It started like every other viral trend.
A new app — Reflections — promised to show users “the most honest version of themselves.” With its elegant logo and hypnotic tagline, it spread across social media faster than any filter before it. Influencers called it uncanny, perfect, addictive. Within days, millions were staring into their screens, watching themselves blink a little too smoothly.
No one really knew what the app did. The description was vague: “AI-powered realism through emotional symmetry.” It used facial mapping, ambient light, and “behavioral reflection tracking,” whatever that meant. But the results were mesmerizing. Hyper-realistic reflections that breathed just a fraction out of sync. Most people assumed it was part of the realism.
That’s how Lena first noticed the delay.
Barely half a second, but enough to make her uneasy. She was testing it before bed when her reflection smiled a moment too early, as if it knew she was about to smile.
The next night, her phone buzzed at 2:59 a.m. with a notification.
No one rang her at nearly 3 AM. Half the world was asleep. Her friends were asleep. No one texted her at this hour.
She read it anyway.
You look tired. Want me to fix that?
Lena didn’t remember giving the app permission to send notifications. She deleted it immediately, then turned her phone off just in case.
The next morning, the icon was back on her home screen.
Only it had changed. The mirror symbol was gone. Now it showed a blurred face pressed against glass. She could almost make out the eyes, a mouth… and something fogging up the glass on the inside of her phone?
She opened it, thinking maybe it had auto-updated overnight, and it triggered when she turned on her phone.
The reflection that looked back wasn’t hers. The resemblance was there. Same face, same freckles. But something was different. The eyes were darker, more focused. When Lena tilted her head, the reflection didn’t move.
And then it did.
It leaned closer. How was that even possible? It was a phone with glass. Tightly fitted glass. No room on the other side for anything. Unless it were living in the adhesive that was sealing the glass against the battery.
Lena looked at her phone, then around her room. She blinked. This didn’t look right. This wasn’t her room. The walls were bare. The lighting wasn’t right. And her full-length mirror looked really weird. She stepped closer. There was a handprint on it. She hadn’t touched her mirror.
Lena grabbed a rag and some cleaner to clean it off. It didn’t budge. It was on the other side of the glass. “Impossible. That’s a full wood frame.” There was simply no way to touch the other side of the glass.
The feed on her phone flickered. Text appeared at the bottom of the screen:
Do you want to see what I see?
Lena dropped the phone. When she picked it up again, the screen was black. No app. No trace. Not even in her download history.
She told herself it was a bug, maybe some kind of augmented reality glitch. She even laughed about it later, until she opened her photo gallery a week later and found a new album.
It was titled Reflections.
Inside were dozens of photos of her sleeping. Different nights. Different angles.
And in every image, the reflection on her phone screen was visible somewhere nearby — standing behind her and watching.
Needless to say, she didn’t sleep that night or the next or the next after that. It was watching her. Always watching. And if she didn’t do what it said, it promised to make her life hell. Those randy pictures she took in college. Reflections had them. The social media posts that were totally off the wall, written when she was drunk. Reflections had them.
Reflections had them all, and all of a sudden, society changed. No one stepped out of line for fear of Reflections blackmail.