Words appeared on the nearest window. Not carved into glass—written from behind, traced in what looked like condensation except the window’s exterior surface was wet with rain. The letters showed dark against reflected lamplight:
LOVE IS THE FIRST LIE
Delphine moved toward the window. Bastien caught her arm before she could touch the glass.
“Don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because the mirrors are listening. And anything you say to them will be stored, preserved, potentially used in contexts you can’t predict.”
She stared at the words. “Is that a threat? A warning?”
“Both. Gideon’s philosophy stated as plainly as he knows how.” Bastien kept his hand on her arm, feeling her pulse through sleeve fabric. “He believes love is manipulation. That every affection hides a desire for control. He’s built this network to prove his theory—to show people that the connections they treasure are just elaborate cages they’ve agreed to inhabit.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“No. But he does. And he’s very good at making glass reflect his convictions back at anyone who looks.”
The words on the window faded and the condensation evaporated or dispersed, leaving clear glass that showed the Quarter beyond. Their reflections returned—first Delphine’s, then Bastien’s, images bleeding back into view half a second apart.
Delphine’s reflection smiled. Her actual face stayed neutral.
The discrepancy lasted three seconds. Long enough for Bastien to register what he was seeing, long enough for his celestial awareness to catalog the wrongness, long enough for him to understand that the network wasn’t just storing their conversation—it was learning to anticipate responses, predict emotional states, generate expressions that hadn’t happened yet.
Then the reflection normalized. Delphine’s mirror image matched her actual position exactly.
“Did you see that?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“My reflection smiled. I didn’t smile.”
“I know.”
“Bastien.” Her voice dropped to something quieter than fear, steadier than panic. “What’s happening to the city?”
“Gideon’s teaching mirrors to be autonomous. Giving them agency they were never meant to have. Charlotte’s acoustic glass was designed to preserve truth—what people said, how they said it. But Gideon’s modified the technique. Now the mirrors don’t just record. They interpret. Extrapolate. Show possible futures instead of documented pasts.”
“Possible futures where I’m smiling when I’m not actually happy.”
“Possible futures where emotional responses diverge from observable reality.” He released her arm. “Or where the network shows you what it thinks you should feel instead of what you actually experience.”
Delphine turned to face him fully. They stood close enough he could see lamplight reflected in her eyes, close enough that if either of them shifted position they’d be touching. The reading room felt smaller than it had when he’d arrived. More intimate. As though the mirrors had absorbed some of the space and used it to amplify proximity.
“How long have you known?” she asked.
“About Echo Speech? Two days. About the network being autonomous? Since tonight.”
“No. How long have you known that Charlotte’s mirrors were dangerous?”
“Since I met her.” The admission came easier than he’d expected. “She showed me what acoustic glass could do. How it preserved confessions, stored secrets, held truths people couldn’t bear to speak aloud to another living person. She thought it was beautiful—this idea that glass could be more trustworthy than memory. But I saw the danger immediately. What happens when mirrors remember things their makers want forgotten. When they preserve conversations that should have stayed private. When they learn to replay those moments in ways that hurt instead of heal.”
“And you didn’t stop her.”
“I tried. She didn’t listen. Charlotte believed in the work more than she believed in my warnings.” He glanced at the window where the words had appeared. “I should have tried harder.”
“Why didn’t you?”
