Day in the story: 11th December (Thursday)

About fifteen minutes later, we were packed and ready inside my Domain.

Peter had called Zoe before we left, explaining the situation as best he could. She wasn't thrilled, but she promised to try and find us later in Ideworld, despite Peter's protests.

While Nick was busy unpacking his stash of dry food into storage boxes and Peter tested the limits of his new suit, Malik approached me. I was pacing, running through a mental checklist while checking the backpacks the boys would carry.

"I knew you were beautiful under the mask," Malik said.

My jaw clenched, but I forced myself to stay calm. Now is not the time.

"Thank you for this totally useless comment, Malik. Please keep yourself together," I replied flatly, instead of unleashing the hellfire brewing in my chest.

"I'm sorry, I just… wanted to say something nice," he murmured, looking like a kicked puppy.

Reality help me, I thought. Maybe I should send him back after all.

"Malik, you don't have to say anything," I said, voice softer but firm. "I decided to give you a chance. So don't talk, just act. Do what's right, okay?"

"I got you."

I forced a smile and left it at that, walking toward Nick.

"Have you told Sophie you're going to be gone?" I asked.

"I did. Told her everything that happened."

"Sweet. She'll start to hate me soon."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm endangering her. You, Peter, just by existing."

He placed a hand on my shoulder, gave me a warm, grounding smile. "Don't worry. It'll all turn out fine."

And in that moment, I kind of believed him.

"If you guys are ready," I said, "we should head out now."

With a thought, I summoned a door, leading to the Ideworld version of our apartment. We stood in front of it for a moment, tension in the air like a taut wire. Then Nick stepped forward and turned to face us.

"Okay. Here's the plan," he said, calm and clear. "We follow Alexa's lead toward Jason and we do it with speed and caution. No getting sloppy just because we're in a rush. If we need to stop and regain strength, we stop. I've got food prepped for that."

He glanced at me. "If we're forced to retreat, Alexa will teleport us back here and paint the exit point so we can return to it later."

I nodded. Peter and Malik gave their affirmatives too.

"Good," Nick said. He turned, grasped the handle and opened the door.

We stepped into what looked exactly like our real apartment, at first glance, anyway. Everything was in its usual place, the air still, familiar. Except for one thing: Sophie.

Or rather, shadow Sophie. She sat at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and staring out the window.

I had completely forgotten, both she and Peter might have their shadows here.

But this wasn't a mirror version of her. No, it was something else entirely. Warped. And unexpectedly so.

Her skin was wrinkled, her hair dull and unkempt, her face drawn and tired. Her eyes—a flat, matte gray.

Is this how she sees herself? Broken, worn out, ugly inside?

The thought made my chest tighten. I'd have to talk to her when we got back.

I turned to Nick, he was visibly shaken. His jaw clenched hard as he stared at her.

"Hello, Sophie," Peter said gently.

She turned, gave a hollow smile. "I haven't seen you in a while, Peter. Oh… you brought Nick."

Her voice faltered. She raised her hand to cover her face. "I'm not ready to meet with you guys. Please, excuse me." Then she fled into her room.

The silence she left behind felt heavier than the quiet itself.

"Well… I guess we can go now?" Malik offered, clearly uncomfortable.

Nick didn't respond. His jaw clenched tighter, but he said nothing, just moved toward the door and led the way out.

We stepped into the hallway and passed a few neighbors. There was Mr. Frankie, for one, someone I had always suspected of being a little too creepy, though I'd never had proof. Ideworld confirmed everything.

Let's just say his self-image took extreme liberties. Overly muscular, grotesquely confident and very anatomically exaggerated down there. Luckily, seeing the men around me, he didn't say a word.

We picked speed. Instead of heading down into the street, we moved upward, toward the roof. On our side of reality, the rooftop was a wide, flat platform. I, Peter and Sophie had set out sunbeds there once to stargaze.

It had always felt like a safe place. I hoped it still would be.

When Nick reached the rooftop door and found the knob wouldn't budge, he tried once, then again, nothing.

"I can get it," I offered, stepping forward.

But he just took a sharp breath and kicked the door in.

"The building will redream it later," he muttered. "Let's not waste time."

He stepped out first, then stopped dead.

Didn't move. Didn't speak.

Just stood there, completely still.

"Ekhm? Nick, can you move your sorry ass?" I said, trying to push some momentum back into the moment. Malik chuckled. Peter sighed. But at least it worked, Nick stepped aside, still wide-eyed.

I stepped forward—and instantly understood why they had all gone quiet.

The city skyline stretched in every direction, familiar in shape and spirit. Crowded. Towering. New York, unmistakably. And yet—not.

Because it didn't end.

