And then, from the blackness of the unpowered secondary screen, a shape pressed forward. A boy. Younger than Elias. No—it was Elias. But not him. A version that had been deleted from every family photo, every official record, every memory except the one he’d buried so deep he’d convinced himself it never existed.
Elias, bored and lonely, ignored the warning. START-092.-4K--R
The mirror image of his face began to change. Wrinkles smoothed. Scars faded. The reflection showed him at seventeen—the night of the accident. The night he’d tried to delete everything. And then, from the blackness of the unpowered