Chương 138: Act 2, Chapter 90: Fractured approach

23rd December (Tuesday), around 10 a. m. Walls of water rose around me. They were deeply black and strangely still and unmoving. This liquid was at my feet too and above me as well, and yet not a single drop dripped down. Instead, there was a light coming from above, as if seen from underwater, dancing on a distant surface. It was the only source of illumination inside the chamber I appeared in. I stood beside a small, backpack-sized cocoon made of the same substance, my hand touching it upon arrival.

It parted, opening to the sides, changing into countless small, hexagonal mirror instances as it moved and shimmered. Inside was a small pedestal, and upon it lay Jason's belongings: his clothes, watch, backpack, shoes, wallet, and the small pendant that had brought me here—still carrying the authority I had left inside it. Jason's phone wasn't there. Joan had taken it to fulfill their clandestine mission of pretense. I looked around like some normal person, moving both my head and my body.

I hated being this clumsy. One would think that higher beings could accept the blessing of many eyes and move on from being so bodily restricted in their seeing. What I saw when I looked past those restrictions were dozens of similar cocoons, all arranged in a circular fashion around a central column. There were no doors anywhere in the chamber. No windows either. All I saw was the black water, reflecting everything but me.

I moved toward the other end of the darkness, where I swear I could see something different in the way the water behaved. Each of my steps left a ripple on the floor, and yet no droplet ever lifted from it. Instead, those ripples fractured into waves of broken mirror shards as they spread.

"You will answer once more, Solitary Twin. The people demand answers…" The court theatrics continued, and I wondered if what I'd attempted here was in vain. Maybe justice would be served and Jason released—but I'd never bet on authorities, as understood in the classical sense of the word. They had always failed me. I moved deeper into the den, reaching the wall that had piqued my interest from afar.

I extended my hand, testing it, and the surface accepted me—breaking its tension and letting my limb feel the coldness of the black liquid, right before it parted like a curtain being drawn aside. The corridor waiting for me was something else entirely. Gone was the black, replaced by silvery mirror-shine. I stood as if on a balcony made of glass, and a bridge ran in front of me toward another just like it, complete with a small balustrade.

I reached it and looked down—and up—only to see what must have been hundreds of similar bridges at multiple levels. A true network of connections, not only along the same tiers but between them as well. Staircases were everywhere. And inside the walls and within the floors and pathways themselves, the Unreflected swam. Like fish in water, they moved just beneath the surface of the glass. A reflection made true. I noticed a few Shattered as well. Each one naked. Each one moving with purpose.

I stood out, therefore—seemingly lost, fully immersed in wonder. I couldn't let that happen, but I had no idea where to go. I was counting on the amulet still being around Jason's neck. So I focused on the walls around me and asked, deep within my soul, for the reflection of Jason as remembered by them. They responded quickly. Both how my soul felt him and my memory of him were strong, and the building—filled with all those reflective surfaces—remembered him as well. A figure appeared in the glass.

It was the same Shattered who had taken Jason from our grasp. A Native American woman I had almost caught before she turned into shards of glass. She carried him into the chamber I had just left. I followed the reflection. It was strange how, despite the fact that the black water didn't project my image back at me, it still remembered, as if it had. She had been in that room only briefly.

She stripped Jason down with careful movements, folded his clothes, and neatly arranged everything inside the cocoon, along with the phone that was now missing and my necklaces. Then a second person entered the room. I instantly recognized the frame because of the uniqueness of the body. Joan. They approached the woman, and the two spoke for quite a while. At first it was calm, but at some point the warrioress became agitated, gesticulating widely, clearly angry.

She jabbed a finger into Joan's masculine torso, pushing them back a step. Then she swept her arm outward, as if indicating the entire chamber they were in, and pressed Joan again. It seemed that Joan, despite her age, was not the one holding higher status in this exchange. And as if the universe knew exactly what I was watching, Nick finally called them on the phone.

"Joan?" he asked, using my voice, wearing my face.

"Jason, my dear. Let's make an effort while we're on the phone. I've heard they're being listened to. You never know who is eavesdropping." They replied with Jason's voice, but also with their own self-assured pretense. I giggled at the absurdity of the conversation. An ancient intersex being pretending to be a man spoke with a young man pretending to be a woman, all so I could sneak through the house of a god who was being held accountable for kidnappings. I wouldn't have put any of this on last year's bingo card.

