Demon Contract

The garden hall stretched in a silver arc of stillness and green, like a dream carefully preserved behind glass. Chloe had always found the Institute's greenhouse strange — beautiful in its own way, but too clean, too deliberate. Pale light spilled from the crystalline ceiling above, casting the illusion of afternoon warmth, but it never shifted the way the real sun did. The ivy coiled over the steel arches with mathematical precision, the leaves caught in a stillness that made her skin prickle. Beneath their boots the floor glowed faintly, tiles pulsing like a slow heartbeat.

Dan kept his pace steady at the front, shoulders squared as though even here he felt responsible for holding the line. He spoke without looking back. "We'll cut through here, take diagnostics on the return. It'll save us time." His tone was calm, practiced, but Chloe heard the quiet edge beneath it.

She glanced around, unsettled by how empty the place felt. "It's too quiet," she murmured, her voice barely carrying in the hush.

Dan gave a small nod, not breaking stride. "The Institute likes to present itself as a sanctuary. Everything polished, nothing out of place. It tries to make you forget what's beneath it all."

Alyssa drifted to Chloe's side, hands shoved deep into her jacket pockets, her dark hair brushing against the faint glow of the glass wall. "Could've fooled me," she muttered, her mouth twisting into a crooked smile. "The last place I saw floors this shiny was a hospital waiting room."

Dan glanced back at her, raising a brow. "Comforting thought. You sure this isn't one?"

Alyssa gave him a look, sharp enough to make Chloe smother a laugh in her throat.

Dan smiled — that careful, tired smile he wore more often these days. Chloe recognised it for what it was: an act of steadiness, like someone balancing a tray of fragile things in both hands. Her chest tightened. It reminded her of the way her uncle used to talk to her before surgery, gentling the edge of fear because he couldn't take it away.

They passed a koi pond recessed into the floor, red and white fish gliding beneath the surface as though caught in syrup. Chloe found herself staring at the ripples too long, caught in the glassy perfection of it, before forcing herself to look away.

"Dan," she said, her voice more hesitant this time. "Do you think they're alright?"

He didn't need her to explain. Max and Victor were names written in both their silences.

"Max will come back," Dan answered after a beat. "He's the kind of man who always does." His tone was steady, but Chloe heard the catch — the space where doubt tried to wedge its way in.

"And Victor?" she pressed, because silence was worse than asking.

Dan exhaled through his nose. "Victor's too stubborn to die. If the Grim Reaper came for him, he'd probably start a knife fight. Likely he'd win too."

Alyssa snorted, arms folded. "You gonna put that on his headstone?"

Dan tilted his head, considering her with mock seriousness. "He won't have a headstone. He's the sort you cremate, you know? Otherwise, he'd come back and haunt us."

That earned a laugh from both sisters, loud and almost genuine. For a fleeting moment Chloe felt the heaviness ease, like a knot loosening inside her chest. But the sound bounced strangely, a little too hollow in the hall. Dan's smile faltered.

Chloe noticed the way he glanced forward again, brow creasing. The corridor ahead seemed to shimmer for the briefest moment, like air above hot asphalt, and then it was gone.

Alyssa slowed her pace, a hand brushing against her sister's arm. "Okay… maybe it's just me, but did the temperature drop?"

Chloe rubbed her arms, realising gooseflesh had risen across her skin. "The lights feel dimmer," she said, though she hadn't seen them actually flicker.

Dan's voice was steady, but Chloe saw the tension in his jaw. "I'm sure it's just the grid cycling. It happens when the shields draw power."

She didn't believe him. From the way his hand hovered slightly closer to his weapon, she suspected he didn't believe himself either.

The reflections in the glass walls were wrong. She knew it before she consciously saw it. Their movements lagged, a fraction of a second behind, like echoes caught in slow water.

Alyssa tilted her head, peering into one.

Her reflected self didn't tilt back.

It simply stared at her, eyes too wide, lips twitching into the suggestion of a smile.

