Chương 69: Act 2, Chapter 23: China Town, life lessons and vertical running

Day in the story: 12th December (Friday) It was the moment I joined the others on the rooftop, inside the suspended Chinatown-like village, that my veiled eyes in Jason's apartment came back to life, thanks to my ever-watchful guardian, Anansi. There she was: his demon of a mother, Josephine Smith, and a man I could only assume was his father. I'd never met him, never even seen a photograph, but the resemblance to Jason was undeniable. Same build. Same sharp green eyes.

His beard was neatly trimmed, silver streaked through it like frost, and unlike his wife, his skin bore the quiet signs of struggle against time. Josephine, on the other hand, had clearly paid several visits to the sort of surgeon who also considers themselves an artist. They tore through Jason's apartment, searching for any trace of him. Despite how often Jason spoke ill of them, they had at least noticed his absence. And they cared enough to come storming in during the dead of night.

His mother even cried before they finally called the police. Back in the China Town's village, I waited patiently as Peter and Nick filled Zoe in on everything that had happened since we left my Domain. I let them talk while I watched Malik, who was very obviously sneaking glances at Zoe as she hovered near Peter. He tried to act casual, but the curiosity lit up his face. He was still such a kid sometimes, despite the immense power already at his disposal, and the even greater potential brewing beneath the surface.

While the others talked, I took a moment to step back and absorb everything around me. This place felt like a floating island, a small town suspended in the vast ocean of New York City. A tourist's version of Chinatown, yes, but with its soul turned inside out and made visible: saturated neon clung to the eaves of ancient wooden huts, while modern towers burst upward from rooftops like glass and steel trees.

The same aesthetic spilled down to street level, where alleyways and staircases intertwined like roots and veins. Animated dragons, long, serpentine, somewhere between snake and eel. They coiled lazily around street lamps and chimney stacks, glowing faintly as they moved. The air was thick with scent so rich, so layered, it could have made Lebens weep from envy. Spices, grilled meats, incense, citrus, and something almost metallic underneath it all. It wasn't just functional it was theatrical, mythic.

A dreamscape built on memory and ritual. Brick buildings were stacked like geological layers, some glowing subtly with trapped echoes of time: laughter, arguments, a wedding toast, a song hummed during closing hours. Whole lives etched into stone. Dim sum parlors clustered like coral reefs, grown from decades of whispered secrets and celebratory feasts. Their walls murmured softly in Cantonese if you leaned in close enough. Lion dancer suits rested in corners like sleeping beasts, waiting to be awakened.

Street signs and restaurant menus shimmered and shifted languages as I glanced at them, switching fluidly from Mandarin to English with the ease of something alive. This place was alive. Magical. A living memory. And I was in love with it and yet I couldn't stay to wander and wonder. The urgency tugged at my soul, a link to the person that placed all of his feeling unto me and was broken in turn. I needed to force myself to restart the chase.

"Guys, if you're done with the chit-chat," I called out, my voice edged with urgency, "I can feel them getting closer. We need to hop onto the Manhattan Bridge and follow it toward Long Island. I think they're headed for that skyscraper on Cherry Street." I pointed toward the tower in question. In the real world, it capped out at around 800 feet. But here, in the Ideworld, it defied scale, stretching endlessly upward until it twisted and joined its mirrored base in the upside-down city above.

"Let's go," Nick said, his voice sharp with the focus we all needed. We took off, sprinting across the rooftops of the Ideworld's Chinatown. The maze of red tiles, neon signs, and hanging lanterns passed in a blur. At some point, the local shadows stopped being afraid of us. They returned to their lives, emerging from doorways and alleys as if we were just part of the strange scenery.

We darted past an old woman scrubbing the pavement in front of her door, narrowly missed a sheet of laundry being flung into the air, and dodged a cluster of men arguing in rapid Cantonese beneath a flickering lantern. Then I saw him. A man standing casually in the shadow of a tea house, a cigarette glowing in his mouth and wrapped lazily around his arm, like a living bracelet, was a Chinese dragon. Its scales shimmered like oil on water, its eyes bright and curious. It flicked its tongue at us as we passed.

I slowed for a heartbeat, staring. I wanted one. Badly.

"Stop staring, Alexa." Zoe zipped past my head with unusual sage tone, a glimmer trailing behind her like a comet tail.

