SILAS

I've heard some say we know ourselves by the mirrors we peer into. The reverse images. Supposedly, if you'd have trouble recognizing yourself if you saw an identical copy in public. The discrepancy is that large, supposedly.

But that's not true.

There are discrepancies here. The color and style of the hair, for one. The sneering look. The pale complexion. Far paler than mine. Strangest of all, the faint sizzling sound, as a thin burn mark travels up one side of his exposed face, shedding a wispy trail of smoke.

But none of these divergences can disguise the truth.

He's right. He is me. Those are my eyes, looking back at me. Knowing. Understanding. In some terrifying, fundamental way, we are the same.

"You've got something..." I say, pointing at the left side of my face. "Right...there."

"That's cute," he says. The burn mark extends, snaking upward toward his hairline. "Humor as a shield for the psyche. You armor yourself against the truth. But you don't get to do that, this time. I'm going to peel back the scales from your eyes. I'm going to make you see."

This time??

"Come with me," he says. "The people here—their fate is sealed. That's all done. But not you. Surrender yourself. I don't want to fight you, Silas. I need you safe. Whole."

"Counter-offer," I say. "You surrender yourself, and the Cloister will determine a fitting punishment for your crimes."

He smirks. "There's only one true sovereign state anymore, and it's not this isolated bunker of inbreds. Don't endanger yourself for these people. Don't be that stupid."

'INITIATING SALVO PROTOCOL...'

The dual handguns appear in my hands. Shoulder turrets activate. I take aim at Daimon.

"I know you want answers," he says. He looks disappointed, but also bored, unfazed. "You're not going to get them that way."

"Sure I will," I say. "And you're gonna give them to me."

"Well, well," Daimon says. He smiles fully, teeth gleaming, sparks igniting in his eyes. "I had explicit instructions to bring you in, intact and unharmed. But if you're fighting back, I guess I don't have a choice. If I take you apart, past the point of repair, don't blame me. I know the higher-ups won't. I'm just following orders, after all."

"That's not much of an excuse," I say, aiming for his face.

"You're missing the point. If you're gonna take the shot, take it. And you better hope you don't miss."

He watches me. And I watch him. The tension builds. A tangible, unseen thing. An invisible snake uncoiling itself, all about us. The mechanisms of fate turn. Divergent paths isolate themselves, becoming uniform. Locking into place.

No going back.

I fire. All four guns. The first salvo.

Daimon's movements are impossibly fast, like a mirage. He fastens the mask back into place and leaps forward, airborne, hair rippling behind his head in tendrils, bullets ricocheting off his mask and armor, one of his gloved hands forming a fist.

I decide to put the handguns away, vanishing in a flurry of green, glowing dust motes. Still firing with my shoulder turrets, I brace with my legs. I reach out with two open hands, catching Daimon's punch like a baseball.

Too late, I realize it's not a matter of blocking the punch itself, but of absorbing the impact of Daimon's entire body, and all his momentum.

I'm not catching the punch. I'm catching him.

The force hits my palms, jutters all the way down my arms and shoulders and into my neck and core. The heels of my metal feet—shoes? Boots?—screech as I'm pushed backward, sliding, despite still being braced in my defensive position. I slide ten feet, maybe even twenty. Daimon is still airborne, riding the momentum of that forward flight, even as he's pushing me.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Just as the momentum slows, and Daimon's feet touch the ground, and I hear the choir of multiple metal plates snapping open, and a sound like a miniature spaceship taking off. Yellow energy bursts, like a Harrier jet;s afterburners, flare out of ports in Daimon's upper back and the back of his forelegs. And even with all my weight, and the force with which I'm pushing back against him, I slide again.

Which is the opposite of what I want. I need to move him back. The other way. I need to throw a wrench into the mechanism. Turn the tide.

I pivot, sidling out of the way while still holding tight to Daimon's fist. I'm gonna harness the inertia. I'm gonna use his own energy against-

He lets me. He leans into the spin with everything he's got, body braced, feet in the air. For a second, we're face-to-face—or mask to face, at least. His dark hair flails wildly. His eyes are dark pinpricks in the mask. No human emotion can be discerned. I'm fighting an automaton.

Too late, I realize he's holding onto one of my hands with two of his.

