Dyna had been given the incredibly imprecise instruction of bonding with her selected artifact. It was only after arriving in Idaho Falls that Dyna realized that Doctor Cross hadn’t told her how to actually do that. Neither had the technician, Harold—pretty much all he had done was complain about Doctor Cross. Under normal circumstances, she would simply have called them up and asked.

There were two problems with that at the moment. The first was that neither had given her contact information. That wasn’t that big of a problem. Surely a receptionist at Carroll would know how to get into contact with one of them. The other problem was that Dyna didn’t have a phone.

Nobody had returned or replaced her cell phone to her following the incident down in Psychodynamics.

That wasn’t that big of a problem either. Her hotel room had a phone in it and, although rare, it was still possible to find public pay phones.

Really, both problems were just excuses. The real problem was that Dyna didn’t want to ask for help. Not yet, not so soon. As exciting as making some kind of progress felt, an undercurrent of helplessness tingled at the back of her mind. Like she wasn’t doing anything for herself. Others were doing everything for her.

Dyna had never been taught that asking for help was wrong or a personal failing. At the same time, if she just went limp and let everyone else push her into the places they wanted her to be, could she say that she was accomplishing anything?

She wanted to do at least this much on her own. And if it failed? Well, she could afford to spend another few days out in the city. It wasn’t like classes and lectures were doing much for her. Besides, they wouldn’t have simply forgotten to tell her about her only objective. This was probably something she had to do on her own.

Sighing, Dyna leaned back in her cushioned booth seat only to lean forward once again after deciding to take a bite from her large huckleberry-filled danish. It had been warm when she first got it, but cooling hadn’t hurt it at all. Since moving to Idaho for the institute, huckleberries had become something of a vice. They were like blueberries if blueberries were actually good. And here at Bacchus, a small café in the middle of Idaho Falls that really should have been a winery based on the name, they made huckleberries into some fine pastries.

Packing up her life and moving from the bustling Los Angeles up to the middle of nowhere in Idaho had been… an experience. Some parts were familiar. Idaho Falls was about a half hour away from the Carroll Institute. There was absolutely nothing between the city and the school. Just flat desert. She was used to deserts, more or less. Though the desert wasn’t all that notable inside L.A. and she didn’t venture out all that often.

Aside from that, however. There wasn’t much in the city either. Flat farms surrounded a flat city. The tallest building was probably a three story hotel and about the only entertainment was a movie theater. The entire population of Idaho Falls roughly matched just the student body of the University of Southern California. Except here, the people were spread out over a fairly wide area.

Not that Dyna came for entertainment. She was just here to think in peace. Bacchus had a much better selection of pastries and their hot chocolate always had just the right amount of whipped cream. The coffee shop in the Carroll dorms wasn’t terrible, but it was almost constantly surrounded by psychics. As was everywhere else in Carroll.

Dyna’s first trip out here had been in the hopes that a café in the middle of the city would have less interruptions. And so far, she had been right. So it provided the perfect place to bond with her new artifact as well.

The other few customers, spaced out with empty tables between, didn’t bother her. They didn’t harass her, peer into her thoughts, or otherwise care about what she was doing. Not that most people at Carroll bothered her. It was more like they thought she just wasn’t worth the effort to talk to.

She certainly didn’t need people sitting around reading her mind while she was narcissistically admiring herself in the hand mirror. There wasn’t much else to do with the artifact. So far, she hadn’t figured out how to operate the camera. The only piece that she could move was the latch that opened the mirror. And the hinge, but that probably didn’t count. Dyna had tried twisting and pulling at a few other parts, but, not wanting to break the device, hadn’t tried with any real force.

Sitting in the café, Dyna tried to avoid looking like a creep as she pointed the lens around the room. Artifacts were supposedly psionically sensitive objects that would help her to focus and hone her own psychic abilities. So far, she wasn’t getting anything. As far as she could tell, it was just a simple pocket mirror.

Pointing the lens at three other customers and the man behind the counter did nothing. She tried turning it on herself, but if that did anything, she couldn’t tell. It was a spy camera, so it made sense that there was some way to activate the lens. If she could figure that out, it might solve her problems.

Maybe if she knew more about the history of the device. That it had belonged to a spy seemed obvious from its design. Cross hadn’t said much else beyond that.