Alyssa recoiled a step, muttering, "That was… not me. I swear I just saw us, but we weren't moving. You were talking, and I wasn't—"

Dan's hand was suddenly on her shoulder, steadying. Alyssa didn't shrug him off, which told Chloe more than the words did.

"You've got that look again," Alyssa said after a moment, her voice deliberately light.

Dan arched a brow. "What look?"

"The Dad look."

Chloe almost smiled, despite the way the hair at the back of her neck bristled. "You do, a little," she admitted softly. "It's not a bad thing."

Dan's mouth curved.

Alyssa groaned, folding her arms tight. "Ugh. I hate that I find that attractive."

Dan stopped mid-step. Chloe's face went hot, her words stuck.

Alyssa waved her hand quickly. "Kidding," she added, though Chloe caught the mutter under her breath — mostly.

Dan gave her a sidelong glare, the kind fathers gave when they couldn't quite manage real anger. "You're sixteen."

"And you're what, twenty-five? Basically ancient."

Chloe laughed before she could stop herself. For an instant, Dan's real smile returned.

Then she saw him go still.

At the junction ahead, a figure stood with her back to them. Institute uniform, clipboard dangling from her hand, shoulders perfectly square.

She hadn't moved once since they entered the hall.

Dan raised a hand, quiet, commanding. "Stay behind me."

Chloe's gaze slid toward the mirrored wall beside the woman — and her stomach dropped.

Because the reflection had turned first.

And it was smiling.

***

The woman at the junction never turned. Her reflection did. Chloe's pulse thumped hard enough she thought the sound might give them away. Dan shifted forward first, one arm slightly raised, ready to block if anything moved. His steps were cautious, each one measured, his weight spread the way soldiers carried themselves when the air felt hostile.

The clipboard slipped from the woman's hand. It didn't fall. It hung there, suspended in mid-air for a second too long, before clattering to the floor with a sound that echoed strangely down the corridor.

Chloe grabbed Alyssa's wrist without thinking. Her sister didn't protest, which told her Alyssa had seen it too.

Dan crouched slightly, eyes narrowing at the motionless figure. Then he straightened slowly and stepped closer, his voice low and steady. "Ma'am? You alright?"

The woman didn't answer.

Her reflection did. The mirrored version turned fully to face them — though its real counterpart stood with her back still rigidly forward. Chloe's stomach clenched as the reflection's mouth opened. No sound. Just the movement of lips forming words she couldn't hear.

Dan's hand snapped out behind him. "Get back. Now!"

They retreated a few paces until the mirrored walls bent into another arc, leading toward the descent platforms. Chloe risked one glance over her shoulder. The mirrored woman was still staring. Still smiling. The real one never moved.

They didn't speak until the glass corridor ended and steel bulkheads took over, the air warmer, heavier, humming with the energy of the Forge.

Alyssa let out a breath she'd been holding so long it came out like a hiss. "What the hell was that?"

Dan kept moving. "Not something we're staying to ask questions about."

Chloe's throat felt tight. "That wasn't a hallucination."

"No," Dan agreed. "Hallucinations don't grin back at you."

The last stretch down to the Forge chamber felt longer than she remembered. The walls vibrated faintly under their palms, warmth bleeding through the steel, as though the machinery deep below had grown restless. Rune panels that once glowed with steady amber were now cracked, flickering at uneven intervals like dying lanterns.

By the time they reached the reinforced doors, the vibration had become a steady thrum in her bones.

The Forge had never felt like a workshop to Chloe, no matter how Ferron framed it. Even the first time they'd followed him down here for their weapons, the place had unsettled her. The heat that clung to the walls, the machinery that pulsed like it had veins, and above all — the cage at its centre. She remembered staring at it far too long, unable to shake the sense of being studied in return.

The Mirror hadn't spoken then. It hadn't needed to. Its surface had shifted just enough for her to catch her own face staring back — a shade older, colder, a version of herself she didn't want to believe existed. Ferron had brushed it off as containment bleed, nothing to fear as long as the seals held.

But Chloe hadn't forgotten the way it had watched them silently. Patient, like glass waiting to crack.

