Mirroring Malice Episode VI
The Dead Speak in Push Notifications...
It’s Dangerous to go alone…
Don't get lost; if this is your first time reading an Episode, start at the beginning. Or pick up where you left off here:
And now Episode VI
The lecture hall is all cathedral arches and flickering fluorescents. Rue stood at the front, like a sin in silk, her hands trembling slightly from the night of drinking catching up.
Behind her, a black screen still bears the illuminated text of her last sentence: “Mirrors do not reflect truth. They reflect belief.”
She turns to face the rows of students—eyeliner smudged, hoodies up, eyes glazed like glass marbles. The lecture is called Hacking White Hate: Subversion, Surveillance, and Digital Hauntology. It was Rue’s favorite unit to teach—equal parts cyber-witchcraft and academic rebellion, a syllabus that has her tenured colleagues wringing pearls and whispering warnings in the faculty lounge. Despite her love for teaching it, it always required a night sacrificed to liquid courage. Over the years, it had become her ritual.
Her heels tapped a metronome of control as she walked across the stage of Lecture Hall B. “I am sure all of you took pause when reading over your syllabus at this particular bullet point, Hacking White Hate. A sociopolitical deconstruction of alt-right recruitment patterns, and how white hat hackers can stop them,” she said, taking a brief pause.
“For the record,” she said, pacing in front of the large projection screen, “hate isn’t born. It’s installed. Like malware. Like a virus you didn’t mean to click on.”
The students laughed. A few squirmed.
Rue smiled.
“Systems of oppression,” she says, “are mirrors. Not in how they show you the world—but in how they show themselves, to themselves. Fragile, silver-backed delusions pretending to be truth.”
Her students hang on every word, fingers dancing across keyboards as if they might hack history itself.
And then—
Ding.
A single chime, sharp enough to slice through her cadence.
Then another.
And another.
Like a plague blooming in real time, every device in the room chirps, buzzes, hums to life. Laptops. Phones. Even the cursed smart watch Rue once confiscated from a cheating freshman. Every screen flashes with the same notification
Ø From: Ellie Teals
Ø Subject: Comp Lab 113
Ø Message: You said mirrors don’t lie. But mine still has my blood on it.
Rue frowned. The name didn’t strike anything familiar in her memory—not even a flicker. Ellie Teals? A bot? A prank?
She checked her own screen.
Ø Ellie Teals added you to a private channel: “The Glass Remembers.”
Rue’s hands felt too cold, her chest too tight. Something about the message—it felt coded, like a cipher that lived in the gaps between words. Like a name written in ultraviolet ink, only visible when illuminated by guilt.
She turned back to the class, but they’re no longer looking at her. They're staring at their screens, entranced, disturbed.
“Anyone know who this is?” Rue asked, trying to inject calm authority into her voice.
The students murmur grows and then died, none of them aware of who or what was happening.
“Let’s get back to the lecture, I’m sure our I.T. department are squaring it,” she said.
“Now, when you hack a system built on supremacy,” she continued, “it doesn’t shatter like glass. It reflects back at you. It adapts.”
The lights flickered.
Behind her, the screen displayed a fragmented mirror—an AI-generated distortion of a face that looked too much like her own.
Phones began to chime, screens flashing, ringtones overlapping like a digital séance. Rue froze, her hand hovering mid-gesture.
The projector screen blinked. A single line of text scrawled itself across the glassy void:
Ø You said mirrors don’t lie. But mine still has my blood on it.
— Ellie Teals
A chill spidered down Rue’s spine.
She scanned the room. Blank faces bathed in cold-blue glow. Whispers.
A student raised their hand slowly. “Professor Rue… Who’s Ellie Teals?”
Rue blinked. “I don’t know.”
But her voice faltered.
Because the name felt like a bruise she couldn’t remember getting.
Because Ian had been twitchy all week.
Because Edmund’s gaze had lingered too long last night when she asked if something felt off.
Rue’s phone vibrated in her pocket.
She fished it out with trembling fingers.
Ø New Message
From: Ellie Teals
You don’t remember me, Rue. But I remember every stolen word. Every stolen breath. Look in the mirror in Room 113. I left you something.
She dismissed the class with a clipped tone that brooked no questions. A few students hesitated, watching her with furrowed brows—some out of concern, others out of morbid curiosity. Rue didn’t care.
Not right now.
The halls of the university felt different, like they’d shifted while she wasn’t looking. The usual buzz of students and chatter faded into a hush. The fluorescent lights above flickered just a little too long between each blink. Her heels clicked too loudly against the tile. Her reflection in the glass trophy case looked a second too slow to follow her movements.
Room 113.
A part of her brain whispered it doesn’t exist. That it had been converted. Sealed. Forgotten.
But her feet knew the way.
Down the east wing. Past the department offices. Through the old archival wing no one used anymore. The smell of yellowed paper and toner ghosts followed her like breath on the back of her neck.
The door was there.
Not labeled. No plaque. Just the number 113 carved into wood like someone had scratched it in with a knife.
The knob turned without resistance.
Inside: dust, stale air, and the kind of silence that made your teeth ache. The room had once been a reading space, long before the renovations. Now it was stripped bare. A skeletal table. A cracked mirror nailed to the far wall. No chairs. No warmth.
Just that damn mirror.
Rue stepped closer.
Her reflection looked normal at first. Slightly blurred from the grime on the glass.
But then—it blinked.
Out of sync.
She stepped back. Her false reflection smiled.
The lights overhead flickered violently.
Rue’s phone chimed again.
Ø Still don’t remember me?
That’s okay. I only needed you to look.
Now the fun begins.
— Ellie
The mirror went black.
For a moment, it became a screen—grainy CCTV footage flickering to life.
Ellie. Bandaged hand. Wide eyes. The corner of her mouth already swelling. She was speaking—screaming—but there was no sound.
Then Ian stepped into frame.
Rue staggered back, the phone slipping from her hand. Her pulse roared in her ears.
“No,” she whispered. “No—no—”
The footage rewound. Played again. Ellie’s sobs. Ian’s shadow. The flick of a switchblade.
Then the screen blinked off.
The mirror returned.
Rue stood, chest heaving, tears pricking the corners of her vision. Her thoughts were a storm, too fast to catch, too loud to hear herself think.
Behind her, the door creaked.
She turned.
Edmund stood there, backlit like a phantom, his silhouette perfect and still.
“Rue,” he said softly, “you weren’t supposed to see that.”
🖤
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