Setting the mirror down on the low table in front of her, Dyna leaned back and tried to imagine just what might its owner have been like? A James Bond type? A man walking clandestine through a city, taking photographs of important people or buildings that were relevant for some adventurous mission. Perhaps there would be pursuers, the villains catching on to the spy and trying to get rid of him.

Of course, a Bond movie would quickly dispense with the spy gimmick, if it bothered with it in the first place, and turn into an action movie. The actual owner of this mirror probably hadn’t been through something quite so adventurous. Dangerous, yes, but more in the sense that enemies would just shoot him rather than leaving him to die in an elaborate laser or shark-based trap.

Dyna took a long drink from her hot chocolate, trying to think of more realistic spy movies that she had seen. Unfortunately, her mind was coming up blank. They weren’t exactly her favorite kinds of movies to watch.

Reaching forward, she took hold of the mirror once again. The moment she flipped open the cover, something changed.

Both silvery glass panes were blank. Black holes that reflected nothing at all.

Dyna’s breath hitched, staring into them. Her finger tapped one, nail impacting glass. They still felt like mirrors, but they weren’t reflecting anything.

This is… good, right? Dyna dared to feel a little excited. She wasn’t sure what she had done, but psychic abilities, as the name implied, all happened in the mind. If imagining a spy movie resonated with the mirror somehow, then she was all for finding a new phone and streaming as many as possible.

A third tap against the glass changed the mirror once again. The panes lit up. Except they didn’t reflect her. It was the room she was in. The café. She could see the counter and the employee with the purple apron and the wooden tables and chairs between her and the counter. At first, she thought she had accidentally pulled up the camera, only to glance up and realize that the scene in front of her was off.

It wasn’t the right angle.

Which became all the more apparent when she realized that the chair closest to the camera’s point of view had her sitting at it. She couldn’t see her own face, but there definitely wasn’t someone like that in front of her. Besides, how many other idiots went and dyed their hair a shiny silvery white?

Nobody, that was who.

Feeling tense, feeling like she had back in Psychodynamics, Dyna slowly turned around, watching the screen in front of her as the angle didn’t change, but the her in the mirror did turn.

She expected to find a camera. Dyna wouldn’t be able to explain how the mirror accessed some random camera, but she couldn’t explain a lot of things in this world and that would at least be a rational explanation.

Instead, she found two people seated at another table just behind her own. Not altogether uncommon. It wasn’t like the place was empty. A handful of casually dressed students were off at another table, possibly studying or maybe playing a tabletop game. A couple had come and gone not long ago. A mother looked like she was treating her children to some donuts.

But the two behind her stood out. They stood out to the point where she had a hard time believing that the entire café wasn’t staring in their direction.

Both men wore suits. Black suits with black shirts and black ties. Both had hats as well. Like cowboy hats, but solid black instead of the brown or white she pictured from movies. One, bulkier than the other, had a solid black goatee that completely encircled his mouth. The other merely had a graying mustache above his lip.

Neither were looking at her. A glance down at the mirror showed that its perspective wasn’t aimed her way anymore either. She got a close up view of the slightly wrinkled face of the man with the mustache. He had dark brown eyes. It was almost impossible to distinguish his pupils from the color.

Trying to act like she had just been stretching, Dyna stood. There wasn’t anything keeping her at the café. The half-eaten danish and now-cold hot chocolate had already been paid for. Mirror clutched in a white-knuckled grip, Dyna made her way to the exit as quickly as she could without looking like she was running.

As soon as she was out the door, she glanced down at the mirror once again. The view in the glass trailed after her, though the man with the mustache partially blocked the screen while facing away from her. Still, the view was definitely looking her way.

At least until she got away from the café’s front windows. The mirror went dark again.

The moment it did, Dyna took off in a run. She didn’t know what was going on but had a feeling that it had something to do with psychics. Either her own psionic potential acting up or other people doing something. Regardless of the reason, she did not like unknown people staring at her. Especially not when they were dressed so strangely.

And extra especially when their perspective showed up in a psychic spy camera.

“It’s only paranoia if they aren’t after you,” she mumbled to herself as she rounded a corner.

Dyna slowed, reaching a hand into her pocket. Her fingers clasped around nothing.

A jolt of panic ran through her, fearing that they had stolen her phone, only to remember that she didn’t have a phone at the moment.

Calling Walter wasn’t an option even though it was the first thing that came to mind. Without her phone, she didn’t know his number. Nobody in this day and age actually memorized phone numbers. The Carroll reception desk was still a possibility, but looking up the number while running around might not be the easiest thing and phone booths didn’t sound all that safe at the moment. Still, it was either that or she needed to get back to the bus stop that would take her back to the institute. Unless the bus was there, sitting about on a bench in the open while strange people were watching her sounded like just as bad an idea as sitting around in a phone booth.