"It was so cool," I muttered, hopping across to the next rooftop.

"I'm coming back here one day to get a dragon like that for myself."

"And what exactly are you going to do with it?" she asked, floating beside me as I landed in someone's rooftop courtyard, neatly folded laundry stacked in baskets, the space styled like a miniature Chinese garden. Even the rocks were arranged in perfect towers, balanced like someone's quiet meditation.

"I'm going to raise it," I said with conviction, "until it's big enough to ride." Zoe laughed. It was light, melodic, like wind chimes stirred by a breeze. But her joy only deepened the contrast inside me, tugging my thoughts back to a lesson I hadn't forgotten. One Penrose had drilled into me: Your eyes are not only a window to your soul, Alexandra. They are also your weapon. Never stare. But never look away too quickly either. Everything in a conversation begins with your eyes.

There is power in that fragile balance. Then comes the rest: your walk, your posture. Shoulders straight, chin slightly down. When it's up, it's arrogance. And arrogant people get punished more than anyone else. He wasn't wrong. I had been arrogant. With the necklace. I thought I could slip through unnoticed, dance between cracks like smoke. But he saw me. He always saw me. There were, however, two more lessons that always followed that first one.

Once you've mastered your eyes and your body, Alexandra, Penrose had told me, the next step is mindset. Set clear boundaries with people. Always start with cooperation in mind. If someone offers you respect, give it back. If they give you shit and fuckery instead, return it in kind. Then, when you've made your point, try to return to cooperation again. The third and most important lesson was calmness. Don't let emotion dictate how you behave in confrontation. Box them, if you need to.

Open the box only when the time is right. That part always came naturally to me. Boxing up emotion was almost effortless. I didn't even have to learn how. But the second lesson, the one about cooperation after conflict, hit harder now, in light of what had happened. Because I'd given Penrose shit and fuckery. Lied to him from the start, from the very moment he asked for the necklace. And eventually, he responded in kind. Just like he taught me. A mirror held up to my own betrayal.

But he had also said there was always a way back to cooperation, even after retaliation. He said he'd ask, before doing anything irreversible. And I should've believed him. He was twisted, yes. But he was also a man of principle. I remembered what Thomas once told me about a dinner Penrose arranged with some fat mobster who'd been interfering in his business. At the time, Thomas had been Penrose's bodyguard. The man assumed it was a business dinner, a negotiation.

He even brought four bodyguards with him and Penrose allowed it. Sat across from him calmly, not flinching, not pressing. They ate in peace. Penrose talked about art, some painting Thomas couldn't recall. Not business. Not threats. Just brushstrokes and color, things mobster wasn't really interested in, but they probably conveyed some lesson. And when the meal was over, Penrose stood up, bowed to the man with quiet formality… Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road.

Support the author by reading it there. … and pressed a button. The man exploded. So did his bodyguards. Gone in a blink, reduced to smoke, heat and body-parts. Penrose had fed him micro explosives. And the man was a glutton. He never noticed. He never even imagined that he'd already swallowed the consequences. That's the kind of man Penrose is. When he says there will be consequences, they always come.

"Watch out!" Peter shouted, snapping me out of my thoughts. But too late. I hit the ground hard, landing flat on my ass. The pain bloomed a second later, right as I spotted the guy who'd dropped me. He wore a white wife-beater and loose, faded pants. Black hair tied in a short bob. In his hand: a metal pipe, still humming from the hit. Red and black shadowlight flickered over his skin like oil set aflame, slowly seeping into him like the air itself was fusing with his body. Peter lunged at him, fists flying.

Kicks came fast. But the guy met every strike with ease, knee blocks, quick pivots, smooth redirects with the pipe. He was fast. Fluid. One misstep from Peter, he reached too far trying to grab his arm and that pipe slammed into his stomach. Peter folded, hit the floor beside me. But there was no pause. Malik and Nick were already on him. Malik struck first, a horizontal jab meant to shatter ribs, but the guy barely touched the punch, just a flick of his wrist and a slide of his feet and all the force drained away.

The follow-up echo attack, though, hit clean. Landed right in the crook of his elbow and sent him stumbling back. Nick surged in, his hands transformed into crystalline salt, jagged and brutal. He went for a full-force blow meant to drop a wall. But the guy twisted mid-fall, shifting momentum like it was clay in his hands. Instead of collapsing, he launched sideways just past Nick's strike and left him a gift on the way out: a whip-quick kick to the jaw. Nick stumbled, salt fragments cracking loose.