Dan laid his hand against the security plate. The door hissed open in increments, thick steel teeth grinding reluctantly apart. Heat rolled over them in a wave.

Chloe caught her breath.

The Forge chamber was a cathedral of machines and restraints, vast walls of black stone latticed with steel. Chains thicker than her waist hung from the ceiling, each one inscribed with sigils that glowed faintly like embers. At the centre of the cavern rose the cage — a construct of glass and silver, every surface etched with scripture and seals, all of it cracked through like shattered ice.

Inside it wasn't a creature in any shape she knew. It was a surface. A pool of silver that didn't lie flat, but swelled against the broken walls like liquid pressed against too-thin glass. It rippled once, and Chloe's own face stared back — except older, sharper, eyes ringed with dark hollows and a bitter twist at the mouth.

She stumbled back a step, shaking her head.

Alyssa swore under her breath. "That… that's not possible."

Dan stood stiff, jaw tight, but his voice didn't rise. "Containment's already cracking."

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The pool pulsed again. Reflections of all three of them surfaced and sank. Not copies. Not shadows. Twisted versions — Alyssa's grin smeared wide with blood, Dan's hands dripping as though from a wound he couldn't close, Chloe's eyes hollow as if she'd already failed everything she'd ever tried to protect.

The cage groaned. A fracture split across its base, throwing sparks. The whispers came next — not from the air, but from the mirrored faces themselves.

"Too late."
"Too weak."
"Too much like her."

Chloe's chest tightened. It was Liz's voice threaded through the echoes, or close enough to tear at her. Of course it sounded like Liz. When Chloe was afraid enough, every shadow seemed to wear her friend's voice.

Dan spread his arms slightly, protective, though his eyes flicked between them with something close to fear. "Stay focused. None of that's real. These are just reflections."

The pool rippled harder. Shards of the cage broke loose and rained down like falling glass. Where they struck the ground, they didn't scatter — they pooled, forming smaller mirrors, each one birthing another wrong reflection.

Alyssa pulled Chloe closer, muttering through clenched teeth. "Feels pretty damn real to me."

The cage screamed as another fissure tore down its side.

And then the Mirror broke free.

***

The cage cracked like a bell struck too hard. A ringing vibration spread across the Forge chamber, running through the stone and steel, through Chloe's ribs, through the marrow of her teeth. She staggered, hand instinctively clamping over her ear, but the sound wasn't in the air. It was inside her.

Fragments spilled from the silver walls of the cage. Not glass, not metal — something thinner, liquid pressed into shape. The shards hit the ground and instead of scattering, they puddled, each one stretching upward into a surface that shouldn't have been there.

Mirrors. Dozens of them.

And each one showed a reflection.

Chloe stared, frozen. At first it was just her own face peering back — pale, wide-eyed, afraid. But then the images shifted. One smiled when she didn't. Another looked at her sister, lips curling in jealousy she'd never admitted aloud. Another stared back hollow-eyed and broken, as if she had already failed everyone and was living with it.

Her breath caught.

Beside her, Alyssa swore under her breath. "Nope. Nope, I'm not doing this." She raised her fists, ready to throw herself into a fight just to shake off the sight.

Dan's voice came low, calm, but tight. "Stay steady. They're not us."

The reflections leaned forward.

And stepped out.

Chloe's chest seized as one of them — one with her face — peeled itself free of the glass like water taking shape, then landed lightly on the Forge floor. Its skin gleamed faintly, silver under the torchlight, but its eyes were hers. Older. Harsher. Eyes that accused.

"You've always been the weaker one," the double said, her voice like Chloe's but stripped of warmth. "The other twin's shadow. Liz's replacement. Nothing more."

Chloe stumbled back, mouth dry.

Another mirror rippled and spat out Dan. Not the Dan she knew — this version hunched under invisible weight, blood dried across his arms, his healer's glow flickering weakly. His voice came out cracked and bitter. "I couldn't save them. I never save anyone. I only watch them die."

The real Dan stiffened, his jaw tight.