Some store nearby had to have a phone she could use.

Before she could even look around, the mirror in her hands lit up once again.

It showed off her own back from a short distance away. The view turned, looking to the man with the dark goatee who was looking down an alley around the corner. The view jerked in what might have been a nod in her direction.

Dyna didn’t wait any longer. It was one thing to stare at her in a shop, but to follow her?

She took off in a full sprint.

Dyna didn’t know where she was going. She didn’t know where to go and she didn’t know her way around Idaho Falls at all. Finding the police sounded like the best option. Failing that, a public space with lots of people around might buy her some time. Though both those were only mights.

Her mind raced through possibilities even as she raced through the streets.

The two men were dressed so strangely and she hadn’t seen any coffee or muffins on their table. Bacchus didn’t just let people sit about without buying anything. Maybe they had just walked in and the barista hadn’t gone to throw them out, but Dyna had been around the Carroll Institute long enough to know that hiding in plain sight didn’t take much mental effort. Almost any type of Influencer could hide themselves, whether through illusions, appearing inconsequential, or direct mind control.

Which also meant that crowded areas and even the police might not be safe. A crowd of people might just ignore her being kidnapped in front of them simply because one of the two men could exude an aura of ‘nothing going on here folks’ through their psychic power.

Turning a corner made the mirror go black once again. Dyna assumed that meant that they lost direct line of sight with her. Depending on how athletic they were, it wouldn’t be for long. She had been part of the photography club in high school, not anything physically demanding.

Which meant that they were almost certainly more athletic than she was by default.

Dyna practically dove into the first door she passed. A bell chimed as she entered.

A beauty salon? The decor looked about fifty years out of date, though maybe that was just Idaho. One of the chairs with its flowery pattern might have even been from the sixties. The mirrors had thick silver frames with that antique leaf-like styling that looked impressive until you got a closer look and realized that they were cheap and mass produced.

Worse than their style was the fact that it was utterly deserted. Dyna couldn’t even see an attendant. Part of her wondered if she was caught in some psychic illusion like when she had walked with Walter through the dormitory lounge. That thought vanished as a portly man pushed aside a curtain of beads and emerged from a back room.

“Sorry, we’re actually about to close for—”

“There are two strange men following me down the road,” Dyna said, trying to speak clearly despite her hammering heart. It was important to communicate clearly in situations like this. Probably. It wasn’t like she had experienced being chased around before. “I dropped my phone. Can I hide here for a few minutes and maybe use your phone?” As she spoke, she moved further into the room, trying to make herself look as small as possible.

If there was one good thing about the interior of the salon, it was its clutter. There were free-standing shelves, rolling trays, bottles of care products, hanging lamps from the low ceiling, large hair dryers that went over people’s entire heads, and a dozen chairs—both of the black leather variety with the foot rest for people getting their hair cut as well as the seemingly random styles from various decades for people waiting at the front of the shop.

No solid walls or counters to hide behind, unfortunately. But just stepping off to the side and crouching in one of the chairs was probably enough to keep anyone from noticing her through a casual glance in the windows.

Although her sudden appearance and proclamation had clearly startled the man, who no longer had a smile on his face, he sent rolls of skin into a wave under his chin as he quickly nodded his head. “Y-yes, of course.”

“Thank you.”

“Come.” He beckoned with his hand. “Hide in the back.”

Dyna didn’t waste any time. She rushed through the curtain of beads to find a relatively narrow gap between a clearly false wall and the actual rear wall of the building. There was a restroom at the far end and another door next to it, a mini fridge with a microwave on top, a counter with a sink, and a pair of chairs around a table. A cramped little break room.

“Phone is on the wall,” he said, pointing near the microwave. “There is another out front. I’ll stay out there and tell anyone who comes in to go away.”

“Thank you,” Dyna said again.

Though she still felt that getting in contact with Walter would be more important. The police weren’t equipped to handle psychics. At least not yet. The Carroll Institute had only existed for a few years, there simply weren’t many graduates just yet. And of those who had left the institute… well, who wanted to live in Idaho Falls?

Orientation at the institute included a fairly direct warning that, if there were any suspected psychic incidents, to call the institute first. They were the authority on psychics in the area.

