02 - Mirrorheart
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10 – I Wasn’t Alone
She couldn’t open her eyes. She wasn’t sure she had eyes. . . Someone said- I can’t remember what they said. I can’t remember who said it. . . Am I dreaming? . . . . I was doing something. . . . . I was somewhere. I was doing something. . . . . Sometimes she was. Sometimes she wasn’t. Sometimes her name was there, but it was writing from a dream, refusing to resolve itself into letters her brain could make sense of. She knew who she was, of course she knew who she was, she just couldn’t…express the answer right now. . . . . . Fractured…
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09 – Come Crashing Down
Curt wasn’t even sure he was breathing as he sprinted down the hall. It was easy to ignore the looks his fellow recruits gave him as he ran – they were always giving him weird looks for one reason or another. Well. One reason. The defining reason. The only thing about him that mattered anymore. Solstice. Ex-Solstice. Monster. The same kind of monsters likely responsible for Newbie being MIA. He pounded his fist against the door of Ryan’s office – this wasn’t the polite and cautious knock of “Recruit Curt”. This wasn’t the knock he gave when he secretly hoped that Ryan wouldn’t open the door. His phone buzzed, but…
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08 – Disrupted Perfection
Curt opened his eyes, rolled over, and looked to the phone on his bedside table and grinned at the perfect timing. One minute before his alarm was due to go off – that meant his meds had worked exactly right. The latest formulation that Two had come up with was working well. There were still nightmares, but not always – and importantly, he was able to wake up, rested, and ready to face the world as “Recruit Curt” again. He grabbed his phone as the first vibration started, and killed the alarm. As the screen went black, the room went back to semi-darkness, lit only by the lights of the…
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07 – Why Can’t I?
I can do this. … … … – … …? …? ? . . I- … . I can- . I can do this. . What? What can I do? . I can do this. What was I doing? I was doing something. I- It was a long time ago. It felt like a long time ago. It felt- Nothing felt. Nothing- Why- Why can’t I- Why can’t I feel anything? Why can’t I- …? …? … …
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06 – Last Requests
Every tiny detail seemed blown out of proportion. The sensation of his own breath. The brightness of the lab lights. The touch of fabric against his skin. Every pinpoint of information that was never otherwise considered. Ryan wiped his cheeks, aware of every line on his palm touching the skin. Every unnoticed detail of hands he’d had for over a century. Hands he’d always feared shared too many details with Rhys. So much – too much – of his early life had been in the shadow of a man simultaneously gone and not gone – as was probably the way with other templated agents. Other templates though, he knew, were…
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05 – A Step Towards an Ending
No news, it was said, was good news. Central was taking their time to respond to his request. He’d spent a long hour in his office, alone and waiting for judgement, before deciding that if these were his last moments alive, he didn’t want to spend them alone. Ryan had walked through the halls of his Agency, making what might be his last memories, before joining Jones and his comatose recruit in a hurriedly-assembled lab on level four. Four was primarily unused, except for a bit of secondary storage, and some supplies for “end of the world” scenarios. It was the right choice – a safer option than having a…
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04 – Status Quo
Curt winced as the clipboard came down on his head. ‘Who the fuck taught you first aid?’ Parker-2 asked, apparently aghast at the job he’d done of cleaning and bandaging the wound. ‘You did, dickhead,’ he retorted and smirked at the doctor. ‘Shouldn’t I be smacking you?’ ‘Don’t flirt, O’Connor, besides, spanking costs extra.’ Parker-2 grabbed a wheeled stool and sat. ‘You did a decent job,’ he said as he cleaned the wound. ‘Could be improved though. You’ve done the basic course, but you never came back for the advanced stuff. It would look really good on your aide application if you’ve already got that squared away.’ ‘Doc, I don’t-’…
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03 – Shockwave
Before the shatter Curt ducked behind a half-full industrial bin and the detritus that had accumulated around it. It would do for a few minutes – the collection of empty boxes, packing plastic and deep shadows would keep everyone off his trail for a moment at least. He kept himself silent and still for a moment, listening for any sounds of pursuit. Any start-stop footsteps that meant someone was trying to be sneaky, and pounding of heavy boots from Solstice tryhards wanting another kill. Nothing. Whatever fights were going on, there was nothing close enough to mess with him. With one more look around, looking for silhouettes in the dark,…
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02 – Ripples
Ryan stared at the drone, each second as slow as eternity. Between each eternity, he felt like he could still see like Death. Could still see all the possibilities and consequences as part of him tried to calculate which was the best way to go. And he knew, that in a hundred other worlds, other Ryans were just as frozen, just as overwhelmed by the decision. With each breath, a new reality was born. Doppelgangers who ran for Faerie. Men who snatched up another shard of mirror to wish their way out of it. Agents who were frozen by the gaze of the drone. Reynolds had always described him as…
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01 – Everything Lost, Everything to Lose
There was an innate stillness to corpses that always set Ryan at unease. All the small motions of life extinguished, the spark gone, nothing but the husk remaining. Stef’s dead eyes stared out into the night, and he blinked back tears. He closed his eyes, holding the image of Stef alive, happy, questioning everything and exploring magic – tried to hold onto the precious few things he knew about her – then took another breath. With a shaking hand, he touched the jagged, misshapen piece of mirror that jutted out from her chest, and made a wish. He could feel the magic flowing in the mirror, static and overwhelming, so…
