Escaping Danny’s grasp, Ludgate yanked his leg back into the mirror, and Danny was powerless to stop him. He rushed forward and hit the glass ineffectually in an attempt to retrieve the leverage he’d lost. Then, before Ludgate could retaliate, he rolled away and pulled his own legs to his chest. Hugging them close, he sat huddled, hiding in Cho’s duster, as equidistant between mirrors as he could get.
“The real you is here somewhere!” he cried.
“Sure, Zeus,” Ludgate chuckled in pure amusement, “but you’ll never find me. Just like you’ll never find your way out. See, I can use any of the mirrors here. But you can only exit out the mirror you came in through. Do you know which one it is?”
Peeking his head up out of the duster, Danny looked around. The mirrors were everywhere. There was no discernable incline or decline in the darkness, but he could tell that some of themore distant mirrors were higher up or beneath him. Otherwise, they all looked the same.
“All of these mirrors connect to the material world, Zeus. Mirrors, other surfaces with strong enough reflections, I can reach them all, but you can’t. You’d starve and waste away before you ever got close to finding your way home. It would take an eternity to explore the vastness of this world without my powers.”
“Your powers?” Danny breathed, dazed and grimacing as his wounds struggled to heal when he was sotired. “They’re more than traveling through mirrors?”
“Traveling through—” Ludgate broke off into his loudest laugh yet. “That isn’t my power, Zeus. I learned how to reach the mirror world long before I Awakened. No, my power is why I can do this when no one else can.”
Danny didn’t understand. If Ludgate traveled through mirrors without powers then how did he do it?
“That suit of yours is something else though,” Ludgate said, large and menacing around Danny like he might step out of his reflections as an army at any moment. “The way each of the pieces work together…it gave me such wonderful ideas. And you’re in luck. Because it means I’m not gonna kill you yet.”
The images winked out, leaving Danny staring at glittering surfaces that filled the blackness with soft, faint light. He could finally see himself, reflected in the mirrors closest to him, and also see the way the mirrors reflected each other, creating an illusion of infinity.
“I jumped the gun, Zeus,” Ludgate’s voice filled the vast space. “Been planning to take you down for six long months, yet I got ahead of myself. If I really want you to pay for what you did to me, we can’t end the game now. We could have so much more fun together. Besides, you ruined the show. Can’t make a splash with the museum heist anymore. Well…maybe I can. Butwe’ll have to think of something better for next time. Something bigger. Because now, Zeus,nowI’m gonna make sure your suffering lingers. So, in the meantime, why don’t I introduce you to someone? Though I think you’ve already met.”
Pivoting his head between reflections, Danny was terrified that Ludgate had gone back for Cho, that he’d hurt him in front of Danny or worse, but Cho’s image never appeared. Danny only saw himself. And then, once when he turned his head, he realized that the reflection he was looking at was staring at him with a twisted smile.
Danny scurried back despite himself. His shoulders hit a mirror and he flinched, expecting Ludgate to push him or punch him or throw him around again, but nothing happened.
While Danny remained pressed back, knees pulled in, staring forward, his reflection started to get up. He looked just as beaten as Danny, wore only his underwear and the duster like Danny, but his wounds started to heal and fade away faster. Dropping the duster from his shoulders, in its place a suit materialized. But it wasn’t The Invisible Man or his usual white and gold.
It was deep purple like Thanatos.
“This is better, isn’t it?” Danny’s reflection spoke, standing there in Thanatos’s suit, purple with highlights in black. The mask was pulled from his face, but the image still shook Danny. “White was never our color. I think we’re better indarkershades, don’t you?”
The yellow of this other Danny’s eyes turned black as he said that—and remained that way, voidless and terrible.
“You’re not real,” Danny clenched his own eyes shut, chanting into his knees. “You’re not me. You’re just a construct. A trick of camera footage and vocal recordings.”
“You sure about that?” the voice whispered from behind him.
Jumping up, Danny spun about to scramble the other direction, seeing his reflection in the mirror he’d been leaning against, grinning at him as he rose from a crouched position.
“See, Danny, I’m the you that you keep trying to run away from. You know who you really are.Whatyou are.” He tilted his head and the black in his eyes roiled like moving shadows. “You’re a monster, Danny. Just like Thanatos. You’reworsethan him. Because you make everyone see this sweet, innocent face, this heroic façade,” he spread his arms, and for a moment the suit was white as it should be, before it shimmered back to purple, “but where you really get your kicks is when you bash someone’s head into the pavement. When you manipulate them for your own amusement.”
The image shorted out like a faulty television and reappeared behind Danny again.
“When you play Cho like a fiddle until he begs for you tofuckhim.”
“Shut up,” Danny said, trembling beneath the image of himself in Thanatos’s suit, “it’s not like that.”
Other Danny crouched again to look him in the eyes—thoseblackeyes. “Isn’t it? Wasn’t that your plan? Because he deserves it, right? Oh, Danny, Thanatos would be soproud—”
“Shut up!” Danny screamed and leapt to his feet, not to punch this time but to pound the glass, if only to beat at his image even if he couldn’t shatter it. “I won’t do it. I won’t go through with it. I thought breaking his heart would make me feel better after what he did, but hedoesn’tdeserve it. He doesn’t.”
His reflection laughed at him while moving to stand. “Sounds pretty monstrous to me. That’s how you created me, Danny. You think I’m not real? I’m real. I’m like a virus. Give me more of what I crave, what I need, and I just getstronger.”
Danny’s pounding tapered off with a final weak thud, his fists and forearms pressed to the glass.
“And one day,” his reflection said, eyeing him as though hungry to take his place, “I’ll be the only version of you left.”
Hands pushed through the mirror and gripped Danny’s wrists. For a moment, he couldn’t be sure if they were Ludgate’s hands or his own,clad in purple and black, in the wrong suit, in the suit that had killed his friend. Hismother.
