Day in the story: ??

"She is waking up."

Was that Malik's voice? Why was it so hushed? Why was it so dark in here?

I only saw Jason's room. Fragments of it. There were people inside. A forensics team, combing through everything. One of them was touching my eyes.

"Make her more comfortable," Nick said.

I opened my real eyes. Slowly.

Light stabbed into them like needles. My head throbbed as I moved.

We were inside some apartment. I lay on a bed, and Malik was sitting beside me, while Nick paced back and forth, his movements quick and restless. He was still missing his left arm. The windows had been covered with thick curtains and a wardrobe dragged in from the hallway. Even some doors were barricaded shut with furniture.

But there was no Peter.

No Zoe.

Oh no.

"Where are Peter and Zoe?!" I asked, sitting up too fast. Pain bloomed behind my eyes.

"Zoe disappeared about an hour ago when the day came. She probably woke up," Nick replied, voice calm but weighed with fatigue.

"Peter was the one who tore through the Unreflected to get to you, after Zoe told us what she saw. We followed him right after."

"Nick, please. I don't need the sob story. Just tell me… Did he die?"

But I already knew the answer, didn't I?

"We don't think so," Nick said.

I focused on the link between me and the armor Peter wore, and the card I'd given him. They were still active, but the card showed only black. No sound. Nothing.

"As I was saying," Nick continued, "we followed him soon after. But when we reached you, he wasn't by your side. Still… all the Unreflected that were coming for you? They were dead. Torn apart. Strangled. One had a massive hole in its chest."

"And yet Peter wasn't there," Malik added quietly. "Nick carried you, and we ran down into the Mirrored City, guided by Zoe. Eventually, we found this apartment and holed up here."

"Yeah," Nick said. "We're only a block from the tower bridge."

I took a breath. "What do you think happened?"

Nick shook his head.

"We don't really know," he said. "He disappeared into thin air."

"Nick, when I was called for my Domain's trial, after it was over… I was placed right back where I'd been taken from. Is it always like that?" I asked.

"You think he awoke his Domain?"

"Yes. I saw shadowlight around him. Before, during the chase, and even earlier at home. I was taken in a moment when my life was in danger. Maybe he was too."

"Then yes," Nick said. "If it was a trial, he'd be returned to the exact spot he was taken from."

"How long do they usually take? And how long ago did he disappear?"

"You were out cold for around five hours," Nick said. "Trials can take anywhere from a few hours to days, depending on how complex they are and on the person, too."

"Alright. We need to go there and wait for him. Make sure he doesn't get lost when he comes back."

"Can't you see through the card you gave him or the hood?" Nick asked.

"Both are still active, but I can't see or hear anything through it. Maybe it's blocked because it's his trial."

"Could be," he said.

There was a pause.

"Alexa," Nick said, quieter now, "that woman you were after… she ignored you as you collapsed. Took Jason. We didn't stop her. I'm sorry."

"It is what it is," I replied. "We gave everything we had. But I think I know where she took him."

"You do?"

"Yeah. She glanced that way while we chased her. And it just… makes sense."

"Where?"

"One World Trade Center."

They both froze.

"That building's the tallest around here. It's also clearly a bridge building. We saw it from our apartment's roof. More than that, it's basically one big mirror tower. Reflective from top to bottom, inside and out. Not just visually, either. Metaphorically too, it reflects on the past. On tragedy. On rebirth. And it's uneven. There used to be two… now there's one. Unreflected."

I met their eyes.

"You need more similarities to the Unreflected than that?"

"No…" Nick said as he slumped into an armchair.

"Your arm?" I asked.

"It's fine. I found some eggs in here, ate them. It's regenerating, but a wound like that takes time to mend," he replied.

"Good. I thought you'd pussy out of what I'm going to do."

"Why?" He blinked, missing the joke.

"Because I need you to lend me a hand, moron."

He smiled. A genuine one, filled with warmth. "Good to have you back, Alexa."

"We're going back to the bridge?" Malik asked.

