Dyna sat as still as she could. Only her eyes and her knee moved, both with a nervous tension. Her eyes darted back and forth between the little girl with red hair and the woman roughly her age with green hair. The older woman was on her phone, talking quietly in the far corner of the room. She kept her other hand locked onto a small silver pocket watch. Her thumb hovered just above the winding stem.

The little girl concerned Dyna just a little more than the older one. After all, it was the little girl who held a pistol. One she aimed directly between Dyna’s eyes. Something about the way the little girl stared with a cold look and shallow scowl made Dyna think that she wouldn’t hesitate to use it. And she wasn’t sure at all who would be on the receiving end.

It made sense that Dyna would be shot, but the girl’s cold look was actually aimed at the green-haired woman. The look was probably just nervous anticipation of what the outcome of the call would be.

Dyna hoped it wouldn’t be anything bad.

“White is Walter, right?” Dyna asked. More blurted, but the effect of getting words out was the same. Although nervous, there was a certain calm in knowing that they were calling him. They were just nervous about someone suddenly showing up. That was all. After the day she had been through, Dyna felt the same.

Except she didn’t have a gun in her hands.

Red-eyes blinked. “What?”

“The call,” Dyna said. “Green-hair over there said she was calling White. I heard White give his code in the elevator and I assume Beatrice gave me his code to give you two. Right? Do you know him?”

Dyna didn’t really know what she was saying. Anything, really. She was just trying to get the gun put away. Or at least aimed slightly away from her. She didn’t think she was in any immediate danger. The little girl’s finger wasn’t on the trigger.

Not only that, but she could hear the distinctively deep voice of Walter coming from Green’s phone. Nothing clear enough to hear what he was saying, but he wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

“Know him?” the little girl said, eyebrow twitching. “I work for the ba—”

“Ruby!”

“I work for the jerk.”

Dyna blinked again before narrowing her eyes. “Jerk?” she hissed. “Aren’t you a little young to be working? You’re like eight—”

“Finish that sentence and you die,” Ruby said, now firmly aiming her gun.

“Don’t point a firearm at something you aren’t prepared to kill,” Dyna said before she could stop herself. She clamped her mouth shut immediately afterwards. A child was probably not the best person to argue with while holding a gun. At the Carroll Institute, she had learned a few things about the human brain. One fun fact was that the reasoning centers of the brain weren’t fully developed until twenty to twenty-five years old.

That meant that Dyna didn’t have a fully developed brain. And if she didn’t have one, this little girl certainly didn’t have one.

“I am fully prepared to kill you if you so much as think the wrong thing.”

Great, Dyna thought, clenching her teeth, a psychopathic mind reader. Why did Beatrice send me here?

Surely she could have gone to the police while Carroll scraped together a proper rescue. Or maybe she could have simply driven back out to the institute in the stolen vehicle.

“No killing today,” the green-haired woman said as she stepped around the cramped motel room. “At least not this one.” After a moment of nobody moving, the harsh tone of admonishment returned. “Gun away, Ruby.”

Tongue clicking against the roof of her mouth, the little girl flicked a switch on the side of the gun before shoving it into a small pack she wore slung over one shoulder. “What’s the deal with her?” she practically snarled.

Despite the harsh tone, Dyna just about fainted back onto the bed now that the gun wasn’t pointed toward her. All the tension in her shoulders, back, and stomach released all at once. She didn’t quite fall over, but she definitely wobbled at the sudden lax feeling.

“The girl is a nascent artificer, though Walt—”

“I don’t know what that means,” Ruby cut in.

“It means she’s new.”

“Oh.” Ruby looked back to Dyna, now with less of a scowl and more of an evaluating expression.

Dyna wasn’t sure why she felt so offended at the small snort that came from the little girl’s nose.

“You clearly have no idea what you’re doing,” Ruby said, corner of her lip twisting up. “Or what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

“That’s what nascent means. At least in this context,” green-hair said. She then put on a kind, almost motherly smile despite not being much older than Dyna. “I’m Emerald. This is Ruby. We’re artificers too. Your seniors, if you want to think about it like that. Don’t worry, we can handle anyone following you if they show up.”

This person, despite initially holding a gun to Dyna’s neck, felt a whole lot more reasonable than the little Ruby. Someone that she could actually get along with. Whose idea was it to give a child a gun in the first place?

“Do you people get chased around by strange men often?”

“We’ve had such encounters once or twice,” Emerald said with that same saccharine smile.

Ruby let out an excessive scoff. The look in her eyes…

Maybe a gun was warranted. Or maybe someone should have simply not involved Ruby in the first place.

“Oh.”

Ruby put on a wide grin, only to let out a small squawk as Emerald dropped the edge of her hand onto Ruby’s head. A karate-chop without any real force behind it.

“Oh…”

“I understand that Walter hasn’t told you much. There is a wonderful gun range inside the Carroll Institute and a quaint little place here in town. I could show you around. Perhaps invest in some self-defense classes? Ruby would offer you some lessons right now, but she has a job to do.”

Ruby looked up, confusion evident in her furrowed brows. “I do?”

“The vehicle outside our motel needs to be lost,” Emerald said with her calm smile never wavering. “As usual, don’t be seen.”

Ruby’s confusion shifted to hostility as she turned and glared at Dyna. She opened her mouth only to get another chop on the head.

“Go. And while you’re gone, we’re relocating. Secondary fall back point.” Turning to Dyna as Ruby shoved past, Emerald offered an explanation. “If the vehicle has a tracker, they’ll know it was stopped here for a time and we don’t want to be found. I’m afraid we’ll be running around just a bit more.”

“Is the… secondary fall back point at the Carroll Institute?”

“Sorry,” Emerald said, smile staying in place but changing slightly to be just a little more apologetic. “Campus is on lockdown until they’ve got a better grasp on the situation and just what kind of danger there might be.”

“I don’t suppose I can talk to Walter.” Not that Dyna didn’t trust Beatrice after managing to get her out of that situation intact, but she knew absolutely nothing about these people other than that they seemed to work with Walter and the Carroll Institute. And also that they had guns. And also that those guns had been aimed at Dyna only a few minutes ago.

She didn’t not trust them. The mirror hadn’t lit up. Even while Ruby had a gun aimed in her direction. Given that it didn’t show off random people’s perspectives, she had to assume that there was more to it than just someone looking in her direction.

Hostile intent? That seemed a reasonable theory.

“You don’t have any authorization codes,” Emerald said, smile finally turning to a frown.

“I think I would recognize his voice.”

“Quite distinctive, isn’t it?” Emerald said with a dainty laugh. “Unfortunately, codes are there for a reason. You attended Carrol’s day-classes, correct? I’m sure you know the capabilities any random person might possess.”

“I…” Dyna glanced back toward the window as she heard an engine start. “There’s no way she’s old enough for a license.”

“A license only matters if you’re being pulled over. Ruby will not be seen.”

“Because she’s so short that she doesn’t poke above the bottom of the window?”

Emerald laughed again, much harder this time. “Careful. If Ruby hears you say things like that, you’ll wind up having to dodge as many knives as I do.”

“Uh…”

“Come on,” she said, bending to pick up a steel case from behind the bed. “We should move sooner rather than later. Do tell me if you see your shadows. Walter would absolutely love to have a chat with them, maybe figure out how they discovered you so quickly.”

“Do you know who they are? Or what they want with me?”

Emerald shrugged, motioning for Dyna to follow her out of the motel room. Steel case in one hand and her other hand in her pocket, she stepped out without looking at all concerned that someone might have followed Dyna. She didn’t even look around.

Dyna did. Her emergence from the motel room involved narrowed eyes, frequent glances to the mirror, scanning the mostly vacant street alongside the motel, and a quick dash to an older station wagon with those faux wood panels on the sides. The door stuck, requiring Dyna to throw her whole weight into pulling it open. By the time she sat down in the passenger seat, feeling the spring coils pressing into her lower back, she felt frazzled and more exposed than ever.

The woman with green hair simply watched, amused smile playing across her face. “You’re going to have a lot of work ahead of you, I think.”

“What?”

“The people following you could be from Russian Psi-Corps, Chinese Jingshen, the Maanasik Department of India, or any number of smaller entities. With the advent of human psionic potential, just about every world power has an interest in pursuing people like us.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“And this happens to you often?” Dyna grumbled. “They could have mentioned this at orientation.”

“No, I mean people like us. Most of your old classmates won’t ever have to worry about something like this. Mind readers are a dime a dozen. No need to come out here for them.”

“Artificers?”

Emerald nodded her head as she glanced from left to right. Not because she was worried about being spotted, but simply because she had stopped at an intersection. “As for what they want, that depends on who is after you. Perhaps they want to recruit you, brainwash then recruit, strap you to a table and perform an encephalectomy, or simply kill you to keep you from becoming a threat.”

Shuddering, Dyna sank down into the seat despite that spring poking into her back. Her thumb rubbed against a small smudge on the mirrored surface of the spy mirror. Since it was acting normal at the moment, she got a good look at her miserable reflection. To think that face had been bright and smiling only a few short hours ago, excited with the prospect of finally having a psychic ability to call her own.

Now? Chased after by potential assassins?

All for the ability to see when someone was looking at her?

She snorted. “I somehow got the perfect ability to know when assassins are after me.”

“The mirror?”

“It showed the perspective of those men when they were watching me.” Dyna shook her head, scowling at it. “It looks normal right now. Guess it only does its thing when someone doesn’t like me.”

Emerald took her eyes off the road, raising an eyebrow. “You should be able to control it more than that. It doesn’t decide to do anything. You do.”

“Well, I only got it a few hours ago. I don’t know anything about it. I was supposed to…” Dyna trailed off, remembering why she was in the city at all. “I wasn’t supposed to be near other psychics while bonding to it.”

“You should be down in Psychodynamics, surrounded by technicians and researchers.”

“But Doctor Cross said—”

“Cross?” Emerald let out a chiming chuckle. “Oh that explains so much about the situation. He threw you into this? I don’t mean to laugh, but it is hilarious. Then he sent you outside the safety of the facility, right into the waiting hands of your shadows?”

Shuddering again, Dyna started glancing around, taking her eyes off the mirror. As Emerald said, she knew nothing. She didn’t know how the artifact worked or what activated it. It might have been her, it might have been someone watching her. Regardless, it wasn’t reliable.

The men chasing after her had been dressed distinctively. Spotting them wouldn’t even be a challenge. All she had to do was look about and occasionally glance at the mirror just in case it did do something.

“I hope Walter is tearing him apart as we… Dyna?”

Dyna sucked in a sharp breath, stiffening. The mirror changed, going dark once again. Just like it did before it showed her the perspective of those strangely dressed men.

“What’s wrong?”

In lieu of words, Dyna held up the mirror, angling it toward Emerald.

“I don’t see anything. Aside from quite a beautiful woman, that is, but I try to limit the hours I spend admiring myself.”

“What? No, it’s…” Dyna looked back down. Both lenses of the mirror were a solid, unreflective black. “You don’t see this?”

“Just a mirror. Must only work for you.”

“It’s black and unreflective. Last time, it showed me the men after a few seconds like this.”

Emerald didn’t respond. Dyna didn’t look to see why, assuming that the other woman was on alert now and looking to see if she could see the men on her own. For her part, Dyna just gripped hold of the mirror, staring, waiting.

“It’s looking at us,” Dyna said the moment the mirror changed to a proper view, “from dead ahead. Elevated. Maybe on a building? But the view is magnified like they’re using binoculars or—”

“A scope,” Emerald hissed, wrenching the steering wheel to the left.

Dyna slammed into the door window as the station wagon veered into the lane of oncoming traffic. Despite all the effort it took to get the door open in the first place, her shoulder was enough to pop it open without even touching the handle. Her seatbelt helped to keep her in place, but even with that, she might have fallen right out had Emerald not spun the steering wheel in the opposite direction.

They careened straight down a side street, traveling twice the speed limit right until Emerald took another turn, sliding the station wagon into a narrow alley.

“Anyone watching us?”

Rattled and disoriented, it took Dyna a long moment to realize that Emerald was asking about the mirror. “It’s black. I think that means no.”

“Excellent.” Emerald kicked open her door, apparently not caring at all that it slammed into the brick side of the building they parked next to.

“We’re stopping? Getting out?” Dyna asked, unbuckling her own seat belt. Were she in charge, they would be flooring it clear out of the city. As she was not in charge, she doubted she had a say in matters. Now, she just didn’t want to be left behind.

“Of course!” Emerald said, leaving Dyna to shove open her poorly latched door. It dinged against another ladder, one that led to the roof of whatever building they had pulled up next to. Dyna just squeezed past, following as the other woman rushed back to the rear of the car where the trunk opened with hinges on the side rather than the roof. “Walter wants to speak with these gentlemen.”

Following her back, Dyna found her opening up a thick case that occupied almost the entirety of the rear storage space. Inside…

Guns. Knives. A crossbow? Grenades? Dyna’s eyes roamed over an arsenal the likes of which she had only seen in movies. A dozen handguns were arranged side-by-side at the rear of the case, handle out and ready to grab. Longer barreled firearms, aimed back and forth, were arrayed across the floor of the case, others were strapped to the roof. Knives with a variety of shapes, from straight and shiny silver blades to cruel-looking black blades curved like a crescent moon, were tucked between the guns, not far from the spherical and cylindrical grenades.

Emerald pulled out a small handgun. She slid back the top part of the gun, flicked a switch on the side, then pressed a small button underneath the barrel. A bright red dot appeared against the side of the station wagon’s rear door.

“Know how to use a gun?”

“Me?”

“I’ll take that as a no.” Emerald held out the gun. “Red light goes on who you want dead. Squeeze the trigger. Really as simple as that. This is a VP9, good gun.” She pulled a long tube from the case and started attaching it to the front of the barrel. “And the suppressor is so your ears don’t explode. It has fifteen shots which should be more than enough.”

“Enough for what?”

Emerald offered a brilliant smile. “Hopefully nothing,” she said, handing it over by holding onto the barrel. “I won’t be gone long.”

Dread sank into Dyna’s stomach at hearing that. “You’re leaving me?”

Emerald grabbed Dyna’s hand and placed it around the gun’s grip.

It was a lot heavier than it looked. A lot heavier than Emerald made it look with the way she moved it about.

As soon as it was out of her hands, Emerald pulled her pocket watch from her green cardigan and started winding the stem. “Not for long,” she said with a wink. “I’ll be back in a flash.”

Dyna blinked. In that split instant of a second, Emerald vanished. Not just ran off, but completely and totally disappeared. In a reflexive action, Dyna quickly ran through her thoughts just as they taught at Carroll, looking for any sign that her mind was being altered, maybe something similar to what Melanie did with her illusions. But she found nothing. Her thoughts were her own.

Emerald simply vanished, leaving her alone in the alley with a huge case of guns, an old and beat-up car, and a sense of extreme anxiety. Dyna gripped her mirror in one hand and the gun in the other. With the latter, she kept her fingers completely around the grip, none anywhere near the trigger.

She started pacing back and forth, jumping at every little noise that made its way down the alley. More than once, people walked past her little hiding spot. Most didn’t even notice her as they walked on to wherever their business took them. The few who did barely glanced in her direction. Only one seemed to notice the gun in her hand. He promptly started power walking away, rushing on.

Dyna paid every single one her near full attention, only relaxing once she noticed their regular attire for the chilly October air. For some reason, it felt like there were far, far too many people walking past. Did Idaho Falls even have that many people in it? It was probably just her panicked mind, but she couldn’t stop exaggerating every little thing into a big deal.

And where is Emerald? Back in a flash? How long was that supposed to be? She teleported away at least five minutes ago.

What if something happened?

A new source of dread invaded Dyna’s mind. The idea that her one source of safety in whatever mess she found herself in had gotten herself captured or killed and wouldn’t be coming back. The black-clothed men could be walking right down the road looking for her even now.

Her anxiety reached a crescendo when the mirror’s black lenses showed off a scene. Dyna swept the gun around, shining the red light around the brick walls of the alley before she realized that the subject of the mirror wasn’t herself.

Emerald’s face ground into a gravelly surface, pressed against it by whoever’s perspective Dyna was seeing. The perspective shifted, swinging to the side. It showed one of the black-clothed men standing right at the edge of a building. He held a pistol in his hands, aimed at Emerald. At his feet, propped up on a pair of legs, a long gun aimed up into the sky with no one standing next to it.

Captured.

She got captured.

Dyna swore, pacing back and forth even more as she stared at the scene in the mirror. She still didn’t have a phone to contact Beatrice or Walter or anyone else. Not that they would ever be able to help Emerald in time. Should she run? That was what her instinct told her to do. She was just a regular person, not some gun-wielding secret agent.

Would Emerald be able to escape on her own?

It didn’t look likely based on what the mirror showed.

That meant…

There was only one person who could help her.

Dyna swore again as she looked back into the station wagon’s trunk. There was a gun in that black case. One with a scope and a long barrel, just like the one the men had on the roof.

Biting her lip hard enough to draw blood, she grabbed the gun. It had a strap that she used to sling it over her shoulder. Rushing back to the passenger door, she grabbed hold of the ladder. This ladder had a small grate protected by a padlock to keep people from climbing. Pointing the red laser at the padlock and squeezing the trigger just like Emerald said got rid of that problem.

Dyna left the pistol on the ground; having no holster, she couldn’t climb with it in her hands.

The second she pulled herself onto the roof, she looked down at the mirror. The perspective wasn’t aimed in her direction. More worryingly, one of the men was trying to get zip ties around Emerald’s wrist. She struggled, but it wouldn’t work for long.

Dyna put the gun down, finding the latch to extend its legs as she looked in the rough direction that she thought the men would be based on the angles from the mirror.

If Idaho Falls had been any less flat, a building might have gotten in the way.

As it was, she saw them. Two moving shapes on a distant rooftop.

Sitting on her belly, Dyna tried to emulate everything she had seen in movies. She didn’t know if the gun was loaded and could only hope that it was. A small switch on the side was probably the safety. She didn’t know which way allowed it to fire, but assumed that the safety had been on while stored, so she flicked it.

Seeing through the scope was harder than the movies made it look. Unless she had her head positioned exactly perfectly, all she got were small crescents or pure blackness. Once she got her head into the proper spot, she had to actually find the men in the scope. Easier said than done, but eventually, she managed to get one of the men in the scope. Emerald was hidden from view beneath the lip of the building’s rooftop.

Dyna could only hope that her being hidden meant that she would be safe when Dyna inevitably missed.

There were knobs on the scope. Dyna didn’t know what they did and could only hope that they didn’t matter. She took a breath and tried to get the taller of the two men aligned with the crosshairs.

Her finger twitched with a nervous tension as the struggle increased. It twitched before she was ready.

Dyna’s ears started ringing as the gun slammed back into her shoulder.

The mirror, propped up just to the side of the roof where she could see it, showed the men entirely unharmed.

For a few seconds.

They clearly heard the noise and both ducked for cover. That was apparently enough for Emerald. She promptly vanished from under the perspective’s grip. A second after, one of the men was the one on the ground, both kneecaps missing courtesy of an Emerald with a smile that was just a hair too serene.

With her back on her feet and one man down, the other black-suited man stood no chance at all. She disappeared and reappeared only long enough to fire her pistol. He fell after only a few shots. Emerald kicked his gun from his hands a moment after. Dyna wasn’t sure if he was dead, but the one whose perspective she was seeing definitely wasn’t.

Dyna rolled onto her side with a small groan, fingers violently shaking. Even her legs and body trembled. A dozen buckets of sweat she must have shed in the last few minutes started to feel uncomfortably chill against the cold evening air.

But Emerald was fine. She was tying up both men using their own zip ties. As soon as they were secure and all weapons removed from their bodies, Emerald vanished from the mirror’s view.

A few seconds later, the mirror went dark.

A few seconds after that, the mirror started showing off just a normal reflection of Dyna’s sweat-covered face.

“Dyna?”

Dyna jumped at the soft voice. Her shaking fingers tried to grab the gun, only for its weight to overwhelm her unusually weak strength.

“It’s just me,” Emerald said.

Closing her eyes, Dyna let out a sigh that vibrated deep in her chest against her best efforts to remain calm. “Are… you okay?”

“Nothing to worry over,” Emerald said with a smile. “I’m… more confused than anything. I had them subdued completely with no effort at all, but then I was the one on the ground.” Her smile faltered as she shook her head, but she quickly recovered. “I contacted Ruby. She will be here shortly to take care of the men. You and I are going to move to a safe spot for the time being. Do you think you can climb down?”

“I…” Dyna shuddered, then shook her head. “Give me a few minutes.”

Emerald slowly knelt down and placed a gentle hand on Dyna’s shoulder. “You’re okay. Try to take deep breaths.”

Dyna did so, breathing deeply through her nose before letting it out slowly from her mouth. “Sorry. I shouldn’t… I wasn’t even in danger. You—”

“I’ve faced far, far worse. Trust me. That wasn’t even in the top hundred terrible situations I’ve been in this year. Though I should say thanks. It might have made it into the top hundred if you hadn’t stepped up.”

“I don’t even know what I’m doing. I was just copying movies.”

“Don’t worry. We can work on that.”

Dyna… didn’t quite know how to respond to that. She didn’t want to work on anything. In fact, all she wanted right now was a hot bath and a hot cup of chocolate.

“Feeling better? Enough to climb down?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, that’s better than before. Come on, on your feet,” Emerald said, holding out a hand to help.

Dyna took a long, deep breath, then took hold of Emerald’s hand.