmetrical circle with a jagged, lightning-like line cutting directly through the center.
COTS.
Children of the Silvering.
I stopped walking entirely, staring at the lighter resting on my palm. The metal was cold against my skin, but it felt like it was burning a hole right through my flesh. Oliver was involved in whatever my father had been investigating. Or worse, he was actively part of it.
"Hey," Victor called out, already half a block ahead. He turned around, resting his hands aggressively on his hips. "You coming, or are you just going to stand there admiring your lighter like an idiot?"
I closed my fist tightly over the cold metal and forced my heavy, unfamiliar legs to move forward. "Coming," I called back, my deep voice carrying effortlessly down the street.
The world around me was loud, bright, and terrifyingly reflective. Every surface seemed to taunt me with the image of a stranger who was entirely myself. I was trapped in a male body, my father was rotting in a maximum-security prison, my step-sister was apparently a predatory menace stalking me in my own home, and my best friend thought I had severe brain damage.
I slipped the silver lighter back into my pocket. I needed to find a mirror large enough to cross back through. I needed to find out what COTS meant and how Oliver was connected to them. And above all, I needed to figure out how to be Oliver Anderson before this glittering world tears me apart.
I picked up the pace, catching up to Victor just as the familiar, yet different, brick walling of the campus coffee shop came into view.
The brass bell above the door jingled sharply as Victor pushed it open. It was time to meet the remaining cast of my nightmares.