"I'm not forcing you to do anything, Malik. I can send you back to Lebens to-" I started.

"No. I'll stay and help." He didn't let me finish.

Good. He was a good fighter, and this fight wasn't over yet.

"I don't know what they want to do with Jason exactly, how long it would take, or if he's even still savable… but Peter is. So I'd like to go wait for him first, then decide if we go after Jason."

"Agreed," Nick said, and Malik nodded.

Then Nick's tone shifted. He grew serious.

"Alexa, your stunt… I know Peter forced our hand, but what you did-"

"Was badass as hell!" Malik cut in. "You jumped and flew like Superwoman or some kind of human rocket! I wish I could do something like that."

"Well, it didn't work. I lost my mask," I said.

"And it was incredibly stupid," Nick added, not missing a beat. "I thought you were dead when we reached you. You would have been, if Peter hadn't gotten to you first and cleared out the creatures chasing you."

"I know. I need to work on that," I said. "I get reckless when I don't have a plan—or time to prepare."

I pulled out my watermark pens and Travel Grimoire, setting them gently on the table. "I need a few minutes to anchor this place. Then I want to jump to my Domain and check Peter's room—see if there's another card there, just in case."

"Then we'll go wait for him," Nick added.

"That's the plan." I got to work, sketching the apartment around us, grounding my strokes in intention. While I painted, I shifted my focus back to Jason's apartment, my second sight still locked onto the image I'd seen when I woke up. The forensics team was busy, turning the place inside out. They were meticulous, brushing under shelves and flipping cushions. One of them had picked up the eye-card and was inspecting it while talking with a colleague about its oddness, speculating it might be some kind of miniature camera. Probably thought they stumbled across spy tech.

Then two more people stepped into the room from the hallway: Agents Sull and Parker. My two favorite FBI watchdogs.

Sull made a beeline for the card and gestured for the forensic tech to hand it over.

"Look, Parker it's the same type of card. Same background, different front image, but the style's too similar to be coincidence, right?" she said.

"Yeah. Has to be the same artist. This one's active though," Parker noted.

Active? How did he know that? Was he some kind of seer?

Sull tilted the card in her hand. "Strange. The other one was metallic, hard like steel. This one's just paper."

So they found the other one. Probably the one I left near the roof, where I killed those gangers. Too late to worry. They'd never trace them back to me.

"It raises questions," she said, "but the Unreflected seem like the most likely explanation. Both the boy and the girl are missing."

"You still think she knew more than she let on?" Parker asked.

"I don't know. Maybe she just doesn't trust the authorities. Or maybe she's just a bitch in general."

Wow. Very professional. But I suppose I earned that one.

"She was too calm for someone who just saw a monster," Sull added.

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"I say screw her. We've got bigger issues. We need a warrant for EoT, and the judge just keeps dragging his feet."

"Even if we get it, they're not going to show us the real stuff," Parker said. "Especially not now."

He handed the card back to forensics, and both agents left the apartment. So, I didn't really learn anything new. Just more dead ends.

I finished anchoring the apartment a few minutes later, with Anansi's help. She guided my extra senses into the background, dulling the distractions so I could concentrate. Once I was done, I reached for my Lifeline Talisman and the world shifted.

I landed softly on the couch inside my Domain.

The familiar glow of the crystal core embraced me as I stood, and I stepped forward to return the gesture, letting it pull from me everything I had gained. A silent exchange of progress.

[You are at 64%. You need 36% more Essence of Authority to initiate growth.]

A few points more. Not a leap, but a step forward.

I turned my attention to the black rivet icon, one of my soulmarks. A piece of a bridge that thought itself a man, now a conduit through which I could bend the world to my will. Then I looked for the other: my Usagi mask.

But it was gone.

In its place, a new mask sat on the pedestal.

Not a rabbit's face.

It was the mask of a Voidling, a creature I'd encountered during my walk through suburbia. Small and shadow-black, with thin horns curving back and eyes like open stars: pure, uninterrupted white.