The skyscrapers didn't taper off into the sky. They went upward, then reversed course entirely, continuing into an impossible mirror-city above us. Another Manhattan, suspended upside down like a reflection that had clawed its way out of the glass and decided to stay.

It was breathtaking. A second city, tethered to this one by towers like Empire State Building, One World Trade and the Chrysler Building that stretched like vertical bridges, their tips vanishing into the hanging architecture of the world above. The sky wasn't empty, it was populated. Lived in. The myth of New York, bloated with memory and meaning, had doubled in on itself. It had become so self-aware, so swollen with its own legend, that it had given birth to an echo—an idea of itself that refused to vanish.

I stared up through layers of drifting fog and glowing signage, and even from this distance, my enhanced senses made out the mirrored details: a rooftop nearly identical to ours; windows glinting like cold stars; cars cruising calmly along an inverted street as if gravity had simply chosen to look the other way.

A city dreaming of itself and making that dream real.

"That's so sick," Malik breathed as he stepped onto the roof.

Peter didn't speak. Just stood silently, jaw set, taking it all in.

Then, the roar.

It shook the air like thundercrack.

We dropped instantly, scattering to the nearest walls, ducking behind concrete, shadows, vents, anything. Hearts hammering, eyes scanning the sky for death on wings.

It didn't take long to find it.

Far down the street, perched atop a traffic light signal pole loomed a creature the size of a delivery van, lizard-shaped, with leathery red wings, glossy black scales and a mouth full of jagged teeth.

It was tearing through the roof of a car beneath it, dragging out a shadowy figure as if it were livestock. The creature lifted the unnervingly limp body and crunched through its head and upper torso in a single, grotesque bite.

Then, with a beat of those enormous wings, it took off, upward. Toward the mirrored sky above, vanishing into the space between cities.

"Was that a dragon?" Peter whispered.

"Judging by the size?" Nick replied. "A drake. Juvenile. The real ones are—bigger."

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I swallowed. "Let's try not to get on their radar, then."

"Yeah," Malik added. "Turns out with lizards, size really doesn't matter. They're all terrifying."

We nodded, silent agreement all around.

We waited a few more seconds before moving together toward the edge of the roof and looked down.

Life below mirrored the world we knew, eerily so. People moved with purpose. It might have been artificial, a mimicry borrowed from the lives of their real-world counterparts, but it was there, an echo of motivation, a strange momentum pushing them forward.

Cars passed by, though not normally. Their turns were too sharp, too mechanical. Sometimes they accelerated in fits, or slowed several feet too soon. It was like watching someone dream of driving: sometimes smooth, other times disjointed, as if the laws of physics were suggestions, not rules.

On the sidewalks, a few people stood frozen mid-stride, locked in perpetual stillness. I recognized the look immediately. I'd had those dreams too, the ones where you try to run, but your body feels like it's made of lead, every step a monumental effort.

It took me the longest to tear my gaze away from it all. When I did, the boys were already watching me, silently waiting for direction.

I closed my eyes and focused on the link, faint but steady, between me and the necklace Jason carried. A tug in my mind, like a distant thread in the dark.

I pointed toward the general direction of the Manhattan Bridge.

"I think they're heading toward Chinatown," I said, though my voice betrayed the uncertainty. "At least, it feels like that."

"We don't have anything better to go on," Peter said, stepping up beside me. "Let's move."

We looked around and then up. Every rooftop was connected to the next by strange bridges: steel, concrete, glass, often twisted together in impossible shapes. Some looked like stairs folded over themselves; others curved like half-forgotten highways, or spiraled upward, defying gravity. None of it felt real, but all of it was there, a living maze.

It looked like something Escher might have sketched in a fever dream.

And we had no choice but to follow it.

Peter and Nick moved first, keeping pace with one another as they bolted for the stairs, an angular, jagged spiral of concrete that twisted upward toward the neighboring rooftop. The building ahead loomed at least ten stories higher than ours and the climb promised to be brutal.

The stairs weren't much to hope for. They were narrow, barely enough room for two people side by side and they lacked any railing. Patches of raw concrete jutted out unevenly, interrupted by rusted metal rods, like the entire structure had been abandoned mid-construction.

"Those ravens perched on the rods up there…" Peter said, squinting. "They don't look too friendly."

"Those aren't ravens," Nick replied. "We call them Pigeyeons. Shadows of Earth's pigeons."

He took a breath before continuing.

"They're black because they're covered in filth-slime, a physical manifestation of how society sees them: dirty, disgusting, vermin. And that extra eye on their foreheads?" Nick nodded toward the perched creatures, their grotesque third eyes gleaming faintly. "That's because pigeons pride themselves, well, their shadows do, as the ultimate navigators. All-seeing, all-knowing. Or so the theory goes."

"Uh, okay. That's great and all," Peter said between breaths, "but you kind of didn't answer the question, are they friendly or not, Nick?"

"I'd say they're idle. As long as you don't try to hurt them, they leave you alone. But if you do…" He glanced up. "They'll flock you hard and in a group? Their Filth Authority gets real nasty."

"Filth meaning… they command shit?" I asked, half-joking, jogging past the rod-topped landing where the creatures perched. Oddly enough, they didn't smell bad at all.

"Funny again, Rabbit?" Nick said without looking at me.

I just grinned. "Someone has to be."

"Remember why we're here, Alexa," he added a moment later, colder now.

And just like that, my mood soured. Of course I remembered. How could I not? But thinking about Jason constantly wasn't helping me keep it together. I just grumbled to let him know I heard his oh-so-important bit of wisdom.

As we climbed higher, something else caught my attention. Cameras. Everywhere. Some were hidden just behind the dark windows, others mounted under the very stairs we were scaling. They tracked our every move. I exaggerated a leap once, just to test one and sure enough, it followed me perfectly, as if it were alive. Another thing to add to the growing list of weird this place kept throwing at us.

We reached the top of the building without any of us falling, a miracle in itself and I let out a relieved breath.

Only to duck behind a nearby wall a second later.

Something, someone, was already up there and they weren't pleased to see us.

A hulking figure stood by the center of the rooftop. It looked like a man, if you could call a seven-foot-tall mass of bricks and twisted metal a man. The thing grunted and a moment later it hurled a full brick at us with terrifying speed.

"Cover!" I shouted as we scattered.

"Can we kill this thing?" I shouted over the impact noise, crouching beside Nick behind a crumbling ledge.

"I have no idea what that is," he admitted, voice tight as another brick chunk shattered just above our heads.

"Don't be a pussy. Go block the hits." I smirked, already readying for a move.

"And you're gonna do what, exactly? Burn the bricks? Good luck with that," he shot back.

"Oh, come on, Nick. I've got an idea." I didn't wait for approval. I took off in a wide arc, sprinting across the rooftop toward a better position.

The creature saw me immediately. As if insulted by my confidence, it sprouted a second pair of arms, each one winding up to hurl more debris at me.

"That's commitment to the bit!" I yelled mid-sprint.

From up close, I could finally see more clearly: the thing wasn't just on the rooftop, it was part of it. Its lower half looked like it merged with the building itself, as if the roof had curved upward and grown into a humanoid nightmare of brick and metal, given just enough life to hate everything that moves.

Chunks of concrete tore from the roof around it and launched toward me with brutal speed. I zigzagged, trusting my instincts and training to keep me one half-second ahead of a cracked skull.

I opened Ella as I approached, asking her with a polite, old-fashioned curtsy to become my shield. She shimmered in reply, obedient, loyal. Good girl.

The first brick hit her a second later and shattered into dust. A brick. Shattered. Ella didn't even flinch.

Then came the next volleys, slamming against her as I pushed forward, inch by inch.

Finally, Nick decided to man up. He let out a raw roar and charged the brick-beast head-on. A flash of green and white shadowlight flickered across his body, he was enhancing himself, probably both strength and durability. It worked: he took the next few hits like they were mere insults instead of bricks.

Well, all except for one.

A brick caught him square in the head just as he turned to check on Malik, who, of course, had slipped on something and was doing a rather undignified sprawl across the rooftop. Nick's head snapped back comically from the hit, but he recovered like a pro. Peter helped Malik up in a flash and the two of them advanced quickly.

Now all four of the creature's brick-hurling arms were focused on Nick.

Perfect.

While it was distracted, I reached for a handful of my sound cards, paper-thin painted tools with speakers, microphones and weirdly effective subwoofers etched in gold. Originally, they were designed for distraction, decoys, acoustic illusions… but today? I had something far more aggressive in mind.

I whispered to them as I pulled them free from my deck and flung them toward the creature. Each card turned metallic mid-air, force of habit and each whisper charged them with a single command: become a constant, loud vibration.

The first card struck and embedded itself into the creature's massive chest. It let out a horrible, metallic shriek, a sound that seemed born from every broken speaker in the world screaming at once. Immediately, I stripped my mask of its sensory authority. The world dulled around me, sound and pain pushed back into a distant murmur.

The rest of the cards followed, slamming into its arms, its base, its grotesque misshapen head. Each one rang out on a different frequency, building a dissonant, vibrating chorus that made the air shimmer and the concrete tremble.

Its body began to crack, fissures spiderwebbing across its brick-and-metal form. That's when the boys struck.

Nick was the first, his arms swollen with coal-black, bully-thick muscle. He grabbed two of the beast's flailing limbs and locked them down. Peter, in the suit I gave him, wasn't as strong as Nick, but still moved with enhanced power. He wrestled the second pair into submission, arms trembling with the effort.