However, as the salon owner headed back into the main room, Dyna could only stare at the phone.

It was a rotary phone. The handset sat atop, connected by a curly cord. The entire thing might have been white a century ago, but was a nasty yellow today.

Dyna wasn’t an idiot. She knew how to use a rotary phone. It was just that she had expected to be handed a cell phone. Something she could have used to look up the Carroll Institute’s number.

Who actually memorizes numbers in this day and age? Dyna bemoaned for the dozenth time in the last hour.

Dyna would. The moment she got back safe and sound to her dormitory, she vowed to commit Walter’s number to memory. His and the Carroll Institute emergency line. Doctor Cross’ too, just in case Walter was busy.

Not knowing those numbers now, however, really left just one number she could call.

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

“Two men are chasing me through the streets. I don’t know exactly where I am. It’s a beauty salon not far from Café Bacchus. In Idaho Falls,” she added.

“Understood. We’ll find you. Police will be on the way. Are you safe right now?”

“I’m not in immediate danger, but it depends on how hard they’ll look for me. I… I have reason to believe that they are psychics.”

“E… Excuse me? Could you please repeat that?”

Dyna grimaced, squeezing her eyes shut. Of course the man on the line would be a skeptic. Lots of people were. Dyna used to be a bit skeptic herself. Maybe she still was, though mostly of herself after six months of nothing.

“Just can you contact the Carroll Institute? Tell them that Dyna Graves, Initiate ID: 50112, has encountered hostile psychics off campus.”

“Ma’am, if—”

“How can you be skeptic in Idaho Falls of all places!” Dyna hissed into the phone. She tried to run her other hand through her hair only to smack herself in the forehead with the mirror—still thankfully dark. “Look, you can’t hang up on me, it’s like illegal or something. And I’m in a big panic at the moment. I lost my phone. Trust me when I say I would definitely be calling them and not you if I still—”

A loud click interrupted her rant.

“Did you just hang—”

A steady tone interrupted her. For the briefest of instants, she thought it was a dial tone. But that only happened in movies. The tone quickly changed into a garbled series of beeps and tones, accompanied by something like a cross between whispering and those old modem connection noises.

Between fearing that this was the psychics somehow cutting the call and hope that it was something useful like the tablet, Dyna couldn’t decide whether or not to hang up.

With the whispering and electronic tones still echoing in the background noise, a clear and feminine voice took over.

“This is Beatrice. Hostile intrusion of emergency call network complete. Dyna Graves, can you hear this voice?”

“Beatrice? The… the one from the elevator?”

“Communication confirmed. Please describe your pursuers.”

Dyna shook her head, somehow both surprised and not. If anyone could detect that she was in trouble, it would be the institute of mind readers. “Two men,” she said. “Both dressed in solid black suits with black hats. One had a goatee. One had a mustache. Black and gray colored respectively.”

“Understood. Solutions are underway. Please hold.”

The first bit of relief she had felt in a long time came with Beatrice’s stilted words.

It didn’t last long, however.

From the back, she heard the distinct bell chime of the front door.

“Sorry, we’re actually about to close for the day.”

Dyna heard the man in the other room. But there was no response to his statement. “Beatrice,” she hissed. “I think they’re here.”

“Sir? You can’t just—”

A soft voice interrupted the shop owner. “You’re feeling… very sleepy.”

At the same time, her only hope started talking once again.

“Understood,” Beatrice said, somehow speaking before she actually spoke. A strange echo on the line. “The door in the back of the salon leads to an alley. Take it. Turn to the right. Cross the street. Enter the opposite alley. The first door on your right will have an electronic lock, combination: zero, four, five, one.”

Dyna didn’t wait to hear any more. Zero, four, five, one. The door, just next to the bathroom door, had to be the one Beatrice had been talking about.

Leaving the phone swinging, Dyna jumped into a full sprint, clutching the mirror to her chest. It still hadn’t lit up which presumably meant that they didn’t have eyes on her.

That changed as soon as she reached the street. With the mirror clutched to her chest, she couldn’t see what it showed, only that it was displaying something.

Dyna didn’t stop to look both ways. The streets of Idaho Falls were never that busy. At least not around the café.

She could see the door in the alley. The large blocky handle with several buttons in two rows was obvious even from the middle of the road outside the alley. Beatrice had been right. Dyna didn’t know how she knew, but she skidded to a stop in front of the door.