"Why are you calling?" they continued, laying their traps.

"Do you miss me?" As they spoke, I watched their reflection remain in the chamber overlooking Jason's sleeping body on the floor. They knelt beside him, caressing his cheek with the back of their hand.

"Yes," Nick replied, using my voice.

"To be honest. My friend died recently, and I feel bad about everything that happened because of me. Including Jason's disappearance. I mean… your abduction. Can we talk? Just talk. Like me and him… Like me and you used to?" Nick was good. Of course we had prepared scenarios for this conversation. He followed the script with only minor changes, but the delivery was perfect. For once, he almost fooled me. In the reflection, Joan lifted Jason with both hands and cradled him close to their chest.

Then they moved out of the chamber. But not through the doors I had used. I followed the reflection as they crossed to the other end of the chamber, where a nook was hidden behind a corner, difficult to discern in all that blackness. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. It led into a corridor made of the same substance. At one point, the liquid became solid glass windows that revealed the outside of the building: the mirrored city, and the one above it.

Joan stopped there for a few moments, taking in the view, looking slowly from one place to another, before finally touching the wall opposite the window with one hand. It rippled, turning into glass-like stalactites growing out in a circle around their hand. They moved: rising and lowering, or disappearing completely and reappearing later. It reminded me of a representation of sound waves. It felt as if the building was talking to them somehow. It had to be. Otherwise, this pause made no sense.

"Mr. Jason Smith was in a condition that required my intervention," the god spoke during the trial, as we finally moved further in, toward yet another fully blackened, liquid-like corridor.

"He felt that there was no place for him within the world. No one understood him, and all hope was lost for him," Solitary Twin continued in his monotone intonation.

"That's not true!" Jason's mother's voice rose from somewhere in the courtroom.

"This is my proof. Even his parent didn't notice that he was long gone," he continued.

"Does Your Divinity have any proof besides your words?" a man's voice demanded with reverence, but also firmness. The case continued while Nick kept Joan on the phone, and I followed their reflection into a new chamber. It was circular, with a mirror-like, watery surface on the floor. But this time the water was perfectly clear, showing that beneath it lay a long tube connected to Reality-knows-where, as looking for the bottom seemed impossible.

From this artificial reservoir, ten stairs made of the same substance rose above the blackened, inclined walls, leading up to doors fashioned from that same clarity. I was wary of my steps until Joan's reflection moved across the surface as if it were bathroom tiles instead of water. When I pressed my feet down, I felt it stir and ripple.

Small concentric rings of force moved outward from me like waves, and yet, when I looked beneath myself, all I could see was a vast, inconceivable abyss that seemed never to end—and no reflection of me either, as if I did not exist at all. But due to the nature of the eyes I was using, I knew deep down that simply wasn't true. It didn't show me, but it saw me and it would remember me, however lunatic that sounded when speaking of inanimate things and abstract concepts.

Joan moved up one of the stairs, and I followed right behind, playing catch-up, when I noticed something stir above me. Not in the reflection but in the actual world. Tentacles made of pure, crystal-clear water dropped from the ceiling. Each had a ridge of protrusions running beneath it, made of jagged glass, and all of them were unmistakably reaching for me. I didn't wait for my memory-guide to finish the ascent. Instead, I ran at full speed along the same path toward the distant exit. Each step felt wrong.

Water wasn't something people made stairs out of. Maybe if it were sealed inside glass, but this? This was pure liquid, yielding slightly beneath my weight each time I pressed down, surface tension alone keeping me above it. I was almost at the doors when one of the tentacles lunged for me with a sweeping motion. I dropped onto the steps, narrowly dodging it, then scrambled back to my feet and finished my escape, jumping through the watery portal into a new place.

"What are you doing here?" The voice bounced off the walls the second I hit the ground, belly first. I scrambled up fast, palms slick, heart hammering. And there she was. The Native American woman. The shattered who took Jason from us. We stood inside a wide, circular chamber that looked carved from soul core's crystal. The floor was smooth and polished, almost gentle underfoot. The walls curved upward, rougher and more jagged as they climbed, sealing the space into a half-sphere.

