Corrupted Reflection



She walks the alley the way the rain does—without permission, without hurry.
One eye is still hers. The other is a cracked implant that won’t stop bleeding blue light into the dark. Wires crawl from her neck like veins that forgot they were supposed to stay inside. Every step sends ripples through the neon-slicked puddles, and in those ripples she is not the woman above them. Something older and wrong stares back, mouth open, shape unfinished.
The signs around her used to sell things. Now they stutter. Cyan flickers into magenta, then into error codes, then into faces that look like they’re screaming through static. She doesn’t look up. She already knows what they say.
Behind her, the city keeps pretending it’s still whole. Ahead of her, the alley narrows into pure signal noise.
She keeps walking.

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