Heart pounding and sweat running down her brow, Dyna hit the first button in the top row before she fully stopped.

Zero. Four. Five. One.

A tense moment stretched on, probably a second but it felt like it lasted ten minutes. The light on the handle flicked green as she heard the locking mechanism click. Dyna slammed her shoulder into the door as she pushed it open. Another shoulder slammed it shut just before the man could reach it.

Just as his fists started hammering against the metal door, a phone nearby started ringing.

Dyna didn’t know what kind of shop she was in. The main lights were out and there were no windows in the back. A dim always-on light illuminated the area just enough to see a cordless phone hanging on the wall opposite from the door. Not exactly a modern phone, but it wasn’t a rotary phone either.

She dashed over, ripping the receiver from the cradle.

“This is Beatrice. Status?”

“Safe,” Dyna said, breathing a long sigh. Her sigh hitched as another fist pounded against the door. “For the moment. I don’t know if they have a way inside.”

“Subject status confirmed. Dyna Graves, your intended destination is the Supreme 8 Motel building on 3rd Avenue.”

“I have no idea where that is.” In addition to memorizing some phone numbers, Dyna vowed to memorize a few maps. Idaho Falls wasn’t a big place, she could memorize it completely.

“Understood. This building provides roof access through a stairway to your left. Upon exiting to the roof, head eastward—”

“Which way is East?”

“Upon exiting to the roof, turn directly to your left and walk along the building rooftops. The fifth building will have a ladder down to the street level. Directly across from the ladder, you will find a pizzeria. I will deliver updated instructions there. Do not be seen on the roof.”

“Okay.” Dyna took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The moment of safety helped to control her pounding heart. “I can do that. I can—”

“Hold.” The background static and whispering noise in Beatrice’s call raised in volume enough that Dyna had to pull the phone away from her ear. It only lasted a moment before returning to normal as Beatrice began speaking again. “An alternate egress route has presented itself. At the third building, jumping down the front side will place you directly adjacent to a silver vehicle that you may use to navigate to the motel.”

“Jump?”

“A single story fall. This egress opportunity will only be available for a short time. You must hurry. If you do not feel confident, proceed to the pizzeria as originally planned.”

Taking one last breath, Dyna hung the phone back on the receiver and rushed to find the staircase. The staircase wasn’t lit. She did feel a switch on the wall, but decided to leave it off at the last second, choosing to climb the stairs in the dark and just hope that none of the steps were missing. No sense leaving an obvious trail for the men after her.

The chill air bit at her cheeks as she rushed across the gravel-covered roof. The sun would soon set. Would that be better or worse for her? Dyna wasn’t sure. Her biggest advantage was simply knowing when someone was looking at her. A lack of light would keep her out of sight.

But she couldn’t wait around. Dyna didn’t know if the men had a way through that electronic lock, if they would just sit around and watch for her leaving, or if they would try to break through what was surely a glass front window to whatever store she had been inside. Two-thirds of those options would see them up on the rooftops after her sooner rather than later.

At the third roof, Dyna angled herself toward the front edge while keeping an eye on her dark mirror.

The third building didn’t have a straight drop down to ground level. That was the first thing she noticed. Some kind of rain cover hung over the door below the roof level. It wasn’t a long drop to it. Maybe her full body height. Hard and rigid, would it hold her weight? Probably. She didn’t think she weighed that much. From the overhang, it wasn’t much further to the ground.

It didn’t take long to spot the silver car either. There were a few of them, but only one with lights on and the engine running despite there being no people in the driver seat or the passenger seat. Whose was it? Was the door unlocked?

The mirror in her hands lit up. She threw a look back over her shoulder to find one of the black clothed men standing at the roof entrance a few buildings back.

The ladder wasn’t far. The second building had been much longer than the third or forth were. She was closer to it than he was.

But then he would just follow her into the pizza shop.

No time to sit around and deliberate. He was already moving.

Dyna jumped over the side, landing on the overhang without much trouble.

The second drop looked a whole lot higher than she had thought it was going to be, even from the lowered spot.

No choice.

Dyna landed hard on her feet, stumbling forward from her momentum and slamming her shoulder into a black minivan parked alongside the road. Biting her cheek at the ache, she pushed off and ran around to the silver car. Dyna couldn’t help the laugh she let out at finding the door unlocked.

She slipped inside the driver’s seat, threw the gear into drive, and hit the gas without even slipping her seatbelt on.

