There’s a little smidgen of gun metal green that presses through the mobs of reporters and camera crew, black-suited businessmen and ditzy high schoolers. He’s doing his best to be polite, but it’s hard when the people are packed elbow to elbow and he’s got somewhere to go. He earns some sharp looks and a few pushes anyway.

You can’t help but laugh a little looking at him. The future trial attorney, all decked out in a bomber jacket, cargo pants, and Converses, with bark brown hair and sparkling hazel eyes. A bold personality in a slim frame, too young to command the respect he craves. Jack Hart. Your classmate and friend.

He pushes away your embrace and shields his eyes to stare up the building, where the noontime sun has skewered itself upon the building’s pinnacle.

“Food court’s at the top, right?” he says. “We should get something to eat.”

“Sure, when the —”

The buzz from the phones around you’s louder than the roar of the cars on the street. You pull your phone out of your jacket pocket, but Jack’s faster, tapping open the news alert.

“Miles Dane reported missing en route to the grand opening of Mall Mirage,” he reads.

You take the phone from him and scan the article. Sure enough, the richest man in the country has vanished without a trace, leaving his press secretary, Camila Fern, to oversee the grand opening.

Somebody laughs. “Really? April fools?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him to pull off something like this, then show up last minute with his entourage.”

“Good publicity, it is.”

“No…” Jack whispers. You follow his gaze past the crowds to where a slender, tall woman in an Oscar-worthy dress and six inch heels clicks her way down the red carpet. She’s surrounded by a security detail, and wears a perfectly pinched frown on her face.

Camila Fern. It’s really her.

She was the person you’d seen on TV, on talk shows. People studied the way her scarlett hair fell in waves down to her waist, the way the corners of her mouth twisted into a mysterious smile. She was the model of the perfect woman: intelligent, elegant, absolutely gorgeous.

So of course you hated her.

She paused in front of the revolving glass doors. The crowd fell to a hush, stunned by her presence.

“It is my regret that Mr. Dane is unable to be here with us today to celebrate this groundbreaking moment. But I assure you that this monument to his success will remain just as astounding as it would be if he were here.

This is not a mall, but a temple. A tribute to today’s society, to our way of life, to progress. An example to all those around us of how we as a people can be — should be. Exceptional.

People of Midtown, USA, let me wholeheartedly welcome you to the greatest mall on Earth: the Mall Mirage.”

As she snipped the velvet ribbon around the doors, the security guards began lifting the stanchions. But nobody waited for them. They leaped over and ducked under the velvet cordons, trampling each other, stampeding with more force and vigor than cattle fleeing from gunshots. They poured through the doors and inside the mall. There was no stopping the flood.

Jack and you wait, letting the others buffet you from all sides. When the rush of people slows to a run, you take a deep breath. Shoulder to shoulder, you step inside.

Glass. All glass. A garden full of glass.

There are glass blown flowers balanced on pencil-thin stems. Class leaves paper-thin and marbled in a hundred colors. Glass birds and butterflies that shouldn’t be able to fly, but somehow do, hiding their mechanical innards beneath layers of shimmering crystal.

A dozen butterflies, blinding bright, drop a wreath of glass flowers around your neck, and flutter away in a puff of dazzling color. The flowers weigh nothing more than angel’s hair, tinkling more gently than fairy’s bells with each breath you take. When you brush them with a fingertip, they sing, humming like a finger on a wine glass.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Two birds tug away Jack’s clear-framed glasses to set a pair of sunglasses on his nose. They flit away, twittering in triumph over their newfound prize. Jack chases after them, shoving aside the children they fly over, brushing past flowers and leaves that shiver but do not shatter with his passing. As the birds make one last leap towards freedom, he lunges at them, brushing one’s wing, and gaining a single crystal feather that seems to be spun out of the very air itself. The bird flits away, clutching his glasses in its feet.

“Dang it,” Jack whispers. He straightens the sunglasses on his nose reflexively, squinting through them. “I can’t even see…”

He stops, staring with his mouth agape. Wordlessly, he passes the glasses to you.

