Dyna took therapy. Doctor Bellows, a psychiatrist who formerly worked for NASA. A nice man, if a bit formal. Dyna had one session a week, barring certain events, mandated by the Carroll Institute. She was supposed to deal with self-esteem issues and paranoia.

Watching an old woman standing on the sidewalk across the street from her apartment, taking photographs of everything around, had her paranoia acting up. She looked like an old woman. She had a walker with tennis balls on the ends. Her camera looked like something from half a century ago.

And yet… a tourist taking photographs in Idaho Falls? Dyna could see it if they were near the river or out in the wilderness, but on her street near her apartment? It wasn’t even a particularly aesthetic place. Just a brick building that had been painted white for some awful reason. A fairly sad-looking tree sat out front and—

“You’re wandering around on your own again? It’s dangerous. People could jump out at us at any moment. It happens to me a lot. A whole lot.”

Dyna’s hand snapped to her holster. She had a gun half out before her brain caught up with what just happened.

“Sorry,” Hematite said, shirking in on herself. “Sorry… I didn’t mean…”

Dyna’s eyes snapped around. She had been walking from the bus stop to her apartment when she spotted that old woman with the camera. The same route she had taken every day that she came here. With Hematite stepping out of an alley just to her side, she was starting to reevaluate her choice in route. Maybe she had become a little too predictable.

Though that might have been her paranoia talking again.

“You don’t really need to follow me everywhere, do you?” Dyna said as she secured her firearm. Since meeting Hematite two days prior, the woman had been uncomfortably present. She wasn’t sleeping in Dyna’s bed or anything, but when she left her dorm in the mornings, Hematite’s black lipstick and dark eyeshadow was there to greet her. “How did you even know I was here? And how did you get here before me? I thought you said you had something to do down in Psychodynamics.”

“I’m being paid to guard you,” Hematite said, eying Dyna’s gun with a wary gaze. “Which is the answer to all of those questions.”

“The operation hasn’t even started yet,” Dyna said, trying to keep her tone pleasant. Hematite hadn’t actually done anything to warrant hostility; as she said, she was just following orders. But Dyna had been hoping to get some more time in her makeshift workshop, maybe to try infusing psionic energy into the voodoo doll or the wolf statue. Hematite popping up out of nowhere put a damper on that.

Having interacted with Hematite a bit more, Dyna wasn’t sure what to think of her. She certainly thought that Ruby’s warning had been a bit… Well, Ruby didn’t get along with any artificer aside from Emerald. It wasn’t surprising that she would exaggerate faults. Ruby had warned against staying away from mirrors, but every bathroom had a mirror and nothing bad had happened so far.

That said, there were plenty of odd things about her. Even more than her outdated aesthetics. She had too many contradictions about her. Hematite looked like someone with zero confidence in themselves, and acted that way as well, yet Walter believed she could stand in as an adequate bodyguard. A replacement for Ruby while Ruby underwent her wellness checks. Hematite didn’t carry any weapon on her, at least not as far as Dyna could tell. A re-scouring of the artifact database produced no results when Dyna had tried to figure out what her artifact was. Her personnel file was basically just one big redaction. Even her height, eye color, and other obvious traits were listed as unknown or redacted.

Then there were things like just now. Her popping out of a side alley despite having had no reason to be here or any real way to get here from where Dyna last saw her at Psychodynamics. At least not a way to get here before Dyna. Emerald could have walked from the institute to the city in an instant, so it wasn’t a complete impossibility, but it was suspicious.

And now, Dyna wasn’t sure what to do. It seemed like her plan for the day was shot and ruined. Unless she could convince Hematite to go away.

“You…” Dyna floundered. Just telling her to go away felt rude and Dyna didn’t want to alienate someone she would not only have to work with, but trust as a bodyguard. She glanced down the street and spotted a small eatery that she had visited a few times. “Frozen yogurt?”

A quick snack. A few words. Then maybe they could go their separate ways.

That sounded good.

Hematite didn’t look like she agreed. She shuddered—shivered?—but slowly nodded her head after a moment.

“If you would rather something else…”

“No. Yogurt is fine,” Hematite said. She opened her mouth, made a slight noise from the back of her throat, then cut herself off before the noise could form into an actual word. Clamping her mouth shut, she started walking toward the frozen yogurt shop.

Dyna cast her gaze upward, momentarily wondering if there were anything she could do to help Ruby get back to normal faster. Shaking her head, she followed after Hematite.

“So,” Dyna said, taking a seat with her cup of vanilla drizzled with mango syrup. “Hematite, do you—”

“I thought we agreed on no silly names?”

“Jane,” Dyna amended. It just felt like such a plain name for someone so full of oddities. “I was wondering if you might share your artifact’s abilities and your own psychic powers?”

“Why?” she asked, looking genuinely confused as she looked up from her entirely untouched cookies and cream yogurt covered in crumbled candy bars.

“Tactics, I suppose.” Dyna didn’t think she was anywhere on the level of Emerald or even Ruby, she had gone through some training. Some of that training included tactics and strategies. Her initial reason for going through all that training had mostly been for self-defense purposes. That was pretty much still true now, self defense was just being applied a whole lot more than she really cared for. “It’s good to know what we can do if the situation gets tense, right?”

“I suppose. What can you do?”

Dyna shrugged. She kind of expected Hematite to already know—her file actually had words in it that didn’t start with R and end with edacted—but she supposed someone of Hematite’s temperament probably wouldn’t have looked it up. “I have a mirror that lets me see through other people’s perspective under certain conditions.”

“A mirror?” Hematite perked up, speaking loudly for perhaps the first time ever. Or at least since Dyna had met her. “I have a mirror too,” she said, reaching into her pocket.

She produced a small pocket mirror. Not the same type as Dyna’s. Hematite’s mirror was black plastic and square rather than circular. A bit thicker as well. Judging from some smudges around the sides, it could easily contain a few internal compartments for makeup. Either that or Hematite was just sloppy.

“Better not open it now, though,” she said, actually sounding disappointed.

“Why not?”

“I… don’t like my reflection,” she said, simply.

Dyna had to raise an eyebrow. Hematite’s makeup was light yet precise. Especially that eyeliner. Her lipstick looked professionally done for a photoshoot. The blending on her cheeks was natural and yet… not at the same time. That took careful work.

Hematite probably spent several hours looking at her face in the mirror every day.

Changing her face. All that makeup. Dyna felt a twinge of guilt. Ruby had warned Dyna against looking into mirrors around Hematite. She had taken that as some kind of poor power interaction they might have. What if it had been concern over self-esteem issues?

No. No… Someone else and Dyna might have believed that. Ruby?

Still, Dyna decided to simply nod her head rather than risk aggravating body issues.

Hematite had fallen silent during Dyna’s brief thought, hardly moving except to play with the little mirror. She flipped it up on its corner, balanced on the table, turned it so the edge was down. Then up on the next corner, then down again.

“Is that your artifact?”

“I… guess so?”

That response had Dyna quirking her other eyebrow.

“Sorry,” Hematite said, ducking her head. “Not used to talking about these things. They like everyone to be all hush-hush, you know?”

“Ah… yeah.” Dyna felt that. “I’m probably not very good at that. I’ve probably said a whole lot more to a whole lot of people than I really should have. In fairness to me, I kind of got thrown into the deep end without any preparation or training.”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Oh I know how that feels. Even today, half the time I don’t feel like I know what is going on. One situation after another pops up and I have to figure out how to fix it?” She slumped down into her chair so far that Dyna suspected her bones turned to jelly. “If they weren’t paying me, I would have disappeared so fast.”

“The pay is nice,” Dyna allowed. It wasn’t what she was here for. More a means to an end. Currently, that end was learning how her powers worked. Hopefully. “You still haven’t told me exactly what it is you do.”

“Whatever is needed.” She nodded her head, paused, then added, “Whatever gets me paid.”

“Protecting me, at the moment.”

“Yep!” Hematite said, taking her first spoonful of frozen yogurt.

She immediately cringed with a loud yelp, slamming a hand into the bridge of her nose where she rubbed and rubbed like it would help with what had to be sudden brain freeze.

Dyna watched her with a small frown. She was avoiding the actual question. And with such an overblown reaction to the frozen yogurt, she had to be trying to distract from the topic. If she didn’t want to talk about it, she could just say that she didn’t want to talk about it.

Deciding to just let it drop for the moment—maybe she could ask Beatrice for more information later on—Dyna finished her yogurt in relative silence. She had time to figure out how best to handle and work with Hematite. The operation wasn’t due to start for a few weeks and even then, she wasn’t actually involved in the direct beginnings of it. There were people to contact, organizations and subcommittees to be made, equipment to procure or manufacture, and more preparations besides.

This was to be a larger operation. Not the haphazard events that Dyna had previously been involved with.

In that respect, it was actually refreshing. Something she had forgotten to bring up with Administrator Theta during their meeting was her dissatisfaction with the level of support she had received during the Hatman incident. True, they hadn’t exactly planned on the Hatman being there or his abilities, but she had felt hung out to dry up until the mobile operations lab had rolled up.

Even if it was just Beatrice being allowed to offer her full support, the situation would have felt better.

But she had brought up Beatrice and that argument had been shutdown before it could even begin. The administrators didn’t like Beatrice, that much was clear, yet they still relied on her for analytical prowess alone. Dyna knew that most data crunching went through her, generally between two humans. Human scientists took measurements, tossed it to Beatrice, then back to the humans for review.

Dyna knew Beatrice could do more. And that was probably what the administrators were afraid of. She could take over their jobs while still running data processing and the before and after bits. On her own, Beatrice could probably replace most of the staff down in Psychodynamics.

Which was scary in a way. Not in the Skynet deciding to destroy humanity sort of way—which Dyna vehemently did not believe Beatrice would do just based on how Beatrice acted when she had been let off the hook and subsequent conversations—but in a sort of ‘humans were just redundant’ way. Dyna wasn’t sure that was actually a bad thing. Instead of being replaced, it seemed like it would just free up a lot of time spent on menial tasks for more advanced research.

But she wasn’t in charge here. Beatrice was locked down.

And, unfortunately, with Hematite’s files so heavily redacted, a locked-down Beatrice probably wouldn’t be able to provide any real information. Dyna switched her mental note from asking Beatrice to asking either Walter or Ruby.

Either way, she didn’t feel like forcefully prying Hematite open. Maybe going around behind her back was worse, but…

Dyna shook her head and changed her focus. “I’ve got an apartment nearby. I was planning on spending the night there. You alright getting back to the institute campus?”

Hematite opened her eyes, but not fully. She squinted over at Dyna while keeping her hand pressed to the bridge of her nose. “You aren’t coming back?”

“Do I need to? Nothing is happening for a while yet. I don’t even have meetings tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Hematite said, slumping. “After I came all this way too…”

Dyna exerted a bit of willpower to keep from narrowing her eyes. Something about Hematite just rubbed her the wrong way. All the evasion, the oddities, the warnings Ruby had given her… and now fishing for an invitation to stay the night?

“I would invite you over,” Dyna lied, “but the place is bare-bones right now. The only furniture I have is a single couch and no extra blankets or pillows.” She glanced down at her phone. “The last bus back to the institute doesn’t leave for twenty minutes. You have time to get back.”

Hematite froze, stilling completely for a full second before she slowly nodded her head. “Yeah. That’s right. I better get moving. It is a bit of a walk, isn’t it?”

“Sorry. I don’t mean to be rude—”

“No, no. It’s alright.” She stood, leaving half her yogurt still in the cup, and put her arms above her head in a long stretch. “I better get moving,” she said again. “But do you mind stopping by the training center later on? Tomorrow around noonish, maybe?”

“Sure?”

“Great!” Hematite said, flashing a grin. “See you then!”

With that, she skipped off. She had to be around Dyna’s age. Maybe slightly older. But she somehow looked younger as she ran away. Maybe she was younger but just had grown up a little faster? And she was an artificer; even having only been one for a short time, Dyna had seen plenty of strange things.

Ruby was right. All the other artificers were strange.

Still, that had been easier than expected. When she suddenly appeared, Dyna feared she wouldn’t be left alone under the ‘protection’ pretense.

Cleaning up the yogurt cups, Dyna left the shop and continued toward her apartment. She didn’t want to be obvious about checking for people following her, but at the same time, she didn’t want a repeat of Hematite popping out of an alley. She pulled out her mirror…

But she didn’t open it.

Ruby’s warning still hung in the back of her mind. With all the oddities around Hematite and that refusal to answer the question of what her abilities were, something struck Dyna as off.

Instead, she pocketed the mirror again, finished the walk to her apartment, and then dialed Ruby’s number.

Ruby didn’t pick up on the first ring, third ring, or even the fifth ring. Dyna hit the voice mail and immediately hung up to try again.

This time, Ruby did pick up. “What do you want?” she asked, sounding distinctly displeased. More unhappy than normal.

“Is everything alright?”

“Fine,” she said through clenched teeth.

Closing her eyes ever so briefly, Dyna started moving about her apartment. She pulled out the purchases she had made the other day. “Just calling to see how you’re—”

“You’re working with Hematite,” Ruby said, tone a harsh accusation.

“Walter brought her in on an operation that I really couldn’t refuse, yes.”

The more she thought about it, the more the voodoo doll just made the most sense to try first. Conceptually speaking, it had a strong theme and preexisting ideas established about what such dolls could and couldn’t do. It wasn’t genuine, but neither was her pocket mirror.

“Ruby?” Dyna asked.

“What’s wrong with me? You don’t want to work with me anymore? First Emerald and now—”

“Stop that,” Dyna said. “First of all, you were there when Emerald got the Korea assignment. She asked for you. She didn’t want to be with Alex. I asked for you too, just the other day, but Walter said you were still… recovering.”

