The halls were colder on the forgotten side of campus.
Paint flaked off concrete walls like dried blood. Rusted pipes snaked across the ceilings. Every step echoed like a scream swallowed by time.
"This place wasn't just abandoned," Lucien whispered. "It was erased."
Locker 18B's contents lay open on the library table just hours earlier—Trisha's black notebook, pages filled with shaky handwriting and sketches that looked like someone losing their grip.
"They know everything. They see through walls."
"Not Vera. Not Cyan. Not Lukas. But someone pretending to be all three."
"The Mirror Room holds the truth."
Now, at 6:37 AM, Keira stood at the door of the burned-out detention wing—sealed off since a mysterious fire three years ago. Rumor said the building had swallowed its last student.
Julian jimmied the lock with surprising ease. "What? I grew up watching spy films."
The door creaked open.
Inside: ashes, toppled desks, charred memories. And yet, oddly untouched.
The squad stepped in—Keira, Lucien, Maya, Julian, and Noah.
"This place feels cursed," Maya whispered.
Keira held the notebook in one hand and a flashlight in the other.
They followed the map Trisha had drawn on page 7—a childlike scrawl of corridors leading to something called:
"The Mirror Room."
Down a hallway, they found it: a rusted metal door with cracked glass and scorched wallpaper.
Lucien reached for the knob.
"No," Keira said. "Let me."
She pushed open the door.
Inside was a room with walls entirely made of mirrors—now cracked and fogged. Each reflected distorted fragments of their faces. In the center, a single chair. Bolted down.
"This looks like a torture room," Julian muttered.
"No," Maya said. "This was… a confession chamber."
They found a small box behind the mirror wall—stuffed with used batteries, SD cards, and one worn cassette tape labeled simply:
"Keira – 001"
Her blood ran cold.
Lucien grabbed an old recorder from the corner, blew the dust off, and pressed PLAY.
"Begin Subject: Keira Faye. Day 4 of Mirror Sessions."
"She refuses to talk. Silent again. That's okay. She'll break soon."
"No one lasts long in the Mirror Room."
[Click. End of tape.]
Keira's hands clenched into fists.
"What the hell was that?" Noah whispered.
"Proof," Keira said. "They were breaking people here. One by one."
Lucien opened a second SD card. Images loaded on Julian's laptop screen.
Photos.
Of students.
Of Vera. Of Cyan. Of Keira herself—taken without her knowledge from the mirror's point of view.
Some showed crying. Screaming.
One showed Trisha… with wires on her head.
And then—footsteps.
Not theirs.
Lucien whipped his head toward the door.
A slow clap echoed.
From the shadows stepped a familiar face.
Mrs. Cabral—the school's beloved guidance counselor.
Smiling.
"Oh, children," she said. "You really shouldn't be here."
Maya gasped. "You?"
She nodded. "Every system needs a keeper. A gardener, if you will. And this school was rotting."
Keira stepped forward. "You ran this?"
"No, dear. I only curated the soil. Someone else planted the seeds."
"Who?" Keira demanded.
Mrs. Cabral's eyes gleamed. "You've already met them."
Before anyone could respond, Lucien lunged.
She stepped back—pressing a remote in her hand.
The metal door behind them slammed shut with a boom.
"You want truth?" she whispered. "Fine. Truth: Trisha was never supposed to return. Neither was Vera. You all—every single one of you—were subjects. The Ex Files were never about revenge. They were about control."
"What do you mean—subjects?" Keira asked, voice tight.
Mrs. Cabral smiled.
"There are two kinds of students in every class—those who survive, and those who teach the rest what happens when you disobey the system."
Julian smashed the control panel. Sparks flew.
Noah rushed forward, tackling Mrs. Cabral, but she vanished down the hallway in a swirl of dust and keys.
"Go!" Keira shouted. "Get the files and RUN!"
They snatched the notebook, tape, SD cards, and bolted out, sprinting back through the fire-charred hallway, their breaths loud and panic thick in their chests.
Outside, the sun was finally rising.
But for Keira, light no longer meant safety.
Back at Keira's house, they debriefed.
Maya was pacing.
Noah was icing his knuckles.
Julian had already begun decoding the rest of the files.
"She's not working alone," Lucien said. "Whoever's behind this has access to school records, surveillance, psych reports."
"She said we were subjects," Keira muttered. "Subjects of what?"
Lucien handed her a single slip of paper he'd swiped from the Mirror Room.
Typed in black ink:
"X-Terminal Phase Beta: Active Monitoring Subjects — Keira Faye, Cyan Avelino, Lukas Silva, Vera Chan, Lucien Dela Cruz."
Five names.
All connected.
"Wait—" Keira looked up. "Lukas?"
Lucien tensed.
"What aren't you telling me?"
Lucien's lips parted. "Lukas was my brother."
Silence crashed through the room like a bomb.
"You told us you came here because of Trisha," Maya whispered.
"I came because of them all," Lucien said. "Because my brother died… and they said it was suicide. But I found his name in those records. Just like ours."
Keira stared.
"So you're not just helping us."
"I'm trying to finish what Lukas started. And I think you were his final plan, Keira."
Cliffhanger Ending:
As Lucien hands Keira one last folded paper from the black notebook, she reads:
"If you're reading this, Keira—then you've survived the first phase. That means the real fight begins now."
—L.S.
She looks up.
Eyes blazing.
"Then let's end their experiment."