And then Alyssa's mirror-self stepped free. Grinning, feral, hands slick with blood. She twirled Chloe's reflection's braid like a trophy and dropped it at Alyssa's feet. "I've always known what you'll do in the end. You'll get her killed."

Chloe's stomach turned. Alyssa went pale, then furious, fists tightening at her side.

The three doubles began circling, liquid eyes glittering.

Dan spread his arms just slightly, enough to edge the sisters behind him. "Stay together. Don't give them ground."

The words steadied Chloe for a heartbeat. Dan always sounded like he believed what he said, even when he was lying to himself. She needed that.

But her reflection stepped closer, smirking with cruel familiarity. "You know it's true. You've thought it a hundred times. Liz was the strong one. Alyssa's the brave one. You're just… here."

Her throat closed. It was a thought she'd never voiced aloud. And now it walked toward her with her own face.

The reflection lunged. Chloe stumbled, barely catching its arm before it could knock her flat. It was cold — not skin, not liquid, something between. Her stomach lurched as its grin pressed closer, whispering words only she could hear.

"You don't deserve to stand beside them."

"No!" The word tore from her throat raw. She shoved back, harder than she thought she could, phasing her body for just an instant. Her reflection's arm slid through her instead of crushing her chest, its grin faltering when it felt the cold nothingness of her power.

She re-solidified and slammed her elbow into its face. The silver cracked like brittle ice, scattering shards that hissed across the floor.

The reflection dissolved into liquid, reforming at the edges of the Forge like smoke curling back to its source.

"Chloe!" Alyssa's voice yanked her around. Her twin was fighting her double barehanded, blood already seeping from a split knuckle where she'd punched solid mirror-flesh. The double laughed, taunting, circling, its voice dripping poison: "You're going to bury her one day. It's written in you."

Alyssa snarled back, but Chloe heard the crack under the anger.

Dan was locked with his own reflection, golden threads of healing flickering around his hands, struggling to bind wounds that opened across his chest every time the double spoke. "I couldn't save April. I couldn't save Max. I won't save Liz."

Chloe's head spun. The chamber was alive with reflections, each shard birthing new echoes, each voice another dagger to the gut. She clutched her braid in one fist, grounding herself.

"They're not real," she told herself, out loud this time. "They're not real."

Her reflection's voice rose out of the silver puddles around her feet, whispering through a hundred mouths.

"Not real? Or just more honest than you'll ever be?"

The Forge shook as if laughing. Chains overhead rattled. The cage at the centre split with a sound like glass under pressure.

And then the Mirror itself began to rise.

It wasn't a face anymore, or a body. It was all of them at once — every reflection pulled into a single, seething surface, rippling with Chloe's eyes, Dan's jaw, Alyssa's sneer. A tide of twisted selves given flesh.

Her knees weakened. She grabbed Alyssa's arm, and her sister gripped back just as tight.

The Mirror's voice poured out from every wall, every shard, every surface in the Forge.

"You are what you fear."

It swelled higher, towering above them, faces screaming across its skin.

"And I am all of you."

***

The Mirror rose above them like a tide made solid, its surface a storm of faces pressed thin against glass. Chloe's. Alyssa's. Dan's. Liz's. They flickered across its skin as if the creature were rifling through their lives, pausing only when it found something that made them flinch.

Dan felt the air thicken in his lungs, the heat of the Forge pressing against his ribs like he'd inhaled fire. He had fought demons before, had seen their claws and chains, but this wasn't that. This was memory dragged out into the open, and it was worse.

The Mirror rippled, and his own face leaned out of its surface. Not the man he was now, but a broken thing — hands red, halo dimmed, voice hoarse from prayers that had gone unanswered.

"I couldn't save April," the reflection rasped. "I couldn't help Max. I couldn't even keep Liz alive long enough to matter."

Dan's chest clenched. He forced himself not to look at Chloe, who had gone pale beside him. He couldn't let her see how much of that landed.

Another ripple — Alyssa this time. Her double leapt from the surface like water given form, circling her with feral delight. "You'll get her killed," it hissed, flicking its head toward Chloe. "You always trip forward first, dragging her into graves she doesn't deserve."

