Dropping the field, Mal spun, only to see Ludgate’s frost-covered wrist struggling to pull back into the glass against an invisible force. Danny should be stronger than that, he was stronger than almost anyone Mal had ever met, but not in whatever world Ludgate controlled inside the reflections. Mal couldn’t blast him; if he did, Ludgate would just retreat again.
Ludgate’s hand remained silver, clearly his own, but the rest of him shifted until the image in the glass was Danny. The mirror copy used its free hand to pull the mask from its face, and it wasDanny’sface, plain as day. But the expression was wrong,the sneer there, the fury. Then its eyes sparked with familiar lightning, only it wasn’t yellow.
It was black.
Mal felt Danny tumble into him, knocking them both to the floor as Ludgate’s arm snapped back inside the mirror. Hurrying to right himself, Mal felt around for Danny’s invisible form to get him to his feet as well. But as soon as he had his footing, he saw the reflection of Danny in the glass vanish—and felt a hand grip his ankle.
The hand yanked, and Mal’s foot flew out from under him. This time when he fell, he slammed his head into the side of one of the cases. His cuff unlatched as it struck the floor and went flying off of his wrist. Somehow the switch for the cold field was flipped on, because the chill was instant and far too numbing, even with Mal’s natural resistance.
He pushed up, blinking the haze from his vision, but he couldn’t see properly, could barely move, as he struggled to focus on where his amplifier lay on the floor.
Only distantly did he notice another set of Ludgate’s hands reach out of a mirror near the first case Danny had shattered and pick up a shard. The hands disappeared back inside as Mal hurried forward to reach his cuff.
Sitting where he’d tumbled to the floor, Danny was visible again, staring at his hands, not moving.
“Danny!”
They were both already covered in frost, and Danny was too close to another pane of glass. The shard reached out of it in Ludgate’s grasp. He hissed as the cold field affected him too, but he was still close enough to stab Danny.
Reaching for his cuff, soothed by the instant feeling of warmth within the eye of the field, Mal rolled onto his back. He simultaneously replaced the amplifier on his wrist and turnedthe cold field off while blasting Ludgate with his powers, not caring that he was still seeing double.
He missed Ludgate’s arm but hit the pane of glass—it shattered. Mal wanted to see the bastard’s arm drop to the floor, severed by the disconnection, but he pulled it back just in time.
“Danny!” Mal hurried to Danny’s side and shook him. The kid’s face, even covered in the mask, still somehow looked stricken. “He’s trying to mess with us and he’s succeeding. Stay with me.” He held the back of Danny’s neck, gentle now instead of harsh, and forced his doubled vision to focus. There wasn’t time for a concussion.
“Zeus!” Ludgate roared around them.
Danny shuddered, but after a moment of erratic nodding, he grabbed Mal by the arms. “We have to get him outside the reflections.”
“Agreed. How?”
“Destroy the mirrors,” Danny said, then more excitedly, gripping Mal’s arms tighter, “Destroy the glass, everything! Leave him no place to hide!”
As Mal lurched to his feet and blasted every shimmering surface in his view, Danny lightning jumped around the room, punching and running through cases like a stampeding animal. In moments the room was in shambles. They both panted when it was over, but Danny in particular looked exhausted after so many jumps.
“Do you think size matters?” He gestured at the small pieces of glass all around them.
Mal huffed. “He can’t reach through something that small, even if he can still watch us.” He realized then that if they’d left one mirror whole, it might have given them the chance to force Ludgate out of it, but this was better. They needed time to regroup.
And then they heard laughter.
ß
I’m not like him, I’m not like him, I’m not like—
Ludgate’s laughter chilled Danny to the bone, worse than being caught in Cho’s cold field. He tried to shake off the image from the mirror, but those black eyes had hit too close to home. Especially after he’d tumbled into madness so easily again, attacking Cho without proof other than hearsay. Because it made him angry.Because he was angry.
That was never an excuse.
Now he felt numb and hollowed out again, and he just wanted it to go away so he wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore.
“Danny…” Cho’s voice cut through Ludgate’s laughter, not by volume, but by the sheer terror in his tone. Cho never sounded like that.
Looking up, Danny saw that Cho had backed away a step, his face pale, arms hanging useless at his sides. But even through the goggles, Danny could see how wide Cho’s eyes had become as he stared at Danny—at Danny’ssuit. As soon as Danny looked down at himself, he saw why.
The tiny mirrors that covered him from head to toe were twinkling between light and darkness, like they were blinking.Blinking, because each and every one of them held the image of aneye.
Danny surged back, but he couldn’t escape his own suit.Mirrors. He was covered inmirrors. His instincts were to tear the suit off of him, but in that moment, he realized he couldn’t move.