A room that felt less built and more grown. Two bath-like crystal basins rose from the floor farther ahead, grown from hexagonal, jagged crystal formations. Thin, mirror-bright cords stretched between them like umbilicals, pulsing with shadowlight that flowed back and forth in a slow, breathing rhythm. And inside those raised pools were two Jasons.

"Are you deaf?" the woman snapped again. She stood squarely between the two constructs.

"You shouldn't be here." A pause.

"Get out." Alright. Time to bullshit my way through this. I had this. Lying was second nature to me, and the one person who could actually twist it against me was currently talking with Nickolas about my so-called heart problems. Quotation marks implied. Could you believe that?

"It's difficult for me to find closure in how it all went," he said.

"On one hand, I feel really damn awful about not telling him about the other world properly. On the other, I'm certain leaving him with you guys wasn't the right call. But I don't have the power to challenge you." Perfect. Just perfect. Painting me as the weaker party only made my cover stronger. Gold star, guys.

"You're much more open on the phone than in person," Joan replied, voice warm.

"But it makes sense you'd feel that way…" She'd taken the bait. And right on cue, the Native American woman turned her attention back to me, waiting for my answer.

"Excuse my tumbling entrance, but I'm still new to these corridors, and without my god in here, it's not exactly easy to get where I need to go." It felt like a reasonable response.

"You're new here?" Short answer, but there was a faint edge of curiosity creeping in.

"Yes. I was in Europe for a very long time, but I was called specifically for this guy." I pointed at one of the Jasons.

"I'm supposed to oversee his transformation and make sure nothing goes wrong." She raised an eyebrow.

"You are?" She moved toward me, then shifted mid-step into a swarm of glassy blades drifting through the air. That's when I noticed something strange about the ability. Something I was sure I hadn't seen the last time. Each fragment was connected to the others by thin threads of shadowlight, all of them forming a vague silhouette of her body. Silvery green. I wasn't sure if I could see it because of the eyes I believed were theirs, or because I believed I was Shattered too.

She rebuilt herself right in front of me, whole and intact.

"You don't look like much of a warrior, guardian, or soldier." Her back straightened as she circled me, slow and deliberate, like a fighter judging another before a duel.

"Why would the god want to replace me at my post? This is one of Joan's politicking moves, right?" She was tense, coiled, ready to strike at the first hint of bad intent.

"No idea who you're talking about," I said.

"I answered the god's call."

"That fucking warlock. They thought they'd get away with this?" Warlock? Joan was a warlock and not a mage?

"Listen," I said, steadying my voice.

"I couldn't care less about your petty squabbles. I don't care whether you believe me or not. I didn't come here to relieve you of your duty, but to accompany you. If you want, I can stand over here and you can stand in the other corner. But I won't disregard a god's task just because you don't get along with another Shattered. It's a shame you have to bear that." She stepped back as if I had struck her.

"Shame? It's a shame we have to tolerate this pretender and all their machinations. If it were up to me, they'd have been relieved of their function a long time ago." Wasn't it sweet how willing people were to share unnecessary information out of pure spite? Moments like this almost made me feel like a mind mage myself. The only difference was that I pressed on people's nature with words, gestures, and expressions instead of authority.

"I really have no idea who you're talking about," I replied, while listening in on the trial at the same time. Solitary Twin had just rebuked an argument from Jason's father's attorney, who claimed Jason was a dedicated young man set on becoming a respectable lawyer. The Shattered's god answered that the cracks in a person's ability to perceive themselves as whole didn't need to be large or obvious, or even visible on commonly examined surfaces.

They often hid in corners, small enough to be overlooked, yet still enough to make the structure prone to shattering under even slight pressure. As much as I hated the very idea of gods walking among humans, this one at least spoke with a bit of sense. I'd give him that. Still, taking people and turning them into thralls just because they were depressed felt a tad excessive. More than a tad, honestly. Enough to tip the scales a metric fuckton too far.

"You don't?" the woman in front of me said.

"You want me to believe you were in Europe and you don't know Joan?" Did I just make an oopsie? We were in an enclosed space, cut off from the gods' influence, and as far as I knew, no one but her was meant to be here. Maybe lying my way through this wouldn't work after all. I smiled anyway, summoning my spellbook around my waist. I only hoped she wouldn't prove much more troublesome than Edward had.