The light hummed faintly in the sterile underground lab in Ottawa, its flicker reflected in the glass vial Malcolm Reiner held between his fingers. The ovum inside, barely visible, contained more potential than anything he had ever encountered. He marveled at the tiny, fragile thing—the beginning of something new.
Chirality. The great untapped frontier of biology. He had been laughed out of academia for asserting it could lead to the next stage of human evolution.
He had been warned that creating mirror-image life forms was risky. Their reversed biology might not function properly, leading to deformities, instability and immune reactions like in the infamous thalidomide disaster. If released, they could disrupt ecosystems in a manner similar to the disruptions to the ecosystem caused by the use of DDT or Neonicotinoids or Glyphosate. Finally it could lead to the development of unpredictable traits in humans.
But the doubters didn’t understand. Mirror proteins, mirror sugars, mirror life—it was possible. It was inevitable.
He arrogantly dismissed their concerns, confident that the process he had developed to mirror image DNA would eliminate all possible risks except those of unpredictable physical and mental traits. In fact, he was counting on those traits manifesting in the form of extraordinary abilities.
“This will be your magnum opus, Malcolm,” he whispered as the pipette hovered over the ovum, releasing the modified genetic material. His hand trembled slightly as he watched the microscopic world shift, the cascade of reactions now firmly out of his control.
The experiment was no longer hypothetical. It was growing.
But he hadn’t counted on the mirror image of identical twins.
***
Lena Reiner’s cries filled the hospital room as the second baby girl arrived. Nurses bustled about. Malcolm’s eyes locked onto the newborns, their skin slick and fragile under the harsh light. Perfectly identical, yet something nagged at him.
“Ten fingers, ten toes! Both healthy,” the nurse confirmed, smiling. Malcolm barely heard. He was too busy noting the subtleties—Elys’s left hand clenching tighter than Nova’s, Nova’s eyes flicking toward the light while Elys squinted away.
“They’re mirror twins,” Lena whispered, holding Malcolm’s arm. He smiled weakly and dutifully kissed her damp forehead.
Yes, mirror twins. But not just physically. His experiment had worked. The molecular-level modifications appear to have taken root. The real test was yet to come.
***
By their fifth birthday, Elys and Nova had fully embodied their roles as each other’s opposite. Nova preferred to draw pictures and, like her mother, hum along to music, her soft voice filling the house. Elys gravitated toward puzzles, dismantling toys to see how they worked.
Malcolm studied them, charting as they played. Nova favored her left hand, Elys her right. Their hair parted on opposite sides. Even their appetites diverged—one preferred sweet, the other salty.
But the more Malcolm watched, the more he noticed what couldn’t be explained by genetics alone. When Elys stared too long at her reflection, Malcolm swore it moved a fraction behind her. And Nova sometimes guessed what Malcolm was thinking before he spoke.
The mirror life was taking root in ways he hadn’t anticipated.
***
It was Nova who spoke first. “Daddy, Elys’s shadow doesn’t match.”
Malcolm paused mid-step. He glanced at Elys, playing quietly with blocks by the window. Her shadow stretched, unnaturally long, in the evening light. He squinted but dismissed it as a trick of the sunset.
Until the shadow shifted when Elys did not.
***
Increasingly, Lena worried about her daughters. Elys sometimes woke up screaming, claiming Nova had been in her dreams, pushing her. Nova had no recollection.
“It’s just a phase,” Malcolm reassured her. But Lena wasn’t convinced. Nova rarely got sick, while Elys developed strange rashes and fatigue. Doctor after doctor found nothing.
“There’s something wrong, Malcolm,” Lena pressed one night.
He couldn’t tell her. Couldn’t explain the mirror proteins or altered enzymes in their cells. Couldn’t admit to modifying the ovum without her consent.
He had to keep going. For the sake of science.
***
By age ten, Elys could bend spoons with her mind. Malcolm encouraged it in secret. Nova’s empathic abilities grew to the point where she sensed emotions from people down the street.
Malcolm pushed harder, bringing the girls to his lab after school.
Nova resisted the experiments, but Elys welcomed them. She excelled, rising to Malcolm’s challenges, bending further into her powers. But Nova withdrew. The light in her seemed to dim.
***
Nova found her mom in tears one evening. “Mom, what’s wrong?”
Lena hesitated but spoke. “Your father… he won’t stop. I think he’s hurting you and Elys.”
Nova looked at her reflection, watching Elys’s figure shift unnaturally. Her twin’s smile mirrored her own, but it felt wrong, stretched and cold.
Elys knew.
That night, Nova tried to run away, but Elys blocked the door. Her voice was low, trembling. “Don’t leave. Dad says we’re special. We’re not like them.”
Nova stared at her twin, recognizing the truth—Elys was becoming something else. Something beyond human.
***
Nova confronted her father, begging him to stop. “You’re breaking her,” Nova pleaded.
Malcolm shook his head. “No, she’s evolving. Don’t you see? You both are.”
But Nova did see. And she knew it had to end. But how?
Nova sat with Elys on the edge of their beds, the low hum of their father’s machines faint through the floorboards. “Elys,” Nova began softly, tracing the line of her palm. “You’ve felt it too, haven’t you? The way things change when we’re together?”
Elys glanced at her reflection in the bedroom mirror but avoided Nova’s gaze. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But we have to,” Nova pressed. “Dad says we can figure out what’s happening. If we do this together, we can control it.”
Elys’s fingers curled over the blanket. “What if I don’t want to control it? What if I like it the way it is?”
Nova shifted closer, lowering her voice to a whisper. “I don’t think we’re supposed to feel this far apart. I miss when we used to dream the same things. Don’t you?”
Elys’s eyes flickered with hesitation. For a moment, the shadows in the mirror seemed to hesitate too. “Okay,” she relented. “But only if you stay with me the whole time.”
The twins stood face to face, the double sided mirror between them. Nova pressed her hands to the glass, and Elys did the same. The air crackled as their powers collided, the mirror fracturing between them.
As shards scattered across the floor, Malcolm watched in horror. The experiment was over. One twin remained standing, but Malcolm could no longer tell which one.
***
Malcolm vanished soon after, his research destroyed. Lena raised her surviving daughter alone. They never spoke of the experiments again.
Some months after Malcolm’s disappearance, Dr. Scully, a former colleague from the university, arrived unannounced. Lena let her flip through Malcolm’s remaining notes, watching her mutter about ethics and things that shouldn’t exist. She warned Lena that the fractures between realities weren’t easily closed.
Detective Harry Wells, assigned to the disappearance of Malcolm and one of the twins, often checked in. He doubted Malcolm was truly gone. “Men like that don’t just vanish,” he told Lena. His eyes lingered long on the surviving twin, as if searching for answers that didn’t belong in this world.
Sometimes, Lena wondered if the daughter sitting across from her was Nova or Elys. And whether it really mattered.
This story previously appeared on Robin Kers Story Page.
Edited by Marie Ginga
A 75-year-old retiree, I spent my career crafting technical documents on labor relations and health and safety for a number of Canadian federal government departments and trade unions. Though I once dreamed of writing the great Canadian novel, I now embrace the art of flash fiction and short stories, enjoying this creative outlet in my later years on our hobby farm in southeastern Ontario.