The floating glass reflected on both sides. They all did. And the mirrors weren’t floating either, no matter what it looked like. Hair-thin threads of monofilament rose into the blackness up towards the distant ceiling, each one as taut as the string to any violin.
LizAlec reached out and tapped one of the threads, pulling back in shock as the wire sliced into her fingertip. Not monofilament but molywire. Behind LizAlec someone laughed.
“Sharp things cut,” said a voice.
LizAlec spun round and saw only herself reflected in a mirror off to the side.
“It’s a maze,” said Sister Aaron.
“I know that,” LizAlec muttered bitterly, her eyes searching steps and runways, looking for Sister Aaron. “Multi-level 3D.”
“Oh no,” the voice sounded genuinely amused. “Not triD, it’s very definitely quad...”
LizAlec was still trying to track down the voice when her own reflection swirled and faded in every glass LizAlec could see. She felt like someone had kicked her feet out from under her. Staring back was her own face but younger. The hair was neat and tied back into a plait, the violet eyes less hard, more hurt. Her mouth was petulant, over-glossed with black shu uemura.
As for the clothes... embroidered trousers, velvet shirt with pearl buttons: she wouldn’t be seen dead wearing them, not now. But LizAlec recognized herself right enough. That night at the Crash&Burn in Bastille, when Fixx sent her over undrinkable brandy.
“Not far back enough?”
LizAlec swung round but there was no one standing there behind her. The only thing that had changed was the girl in the mirror. It was still LizAlec, looking younger still, more haunted. Ghost-ridden. In place of the sullen fourteen-year-old in a velvet shirt was a naked twelve-year-old, hands crossed tight over her hollow gut, shoulders hunched forward to hide tiny breasts. She was sitting on the edge of a bed, tears streaming down her anguished face, dark shadow hiding her thighs like a swirl of blood.
She could have been the model for Edvard Munch’s Puberty.
Or for Felician Rops’s engraving of Don Juan’s Greatest Conquest.
But she was neither.
And the old man in the background struggling into a dressing gown woven from silk genetically engineered to contain pure gold was not an artist. LizAlec knew his face, every child did. It was the face on all the medals, on the holograms used to emboss cartes blanches and nobliques. The Prince Imperial looked thoughtful, even slightly sad, but there was no regret in his smoke-grey eyes.
No remorse.
No uncertainty.
“You owe Lady Clare nothing,” said a voice. And this time when LizAlec turned round, Sister Aaron was standing right behind her. “Lady Clare’s not even your real mother. You’re a clone like me. And not even her clone.”
“No,” LizAlec shook her head frantically. She’d have known if she was a clone, LizAlec was certain of it.
“You belong here,” Sister Aaron said and the child in the mirror vanished as Sister Aaron gave LizAlec back her reflection. Except now they both knew exactly what flaws were hidden inside. Which didn’t make LizAlec feel good about herself — and it didn’t make LizAlec feel good about Sister Aaron, either.
Emotional manipulation, the girl thought bitterly, that’s all this was. Nothing more. She stopped looking at the mirrors and stared instead at the woman in front of her. In most ways Sister Aaron was way too exotic for LizAlec to understand, but in one way she wasn’t... LizAlec figured Sister Aaron had to have the same circuitry inside her head. Apparently that was something she shouldn’t have thought.
“Make your choice,” said Sister Aaron abruptly, and every mirror around LizAlec reverted to the crying child. “Be this, or be us. While you still can...” Her voice was cold and contemptuous, as if LizAlec had failed some test.
Maybe I have, LizAlec thought, but that changed nothing. Looking at Sister Aaron, LizAlec knew just what she intended to do. She was going to take back Anchee’s shrine, even if she had to kill Sister Aaron to get it. And then, when she got back to Paris, she was going to face down the bitch she’d thought was her mother and ask the questions no child was meant to ask.
Why?
Who gave you the right?
Why me?
The two women stared at each other, a hand’s breadth apart. And then LizAlec moved, spinning not at Sister Aaron but towards a mirror, hands flicking out in front of her. Shiori’s razor-sharp katana was in LizAlec’s hand before she was even conscious of it, metal flowing from between her fingers into a black blade that swung in a dazzling arc.
