(Amber’s POV)
{ Textile Factory storage, close to the railway station. }
Amber read the typed script on quality paper, with the Section 5 logo in the top right corner.
Her deputy was in the carriage with Ola, while a third member rode shotgun with the coachman.
Amber turned her horse and raced through the alleys, taking the shortest routes to reach the textile factory.
She really didn’t like being in these parts of Astrohelm. It smelled terrible, and there were too many people invading her personal space. Saying that the chances of running into stupidity increased exponentially would be an understatement. Well, she was the one riding a horse through populated streets, so she supposed stupidity already had her in a stranglehold.
Amber stopped outside the perimeter of the factory and looked up at the steel pipes overhead. Gas, water, and steam ran through them, and in the distance, she saw artificial waterfalls emerging from the top units of the factory.
Amber got off her horse and started walking around the factory compound with a mirror in her hand.
She looked into the mirror as she walked. Other than her reflection, she could see people walking or working in the background. Only she could see these background figures, for they did not exist in the physical world.
Yet, once upon a time, they did. This was history playing out as witnessed by shadows.
Or at least she believed so.
Amber wasn’t sure whether a whole world existed within the mirror or if mirrors simply rendered a world whenever she looked into them. She had been a High Extractor for seven years, yet she’d made practically no progress in advancing her pathway.
Not that she was complaining. Though her Sequence 7 confused her to high heavens, she worked in a middle-league company as one of their strategic assets, and her monthly paycheck made that abundantly clear. Her life was good, and her powers were, quite frankly, terrifying.
Amber paused in her stride when she saw twelve figures walk through a hole in the chain-link fence, carrying a large number of packed duffel bags.
She drew power from within herself and let her will drain into the mirror. The figures suddenly turned and stared at her, some even opening a duffel bag and arming themselves.
Amber quickly cut off her ‘energy supply’ and turned the mirror to face the ground. She walked all the way to the railway tracks behind the factory and dropped the mirror, shattering it to pieces.
A train would make those pieces even smaller, and she would light incense for those in the assault team.
She’d never really understood what happened to people whenever she brought their reflections to life. Her sequence was called ‘Contractor.’ It was from the Midnight pathway and was classified as Unregulated by EIPO.
However, none of the reflections had ever shown the ability to talk, and they attacked her soon after they started moving. Therefore, the sequence name never made much sense to her. Experimenting with her sequence was also a dangerous affair, not only to everyone else but also to herself.
After getting rid of the mirror, she sneaked back into the factory through the hole in the chain-link fence. She was pretty sure she didn’t have to worry about the twelve people anymore, but not confirming whether they truly were incapacitated would fall under the ‘stupid things that could get me killed’ category.
Amber climbed onto one decommissioned steam tank and carefully walked on a suspended steel pipe heading to an adjacent building. After squeezing through the opening where the pipes entered the brick building, she got an aerial view of the powered-down machines.
Twelve people busied themselves preparing for their assault. Some were doing routine checks on their weapons and outfits, while others were having a smoke on the conveyor belt.
They were most likely waiting for a signal, oblivious to the delay in the mirrored actions of their reflections on various surfaces.
Amber crouched and watched their idle motions steadily turn from simple repetition to obsessive compulsion. No matter how many times she’d done this, she still didn’t know how any of it worked or how it was even possible.
Soon, the assault team realized that something was terribly wrong, but there was nothing they could do about it now.
Amber climbed down in time to catch the spark of defiance in their eyes go out, replaced by beady stares that reminded her of the eerie reflections she saw whenever her powers drained into reflective surfaces.
The assault team continued what they were doing, and soon, their out-of-sync reflections blended into each other, achieving harmony once again. The only difference was that they were no longer themselves.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Amber believed that their reflections either possessed them or switched places with them. She had no idea whether it was reversible, but that wasn’t her problem.
Amber searched the building for clues on who hired them but came up empty. The textile factory was simply a temporary hiding spot, and the team only brought with them the bare minimum.
Amber went back to her horse, rode it back to Miss Ola’s carriage, and then fell into formation at the rear. The beads in her headband turned back to their white color.
They steadily got closer to the train station that would take them to the outskirts of the city, to the Midnight Church. A loud whistle from the station let them know of the train’s arrival, and calmly, Amber nodded. The whistle was the signal the assault team had been waiting for. She could see the textile factory from where they were, and it was seven minutes past three o’clock.
---
(Zeraki’s POV)
The CBD had five numbered mega-buildings that were visible from within the restaurant they were in. What the numbers stood for was anyone’s guess.
Suspended steel pipes supplied steam or gas to buildings, and concrete halls served as streets above ground. These streets then went on to compound themselves and transform the district skylines into a network of interlocking, intersecting structures that let very little natural light reach those on the ground. Commuter trains had their rails weaving above, around, or through buildings.