Alyssa's lips pulled back in a snarl, but her voice cracked. "Shut up."

The words didn't carry conviction. The reflection only laughed, and the sound bled across the Forge until Chloe's ears rang.

Chloe's own double stepped close again, silver hands reaching. "She'll always be the stronger one," it whispered, voice dripping with every old fear Chloe had swallowed. "Liz was the only one worth saving. You? You're just the spare."

Chloe flinched as though struck. Alyssa moved to put herself in front of her, but Dan stepped between them before the spiral could lock tighter.

Enough.

His halo flared. Golden light unfurled above his head, not in fire but in threads — thin strands that drifted outward like silk spun from his chest. He pressed his palms out, letting the warmth course through him, and forced his voice to stay steady.

"They're not you," he said, louder now, carrying over the Mirror's whispers. "They're not what you are. They're what you're afraid of. There's a difference."

The reflections staggered back as the light bled into the cracks on the floor, settling around Alyssa first. She gasped, shoulders dropping as if someone had just lifted a weight off her back. The words of her double dulled, its grin faltering.

Chloe's eyes filled with tears she hadn't realised she was holding back. Dan caught her gaze, and for a moment it was just the two of them — her panic, his exhaustion, and a thread of warmth binding the gap.

"You're not weaker, Chloe," he told her, firm enough that she had to believe he meant it. "You're here. You're standing. You've been fighting since the day this started, and you're still fighting now. That isn't weakness. That's the only reason the rest of us can keep going."

The Mirror shrieked, its voices fracturing, dozens of mouths opening across its surface. Dan pushed harder, his arms trembling as the golden threads tightened into a web.

"Liz isn't gone," he said. "And she isn't the only reason any of us are here. Don't you dare think you're less than her. Don't you dare think you're less than anyone."

Alyssa barked a laugh, breathless but real, as if he had snapped something inside her loose. "Hell, she's tougher than me. She puts up with me every day."

Chloe gave a short, broken laugh of her own. The reflections nearest them faltered, their forms running like wax.

The Mirror's surface twisted, its tide of faces screaming in unison. The glass cage that had once bound it shuddered, chains overhead rattling loose. Sparks rained down like stars burning out.

Dan felt his knees weaken, his hands shaking from the strain of holding the threads steady, but he refused to lower them. If he let go, the Mirror's words would sink back in, and he couldn't let that happen.

"You're not broken," he told Alyssa and Chloe both, his voice raw now. "You're enough. You're the reason I can keep standing."

The Mirror roared in fury, the sound like a thousand voices tearing through his skull. With one last violent shudder, it tore the final chain binding it to the Forge's heart.

Shards of silver rained outward as it pulled itself fully free, the cage collapsing around it in molten ruin.

The Mirror heaved itself upward, a tide of stolen faces surging together until the chamber seemed too small to contain it. Its body was a shifting mass of mouths and eyes, stitched with liquid light.

And from all those mouths came one voice:

"You are what you fear. And I am all of you."

Dan's golden threads flickered, but he stood his ground, jaw set.

Because if he broke now, they were all finished.

***

The Mirror towered over them, its mass shifting between forms. Dan's face stretched across one side, pale and defeated. Alyssa's grin twisted into a predator's snarl. Liz's eyes flickered at the centre, cold and accusing. Chloe's stomach heaved at the sight of herself multiplied, each version bent and broken.

She gripped Alyssa's hand so tightly their knuckles whitened. The touch grounded her. Her sister's pulse raced as fast as her own, hot and frantic, but it was real. That was what mattered.

The Mirror's voice rolled out of a hundred mouths, overlapping and dissonant. "You will fail her. You will fail them all. That is your truth."

Chloe's throat felt raw. For a moment, she wanted to believe it. She'd always carried the thought — that she was only here because Liz wasn't, because someone had to fill the space. And the Mirror knew it. It was feeding on it.

But then she remembered that first night on the road after their town burned, Alyssa curled against her side as they tried to sleep on hard concrete. Alyssa had whispered, You're still here. That's all I need.