Katana hit molywire but it was the wire that snapped, whipping roofwards to smash another mirror on its way. A second stroke and another mirror broke free, falling a hundred metres to smash against the steel floor below.
Hove the sound of breaking—
That was Fixx for you, still polluting her head with soundbites even when she was trying to save his life. Actually, if Alex Gibson was right, it was everybody’s life, more or less. Lady-fucking-Clare included.
“Last chance,” said Sister Aaron.
LizAlec shook her head. No, her last chance was long gone. “Give me Anchee’s shrine,” LizAlec demanded and Sister Aaron laughed. Sharp as broken glass and cold as wind through an attic.
Bringing up the blade of her katana, LizAlec swirled towards another mirror and high-tension molywire ricocheted up into the distance as another sobbing child crashed to fragments on a walkway three levels beneath. Suddenly, there were mirrors everywhere, what looked like thousands of them, edging walkways at every level, reflecting LizAlec back at herself until she was being buried under her own memories.
LizAlec swung the blade in a clumsy arc around her head and turned to face Sister Aaron. “Stop it,” said LizAlec. “Stop it now.”
The face that smiled back was more beautiful than any LizAlec had seen, more beautiful even than Anchee. But the curve to her perfect lips was cold in the way that a Big Black was cold and her blue eyes were hard, inhuman.
“Walk away,” Sister Aaron offered. “Leave The Arc. Take that ship and your friends...” For a second LizAlec saw Fixx and Leon through the eyes of Sister Aaron. A washed-up, has-been tetsuo and a would-be street punk. “Take them and go.”
“No,” said LizAlec and knew she was saying the word three years too late and that no one would have listened to her back then anyway. But that wasn’t the point. Even late can be better than never learning to say it at all.
“Get out of my head.”
LizAlec made her blade sweep an infinity spiral in front of her, tracing its figure of eight faster than human eye could see. Both LizAlec’s feet were placed correctly, one forward for advance, one back and half turned to balance LizAlec on the rocking walkway... It wouldn’t convince the St Lucius sensei but it still felt pretty neat to LizAlec.
Something about it didn’t convince Sister Aaron either. Instead of backing away she stepped straight into the path of the blade, instinct making LizAlec throw wide her blow. Sister Aaron smiled.
“Sweet, aren’t you?” The voice had gone back to being amused. Elegant fingers reached out to caress LizAlec’s smooth cheek and the girl screamed. When Sister Aaron stepped back her immaculate fingers were lacquered in Mood.
Sister Aaron moved in again. Only this time LizAlec stepped back and swung her blade hard at Sister Aaron’s face, blinking as the woman spun effortlessly away. Fight or flight? There was no contest really. LizAlec turned tail and fled, sliding down to the next walkway, slamming into the bottom so hard that mirrors around the walkway rang like wind chimes.
Three directions, out to each side and straight ahead — and she didn’t have the faintest which one to choose. LizAlec went ahead — it was easier than trying to throw a turn on a walkway that rocked like a badly-built house of cards.
Ice dragged at her throat as LizAlec pulled frozen air into her lungs and jumped another flight of steps, hanging a right because that was all there was. She jumped again and insti
nct saved her — pure, animal, unmissable — as she threw up her sword in front of her and promptly catapulted onto her back as her blade slammed into molywire strung throat-high across the walkway.
Scrambling to her feet, LizAlec hacked at the molywire, severing it in a flash of sparks. She took the next landing at a lope, sword in front of her this time. In one way, every walkway she reached was the same. Mirrors overlapped mirrors, everywhere, in all directions, and all of them showed her...
There were gaps between the mirrors, spaces a body might slide through to reach walkways behind. But there was no way for LizAlec to find the gaps, short of running her hands over the face of every mirror she met, looking for where it ended and space began.
So instead LizAlec cut down her reflections, shattering the memories she’d worked so hard to forget. LizAlec as a small child, crying on her first day at the Lycee; the morning she lost her best friend; the Imperial ball, LizAlec sitting on a gilded chair on the edge while the Prince Imperial’s bastard son Louis danced with someone else; that first time Fixx got drunk at the club and walked out on her. Small hurts and bigger ones, all ripped out of her head.
