It all came down to this. Waiting…

I had written my note explaining what I had experienced and sent it to my lawyer. I had told Derek to stay away from mirrors and I would try to get Janet back. He asked how. He even believed… partially because he saw Janet go into a bathroom with no window and never come out… and more than a little because he was grasping at straws. He wanted to do it together, but I told him there was no time to meet up. He wanted to do it instead of me, but I told him let me go first. If we didn’t come back in a day he would try. He gave in because he knew I was the better choice.

So here I was waiting. I had been quick. Sold my Land Cruiser for cash and made some… slightly illegal purchases. Who am I kidding, half my gear would get me arrested. What did that matter when facing a beast in a mirror stealing people? I had been standing, ready, in front the full length mirror for almost an hour. I didn’t know how to make myself a potential target though. I tried looking away and then back at it. I tried walking out of frame and then back in. Nothing worked so I just stood there waiting.

Then it happened. There a slight shimmer and I knew it was about to happen. I felt my mind go where I tried so desperately hard not to go. This feeling. It was the same feeling that killed my brother. The same reason we had taken up not only climbing, but free climbing. The reason we jumped out of airplanes. The reason we competed in Kick Boxing and Muay Thai. It wasn’t a rush. That was adrenaline. We never got that. Adrenaline made you stronger, sure… but it was over in 5 minutes. This was so different from that and lasted as long as there was danger.

It was peace. Like all the worry of life stopped. There was nothing that could change our mood. It was also focus. Unwavering and complete attention that brought the world into view. Our field of view is around 200 to 220 degrees with both eyes open and yet we only see 15 degrees of that at any one time. Not with this feeling. We saw it all at once. Only under this feeling could our brains keep up with the sheer amount of information. The limits were off and my brain sped up.

Chasing this feeling had led to my brother dying before my eyes. We felt so alive and yet it had caused the exact opposite effect to my life. With my brother gone I couldn’t bring myself to search for things to cause this feeling anymore. The desire to feel it wasn’t there. I wasn’t even sure I could feel it and yet here I was. It was like it always was. Everything both fast and slow in my eyes. The world moved slower than normal, but I saw ten times more… and I was ready.

The shimmer was over quickly and there was the beast. I saw things this time I had missed. The background wasn’t my bathroom. It was somewhere else. There were other people off to the side. That answered that question. Hope sprung up in my chest. If it was just the beast there was a chance Janet was already dead and eaten. If other people were involved then there was a chance! I didn’t know why this was happening, but I had to find out. The beast came halfway out of the mirror and latched onto my gear. It was a dog bite suit. I moved just enough so that he just got the cloth and not my arm. There was no time to marvel at the fact it had come through the mirror. I was expecting it and yet still couldn’t believe this was happening. Then I threw my flash bang as I shoved its head through the mirror. I held onto the side of the mirror to keep from having my head pulled through until I saw a flash of white behind my eyelids that were closed tight. Then I plunged the rest of the way through the mirror.

It was chaos. The Beast was rolling on the floor shaking its head. The others in the room were on floor holding their ears and had their eyes closed moaning. Guess that had been worth the cost. I pulled out the second piece of illegal gear and shot the beast with a tranquilizer dart. It would take 10 minutes for this to work on a lion so I also kicked it into what I had to assume was its cage and shut the door. The most dangerous threat taken care of I turned to the others. Headshots took out what I had to assume were guards. Then I had to figure out what to do with the last guy. He was going to be my source of information. The fact I had just killed 5 people tried to weight down my mind, but I shoved the feeling away. To easy to do with my… feeling still in effect. I noticed what looked like a metal collar on the floor next to the last person who, unlike the other guards, didn’t have any weapons and was dressed in fancier attire. I picked it up and wasn’t sure why, but put it on him. I had to guess it was meant for me once I was pulled through so I figured it couldn’t hurt.

As soon as I put it on him, he stopped moving. He felt down at his neck and said “NO! What have you DONE!” Now that surprised me. How did he know my language? It gave me hope though. The fact he could understand me meant the interrogation would go quickly. He started to blink his eyes to look for who had done this and was slowly able to focus in on me. I stood there pointing my gun at him and said, “Hey there. I don’t have much time, so you are going to answer some questions for me and then, if you haven’t lied, I’ll let you go.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

He seemed to think about this for a second and then pointed his arm at me for a few seconds. I was ready to shoot him in the leg if anything happened, but when nothing did, he looked at me and said, “have to take this collar off me and put it on. You don’t know what will happen if you don’t. You will anger the god! Quickly!” He tried to use a key he pulled from his neck to undo it, but the collar shocked the key out his hand.