What's going on, Anansi? Why did my icon change?

[Your soulmark changed when the Voidling touched you,] she said. [It's no longer a mark of Identity. It's a soulmark of True form. It still lets you manipulate identity through art, but now, when you pour Authority into your work, it forces the subject to change its true nature.]

What does that mean, exactly?

[It means when you understand someone or something deeply enough to see its essence, you gain much stronger Authority over how it can change. You don't just shape how it sees itself and is understood by the world anymore. You rewrite its truth.]

Was that why I'd beaten the Terracotta warrior so easily? Why I could tear through his defenses and force him to have an external nervous system like it was nothing?

[Yes. You saw what he really was. That's what gave you power over him, even though he was stronger than you.]

I focused on the new icon, the Voidling's face. Back then, when it touched me, I felt exposed. Stripped to the core. My true self laid bare.

I hadn't realized it was leaving something behind.

A gift.

The ability to do the same to others.

**********

I told the guys I couldn't open the door to Peter's room inside the Ideworld version of my apartment. That likely meant he was forming his Domain right next to mine. Close, but still sealed off. That was a good sign. It meant he was alive, fighting his way through.

Now, we were outside again, walking back toward the massive skyscraper bridge that brought us into this place. It rose like a pillar of heaven, dwarfing the buildings below it, a jagged mirror stretching into the inverted skyline.

Walking upside down was still surreal. Looking up and seeing the world hanging above us like a reflection on glass. Our reality flipped. It was the kind of thing that should have broken our brains. We were walking on the firmaments of heaven, suspended in the void, and for all physical laws, we should have fallen. But we didn't.

The sun still shone down from above, warm and golden, even though by all rights it shouldn't have. Nothing about this world cared for science or physics. Here, symbolism had more weight than gravity.

The air was sharp, brisk, not freezing, but biting in a way that reminded you this place was stitched together by shadowlight and held aloft by will. The same shadowlight that pulsed through our souls now, keeping us warmer.

Without my mask, my perception felt dulled. The lack of it was enough to remind me that I was exposed. I'd need to replace it, eventually.

A hood, maybe. Like the one in Peter's suit. Simple. Iconic. Concealing. Expanding awareness.

We moved with caution, peeking out from the edge of the building.

A horde of shadows was sweeping through the street. All of them were dressed in corporate suits and pencil skirts, button-ups and heels. The uniform of the civilized, now twisted into the wardrobe of madness.

They moved like zombies, but not of one kind. No, each belonged to a different flavor of corporate nightmare. Some drifted aimlessly, eyes glassy, feet dragging like sleepwalkers being pulled by invisible strings, still dreaming of deadlines and coffee breaks. Others were frenzied, possessed by pure rage. They ran and jumped over cars, trampling fellow shadows in blind fury. They flailed and screamed, their faces twisted into masks of hatred, attacking anything in their way, especially each other.

The entire horde churned like a human storm, crashing through the streets without order or destination, just mindless motion. It wasn't a crowd, it was a nervous system fried by stress, a blob of instinct and disorder with limbs flailing in every direction. It weaved between cars and storefronts, chaotic yet strangely rhythmic, as if the city itself tried to make sense of humanity's erratic morning panic… and failed. What remained was a grotesque albeit dangerous parody.

These weren't shadows of real people. They couldn't be. They were shadows spawned by the Mirrored City itself, like the ones I saw on the Bridge Castle. Echoes made flesh, carved out by a place that only thought it understood people. A city dreaming of what workers were supposed to be and giving birth to the worst parts of them.

It took everything wrong with corporate life and cranked it past eleven.

"They weren't here when we moved through at night," Nick said, his voice low as we pressed our backs against the boutique wall, watching the wave of corpo-zombies pass. They hadn't noticed us. Yet. But that would change. Everything changed eventually.

Most of them had come pouring out of the very building we were trying to reach. It made sense now. It was an apartment complex after all, and from down here, it didn't look nearly as tall as it had felt when we crossed its side. It was taller, depending on where you were standing. That would explain the horde.

