by Dan Rix
“No, no, no,” he moaned. “Please, no.”
Instinctively, I followed, shouting over the deafening screeches. “What is it?”
Anguish constricted his voice. “It’s Amy. She’s back.”
Chapter 19
Charles flipped on a monitor in his office which showed a black and white video feed from room A. Amy was slumped over the red button, slamming it again and again with her fist. Damian was absent.
For a moment my heart stopped. She had just pressed it, she had just orphaned him.
Then I realized the mirror wasn’t breaking. I stared at the monitor, the hairs on my scalp bristling as she scratched at the button, desperate to release the ultrasound. “The button’s not working.”
“It’s a safety mechanism,” said Charles, his voice hollow. “The computer’s detecting something in the room that shouldn’t be there—something that hitched a ride back with her.”
I processed what he said, and my mind jumped to the shadowy figure I’d seen earlier. Goose bumps rose on my forearms. “What are you talking about?”
“She has crossover sickness.”
“What’s it detecting? What came back with her?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “No one knows.”
I stared at him. “Something alive. This is what the third rule is for, isn’t it?”
“Blaire, the alarm is telling us we have to put her back inside the reflection. We have to seal her inside.”
“But Damian’s still down there.”
“Don’t question me,” he said. “I’ll explain it all later.” He pulled the master keys from a drawer in his desk, his hand trembling.
“You’re going to orphan your own daughter?” I said, my jaw suspended in disbelief.
“It’s a danger we’re all aware of,” he said. “We all accepted the possibility when we signed up, should it come to pass.”
“I never accepted this—”
“Because you’re not at risk,” he barked.
On the monitor, Amy moved on to the axe. Steel clamps had locked the handle in place, and she couldn’t budge it.
She swung around and faced the camera, stared right at us—and I understood. Her fully dilated pupils gaped like dark holes. The veins around her eyes strained against the skin, black and swollen. She wasn’t the same Amy who had left. Her gaze moved on.
Methodically, she searched the room for objects to break the mirror. She swung Damian’s laptop—and I winced—but the laptop just broke in her hand. She heaved the stool, which bounced off the glass, the wood too soft. She needed a sharp point, backed by force.
“We need to banish her before she breaks the mirror. Follow me.” Charles hurried down the hallway to a recessed cabinet, from which he produced a tranquilizer gun. A contingency plan.
They were prepared for even this.
“What about Damian?” I said. “We need to get him back.”
“Not an option,” he said, loading a dart into the weapon and slipping one behind his ear. At the door to room A, he pressed his index finger to the fingerprint scanner, which blinked yellow. “We put her back in the mirror and close it up. That’s all we can do now.”
“But Damian’s still in there!” I screamed.
The keys jingled in Charles’s hand, and he slid one into the lock, unlatched the dead bolt. “It’s too late for him . . . he knew the risk.”
“He’s your best carrier.”
“Not anymore. Now you are.”
He flung open the door, and I glimpsed Amy. She stood on the stool in the corner, her face inches from the ultrasonic device. She had pried open a side panel and yanked out a tangle of wires. She was trying to hotwire it.
Charles took aim and fired. The dart stuck into her thigh. He stepped further into the room, loading the second dart with military precision, but the stool had already tipped sideways. Amy toppled to the ground, the back of her head clipping the axe mounts. Her limp body sprawled on the ground, blood staining the blonde hair at the back of her scalp.
Charles paused in the doorway, taking in the sight of his unconscious daughter. He exhaled slowly, and stooped over her.
“Orphan us if you want,” I announced, dashing toward the mirror that Amy had tried so hard to break. “I’m getting Damian.”
“Blaire, don’t—”
I leapt into the reflection. A wave of nausea brought me to my knees, and I clutched my stomach, wincing, trying to hold it in.
“Blaire, I don’t have enough tranquilizer to keep her under,” came Charles’s voice, muffled through the glass. “There’s not enough time. We have to do this now.”
I spat—saliva mixed with bile—and clambered to my feet, gritting my teeth. “Then make time.”
***
It was my fault.
Damian never would have gone on a mission with Amy if I hadn’t severed his hand. I sprinted once I reached the alley and veered up the street. The wind rose to a whistle.
Three blocks out, Damian had said. On the way to the ER.
And how much time did I have before Amy woke up and hotwired the ultrasonic pitch emitter? Ten minutes? Two?
Charles hadn’t told me the truth about crossover sickness. It was more than just the accumulated effect of crossover rotting out Amy’s body; it had also made her vulnerable.
Crossing over, just a few times in Amy’s case, had eroded away enough of her body that something else had been able to get in. She had become an empty shell that another creature could inhabit.
Tonight, something had gotten inside her and tried to hitch a ride out of the reflection into the source, where it didn’t belong—because she was a carrier, because she could crossover. And I had a pretty good idea what.
The creature I had glimpsed earlier.
Sirens whined in the distance, but not police cars. I recognized the sustained drone of fire engines. The first responders.