The memory cut through the fog like a blade.

Chloe squeezed her sister's hand, her voice shaking but rising. "That's not the truth. That's what you want us to believe."

Alyssa's eyes flicked to her, startled. Chloe felt the heat rising in her chest, not fire like Max, not golden healing like Dan, but a sharp clarity. She'd spent so long letting her reflection define her. Here and now, she refused.

The Mirror screeched, its form boiling. Shards of broken silver rained around them, puddling into smaller doubles that staggered forward. Dan braced himself to hold them off, golden threads flaring around his arms.

But Chloe saw something in the chaos.

One shard — larger than the rest — had fallen near the edge of the cage. Unlike the others, it didn't ripple with warped faces. It showed something different.

Her and Alyssa. Side by side. Younger, laughing at some forgotten joke in their mother's kitchen. Not stronger or weaker. Just them.

Her breath caught. It wasn't a lie, and it wasn't twisted. It was real.

She grabbed Alyssa's arm and pointed. "There!"

Alyssa followed her gaze, and for a heartbeat the sneer on her face cracked into something softer.

Together, they moved. Chloe darted forward, phasing through one staggering reflection, her body half-ghost as she snatched the shard off the floor. Cold seared through her palms but she held it, held it like it was a lifeline.

Alyssa met her in the centre, gravity warping around her fists. "What do we do with it?" she demanded, breath ragged.

Chloe's eyes locked on the Mirror, that seething tide of wrong selves. "We remind it who we really are."

She pressed the shard to her chest, phasing it through her body. For an instant her insides turned to ice, the shard sinking deep until it pulsed with her heartbeat.

The Mirror recoiled, its voices rising into a shriek.

Alyssa didn't hesitate. She grabbed Chloe's arm, pulling her close. "On three," she said, though her grin was wild. "One—two—"

They leapt together.

Alyssa bent gravity inward, a crushing funnel that dragged them through the air like a spear. Chloe phased them at the last instant, slipping through the Mirror's thrashing outer mass, the shard blazing inside her chest.

She solidified with a scream, driving the shard into the creature's core.

The Mirror's form buckled under the shard's strike. Its surface rippled violently, faces distorting into masks of pain and fury. Light bled from the wound Chloe had driven into it, searing arcs that split the Forge chamber like lightning. The air reeked of burnt copper, sharp enough to sting her nose, and every breath felt like swallowing glass.

One by one, the reflections shrieked and collapsed, their silver bodies crumbling into dust.

The great cage that had once bound it disintegrated, chains snapping loose and falling in molten fragments. For a breathless moment Chloe thought they'd done it — that the nightmare was over.

But then the Mirror drew itself upward, shedding its broken outer shell. What remained was leaner, sharper — a silhouette stitched from silver and shadow, its surface still crawling with stolen faces. It let out a sound that was not quite a roar, not quite a laugh, and began to withdraw, sinking into the fractured walls, sliding into every shard and reflective surface it could find.

The Forge chamber shook as it vanished, the last glimmer of its liquid body streaking up the cracked steel supports and disappearing into the mirrored glass high above. The air snapped with sudden emptiness, leaving only the reek of hot metal and ash.

Dan lowered his arms, trembling from the strain of holding the barrier. Alyssa's fists slowly unclenched, her breathing ragged. Chloe didn't move. Her eyes stayed fixed on the broken cage, on the dark smear left behind where the Mirror had torn its way out.

"It's gone," Alyssa muttered, almost convincing herself.

Chloe shook her head. Her voice was low, unsteady. "No, it's not gone. It's now free."

The words hung in the chamber, heavier than the silence that followed.

They turned for the exit, each step carrying them away from the wreckage of the Forge. But Chloe knew, with a certainty that settled in her bones, that the demon they had feared most wasn't caged anymore.

The Mirror was out.

And it would be waiting for them. Somewhere deep in the steel, too faint for the others to notice, Chloe thought she heard laughter scraping along the walls — a sound that promised the Mirror had not gone far.