"There's no way we're getting through them directly, right?" I said, scanning the street.

I could probably leap from post to lamp to fence, maybe even reach the building's side if I timed it right. But the guys didn't have the same speed or power. They'd be swallowed in seconds.

"Maybe you can," Nick offered. Malik said nothing. He was quiet in a way I didn't like, his usual tension now edged with fear.

"We could wait it out," I suggested, glancing again at the skyscraper-bridge. From here, I could still spot clusters of unmoving bodies. Unreflected piled near the base. The lowest one had to be where Peter made his stand.

Nick followed my gaze. "We can see the spot Peter would reappear... but you really think those things won't notice us before then? I'd rather not fight a crowd again, not if we can help it."

I turned toward the storefront we were hiding behind. It was a boutique. Lights out, doors locked. Without a word, I reached into my pack, pulled out the black spray paint, and started working on the glass. A wide oval, tall enough for Nick to pass through. As I filled in the last section, a ripple of shadowlight jumped from my hand into the sprayed paint and then into the picture itself.

The hole knew what it had to become.

I blinked. That… was fast. Clean. I didn't even have to think. Was I already that good at this?

I hadn't felt some grand revelation lately. No triumph, no moment of ascension. But maybe it wasn't about triumph. Maybe it was that moment I lost to Rhythm. When I closed my eyes and stopped fighting. Stopped pleading. Stopped asking.

When I just… was.

That had to be it. A moment of stillness so full of being, it rewrote something deep inside me.

That was my revelation, wasn't it?

That I am what I am and it's enough.

That I don't need to ask, or plan, or even think.

My intent follows my will, my needs, and my motion.

It knows.

Anansi, is that why you told me I could call it that way, when I asked about the Talisman working on its own?

[Yes. Because, in truth, it didn't work on its own. You made the decision, just not a conscious one.]

My creations are part of me.

The part that knows. That acts instinctively, even when I hesitate.

That's right, isn't it, girl?

[You are killing it today!]

You're getting sassier by the minute. I love it. Keep going.

[Soon I'll be the one in charge.]

I laughed. I liked this version of Anansi. Sharp, clever, growing into herself.

"Come inside, guys," I said, stepping through the painted window. Malik followed, then Nick. Once we were in, I pulled my Authority out of the glass, the oval of paint becoming just simple blackness.

I sat by the window, keeping my eyes fixed on the distant building, the mirrored tower that housed Peter's point of return.

"It could take hours, right?" Malik asked. "Or even days?"

"Yes," Nick said simply.

"Then we should take shifts watching. Otherwise, we'll lose it."

"I agree," I said. "Although I'm pretty sure I'll see through Peter's hood the second he's back. It's still tied to me, still holds my Authority. If it had been destroyed, I'd have felt it."

Malik grinned wide.

"What's funny, boy?"

"I think that's the first time you've ever agreed with me."

Nick laughed from across the room, examining the small, regenerating limb at his elbow. It looked like a tiny, shriveled version of his arm. Gross and somehow hilarious.

"That can't be right," I said.

"Might be," Nick shrugged. "You usually dismiss anything he says outright."

I sighed and rolled my shoulders, half in annoyance, half in acceptance.

"Alright, Malik… Nick's probably right. I'm sorry for being a bitch to you. I thought you were reckless. Kid-stupid. And while I still think that, most of the time… I can admit you're more than that. So… are we good?"

"That's the worst apology I've ever heard," Nick chimed in on his way deeper into the boutique.

I shot him a look sharp enough to shave iron. He laughed.

Malik just smiled.

"We're good, Alexa. You're right… I don't think things through. I repeat what's worked in the past, without asking if I should be doing more or anything different."

"You're an Echo after all."

He perked up when I said it. That label mattered to him, maybe more than I realized.

"Just remember, an echo doesn't have to repeat the same thing forever. You learn to change the sound, and you'll be fine."

"Much better now!" Nick shouted from somewhere in the back.

