Back in the darkened hall outside the bright comfortable glow of the library, I let my eyes adjust to the shadowy space punctuated at regular intervals by the bright, naturally-lit opaque skylights running down the hall. I recognized the door to Dr. Vasquez’s laboratory down the hall and the door to the prison cell beside me. The library’s door closed behind me with a soft click, the sliver of welcoming light narrowing to nothing. I was at the intersection of hallways running perpendicular to each other, and opposite the prison cell door was another door with no handle. It swung open inwards without my intervention, and I could see the room inside it from the hallway.

At first I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. It seemed to be another hallway that impossibly went into the walls outside the rooms, until I realized the walls were floor to ceiling mirrors. The interior was lit by the same skylights I’d seen everywhere else in the facility, and it was hard to tell what was an entrance and what was a reflection. Objects—globes, cubes, and cones of all sizes—were scattered across the polished floor like abandoned toys.

A cool breeze blew out from the room into the hallway, carrying the faint scent of ripe elderberries. Somewhere, a small radio played cheerful music.

I stepped through the doorway.

The curved surface of a brass globe caught my reflection—fractured, watching. The mirrors created an infinite tunnel of myself stretching in every direction. In the faceted edge of a crystal cube, something shifted—a glimpse of movement that wasn’t mine. I picked up a cone, its smooth surface cool against my palm, and noticed how the music seemed to bounce off every reflective surface.

I moved deeper into the room. The elderberry scent grew stronger. My footsteps echoed strangely, the sound folding back on itself among the mirrors.

A brass sphere rolled slightly on the floor, its surface showing not my face, but something else. Patient. Familiar.

I stopped in the center of the room. My reflection surrounded me in every direction—hundreds of versions of myself, all moving in perfect synchronization. But then I noticed something: one of them, a reflection slightly to my left, was half a beat slower. It raised its hand a moment after I raised mine.

I turned to face it directly. It turned with me. But it waited.

The mirror behind me held my image for a moment longer than it should. I spun around. Empty. But I had seen it—eyes that had held my gaze for an extra heartbeat.

I turned back to the slow reflection. It was still there, still watching. I walked toward it, footsteps echoing, the elderberry scent thick in the air.

The mirror showed not just my face, but the face of the strange man from the bathroom—the one who had looked back at me with recognition I didn’t understand.

I pressed my palm against the glass. It was warm. The reflection pressed back, palm to palm. A faint vibration passed through the glass—not sound, not heat, but a presence.

I pulled my hand back. The reflection mirrored me perfectly, but for the slightest pause.

I looked around the room again. The globes, cubes, cones, and spheres were not toys. They were anchors. Each held a reflection tied to a different moment. I picked up a brass sphere and saw my face from the moment I first stepped into the library. I picked up a crystal cube and saw fragments of the prison cell. I picked up a cone and saw the hallway, the library door, the pause before I entered.

I set them down carefully.

Then I looked up. The strange man was no longer in just one mirror. He was in all of them—hundreds of versions standing behind my own reflection, all holding the same pose. I turned. They turned with me. And then, in a single moment, they all raised their hands.

I raised mine. They mirrored me. But I had not chosen to raise my hand. It had moved on its own.

I stood at the center of the room, surrounded by myself and by the other self—the one who had been watching, the one who had been waiting.

“Who are you?” I asked aloud.

The room was silent. The music played on. The elderberry scent hung in the air. No one answered. But I felt, in the warmth of the glass, that I was not speaking to a stranger. I was speaking to the part of me that had been watching the whole time.

I pressed my palm against the glass again. The reflection pressed back. This time, it did not lag. It was exactly with me.

I closed my eyes. When I opened them, the strange man was gone. The reflections were just reflections. The globes, the cubes, the cones, the spheres—they were still there. But the sense of being watched had settled into something quieter. Something that felt like company.

Near the corner where two mirror walls met, the music seemed louder. The scent was thicker. And on the floor, just where the seams of the mirrors converged, there was a small brass key.

It was tarnished, but it looked like it fit something.

I knelt and picked it up. It was warm in my palm, as if it had been waiting.

I held the key, looked at my reflection, and then looked around the room. The music did not stop. The scent did not fade. But the room felt different—like it had just handed me something and was waiting to see what I would do with it.

I could walk back out into the hallway. I could return to the library, or the lab, or the prison cell. Or I could stay and see what this room still had to offer.

I held the key, and I waited, letting the room decide what it wanted to show me next.

*** This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ***