Chapter 152 The Frozen Mirror
The higher you climb, the more the world shrinks, until all that is left is the truth and the wind.
The blizzard hit without warning. One moment the sky was a bruised purple, and the next it was a white sheet of screaming wind. I huddled against the stone wall of a shallow cave. My fur kept the worst of the cold away, but I could feel the baby shivering.
"Evan, I can't see the path," I thought. The link in my mind felt fuzzy, like a bad radio signal.
Stay still, Cass, Evan replied. There is a heat signature ahead. Small. Steady. It’s not a wolf. It’s a heart.
I pushed through the snow, my paws sinking deep. My vision was a blur of white and grey until I saw it, a small wooden cabin tucked under a frozen waterfall. Smoke curled from a stone chimney. It looked like a postcard from a world that didn't know about the Board or the Council.
I reached the door and shifted back. The change was painful in the cold. My skin felt like it was being pulled by hooks, but I forced myself to be human. I needed to look like a mother, not a beast.
I knocked.
The door opened slowly. A woman stood there. She held a kerosene lamp high. The light hit her face, and I felt the world tilt.
She had my eyes. She had my nose. She even had a small mole near her left temple. She looked exactly like me, but her hair was as white as the snow outside.
"Cassia?" she whispered.
"How do you know my name?" I gasped, clutching the baby.
"Because it's my name, too," she said. She stepped back, gesturing for me to enter. "Or it was. Before the ice took my memories."
The cabin was warm and smelled of dried herbs. I sat by the fire, unwrapping the child. The woman watched me with a strange, hollow look in her eyes. She moved with a stiff, mechanical grace.
"Who are you?" I asked. My voice was trembling.
"I am the Third," she said. She sat across from me. "Our father called me the Backup. When you and the neighbor didn't satisfy him, he brought me here. He wanted to see if the blood would stay pure in the cold. He left me here ten years ago."
"Ten years?" I looked at her. She looked my age. "How is that possible?"
"Time moves differently in the peaks," she said. She reached out a hand to touch the baby, but she stopped. Her fingers were silver. Not skin. Not for. Silver. "He replaced my parts as they froze, Cassia. I am more Board than Marlowe now."
Cassia, get away from her, Evan’s voice suddenly screamed in my head. She’s not a sister. She’s a transmitter!
I jumped up, but the woman didn't move. She just smiled. It was a sad, beautiful smile.
"He's right," she said. "The moment you stepped inside, the Council received your coordinates. They are already on the slope."
"Why are you telling me this?" I demanded.
"Because I want to be a real girl again," she whispered. She looked at the silver locket in my hand. "The sequence in that locket... it doesn't just open gates. It can shut down the silver in my veins. It can let me die, Cassia. I’ve been waiting ten years to die."
A loud, metallic howl echoed from outside. It wasn't a wolf. It sounded like a saw hitting stone.
"The Hounds," the woman said. She stood up and walked to the window. "They are the Council's elite. They don't have blood. They have oil and silver hearts. They won't stop until they have the New King."
I looked at the baby. He was looking at the woman. He let out a soft yip, and the golden glow in his eyes intensified.
She is telling the truth, Evan thought. Her mind is a cage of wires. I can see the code. If you give her the locket, she can use the sequence to overload the Hounds' frequency. It will kill her, but it will blind them.
"I can't just let you die," I said to the woman.
"You aren't letting me die," she said, looking at me with those familiar eyes. "You're letting me go home."
The door of the cabin shook. A massive, silver claw tore through the wood. The Hounds were here.
I looked at the locket. I looked at my third sister. I looked at the baby.
"What do I have to do?" I asked.
"Give me the silver," she said. "And run through the waterfall. There is a tunnel behind the ice. It leads to the Silent Valley."
I handed her the locket. Her silver fingers closed over it. A blue spark jumped between the metal and her skin.
"Go!" she shouted.
I grabbed the baby and ran for the back door. As I stepped into the freezing spray of the waterfall, I heard a massive electrical explosion behind me. The cabin didn't burn; it shivered. A wave of blue energy rolled out, turning the falling snow into sparks.
The Hounds outside let out a synchronized screech of mechanical pain.
I pushed through the ice and into the dark tunnel. I didn't stop until I felt the air grow warm again.
I looked back. The cabin was gone. The sister I never knew was gone.
We’re in the Valley, Cass, Evan’s voice said. But he sounded distant. Faded.
"Evan? Why are you so quiet?"
The explosion... it scrambled my signal. I’m losing the anchor, Cassia. The link is breaking.
"No! You can't leave me now!"
I looked down at the baby. He was staring at me, but the glow in his eyes was gone. He looked like a normal, human child.
"Evan?" I shook the baby gently. "Talk to me!"
A figure emerged from the shadows of the tunnel. It wasn't a wolf. It was a man in a white coat. He held a clipboard and a silver whistle.
"Subject 150 has reached the final destination," the man said. He didn't look at me. He looked at a watch on his wrist. "The maternal bond is at 98%. The digital anchor has been successfully purged. Prepare the harvest."
I backed away, my claws sliding out. "Who are you?"
The man looked up. He had no face. Where his features should have been, there was only a smooth, silver mirror.
"I am the Mirror, Cassia," he said. "And you are finally home."
I looked into the silver face, and for the first time, I saw my own reflection. But it wasn't me. It was a girl in a white dress, sitting in a hospital bed, holding a doll.
Is the Silent Valley another simulation, or have I finally found the heart of the 1000-year-old lie?
Cassia finds a "Third Sister" in the mountains who is a cyborg-like experiment. The sister sacrifices herself to blind the Council’s mechanical Hounds. Cassia enters the Silent Valley but discovers that Evan’s digital soul has been purged from the child. She is met by a faceless man who suggests the entire journey might still be part of a massive, nested experiment.