They tint the world a shimmering sky blue, Mirage’s signature color. At first, that seems to be all they do. But as you sweep your gaze to the people around you, you see strange fashions, robotics parts, and foreign tongues. When you take off the glasses, you see reality again. Put them back on, and turquoise labels tag each difference.

Biofiber. Invisibility cloak. Self-healing cloth.

Augmented eye. Exoskeleton. Hovering shoes.

There are other labels, in chartreuse, one for each person around you. You stare at your classmate with frizzy salt and pepper hair.

“94% chance of becoming a scientist; 29% chance of winning a Nobel Prize” his label says. Seems to fit with what you know about the student who won last year’s science exhibition.

You check the young woman in athleisure. “Married. 73% chance of becoming a new mother.”

“Banker. Reckless. 67% chance of losing money to volatile stock market.”

A few labels are marked in crimson. As you read them, lead sinks through your gut.

“Dangerous. 56% chance of committing a violent crime.”

“Lazy. 43% chance of becoming unemployed.”

“Jealous. 89% chance of betrayal to friends.”

This can’t be right. A pair of glasses can’t just read a person’s life story off of their face. But you feel yourself lean away from them anyway.

You swallow and turn your gaze to your friend, Jack, who is taking in the sights of the mall. “Loyal. Chivalrous. 91% chance of becoming a lawyer. 63% chance of his passion leading him into trouble.”

It’s right. All of it.

You remember the times he went out of his way to help a friend, even when it meant losing sleep or precious time to study. You remember how he always insisted on giving the person on the street his change, how he took in a stray dog for a month, how he would yell at his teachers when he believed that they were in the wrong.

Does that mean the other predictions were right?

You look at yourself. “Too impatient for success. 81% chance of being a disappointment.”

It feels like a punch to your gut. You tear off the glasses and shove them back into Jack’s hands.

But you can’t shake the feeling. Could it be true? If his predictions were right, could yours be too? Could you really be doomed to fail?

You brush past the flowers and leaves, forcing your way through the mobs towards the elevators. Jack jogs to keep up.

“Let’s go to the food court,” you say.

There are ten elevators at the far end of the atrium. Nine of the clearest, shiniest glass. One, locked, of pure silver. You call an elevator for the hundredth floor, and the second from the left opens with a dry hiss.

There’s a woman inside, facing the panel of buttons. She's pressed every button from 1 to 100. You and Jack try to step out of the elevator, but the doors snap shut with crushing finality.

The woman speaks, but doesn’t turn. Her voice echoes as if she were speaking from inside a grand cavern. “I’m sorry, dears,” she says. “There’s a floor I want to go to that I remember from my childhood. I can’t quite figure out which one it is.”

Jack meets your eyes for a moment, one eyebrow raised.

“Excuse me,” he says, “but I don’t see how you could have been here when you were younger. This mall was only opened today.”

“Oh I know, sweetheart,” she says. She turns, as if to smile at us.

But it isn’t a smile. Or rather, it is only a smile. She has no face, only a gaping, grinning void where her hair ended and her neck began. A blackness illuminated only by the nicks of her jagged teeth.

She steps towards you until you can see the rows of shark-like teeth.

“Don’t be afraid, little ones,” she says. “I just want to enjoy this place, just like you.”

You suppress a scream and look to Jack for comfort, but he seems oblivious to the monstrosity before you. He’s smiling politely.

“Jack.” You grab his arm. “Jack. Can’t you see her? That void?”

Jack turns to look at you, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Then he catches a glimpse of the women out of the corner of his eye and his eyes go wide.

“What the —”

The woman shuffles forward, until she’s an arm’s length away.

There’s a ding and the elevator door slides open.

You go left. Jack goes right. You both duck around the woman and scramble past her, running everywhere — anywhere — away from that elevator.

The doors slide shut. She doesn’t follow you.

And now you find yourself… in a library?