He shifts his alignment, so he's facing the opposite direction of the spin. The inertia is fighting against Daimon's afterburn jets. And losing.

His feet hit the floor, and mine leave it. I'm flying sideways through the air. Into the wall. And through it.

Thick sheets of heavy concrete split and crumble around me, in an impact that leaves me with a throbbing ache along my entire side.

I fly. Into a shadowy room with boxes stacked to the ceiling. The only light source is behind me, from the hallway lights, bursting in via the hole my body made.

I turn in the air, trying to land on my feet. But when my foot touches the floor, the rest of my body keeps going. I keep flying, all the way to the wall at the end of the room. I brace just before the impact, bringing my arms up to protect my face as I hit the wall head-on. And crash through that one, too.

I hit the floor, rolling, shoulder-over-shoulder, but I still can't manage to slow down. Not until I hit my third wall in one go, hitting the concrete segment back-first, hard enough to partially embed my body into it, slightly off the ground.

My vision blurs and fizzles a little, like a TV losing its signal. Which can't be a good sign.

Blessedly, the feeling fades.

I ease myself forward, pulling myself bit-by-bit out of the wall.

This place. It's a storage room, like the last. But there's a different vibe to it. I can smell old paper. Thick swirls of airborne dust. Charred electrical cables. And a whiff of what I assume to be mouse droppings.

I'm free of the me-shaped crater, and on one knee, when Daimon's shadow blocks the light sourcing in through the hole in the wall. He ducks his head as comes through, then casually sits down in the gap.

"Seriously?" He takes off his mask, some of hair falling forward in front of his face. "You know, I'm struggling right now to believe you used to actually be formidable. You're in big trouble if that little move was too much for you. I wasn't even trying, my guy. If this is what it's going to be like, I'm not sure I even want to play."

What...the hell...

"Don't be like that," I say, grunting as I get to my feet. "We're just getting started."

"As he struggles to get to his feet. You realize I have a number of weapons at my disposal? I haven't dipped into any of them, yet."

I stare at him. He's shadowy, goblin-esque silhouette, sitting slouched in the gap.

"You're enjoying this," I say, realizing. "Aren't you? I was so much better than you, it took me losing everything for you to be able to actually knock me down a peg."

He sighs. Stands. "Well, fine," he says. "For that."

I get that lightheaded feeling again. My vision crackles. I shake my head to clear it, blinking rapidly.

"It's fitting really," Daimon says. "That was always your problem. You never knew when to quit."

He makes fists with his hands, like he's challenging me to fisticuffs. He bobs and weaves, shadowboxing the air.

"You're not taking this seriously, are you?" I say. "It's just a game, to you."

"That's rich coming from you," he says. The words are coated with spite. "Tell me. How did you solve your problems, before the light?"

Before the light...

Briefly, my mind travels back, to that moment in the car, with that ball of light in the rearview mirror. But I can't see what my past life has to do with any of this.

"The answer is that you didn't," he says. "You stayed tucked away in your room, with your toys. You self-medicated. All to keep yourself from comprehending the truth. You shut your eyes to your surroundings, because you didn't want to see the cracks."

I don't know what he's talking about. And I don't care.

Only, I think back, again, to that moment when I was hiding in the pantry, peering into the living room. My mom was saying something. But I couldn't hear it. It's as if the words were being...bleeped out.

And…it's so strange. I knew something. Something was off, and I may have even known at the time.

But now, I can't seem to-

No.

I can't think about this, right now. No matter what he says.

I shake myself. "You're trying to distract me."

"You're distracting yourself," Daimon says, arms folded firmly, no longer bouncing from foot to foot. "It's the same old, tired tactic. That's the irony of it. You always talked about the world and society being fake. But you were the one faking. All the way to the light. It's the ultimate charade. You faked yourself."

"Glad you've got it all figured out," I say, bringing my hands up into fists.

"Thanks," he says, mirroring my stance of readiness. "Like I said, I'm you, but better. I've come to terms with the past; something you'll never do. I've seen things as they actually are. I've divined the meaning."

"Yeah?" I say. "What's that?"

"That there is no meaning." He gestures with two fingers, telling me to come to him.

I grit my teeth.

I initiate Blast Protocol.