MF1.0 - 88 - Mirrorfall

Stef stumbled back from the fight, wiping blood from her cheek as she watched Ryan overcome the two halfbreeds that had been challenging them - his fighting style really was impressive.

The fact that he did it without ruining his suit impressed her even more.

She slid her gun into the waistband of her pants and required a bottle of water, she tore the cap off and drank it slowly, despite urges to gulp the entire thing down - getting waterlogged and useless was the last thing she wanted at the moment.

One of the halfbreeds broke away and ran, Ryan finished off the other with a single gunshot, turned back to her with a nod and ran after the other one.

She took another sip of water and then felt the oddly familiar sensation of a gun being pressed to her head.

‘Make any noise and I’ll end you right now.’

Kane.

He tore the gun out of her waistband and grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled her down the street and through an open door ‘An agent huh?’ he asked as he yanked on her hair, threatening to pull the out the whole clump. ‘Lying bitch.’

‘It worked well enough.’

He released her hair and spun her toward him, punched her in the gut and then in the head as she dropped to her knees.

She began to giggle.

‘What so funny?’ he demanded, raising his gun again.

‘You’re so…angry, even though it’s your fault I’m here.’

‘You’re system scum, nothing to do with me.’

She pressed a hand to her stomach, but didn’t attempt to get up. ‘Nothing to do with me, everything to do with Oliver.’

‘What does the bastard child have to do with this?’

‘You’re his father, you have to know what a brilliant hacker he was.’

He kicked her again. ‘He’s not my son.’

‘That’s not what you were saying when he disappeared. You lauded yourself as the best father around, not stopping or sleeping till he came back. What was that, two years ago?’

‘That was before I discovered the lie. He’s not my son, he never was.’

‘He was brilliant. He was daring. When someone like that disappears, people tend to notice. From there, it’s only a hop, skip and a jump to finding out about weird-arse conspiracies and finding yourself in the middle of one.’

Require: David Kane dead.

Nothing.

Require: giant anvil to fall on David Kane.

Nothing.

Damnit.

He turned for a moment, and she tried to jump up, but he saw her and knocked her to the ground again. ‘I-’

‘If you’re going to shoot me, then shoot me, cause I’m not going to be sitting on my arse when the magic mirror drops out of the sky.’

Are you fucking insane? Erm, yes?

‘If you insist.’

Require: make all the - gods let this work. Stop thinking!

Kane took a step forward and aimed the gun down at her.

Require: delete all the load-bearing beams.

The roof creaked, the walls groaned. Kane looked up and watched a long split run across the ceiling. She threw her hands over her head and curled into a ball and giggled as the roof caved in.

A huge piece of plaster fell onto her and cracked in two. She heard Kane scream and she breathed a sigh of relief - then coughed out all the dust that she’d inhaled. She went to push on the plaster, but the world blurred.

‘I heard a building collapse,’ Ryan said. ‘And suspected it was you.’

‘It was only a roof,’ she said defensively. ‘And we pay for the damages…right?’

‘Recruit,’ he said as he reached over and pulled some debris from her hair. ‘The point is not to cause the damage in the first place.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Fine, I’ll remember that for next time. Can we hijack a-’ a flash in the sky made her go quiet.

The patch of sky in centre of the clouds was pulsing and crashing, sudden bursts of light escaped it as it became more violent.

‘Keep watching,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s happening.’

‘Trust me,’ she said, ‘the last thing I’m going to do is blink.’ She slowly reached forward and touched him, just double-checking that he wasn’t made of stone.

The sky exploded.

She hid behind him again, just in case the phoenix had returned, but when she peeked out, there was nothing. All of the clouds had disappeared, and the sky was stable again. All that was out of place was one slowly moving, glinting-

‘Oh, that’s the-’

‘Of course.’ He fell silent for a moment. ‘Coming?’ She nodded furiously. ‘All right, but if-’

She smiled. ‘I’m a big girl, I’ll be fine.’ He looked at her, then past her at the room of debris. ‘I…promise to only cause minimum damage to property?’ He stared at her for a moment longer, then nodded. He moved off and she fell into step behind him.

‘Why don’t you just shift up there and grab it?’ she asked after a moment.

‘We just…can’t,’ he said, ‘it won’t allow us to. It’s almost as though…it wants to be fair.’

‘It’s alive?’

‘Not in so many words. But, at the same time, yes.’

There were no longer any shouts or sounds of fighting from behind them, it was all in in front of them. You’re heading for a clusterfuck, this isn’t where you should be. Shut up. Dorian said- ‘I don’t care what Dorian said!’ she growled. He turned to look at her. ‘Sorry, talking to myself.’

‘If you want me to send you back…’

‘No.’

‘Stef, you’re-’

‘Not going anywhere. Please, let me stay?’

‘As you wish.’

Three Solstice emerged from the shadows, and she couldn’t help but grin.

At least, until they drew their guns. Ryan pushed her to the ground and shifted into the middle of them, one shot him a few times before having the gun ripped out of his hand, the second ran and the third came toward her.

Flight, rather than fight, instincts, kicked in for once, and she pushed herself to her feet and ran for the ladder going up the side of the building. She scaled it with the practice of someone who had spent far too much time on the monkey bars as a child and reached the top before the Solstice had even reached the middle.

She poked her tongue out at him and required the ladder away.

He fell the ground, and was shot by Ryan before he could get up. He pointed a finger at her, but she threw her hands up before he could shift her.

‘Go on already, I’ll follow, I don’t want to slow you down.’