The mirror was dark for the moment. She didn’t know how long that would be the case, but she was hoping that it meant that nobody had seen her get into the car. If nobody had seen her get into the car, driving normally was the best option. Make it look like she was just another car on the road.

The tension in her stomach still made her scream when a loud buzzing ring came from the car’s speakers. Dyna took her eyes off the road long enough to find a phone in the cup holder.

Grabbing the phone, Dyna swiped to answer and immediately shouted, “Beatrice, I’m in the car! Where do I—”

Dyna, fully prepared for a calm voice offering her instructions on how to fix the situation, screamed a second time as a litany of profanity, pleading, demanding, and other detritus started shouting over the car’s speakers. The car’s owner? Dyna couldn’t hang up fast enough.

“This is Beatrice. Take—”

“I stole a car.”

“Take a left at the next intersection. Are you still being pursued?”

“I don’t know? The mirror is dark.”

“Clarify mirror.”

“The artifact. The one Doctor Cross gave me.”

“Understood. Note made and submitted for scientific review for Doctor Cross. Continue straight through the next three intersections.”

Dyna tried to take another few breaths to calm down. “What about the car? Someone called the phone just before you did. They definitely knew I stole it. Maybe they saw me from whatever shop they had been in. They might have seen my face.”

“Irrelevant.”

“What? But—”

“Subject Dyna Graves is the object of an ongoing Level Five incident. I have been granted elevated permissions to see you to safety. All other matters can be dealt with later. Turn right at the next intersection then take an immediate left.”

Dyna’s hands kept a tight grip of the steering wheel. The man on the phone had probably just run into the store for a quick moment, leaving their keys inside to keep the engine warm. That was why Beatrice had said that the opportunity would only be available for a short time.

Maybe Idaho was different from what she was used to, but Dyna could hardly believe that someone would just leave their car unlocked. Or leave a car unlocked with the keys in the ignition.

Once she was safe, she could hand the car over to the police and Carroll could help explain what happened, keeping her out of trouble. The phone kept buzzing with what were surely angry text messages and phone calls that went ignored. She would probably have police on her sooner rather than later. Especially if the car or phone had any kind of tracking. The car wasn’t particularly new, but it did have a wireless connection to the speakers.

She could only hope that they would all forgive her in the end.

While that made her feel marginally better, she couldn’t help but cringe every time she hit a bump too hard. This was someone else’s car.

Trying to focus on the road as she followed Beatrice’s continued instructions, she kept glancing down at the mirror, which had returned to its normal job of reflecting the world. That was… a good sign, right? Maybe it meant that she was far enough away from those two men that it couldn’t pick up their vision.

Supreme Eight Motel and Inn was a dingy little hovel that looked like it had seen better days. Those days were probably circa nineteen-sixty-three. It was a single story line of rooms with the doors all open to the street.

“Room four. Knock three times. When answered, give the pass phrase White four-one-one. Beatrice Emergency Task Resolution Environment standing down.”

“Wait!”

Phones didn’t click when they hung up, but Dyna still imagined the noise. She stared at the face of the phone for just a minute, noting three hundred messages had been sent to the number in the ten minutes it took to drive out to the motel. Shaking her head, Dyna dropped the phone back into the cup holder.

Mirror clutched in one hand, Dyna knocked against the door.

It didn’t take long before a young girl opened up the door. For a long moment, she just stared up. And Dyna stared down. Had Beatrice gotten her information wrong? The girl couldn’t possibly be older than ten years old. Everything else had been right, but this?

“Who the fu—”

Someone shouted from further in the motel room. “Ruby!” she said, voice carrying that motherly admonishment that Dyna was ashamed to say she recognized far, far too well.

The little girl rolled bright red eyes that matched a gemstone in her choker. “Who the bleep are you?”

What was it Beatrice had said? “White four-one-one?”

The little girl’s eyes narrowed.

In the span of a single blink of Dyna’s eyes, she found herself going from staring in disbelief at the little girl to staring in shock at a gun aimed directly toward her.

Dyna took a step back in shock, mirror in front of her like it was some kind of especially tiny shield. She started to take another step back, but her movement went interrupted by someone else standing just behind her.

Something cold and metallic pressed against her neck.

“Why don’t we have a little chat inside?” the calm, motherly voice sounded like someone asking for a cup of tea.

Dyna had a feeling the reality was anything but. A glance down at the mirror in her hand showed off a gun barrel pressed directly against the back of her head.

“Okay?”

What else could she say?