LizAlec slammed the razor-edged katana into molywire, sending memory after memory crashing into shards onto the walkways below. However many mirrors she cut there were always more behind, more walkways, more steps... LizAlec took the next flight at a run, blade in front of her — no wires — and slid right to find herself face to face with Sister Aaron.
LizAlec’s blade swung for the woman’s throat and glass shattered.
“You can run, but you can’t hide...” Framed in another mirror, the ash-blonde woman adjusted her hair. Not a strand of it was out of place: no sweat patches stained her white sarong, the bitch’s hairline wasn’t even damp.
LizAlec shattered that mirror too and behind her Sister Aaron laughed, the real Sister Aaron this time.
“God, I love this game,” she told a breathless LizAlec. “I can’t tell you when I last had this much fun.” Fingers reached for LizAlec’s face and the girl ducked back, sword flicked up in front of her.
“Back off,” LizAlec hissed, really meaning it, and swung, hard as hell, straight at Sister Aaron’s head. But the woman just stepped sideways, elusive on her feet. “Temper, temper...”
LizAlec attacked again, swinging viciously towards Sister Aaron’s head and when that missed, she cut down hard towards the woman’s bare legs. Let her walk on stumps... Neither blow came close.
“Honey,” snapped a voice deep inside her, “Don’t waste your energy.” LizAlec froze, then jerked back as Sister Aaron’s hooked fingers whistled past her eyes, so close that LizAlec could feel the breeze.
“Alex?”
“Alex!” Outrage filled LizAlec’s head. “You know what Alex-fucking-Gibson knows about close combat? Fuck all... Get down,” snapped the voice and LizAlec did, Sister Aaron’s clawed nails whistling over her head. “Rule one, don’t let the bitch make you fight on her territory.” The voice sighed. “Well, you’ve blown that. Rule two, find solid ground...”
LizAlec hesitated.
“That means fucking jump,” the voice said irritably so LizAlec did, clearing a short run of steps and stumbling on the walkway below. “Jump again,” snapped the voice. And LizAlec ran straight into a mirror.
“Sweet fucking Nazarene. Can’t you do anything right?”
“No,” LizAlec shook her head and pulled herself unsteadily to her feet. It seemed she couldn’t, not properly.
“All right, let’s try this...” Neurons exploded within LizAlec’s cortex, burning into a double matrix of endlessly swirling impulses as axons and dendritic nerves sparked off each other, hollow as ghost fire. All LizAlec felt was a lurch in perception, no stronger than the beginning of an ice run, and then someone else was looking out through her eyes.
“Don’t worry,” the someone said, using LizAlec’s voice. “Everyone’s more than one person.”
“Speak for yourself, darling,” said Sister Aaron, climbing up the stairs that LizAlec had been intending to go down. She still wore the white silk sarong fastened under her arms, her legs were still bare and her face was as empty and beautiful as ever, but that wasn’t what LizAlec noticed. In Sister Aaron’s hand was a sword, black with a silver cutting edge and a gently curving blade.
The woman swung the blade lightly in front of her and inside her mind LizAlec felt the ghost grow suddenly tense. Then the tension seeped away to leave nothing but whistling waste-like emptiness.
“Close down,” whispered the voice in her head. LizAlec tried, but didn’t know what she was trying to do.
“Think hollow,” said the voice.
Sister Aaron smiled, still swinging the blade lazily. “Relying on the hired help again, are we, darlings?” The woman’s wrist flicked lightly sideways and her blade skimmed up towards LizAlec’s unprotected throat.
It never came close to connecting. Inside the same split second, LizAlec blocked the incoming blade in a crash of sparks and pivoted her own sword around Sister Aaron’s, pushing it to one side. Without stopping, LizAlec sliced sideways at waist level to open a rip in the blonde woman’s white sarong that beaded with blood along its edges.
“Little bitch.”
The mind pushing at the outside edge of LizAlec’s faded slightly as Sister Aaron drew back into herself, fingers touching the cut on her hip, as if she couldn’t believe the wound was there.