“Yeah pass. Collar stays on you. Now like I said” I pulled out my taser gun. “I don’t have a lot of time.” Then I hit him with it. He spasmed and then looked at me horrified as he touched the collar and as he said “My essence shield isn’t working at all.” I held up my hand and counted off my three questions. “Why are you stealing people? Where are the others? How do we get back?”

Rich guy was looking like he would wet himself but said, “If I tell you will you leave back through the mirror quickly?”

“That is the plan bud.”

“We are pulling people through from your world to act as breeding slaves. Even though your world has no essence to use you all have the ability to cultivate it. Here that is rare. If breeding with your people produces increased numbers of cultivators we will be rich. The others we have brought here are in cells down the hall. They are being tested for diseases before they are used as breeding stock. As long as the Chuta” he blanched. His eyes darted around to land on the currently very unhappy, but starting to be slightly groggy beast. He relaxed for a second and then started again, “As long as the the Chuta mirror beast is alive you can push it part way through the mirror and jump through. It will follow my commands as I am the one who captured it. So will tell it to do this if you let me live.”

Noting the mirror still had my bathroom showing on the other side, I looked at him for a minute, “Ok, first off, are there keys to where the others are?”

“Yes they are on the body of that man.” He pointed at one of the downed guards.

“Are there other guards waiting outside?”

“No. Once the collar is on no one can disobey. There is no need for more.”

I said “Thank you” and then shot him in the head. I didn’t have time to figure out how to manage him and get people out before he inevitable stabbed me in the back. I had my own way of dealing with the… ‘Chuta did he say?’ after all.

I grabbed the keys off of the guard as well as the one that seemed to be for the collar and headed for the door. I used a small mirror to check outside and found no-one. It was a long hallway with many doors. I went to the first one and there was a symbol on the door so I matched the key with the same symbol and opened it. Inside there were more than a hundred men and women with collars. Crammed together without room enough to do more than sit “You all speak English?”

They all nodded. I called out Janet's full name, but got no response. I pointed at a man that looked the least dazed by my appearance. “You. I’m giving you the key to the collars. Get them off and then follow me. Everyone else head to the room next to this one and wait for me to come back. We are headed home.” They looked over-joyed and the man I tossed the key to the collars to got to work right away. I headed to the next door. Janet hadn’t been in there. She had to be somewhere though.

She was in the 22nd door. I called out her name and she screamed “Frank!” and ran at me and gave me the tightest hug I’ve ever gotten. “How are you here?”

“I don’t know how much time we have so wait on that for now.” I looked around at suddenly hopeful faces. “We are getting out of here. Come on and line up to go back through the mirror. I grabbed the guy with the key to the collar as we walked back to the room with the mirror and had him come with us. Back in the mirror room the beast was asleep and everyone was crowding around the mirror.

“Move out of the way.” I said and turned to the guy with the collar key. “What is your name, I didn’t ask.”

“Dave”

“Ok Dave we will need to do this in stages for people. First we have to move this beast so it is halfway through the mirror. Then you will need to take peoples collars off before they go through. Are you willing to help me with that?”

Dave looked at the mirror then back at me. “I get to go through too right? If you promise that, I’ll help.”

I smiled “I promise.” I said.

We moved the Chuta with a fair amount of struggle as it weighed at least 300lbs. I put its paw through the mirror and the whole mirror became like liquid, easy to push through. I then had him take Janet’s collar off and told her to go call Derek. Then I pushed her through before she could argue. I had stuff to do here. I’m no hero, but I didn’t like that they came for me twice. That wasn’t going to happen again and I was going to make sure.

People streamed past me and Dave. He got fast at taking collars off and I had to re-trank the Chuta twice before the line started to get short. There were a lot of people.

“what about the other rooms” Dave asked.

“I’ll go. Hold the trank gun just in case. There were only another 10 or so doors.”

I ran down the hall and started unlocking doors. After the last door I ran back to Dave and we started our work again. Once the last person was through, I had Dave go through and then taped an explosive to the mirror frame and on the Chuta. If this is how they got to us I was going to make sure that wasn’t an option anymore. While I was in the process of doing this, I heard a strong feminine voice.

“My, my… what have we here?” and everything went white.