I ran harder, biting off the panic in my mind, suppressing it. I flew around the corner, and the sight made me gasp.
Damian’s Mustang rested upside down on top of another car which had been flattened to a pancake. Glass and metal littered the intersection, and gasoline pooled under the wrecked vehicles.
I splashed through it. The other driver was dead, his scull pulverized, brain leaking onto the asphalt. My heart chilled to ice. I ran to the drivers side of Damian’s car—and glimpsed a limp arm, blood dripping from under a wrist guard. Damian.
I yanked open the door, and he fell into my arms. Dead? No, breathing. Barely. I postponed my relief and dragged his left arm over my shoulder, gripped his waist, and hauled him away from the wreckage.
“That crazy bitch,” he muttered.
“We need to hurry.” I prayed the mirror was still open, that Charles hadn’t orphaned us all. After tonight, I knew he was capable of it.
Damian couldn’t support his full weight, so I let him lean on my shoulder and we hobbled back. We made painfully slow progress, and I was keenly aware of each passing second. Ample time for Amy to break the mirror or for Charles to give up on us.
“Please, Charles,” I whispered, “just wait a little longer . . . we’re almost there.” The ISDI sign glowed green at the end of the block.
Damian groaned, and more of his weight sank into me. “Who are you talking to?” he mumbled.
“What happened to Amy?” I asked, trying to keep my mind off our increasingly likely fate as orphans. One step at a time, Blaire. One step at a time.
“You were right to push the button,” he said. “Everyone knows you made the right call.” He slurred the words, and I felt blood drip down my shoulder blades from his mouth. “I used it to push you away, Blaire—because we both know I’m not coming back one of these times. I figured if you hated m
e, it would be easier for you to let me go.”
Uh-oh. Those were the kinds of words people uttered before they died. “Apology not accepted,” I said. “Save it for the source.”
“It wasn’t an apology,” he said, “and dream on. There’s no way you’re getting that a second time.”
Okay, so he wasn’t too close to death to act like a jerk.
“Just shut your face,” I said. We staggered into the garage, and for a split second I was tempted to take the entrance into ISDI through room B to avoid Amy.
That wouldn’t work, of course. If Amy was still in room A, she was guarding the only way back into the source.
But we found room A empty.
I gripped Damian’s waist tighter and we scaled the last few steps—and the sight at the top of the stairs made my insides freeze over.
***
The mirror was . . . gone. Just an empty frame, not a single shard left—
Then the understanding of what I was seeing sent relief flooding through me. The mirror was still intact, still delineated by blue tape. In the source, Charles had tilted a desk on end and shoved it up against the mirror, blocking any attempt to crossover through it. At first glance, the desk’s surface resembled the soundproof panelling on the wall behind the mirror, making it look like it was gone.
“Damian . . . Blaire . . . can you hear me?” Charles’s voice crackled over the intercom. “I don’t know what she tampered with.”
“Loud and clear,” said Damian, straightening up at my side. “Status?”
“She’s down there with you. I repeat, she is down there with you.”
“Negative,” said Damian. “No sign of her.”
“Then find her,” said Charles. “I pushed her back into the reflection and bolted a desk over the mirror. When I got back to the my office, the room was empty on the video monitor.”
A chill scampered across my back. The tranquilizers must have worn off, and now she could be anywhere.
“Charles, unbolt the desk,” I said, releasing Damian and stepping up to the mirror.
“I can’t risk letting her back in the source,” said Charles. “You’ll have to neutralize her first. I suggest you arm yourself with the tranquilizer gun. Down there, you should still have darts.”
Damian dragged his gun out of his pants and cocked it. “That won’t be necessary.”
“Damian, you are not permitted to use deadly force. I repeat, you are not permitted—”
“Why the hell not? We’re orphaning her anyway.”
“That’s my daughter you’re talking about,” Charles spat. “When we break the mirror, whatever’s inside her will look for a new host. After the tranquilizers wear off, she won’t remember what happened. She’ll find my reflection . . . and she’ll . . . she’ll be . . .”
“She’ll be okay,” I said. “Why don’t we just lock all the doors and wait for you to unbolt the desk. She’s not in here.”
“You can’t lock the doors from the inside. She’ll be able to open them. And it’ll take me a few minutes to unscrew the bolts, during which I won’t have access to the video monitor or the intercom. It’s too risky. I need to know where she is and I need to know she’s down.”
“Alright, I’ll get the tranquilizer gun. Damian can hardly walk.” I headed for the stairs, imagining all the places Amy could lurk along my trek through the dark garage, the alley, and around the building to the front door.
“Blaire, do not go through the garage,” Charles warned, echoing my concerns. “I want you to open the door into the hallway.”
“We can’t open that door, remember? Your precautions.”
“One day you’ll thank me for them,” he said. “If you force the door, you’ll trip the alarm. You need to override the lock.”
“Okay.” I stepped up to the door. “Walk me through it.”
“Press your right index finger to the fingerprint scanner until it blinks red and you hear a single beep. Do that three times.”