Malik darted in next, launching a flurry of kicks and punches. His physical blows were barely felt, but the echoes that followed each strike? They hit like a freight train. Each reverberation tore chunks from the creature, the sound peeling away its defenses brick by brick until the whole thing crumbled with a final moan, toppling like a statue struck from its pedestal.

I reached out with my aura and drained the authority from the screaming cards, silencing them all in one breath. Then I reinfused my mask, sharpening my senses again.

The silence that followed was sudden and heavy.

"See? Not so hard, boys," I said, standing tall while the rest of them hunched over, breathless, hands to bleeding ears.

"Funny much?" Nick muttered, spitting blood. I loved when he said that.

I strolled over to the remains of the creature to collect the cards, at least the ones intact enough to be thrown again. As I gathered them, I peeled off the steel authority from each, one by one.

"I'm jealous, honestly," Peter panted. "This suit's amazing and I train every day, but I still can't catch my breath."

Nick handed him a cracker. "Carbs fix everything, Peter."

"Wait a second," Malik interrupted, eyes narrowing at Peter. "You're wearing a spider suit and your name is Peter?"

I burst out laughing.

"Is your last name Parker?" Malik asked, dead serious.

"No, it's not." Peter sighed. "It's Peter Stark and for the record, the suit was made for her." He pointed at me. "Her friend reworked it to fit me."

Friend, huh? If only he knew the whole story.

"Peter," I said, the idea striking me, "want to try the hood's eyes? See what it's like?"

All of them turned to stare at me.

"You can give him vision through them?" Nick asked.

"I've never tried, but I don't see why not, assuming he doesn't resist my authority."

"I don't think it's a good idea," Nick said. "His mind's not supported by shadowlight. Sensory overload could mess him up."

"I want to try," Peter said, determined. "But maybe—just one extra eye, for now?"

I nodded and stepped toward him. As he pulled the hood over his head, I reached up and touched the fabric gently, focusing on one of the smaller eyes sewn into the back.

Be Peter's eye, I commanded softly.

A pulse of shadowlight surged into the hood, swirling around the eye and anchoring deep into the cloth. The air shimmered faintly.

"Oh hell!" Peter dropped to his knees, clutching his head. "This is so strange! My head hurts like fuck."

Peter rarely swore. I took it as a small win.

"Do you want to stop?" I asked, eyeing Malik, who bounced on the balls of his feet like a kid waiting his turn at a new toy.

"Yes," Peter groaned. I immediately withdrew the authority from the hood. He yanked it off with a gasp of relief.

I turned to Malik and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Reckon you're next?"

He nodded, grinning as wide as his face allowed. I pulled a card from my holder, threw it and whispered the command to become Malik's eyes. It shimmered, then activated.

Malik instantly dropped onto his ass.

"This is so cool!" he said, moving his head around. "But so disorienting too… when the eyes don't follow your head…"

Then he gulped, leaned forward and threw up.

"I am… sorry," he mumbled, wiping his mouth. I removed the authority from the card.

"Seems like your mind didn't like it as much as you did."

"You too, Nick?" I asked. Honestly, I expected him to say no.

He nodded.

A welcome surprise.

I stepped up to him, placed a hand on his chest and threw another card. When it flared to life, Nick stood perfectly still. He turned his head slowly, blinked a few times, then closed his eyes for a beat longer.

"Okay. Enough. This isn't meant for people," he said plainly.

The boys laughed. I withdrew the authority and went to retrieve the card.

"Maybe it's not meant for men," I teased. "You can only focus on one thing at a time."

Nick wasn't having it.

"Yes and we should focus on getting Jason back. We've wasted enough time already."

"We were actively resting, Nick," I said, voice level. "I probably want to save Jason more than any of you. But I won't run headfirst into whatever's out there tired and unprepared. Not if I can help it."

"Okay," he said after a moment. "Let's get going."

We moved as one toward the ledge, where this time a bridge connected us to the next building. But instead of leading to its roof, it sloped downward, funneling us into a tunnel.

We ran across it, steel and concrete underfoot, but the structure gave with each step, like it was just rope and planks beneath the illusion. The whole thing swayed gently, nauseatingly. Uncanny. The only one who didn't seem to care was Peter. Inside the suit, he moved like it was nothing. Balancing and sprinting on any surface was the point of it, after all. He hadn't tried it yet, but I was sure he could run on walls or ceilings if he wanted.

The bridge led us into a wide tunnel that opened into a cavernous space, dim and surreal. Concrete columns rose like trees, their forms twisted and branching. Metal grass swayed at our sides, soft and eerie.

"Is this…" Malik said, glancing around. "A concrete jungle?"

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