“It feels cramped here,” Zeraki idly commented.
“Mm!” Hadiza sipped her juice through a straw. “I know what you mean, big man. Regulations and setbacks are practically non-existent. These corpos keep building structures above each other and try to take up as much space as they can. It’s practically a miracle finding any public places like parks around here.”
“Every city has a district that looks like this?” Zeraki asked, looking at the mess of steel and concrete outside the window.
“No. Just cities in this duchy. Where I’m from, the 5 families have had consistent urban planning for every city that goes back may be twelve generations.”
“Why doesn’t the empire step in?”
“Ha! I don’t know, big man. However, Ola does have a hypothesis. Every duchy runs on a philosophy. The same goes for the empire. The empire believes that its impossible to rule over all people with the same set of rules.
“Like saying you want to make a world for all animals. If you make the whole world a forest, the aquatic will die out, if you make it a dessert, then you have a world soon to be ruled by camel overlords.
“ ‘People’ is a general term, like ‘Animals’. There are people that love freedom above all else. There are those that love order. Those that love competition. We have those that value interpersonal bonds. Those whose religion is of utmost importance and the list goes on.
“The empire accepts that different people require different biomes. The Burton duchy is a ‘freedom and equality’ biome, resulting in very little government interference; and therefore very little oversight and regulation.
“Actually, the last time they did anything was when they introduced weekends into the calendar. I wasn’t even born yet!”
Tara looked at Hadiza with so much adoration and she preened at the attention.
“I’m a smart cookie right?” Hadiza fished for complements.
“Smartest choom I know!”
It was an interesting hypothesis. One that made so much sense. Zeraki just wondered whether it was true.
After the lunch break, Hadiza took them to the spa Ola brought her to before her advancement. She said that the celebration wasn’t done until after she had a good time with everyone she considered a friend.
One look at the prizes had Number 7 gritting his teeth, cussing like a coal miner. [ One hundred gold per adult and forty gold per child! They better be using Midnight’s bathwater and heated with divine flames. ]
Number 4 and 3 started drifting away from Number 7 after hearing him cuss. Zeraki was considering moving away too. Divine smiting didn’t sound like an appealing way to kick the bucket.
Hadiza proposed that they come back in a few months but Zeraki paid upfront for all of them. He wasn’t short on cash especially after his escapades in Valentino territory. And now that he was thinking about it, may be clearing out Valentino safes was a viable income stream.
——
Zeraki relaxed. The tension draining from his stiff muscles as a chiropractor cracked his joints and then a masseuse massaged his entire body. Before him was a broad floor to ceiling window that stretched from wall to wall, giving a breath taking view of the city.
At some point, he’d started relaying Number 4’s conversational ideas to Hadiza who was in the next room with Tara; separated by a paper wall.
Hadiza was silent, face in the circular pillow, looking into empty air and imagined a prototype.
First, a dark point appeared that moved, forming a perfect circle of a random radius. Then the circle filled with the sheen of copper. Evenly spaced teeth depressions appeared on the smooth circumference. She imagined the gear moving to the side and then she started designing a new component.
Her eyes kept flickering, giving anyone watching the impression that there existed something suspended that only she could see.
“I really want to build this, big-man.” Hadiza said as the components started slotting into each other, yearning evident in her tone, “Can’t you at least give me a hint of this power source of yours? I doubt its gas or steam. I mean, I don’t see any pressure regulators or perspiration drains.”
“One, its only a hypothesis, Hadiza. Two, we have a lot of time on our hands. We can test it out tomorrow.”
“Fine.” She sighed and let the device her imagination conjured fade, “what happened to calling me choom, eh big man? Tara, do you think he changed his mind about me?”
"Nah. He's a right proper gent. You're the queer fish." Tara droned as the masseuse worked her magic on her back.
‘What time is it?’ Zeraki mentally voiced his query.
[ Number 3: Brothers. Make yourselves useful and tell us what time it is on the tik tik sticks? ]
[ Number 4: Its half past three o’clock, Otousan.] he then turned to Number 3 and pointed at a large analog clock on the back wall, [ By any chance, is that what you mean by ‘tik tik sticks’? ]
She ignored him and continued glaring at the empty massage beds as if willing herself to manifest a physical body.
[ Number 7: I don’t think she can read an analog clock… ]
[ Number 3: How am I supposed to know how to read those? I wasn’t born in the stone age! ]
Boom!
Zeraki pushed himself up to get a better view. He could see an explosion in the distance on one of the railway tracks.
[ Number 3: …should we go check it out? ]
[ Number 7: Why? It has nothing to do with us. ]
‘Leave it. You can’t reach it without breaking the concealment charm.’
Zeraki laid back down causing the masseuse to snap out of her shock and after a moment of hesitation, she also went back to continue with the session.
——