Chapter 17 - Seven Days
Nicole positioned herself between Sweater Daniel and the mirror.
He noticed.
“You’re afraid of me now.”
“I’m cautious.”
“Because Thomas told you to be.”
“Because you entered my locked house without permission.”
His face tightened.
“Our house.”
Nicole’s expression changed.
Sweater Daniel realized what he had said.
“That sounded like him.”
“Yes.”
He laughed bitterly.
“Of course it did.”
Nicole kept her distance.
“You are him.”
“Not anymore.”
“Four days don’t erase thirty-nine years.”
“Four days can change everything.”
Nicole believed that.
But Thomas’s notes warned that identity divergence could create desperation.
“What do you think happens on day seven?”
Sweater Daniel looked at the mirror.
“I don’t know.”
“Thomas did.”
“He guessed.”
“What do you want from the mirror?”
He remained silent.
Nicole understood.
“You want to become permanent.”
His jaw tightened.
“I want to stop waiting for someone to decide I disappear.”
The sentence disarmed her.
For the first time, she imagined his existence from inside.
He remembered a childhood.
Parents.
College.
Meeting Nicole.
Their wedding.
Their first home.
Every intimate morning.
Then he awakened and was told none belonged to him.
“That’s terrifying,” she said.
His eyes filled.
“Yes.”
Nicole did not step closer.
Compassion did not require carelessness.
“But taking Daniel’s place won’t fix it.”
“I don’t want his place.”
“Then what?”
“My own.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
His anger cracked into fear.
“I don’t have a Social Security number that isn’t his. I don’t have a legal identity. I don’t have a bank account. I technically don’t exist.”
Nicole had not fully considered that.
“You need lawyers.”
He laughed.
“What should the petition say? ‘Your Honor, I was generated by an antique mirror on Tuesday’?”
Nicole almost smiled despite everything.
Then his expression softened.
“You used to laugh at my stupid jokes.”
Her chest tightened.
“That memory belongs to you.”
“Does it?”
He looked at her.
“Or am I stealing that too?”
Nicole had no answer.
A vehicle pulled into the driveway.
Doorway Daniel.
Sweater Daniel stiffened.
“Did you call him?”
“No.”
Daniel entered moments later and stopped when he saw his double.
“What are you doing here?”
Sweater Daniel said, “Talking.”
“Get away from her.”
Nicole snapped, “Do not give orders in my house.”
Both men fell silent.
She almost laughed at the absurdity.
Doorway Daniel saw Thomas’s letter.
“You found something.”
Nicole told them the seven-day rule.
Daniel’s face changed.
“Three days.”
“Yes.”
Sweater Daniel said, “Convenient.”
“What?”
“A deadline. Thomas loved controlling people with rules.”
Daniel stared.
“You think he invented it?”
“I think he was terrified of what he couldn’t understand.”
Nicole asked, “Have you lost memories?”
Sweater Daniel hesitated.
Daniel saw it.
“You have.”
“No.”
Nicole said, “Tell the truth.”
Sweater Daniel looked at her.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Our first apartment.”
Daniel stepped forward.
“What about it?”
“I know we lived there. I know the address.”
Sweater Daniel pressed fingers against his forehead.
“But I can’t picture the bedroom.”
Daniel looked disturbed.
Nicole asked, “Anything else?”
“My mother’s voice when I was little.”
Judith.
Sweater Daniel looked suddenly young.
“I know facts. But pieces feel farther away.”
Thomas had been right.
The double was diverging.
Daniel asked quietly, “What memories are stronger?”
Sweater Daniel looked at Nicole.
“Recent ones.”
Nicole understood.
His current identity was replacing inherited memory.
A separate person was forming.
The mirror trembled.
All three turned.
The glass lay face-down.
Yet a low vibration passed through the frame.
Daniel whispered, “We should destroy it.”
“No,” Nicole said.
“Why?”
“Thomas warned against it.”
“He was wrong about plenty.”
“He also spent twenty years studying what happens.”
Sweater Daniel crouched beside the frame.
Nicole backed away.
“Don’t touch it.”
He stopped.
Then the lights flickered.
The large mirror turned by itself.
Not fully.
Only enough for one corner of glass to face upward.
Inside it stood the Witness.
Older Daniel.
Gray hair.
And behind him—
Nicole.
Older too.
Her hair streaked with silver.
She stood beside him.
Wearing a wedding ring.
Sweater Daniel inhaled sharply.
Doorway Daniel stared.
Nicole’s heart pounded.
The future reflection turned toward them.
Older Nicole lifted one hand.
On her palm, written in black ink:
May you like
![92 The Girl They Called Broke Was a Billionaire’s Daughter—But Her Father’s Arrival Exposed a Secret Powerful People Had Buried for Years]](https://cdn.treeiq.biz/site_590/2026/11/clone-0-0915d882-53d7-4d17-b43a-a010ca1a1068.webp)
DON’T CHOOSE EITHER.
Then the mirror went dark.