I did. I pressed my finger to the device once, twice, and on the third time, and the device emitted a series of rapid beeps and blinked yellow. “Okay, now what?”
“You should find a latch under the scanner. Disengage it with your fingernail, and lift off the cover.”
I did as he said and opened the scanner’s plastic case to reveal a circuit board and a tiny alphanumeric keypad.
“The code is . . .” Charles swallowed, the sound amplified over the intercom. “The code is A-M-Y.”
I keyed in the letters, and the moment I pressed the last one, a series of clicks propagated up the door. Unlocked.
“You saw where the tranquilizer gun was stored,” he said. “Remember, our reflections are probably still sitting on the couch waiting for Damian’s phone call. Do not alert them to your presence. Find Amy and shoot her. Make sure she’s unconscious, and then come back to room A and I’ll let you and Damian back through. Be careful, Blaire. I have no idea what she’s capable of.”
I glanced behind me at Damian, still badly in need of first aid. He had fallen to a crouch against the wall, eyes closed, his gun limp in his left hand. Blood still oozed from under his wrist brace.
I swallowed down my fear, opened the door, and slipped into the dark, humid hallway.
***
Anxious voices floated up the stairs. I recognized my own voice.
“. . . doesn’t feel right,” my reflection was saying. “Just let me go in and see. I won’t even go down the stairs.”
Coming from someone else, my own voice sounded pushy, arrogant, and rude. I talk like that? No wonder Damian liked me.
I sounded just like him.
“Definitely not,” said Charles’s reflection. “This is different than when you broke Damian out of jail. That time we knew your reflection was asleep at home, whereas this time we know you’re here. It’s very likely that anything you decide to do, your reflection will decide to do as well. We can’t risk her stumbling upon the mirror from the other side.”
They really had no idea. I edged along the wall, darted across the opening at the top of the stairs, and retrieved the tranquilizer gun from the cabinet Charles had opened in the source.
A whisper stirred the back of my neck—like someone breathing right behind me. I flinched and flattened my back to the wall, waving the gun in all directions. The hall was empty.
There, at the far end. A dim glow spilled from Charles’s office, when a second ago all the lights had been off. I tiptoed back up the hall, my heart thrumming against my sternum.
A few feet away, the sound of skittering escaped the open door. Our reflections were downstairs, oblivious. Damian was locked in room A.
It had to be Amy.
I paused outside the office, took a deep breath, and swung the weapon into the room. Instantly, my eyes fell to the lump on the floor. Amy’s body, motionless.
I laid the tranquilizer gun on the desk and knelt over her. The corners of her lips were black, and appeared blistered. Gangrenous almost. The inside of her mouth was black too. I pushed open her jaw to see inside, and immediately felt dizzy with nausea. Her tongue—and what I could see of her throat—was burnt to ash.
Movement lower on her body caught my eye. A blood stain, seeping into her T-shirt near her navel. As I watched, another dot formed higher up, and another, each grabbing hold of the cotton and spreading. She had a recent wound on her stomach.
I was about to lift up the hem of her shirt when I noticed the splintered pencil in her coiled fist, bloody up to mid-shaft; the wounds were self-inflicted.
By now some of the dots had bled together, forming a pattern on her shirt, letters and words she had gouged into her own flesh—a message.
I stared in horror as it materialized.
Blaire, you
are the one thing that doesn’t belong.
***
I left her down there. She was already dead anyway. Sooner or later, after no one returned from the mission, Charles’s reflection would find her and give her a proper burial.
Only after Damian and I were safely back in the source with the mirror destroyed did Charles release his emotions. He shut himself in his office and wept.
“Why don’t we just bring her reflection up from the failsafe?” I said. “There’s a version of her still down there, right?”
“No.” Damian shook his head. “Whatever’s down there isn’t Amy anymore. It’s a doppelgänger.”
“What the hell is that?”
“A reflection without a source . . . it’s not human,” he said. “It’s a shadow, a projection. When the source dies, the soul ceases to exist in any reflections that are still out there—leaving behind a doppelgänger. Charles knows better than to go hunting for her ghost. In fact, he’s probably going to close that failsafe to prevent it from wandering up.”
“What does a doppelgänger look like?”
“Same as her,” he said. “Just empty.”
My earlier encounter came to mind. “Before you guys crossed over, I saw something wandering in my room. It was moving inside a mirror that didn’t have broken symmetry . . . a figure, about eight feet tall and really blurry.”
His eyes flashed to mine. “That wasn’t a doppelgänger.”
“Was that what got into Amy’s body?”
He nodded. “I’ve never seen one before. Charles has.”
“How does it move like that without breaking symmetry?”
“We don’t know. Crossing over . . . we’re opening doors that shouldn’t be opened, portals between parallel universes, we’re leaving behind holes. Somehow it just slipped through. All we know is it’s from deep, hundreds of reflections down . . . maybe the bottom, I don’t know.”
“What is it?” I asked, horrified.