‘You do realise it will be just as quick if I shift you.’

‘Shut up and go.’

‘Recruit-’

‘And suddenly, I lose my name again.’ Her shoulders dropped. ‘I just don’t want to get shifted into the middle of a fight that big. I need a minute. Just a minute. Ok?’

He nodded, and shifted himself towards the fight and the mirror.

She slumped and took a few deep breaths. She looked up at the mirror, the seemingly innocuous object, the cause of so much fear and terror, so much confusion, and at least a few deaths.

The silvery heart of a dead world.

She glared at it as she crossed the roof, and required a thick plank as a bridge over to the next one.

‘You don’t look that great,’ she muttered angrily. ‘Stupid m-word mirror. Stupid m-word.’ She bit her lip. Killed a planet. Made a monster. Let you find your angel. Got you killed. ‘You killed da-da-duh-doi-damnit. Dajulveed, I hope someone turns you into a damn flower!’

The mirror shuddered.

‘Hey, flowers aren’t that bad.’

The mirror stopped shuddering and resumed tumbling through the sky.

‘Holy fsck, are you listening to me, you stupid McGuffin?’

‘Flower!’ she shouted, but this time, it didn’t make the mirror quake in fear.

‘Dajulveed,’ she whispered.

It stopped tumbling, and began to spin like a top.

‘Dajulveed,’ she said louder.

It continued spinning.

‘Dajulveed,’ she said a third time, and this time, it started to move toward her. Her heart began to beat quickly, enthused at the thought that such a bizarre thing had had any effect on something as magical as the mirror.

‘Faster, you stupid magic mirror, faster!’ She grinned. ‘Dajulveed!’ she shouted! ‘Dajulveed!’

It began to race toward her, outdistancing everyone else who wanted to get their hands on it.

She turned and ran back across the plank and onto the first roof, whispering the name of the dead planet over and over, turning once every few seconds to make sure it was still following her.

Stopping a few feet from the edge of the roof, she turned and looked up at the mirror.

Require: gun.

She clutched the gun that appeared in her hand, but made no move to lift her arm, it hung limply at her side, heavy with the responsibility of the choice.

Just blow this thing so we can go home and have cookies.

She clicked off the safety, centred herself and raised the gun. She waited until it came a little closer - the smaller the distance, the more chance she had at getting it the first time - the shouts were getting closer.

‘Just breathe,’ she whispered to herself. ’Just do it, Spyder, just do it.’

Smirking, she lifted her gun and fired.

She raised her hand, expecting the mirror to shatter and ensure her seven years of bad luck, but it was apparently fine.

She wrapped her finger around the trigger again, but before she could pull it, the mirror began to warp. It stretched and skewed, like a piece of clay in the hands of an inexpert modeller.

As it spun, she could see the path of the bullet - it had stretched the skin of the flowing mirror almost to its breaking point, and if the stress ripples were anything to go by, it was still desperate to break free and continue its path.

And it did.

The bullet pierced the mirror and shot off into the night.

A crack ran through the mirror, then split, making a fine spider web pattern over the surface, it groaned for a moment, as if trying to hold itself together, then exploded.

Oh, cra-

She barely had time to blink as a large shard shot toward her.

Ry-

*****

Ryan snapped his head toward the source of the explosion. It hadn’t been a bomb, or a blackout grenade, it hadn’t been-

It was suddenly became very apparent that the mirror was gone. The subliminal force it exuded in its complete form was missing, the world felt a lot lighter, as if a great weight had been lifted.

He doubted anyone else had noticed - you had to be very in tune with the world to feel it, and it was so subtle that it would be unnoticed by most of the fey and half-fey present, as it wasn’t loud, shiny or causing chaos.

There was only one reason that its presence could no longer be felt - it either wasn’t complete, or it had been used, consumed or spirited away from the city.

None of those possibilities were good.

He step a step and something crunched beneath his foot. He lifted his foot and looked down at a small, dirty, broken reflection of himself.

‘What…?’

He knelt and picked up the piece of mirror - the power flowing through it made him certain that it wasn’t a lost compact or result of an earlier fight. He held it in the palm of his hand, he willed it to disappear. Mirrors, even tiny fragments, only caused trouble, and any potential benefit they had was far outweighed by the possible disastrous outcomes.

The shard crumbled into smaller fragments, ground itself down to sand, then was whisked off his hand by the smallest breeze and disappeared entirely. He saw another piece of mirror a little down the street, he walked over to it, stooped and willed it away as he done the first.

A larger piece crashed to the ground to his left, he made it disappear, then he looked up to where it had come from. He saw a large piece dangling on the edge of the building’s roof, so he concentrated and shifted up.

The moon’s light reflected off at least a dozen last shards.

‘Clean-up crew to-’ he turned slowly, taking count of each of the shards.

Seventeen shards.

Seventeen shards and one body.

‘Sir?’ came the reply.

‘Don’t report in yet,’ he said stripping all emotion from his voice, ‘the area isn’t secure yet.’

He ignored the shards of mirror and walked slowly toward the body.

It wasn’t moving.

It wasn’t breathing.

He came up behind it, knelt - being careful to avoid the small pool of blood - and pressed two fingers to its throat. There was no pulse.

Dead.

He gently rolled the body onto its back, just to confirm the identity - a confirmation he’d had as soon as he’d seen her dirty sneakers.

‘Stef…’

Glassy eyes stared out into the night as the moon glinted off the large chunk of mirror lodged in her chest.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered as he pushed her eyelids closed, ‘I’m so sorry.’