Definitely not a fan of that.

"Where are you going, shadows?" the man finally asked, still fending off Echo strikes. He moved easier now, clearly expecting the ghost-hits that followed the real ones. And he smiled the whole damn time.

"We're not shadows," Nick answered, spitting blood as he stood.

"You aren't?" the man replied, parrying another Echo strike with a flick of his wrist. Then swift pivot, pipe sweeping upward and he dropped Malik onto his ass again before flipping backward out of reach.

"My bad then. You looked the part," he said, pointing at Peter and me.

"Especially you two."

"Yeah, no, we're definitely not," I said.

"But we're in a hurry, and if nobody's dying, we'd like to get moving."

"For real?" Malik said, brushing dirt off himself.

"This dude just wiped the floor with us, and you ain't even gonna ask one question?" The young man laughed, light and amused, no ego in it, just like the fight had been a pleasant detour. I, on the other hand, had very little patience for Malik's sentimentality today.

"No, Malik. We don't have time," I said, already jogging off. I gave the stranger a nod of respect as we passed. His skill deserved that, at least.

"That blows," Malik muttered, catching up beside me as we sprinted toward the bridge now visible up ahead.

"You expected us to stop and interview him just because he took us down? Not everyone who crosses our path is important, Malik. That's life. You meet people all the time, you can't follow every single one just because they're interesting."

"I just wanna know more. Dude was a real good fighter."

"Maybe one day," I said, "you'll have time to wander the world and meet whoever you want, on your own terms. But not today. Today we've got a job." He didn't answer, but he kept running beside me. Of course, my life lesson couldn't last long, because that guy started chasing us. We were tearing across the rooftop version of Chinatown when I heard him call out from behind.

"Excuse me!?" he yelled, his voice half breath, half shout. I saw both Nick and Malik glance back, slowing slightly, clearly tempted to stop and hear out whatever sob story he had loaded. I gave them a look that said: Absolutely not, and I didn't ease my pace for a second.

"Maybe…" he gasped, trying to keep up, "…you need any help!?" He sucked in air between words.

"With whatever you're doing?" Is he another Malik in the making? I groaned internally. What is it with me being a magnet for stray dogs?

"No! Thank you!" I shouted over my shoulder.

"We'll manage!"

"But…"

"No buts!" I cut him off, ducking under a line of laundry and vaulting a low railing. Malik giggled beside me. What the fuck? This whole chase felt surreal. We'd fought monsters, crossed dimensions, stared down impossibilities and now we were being tailed by some guy with a metal pipe and a surplus of social energy. It quieted down after that. Zoe fluttered closer, her glow soft beside me.

"He's still following," she said evenly.

"At this point, I don't fucking care," I muttered.

"Maybe he helps. Maybe we have to kill him. I just want to get to Jason." She didn't respond. Thankfully. No probing questions, no teasing about what Jason meant to me. I wasn't ready to answer them, not even to myself. We finally reached the point where the clustered rooftops gave way to a suspended walkway that connected with the pedestrian path on the Manhattan Bridge. We didn't slow, just poured down onto the bridge's edge and kept moving.

The track lines shimmered with distant lights, and the city's heartbeat throbbed under our feet. That's when I heard it. A low, mechanical clatter. I threw up my hand, signaling a full stop. Everyone froze. We'd just reached the train tracks. Something was coming. The train that screamed past us seconds later shouldn't have been able to move that fast. Nothing that big should, but it did. And it had a mouth. Jagged, segmented like a centipede's, filled with clicking mandibles.

Its many insectile legs scurried along the tracks, metal clashing against metal like claws on tile. It was a train, yes— but only because it was pretending to be one. As it streaked past, I caught a glimpse: a person, probably a shadow, snatched from the platform by one of those twitching limbs and tossed into its gaping maw. Oh Reality, I thought, this place is amazing.

"You saw that?" Peter asked.

"Yes," Zoe answered simply, hovering in the air beside him.

"I'd never get inside one of those," Nick muttered, clearly shaken. His arachnophobia was practically humming through his skin.

"You're afraid of Metropedes?" came a voice behind us. The Chinese guy had finally caught up, just standing there, breathing like a normal person, despite the sprint he'd just done. We all turned to stare.

