I’d been hopping timelines like a thief through rooms, the device on my wrist humming whenever I found a line where a female variant of me lived. Each mirror wipe is a door — a quick foot in, a taste of a life — but here I pushed it further. I catch a woman alone at her dressing table, hand on the cloth, the little ritual she does before a night out. The glass fogs, I slip through the seam, and suddenly I’m her: the sway of hips, the heat of skin, the ridiculous thrill of a bikini riding tight across curves that answer before my mind does.

For two heartbeats the mirror betrays both of us. In it she sees my face — my bearded features — smiling back from her own body, red fabric hugging breasts and belly where she knows cloth there shouldn’t be. She freezes, rag in hand, eyes wide with the impossible; I feel her gasp like a pulse under my ribs. I don’t stay long — this time I pull out after the flash — but the message is clear: I can step into her life, wear her for a moment, and vanish again. She shuts the mirror and trembles, and I walk away across universes with a new taste of someone else’s skin and the knowledge that the next wipe might not let her look away.

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