“I’m fine,” Ruby said again, this time more of a whiny grouse than an angry hiss. “It’s the stupid scientists. They just want to poke and prod me. I don’t know why they want me. November is the better test subject, isn’t she?”

Dyna sighed, moving on to the Ouija board. That was another good choice. Maybe she could ask it what Hematite’s powers were. “You’re a human who is experiencing strange things. She isn’t. That probably gives them different data to work with.”

“It’s stupid. They don’t even let me go down to the training room on my own, but they let November walk around like she owns the place?”

“Probably don’t want to offend the inhuman entity; they want her cooperation.”

“What about offending me?” Ruby snapped. “I had to threaten to stab someone just to get them to let me answer my phone. They’re probably calling security as we talk.”

“Have you talked to Walter?”

“Not for about two weeks. We were supposed to have a meeting about my status a week ago, but something ‘came up’ and he was ‘busy’. And I just put finger quotes around that.”

Dyna winced. That might have had something to do with her. If she hadn’t wound up getting the Theta’s operation going, Walter might have had more free time. “I’ll see if I can’t find him tomorrow. Remind him of your appointment,” Dyna said, setting aside a small art piece. It was several thin glass panes—all at perpendicular angles to one another—standing upright to look like a city skyline. Laser-etched circuit-board patterns covered all the panes. LED lights built into the base would illuminate each pane and the patterns in a variety of colors.

She wasn’t sure why she bought that one.

“How did you know I was working with Hematite in the first place?”

“She came to brag.”

“Brag?”

“‘Oh, look at me. I went and ate a spot of frozen yogurt with Onyx. Shame you couldn’t go, dearie.’ Stupid bitch.”

Dyna wasn’t quite sure why falsetto-Hematite had an English accent, but figured that was just Ruby being Ruby. More importantly… Dyna glanced at her phone. “Ruby, that was only ten minutes ago.”

“No. It was about an hour ago.”

“I mean… The bus… she couldn’t… Ruby, what are Hematite’s powers? Precognition?” Based on that little snippet, that was her best guess at the moment.

“Something like that… I think. I only worked with her once and she wouldn’t tell me. Just things worked out for her. Except when I used a mirror to look around a corner, I caught her reflection. She turned into a monster and attacked me.”

“A… monster?” Dyna asked. “Was that a Ruby-ism or literal?”

“Uh… yes.”

“Ruby…”

“I don’t know, okay? I caught a glimpse for a split second. Next thing I knew I was regrowing my face. Told Walter that if I ever had to work with her again, I would cut out her eyes and shove them up her ass.”

Dyna… didn’t have anything to say to that. She just slid the circuit city statute off to the side of her kitchen counter with a slowly deepening scowl. Precognition as a base-line psychic ability with some kind of artifact-based transformation involving mirrors? Did it work off any reflective surface or only mirrors? It had to be the latter or she would have probably flipped out just walking past glass storefronts. How did she handle public bathrooms or even stores—plenty of stores had mirrors on display for a whole variety of reasons.

“Are you sure she attacked you and not something else?”

“I know what I saw,” Ruby snapped despite having just said that she wasn’t sure what exactly happened.

Dyna just let out a sigh. “I think I have something else to talk to Walter about tomorrow.”

If Hematite really did have some kind of mirror transformation that made her susceptible to attacking allies, that seemed like absolutely vital need-to-know information. Doubly so for someone whose artifact was a mirror.

“Ugh,” Ruby said. “Got to go. Security guys are here.”

“You didn’t actually stab anyone. Your frustration is understandable. Don’t let them bully you.”

“Bully me?” Ruby snorted. “From the way they’re dressed up, I think they’re the ones expecting to get pommeled.” The distinct sound of cracking knuckles popped over the phone speaker. “Hope those are good helmets,” she said.

The line went dead before Dyna could try warning her against picking a fight with the security team.

Three ignored calls later and Dyna just sighed. Her thoughts slowly drifted away from what hopefully wasn’t a bloodbath and toward Hematite. From what Dyna had seen, gloating didn’t seem like Hematite’s style. Dyna trusted Ruby, but at the same time, was well aware of Ruby’s general temperament. What could have been a casual comment about yogurt might have sounded a whole lot more hurtful to Ruby’s ears. Especially with her prolonged isolation for testing and examination.

Two-faced or not, it sounded like Hematite was definitely stronger than she looked. Once again, Dyna had to shove aside disappointment in her mirror.

But that was just a temporary state.

Taking a deep breath, Dyna snatched the voodoo doll from the counter and headed for her shielded bedroom. She probably wouldn’t get it doing anything anomalous tonight, but she could certainly try.