Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 95475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Contain the network—would require more resources and power than he possessed. The system was too large, too distributed. He’d need a dozen practitioners working in concert, and even then, success wasn’t guaranteed.
Or subvert the network. Turn Charlotte’s creation against Gideon’s intentions.
Destruction would hurt the city. Containment was impossible.
But subversion—that he could attempt.
New plan forming as he navigated back toward the access ladder. Use Delphine’s stabilizing influence to anchor specific nodes. Create a counter-network of calm within Gideon’s storm. Turn his surveillance system into an early warning system. Make the mirrors watch for threats instead of storing ammunition for philosophical warfare.
But it required making Delphine part of the essential infrastructure. She may have already agreed to the anchoring, but it was the one thing he’d tried to avoid—using her as a magical resource; exactly what Gideon wanted.
The water level was dropping. Storm passing, runoff draining toward the river. His boots found purchase on stone instead of slipping through current.
He reached the ladder and began the climb back to surface level. Thirty feet up through darkness, metal rungs cold against his palms, the weight of what he’d discovered pressing down with more force than the storm above ever could.
Rain still poured when he emerged. The fresh air was sharp after the tunnel’s atmosphere. He was soaked, exhausted, and covered in limestone dust and algae.
But he had new understanding.
Charlotte had built a mirror network to preserve memory. Gideon was using it to weaponize memory. Bastien needed to transform it into something else entirely—a network that remembered but didn’t control. That connected but didn’t invade. That served rather than surveilled.
He had no idea if that was even possible.
But standing in the rain with the Quarter spread before him and Delphine asleep in his apartment and Charlotte’s century-old creation pulsing beneath the streets, he knew he’d try anyway.
He turned on Dauphine Street as dawn broke. The rain had stopped. Puddles covered the pavement, holding lamplight and building facades in their still surfaces.
Bastien looked down.
The puddle at his feet showed everything except him. Empty space where his reflection should form. He moved to the next puddle. Same result. Clear water, perfect conditions, nothing looking back.
His reflection was gone.
Not from one puddle. From every reflective surface in the Quarter. The price the network had extracted for accepting his frequency—anonymity purchased through integration.
The city’s mirrors would no longer see him.
He raised his hand. The puddle showed only sky, only dawn breaking over buildings. He pressed his palm against wet pavement. Solid. Real. His hand left no print in the water’s film.
Morning sounds filtered through streets. Delivery trucks. Shop owners raising shutters. The city waking to commerce and heat.
He turned toward home.
The puddles showed nothing as he walked. The glass storefronts reflected everything except his passing. Brass door handles held only empty air.
In the dark water that drained toward the river, nothing looked back.
Chapter
Twenty-One
Bastien stood on Dauphine Street as dawn broke across the Quarter, rain-soaked and hollow. The puddles at his feet showed everything—buildings, sky, the faint orange glow of streetlamps—everything except him.
He crouched beside the nearest one. Pressed his palm flat against the water’s surface. Ripples spread outward, distorting the reflected buildings, but where his hand should cast shadow or break the image, there was nothing. Just empty space shaped like absence.
He moved to the next puddle. Same result.
A shop window three doors down. Glass door of the building behind him. The side mirror of a parked car. He checked them all with the methodical thoroughness of someone cataloging disaster, and each surface confirmed what the first puddle had shown.
His reflection was gone.
Not delayed. Not distorted. Gone.
The network had accepted his frequency during the storm, integrated his signature into its foundation, and the price had been visibility. He was woven into the mirror lattice now, part of its structure rather than something it could observe.
Bastien straightened. His clothes were still damp from the vault, limestone dust streaked across his jacket, and exhaustion pressed against his skull. He needed to document this. Needed to understand what losing his reflection meant for the investigation, for Gideon’s ability to track him, for—
His phone buzzed.
Delphine: Where are you? Your note said Maman’s but you’re not answering.
He checked the time. Seven-fifteen. She’d been awake for at least half an hour, probably longer. Long enough to find his apartment empty, read the note he’d left about checking on storm damage, and start worrying when he didn’t respond.
Another text arrived before he could answer the first.
Delphine: I’m heading to the shop. Meet me there.
Bastien: On my way. Don’t touch any mirrors.
Delphine: Why would I touch mirrors?
Bastien: Just don’t.
He pocketed the phone and started walking. His boots splashed through standing water, each puddle a reminder of what he’d lost. The Quarter was waking around him—shopkeepers sweeping water away from their doorsteps, tourists emerging tentatively to assess storm damage, the smell of coffee and wet stone mixing in air that felt scrubbed clean.