“Okay,” said the voice, sounding tentatively relieved. As if what it had feared would happen just maybe wasn’t going to. The walkway still rocked below LizAlec’s feet as she circled Sister Aaron, but this time LizAlec had no trouble keeping her balance. She had the blade held in front of her, angled off-centre, ready to block any slice Sister Aaron might throw.
Left.
Right.
The tall woman’s sword curved in, only to thud into LizAlec’s silver blade, sparks flying, shock waves numbing the nerves in both their arms. Block, cut, block — fighting got easier once you got the empty rhythm of the moves.
“Finish her,” said the voice in LizAlec’s head, but the girl only stepped back, raised her blade and began to circle again. She could do block and parry, at least she could now. Doing death was something else again. LizAlec didn’t do death. She’d never even killed an insect, except by accident.
“What about Brother Michael?” The voice in her head sounded exasperated.
That was different. Anyway, she hadn’t killed him, that had been left to the Big Black.
“Get real,” the voice told her. LizAlec didn’t want to. She very seriously, very definitely didn’t want to get real at all. She was just about coping with the idea that this wasn’t real, that maybe she was merely insane.
“Honey,” said the voice. “If we don’t fucking finish this, she will...”
And that looked to be true, too. Sister Aaron was closing in, pushing LizAlec back towards a glass behind her, until the girl had no more room to retreat.
“Fall,” the voice snapped and LizAlec fell, hearing Sister Aaron’s sword explode into the glass above, showering LizAlec with razor-sharp splinters. In front of LizAlec, her own sword was changing shape, its blade shrinking down to dagger length.
“Now. Roll,” said the voice and LizAlec rolled in through Sister Aaron’s legs, stabbing upwards as she did, hearing a wet sucking sound as metal severed flesh and then ground noisily against bone.
LizAlec didn’t need the second blow, the one that would reach back and snap the hamstring of Sister Aaron’s left ankle because the woman’s bowels were already voiding, but LizAlec cut the hamstring anyway and the screaming woman buckled sideways, blue eyes already blank with shock, her blade retracting into itself, melting to a silver puddle next to her twitching hand.
“Finish it, honey,” demanded the voice. “You have to.”
Unfortunately for LizAlec that was true. Kneeling over Sister Aaron, LizAlec felt for the woman’s heart and found its beat erratic and weak beneath one
perfectly denned breast. Closing her own eyes, the girl positioned her blade between two thin ribs and pushed.
“Now get that fucking shrine and get out of here, okay? No tears, no hanging about, no shit.”
Not even bothering to take one last look at the corpse behind her, LizAlec flipped down some stairs with speed she didn’t know she had, rolled into the gap between a mirror and the walkway and dropped into space, landing lightly twenty feet below. She was moving again almost before she was aware she’d landed, spinning sideways, cutting a wire she didn’t even know she’d seen and then taking the next flight of steps at a single jump.
If she stopped now she’d never start again. LizAlec didn’t know how she knew, she just did. Or maybe she didn’t. Maybe it was the person looking out of her eyes who knew. Landing with another roll, LizAlec came face to face with herself in the mirror and saw a half-naked silver exotic looking back. Shark cartilage overlaid with lizard skin protected her shoulders, her eyes were silver and her fingers flexed and unflexed to show wicked molyglass nails that sprang out and retracted like those of a cat. Her exotic’s top was covered with an open silver Issaki Mashui quilted jacket but from the hips down she was bare, her body hair depilated, pudenda sealed with three gold labia rings.
“What the...”
“Razz,” said Razz, and LizAlec felt herself flip sideways, then run for another flight of stairs. “See me while you can.”
“My mother.”
“If you say so, honey.” The voice sounded surprised but cool about it all the same. LizAlec needed to stop, to slow down and talk but the presence behind her eyes wouldn’t let up, hurrying her ruthlessly down towards ground level. Making LizAlec ignore her mirrored reflection that changed with each drop, each new walkway. She’d long since ditched her own past, bleak though scraps of it were, and traded up to worse possibilities. The mirrors gave form to fears LizAlec had fought to keep nameless. All that had been locked inside her head was reflected endlessly in the surrounding, suffocating reflections. Infinity and horror stuffed into boxes.
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