"What?" he said, shrugging.

"Just making an observation." I sighed and stepped over the tracks, across the road, and up to the base of the skyscraper bridge. It wasn't a metaphor anymore, it was a literal bridge, stretching up from this side of Manhattan and arching into the sky, linking with the Mirrored City above. People walked up and down its translucent, glassy spine like it was just another street. I saw someone on horseback, moving at a trot upwards toward the upside-down skyline above. Yet the building's interior was still active too.

Some lights were on. People sat at kitchen tables, watching TV, sipping tea. Playing house. It was both real and fake at the same time. Welcome to the Ideworld.

"You guys are going into the Mirrored City?" our tagalong asked, gawking at the sight.

"Are you crazy? You'll die in there."

"Those shadows seem just fine going up," Peter said. He shouldn't have replied, not to this guy. Anyone who chased us across half of Chinatown just to throw out commentary couldn't be fully sane. Still… if he was afraid of going up there, maybe this was our chance to lose him. Before I made the jump, I noticed them again. Cameras. Watching. Following. They were everywhere we looked, lenses shifting with uncanny precision to track our movement. Focused entirely on us. We had no time to deal with them now.

We had to keep moving. I landed first. Then Nick, Peter, and Malik hit the ground behind me. Zoe flew low and silent at our side as we dashed across the final street and vaulted up onto the wall of the building-bridge. The moment my feet hit the surface, I felt it, like the world tilted on its axis. A moment of vertigo, a subtle warping of reality. What was once a wall was now solid ground beneath me. My body accepted it faster than my mind did. The boys landed behind me.

Nick stumbled and blinked hard, struggling with the shift. Peter was stone-faced and steady, probably thanks to the spidery identity that hummed beneath that suit he wore. Malik, on the other hand… He landed, paused, and promptly threw up. Then he grinned like a madman.

"This… this is straight lit!" he yelled, voice echoing up the strange slope of the world. That's when I felt it, like a tug on a thread stitched deep inside my ribs. Jason. His necklace pulling through our link. He was here. Same building. Same path. Just farther ahead, moving toward the mirrored city at the far end of the bridge.

"We have to go," I said, and started forward. At first, each step was slow and cautious. It felt wrong to lift both feet off this surface, as if gravity might suddenly remember what it was supposed to be doing and hurl me into the sky. But Malik ran with zero hesitation, hopping between windows and neon signs like a damn acrobat. If he could do it, so could I. I picked up speed, steps growing confident, until I was running full tilt across the vertical face of the building.

We passed windows, actual windows into apartments. People inside, living… existing. Watching TV. Gaming. I even caught a couple mid-sex, a blur of motion behind the glass. It hadn't occurred to me before that Shadows… did that sort of thing. Still, we ran. Shadows moved past us in the opposite direction, some going up, others descending, none moving as fast as we were. Then came his voice.

"Well, don't say I didn't warn you," the Chinese guy called out casually. I stopped mid-stride, legs tense, toes digging into what used to be glass but now might as well be stone. Turning around sent the strangest lurch through my stomach, the skyline I knew was now in front of me, flipped ninety degrees, hanging where my horizon used to be. I glared back at him.

"Okay, man. I thought you'd take the hint and leave," I said.

"Why, for the love of Reality, are you still following us?"

"I haven't seen normal people in weeks!" he shouted behind us. I couldn't help but laugh, a dry little giggle caught in my throat at that word: normal. This guy? He must be insane in the membrane.

"We're not exactly normal," Nick called back before I could say anything.

"I meant non-shadow people!" he clarified, louder now, trying to push his voice through the rising wind. I stopped listening after that. Rain had begun to fall. At first, just a drop that was falling from Reality-knows where. It curved in its path around ten feet above us, coming from what used to be my up, then turned down toward my feet as if caught in gravity well of a building. Gentle taps against the strange vertical surface beneath our feet.

But then more came, falling like beads of mercury across the mirrored city's bridge. They slid along glass windows as if the world itself were tilting further, pulling the sky down with it. A few drops. Then a dozen. Then the whole sky cracked loose. Soon we were running through the strangest rain of my life, upward, across a skyscraper, toward a city suspended in the sky, while some lunatic followed us because we were the first "normal" people he'd seen in weeks.

Reality was unraveling in the most inconveniently poetic way possible. And I could only think: This is my life now.