"Shut up, handyman," I muttered.

Then I turned back to Malik, narrowing in.

"Tell me, what's the deal between you and Rhythm?"

His whole body shifted, shoulders rising, gaze dropping. That hit home.

"I don't know him," he answered quickly.

"Malik," I warned, "don't make me regret everything I just said. I know you know him. Hell, I know he knows you. Malik, not just Echo."

He still didn't look up.

"I overheard the EoT crew talking after he handed us our asses. They said he was dealing with 'family matters.' So I'll ask again, whose family is he?"

Nick wandered back in, holding up a summery blue dress. He sat on the counter, silently listening.

Malik muttered something, barely audible.

"Spit it out, man," I said, gentler now. "I don't care who he is. I just need to know if I can trust you."

"I kind of… lied," he admitted. His voice was low. "When I told you about my brother being killed by a stray."

I folded my arms. "Go on."

"He wasn't studying to be a nurse," Malik continued. "He was a ganger. Through and through. Took after our father. He was the one who killed my best friend."

I blinked. "Friend was the nurse guy then?"

"When I found out what Robbie did. Told him never to come near me or Gran again. So he left. But before he did, he warned me not to cross him. Or his people. Or there'd be consequences."

Nick leaned forward. "So you knew… and still went after them?"

Malik nodded. "I didn't know Robbie had powers. I thought I was the only one. I figured I could push them out. Take away the gang, show him there was another way. That he didn't have to keep going down that road."

"And now he leads them?" I asked.

Malik's voice cracked. "Seems like it. He always loved music. Even when we were kids. He'd play some track, and I'd echo the words. We'd laugh, make dumb songs. Then one day, he just changed. Got cold. Got serious."

I felt something twist in my chest. For once, not out of fear or stress, but pity.

"Everyone wears a mask, Malik," I said. "Some of us keep it on so long, we forget it isn't our face anymore."

He looked up at me then, eyes tired but clearer.

"You think that's what happened to him?" Malik asked quietly.

"All I know is that he was willing to kill you, me, Nick… hell, even your gran. He's not your big brother anymore, Malik."

"I know that. I've known since I told him to get lost. But still… I wanted to give him a chance."

"Love makes us do stupid things," I replied. "Also, I'm pretty sure you meeting us in Suburbia, and you being his brother, are not accidents."

"How so?" Nick asked, while Malik looked up at me again, eyes no longer fixed on the floor.

I turned my gaze upside toward the bridge-building, its form looming above the corpo-zombie horde just a window away.

"It's too big a coincidence," I said slowly. "I meet him, and then get sent to spy on EoT, who just happened to have hired his brother? I was set up. Either by Penrose, or Beatrice, or both. But I don't know how, or why, or where Malik fits into it."

There was a pause. A quiet sharpening in the room.

"Can seers see the future?" I asked aloud.

"No more than you or me, far as I know," Nick answered.

"Well, Penrose has a knack for setting dominos in just the right way. Question is, Malik -which way were you supposed to push me?"

Nick narrowed his eyes. "What were you supposed to get from EoT's island?"

"List of names. Mages with Domains and their locations in Ideworld."

Nick frowned. "Hard to believe such a list exists. Why would a mage ever disclose their Domain location?"

"I thought the same. But then I figured that all they needed were home addresses, right? If a mage's Domain is rooted where they live, it wouldn't be that hard to track them, right?"

Nick shook his head. "Not quite. Most mages aren't like you, or Echo, or Peter. We don't create Domains, we inherit them, through lineage. Besides, who's to say you don't move out one day, leaving the Domain where it is?"

"True," I admitted.

"But still," Nick continued, "I doubt that list even exists. Beatrice sent you, right?"

"Yes."

"Then she either lied to Penrose about the list… or they both lied to you. They wanted something else."

"I've also thought about this," I admitted. "But I still don't know what role Malik plays in it." The gate, maybe? But if they wanted that, there were easier ways to get it. It had to be something else.

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