Liam Westend, of course, did not actually need to go to the toilet. In the empty men’s room, he stood at the sink, splashing his face with cold water. Now that he thought about it, this was the first time in years that he had spent time with people his age – plural, that is. And excluding Elynn, of course.

It hadn’t occurred to him that this could be anything but a one-off. But Aubriella had kept mentioning friends. Their conversation had marked three mentions of forming friendship with others. And apparently, all three of those times had been meant to imply forming a friendship with him.

Well, how was he supposed to know that, with her speaking so cryptically?

Not cryptically. He just- he just couldn’t read between the lines.

He sighed, leaning against the sink.

He couldn’t say he had taken to any of the three teenagers, but he wasn’t repelled by them either. Well. He wasn’t repelled by the girls.

He could easily do without Eugene Keyes.

Ever since that first night class on that warm summer evening, Liam knew he disliked Eugene. The teen had literally slept through the entire class. Yes, Aubriella Sanders and Mirella Poole had been horribly late to that first class but they had since proven themselves model students. Eugene didn’t even have that.

He was glad Dr Ridgeway had decided she didn’t need Liam’s help on Monday or Thursday evenings.

Liam looked up at the mirror and breathed out, trying to calm himself. He didn’t know what to do.

He’d be lying if he claimed he wasn’t lonely. Up until Eugene had cruelly mocked his intelligence and field of work, he had been enjoying the evening. Sure, he’d still have preferred to be curled up in his living room, next to his parents, reading that book he had mentioned, but Aubriella was a very nice girl and-

Mirella was probably fine. She was nicer than Eugene anyway.

He hung his head and let out a deep breath.

He knew his field of research was something largely mocked by the science community. Many said it was based more in fiction than logic or rational thought.

When with Dr Ridgeway and her team, it was easy to forget the mockery, but it didn’t mean it didn’t exist. So, it continued to be a sensitive topic to him. It was why Eugene had baited him so easily.

He let out a deep breath and looked up at the mirror.

He stumbled backward, away from the sink, falling over in his haste to get away.

He thought-

He thought he had seen hollowed out black pits instead of his eyes. But his reflection was… normal.

“What…?”

He got to his feet and slowly approached the bathroom mirror. His reflection looked normal. He frowned. “The… Monster in the Mirror?” he asked, tilting his head.

“Monster – monster – mirror – mirror” whispers echoed back, accompanied by giggling.

“What…” Liam hesitantly asked, looking around the room, as if he’d be able to find the source of the whispers bouncing off the walls.

“It’s him!”

“Touched one…”

“Gaderian’s own,”

“Knows our name,”

“Dangerous,”

“Don’t care,”

“Shut up!” Liam demanded, holding his head. Was it him or were the corners of the room growing darker, black cracks spreading out, as the space became smaller. “No, no, this-”

“Explorer,”

“Knows too much,”

“Kill the explorer,”

“Goodbye explorer.”

A tile Liam had been standing on fell away. In fact, many tiles were falling away, as if falling down into a dark pit and where was the light coming from? What was this darkness swallowing the world whole?

Liam latched onto the sink and the last of the tiles fell away. He was surrounded by void, with just him, the sink and the mirror. He looked at his reflection and it was grinning back at him, widely, inhumanely wide.

Liam was not a strong man.

He slammed his fist into the mirror, smashing it and all was black.

— 📀 —

The sky was purple.

Liam Westend closed his eyes, then opened them again.

The sky was still purple.

He sat up, to find himself on the street just outside the diner. Or what looked like the diner. The buildings were concaved, leering over him, as if watching him. The windows were dark, blackened out. He couldn’t peer inside any of them.

And he felt tired. A specific kind of tiredness. There was a dryness in his nose, his face felt pinched together. It was the kind of tired he experienced when he had a cold. He sat up. He knew where he was.

This was a sub-reality.

The sub-realities were real and he was right. They weren’t just juxtaposed to their reality. They intersected. They intermingled. They swallowed whole. Sub-realities were not interested in remaining lesser existences, they wanted to take over-

The whispers. They had mentioned Gaderian. They’d called him explorer. That couldn’t possibly reference what he thought it referenced… Could it? The archetypes… But was he an archetypical explorer? He’d never have considered himself that in a million years… Hyperbole meant.

How was he supposed to get home from here?

“Dr Ridgeway?” he called, getting to his feet. “Mum? Dad?” He hesitated, then called “Aubriella? Mirella?” He paused and finally called, “Eugene?”

He received no answer.

There had to be a simple way to return home. It can’t be that a sub-reality could so easily take from reality, when reality was so much bigger than… this warped version of Orthank City.

He wandered aimlessly. He didn’t know where to go and it didn’t occur to him that perhaps the doors would be unlocked.

He headed towards home. Even though the walk would be hours. The diner was near Nocoeur High and it took him an hour to get to the school by public transport. He’d be walking for hours. But what else was he supposed to do?

“I wonder what Elynn would make of this,” he mumbled. “Wow Liam, your theories were right! Why yes, Elynn. But I already knew that. So how did you get home? That’s a great question. First, I made my way home. It took me hours... Did anything happen? Oh, no. Never, never... So, Liam, why did the Monster in the Mirror call you explorer?” That was a good question. On such a long walk, perhaps it would be good to seriously consider it. Maybe he could think up an answer. Either way, he had time to kill. Assuming time flowed the same way it did in reality.

“If our world’s defence mechanism is to produce humans to defend it,” Liam began explaining to a friend that was not there. “Then we consider humans the immune system of our reality. Hence why most of us seem to be bent on destruction. We’re the eosinophils of the universe.” He paused. “Ok,” he said in a mockery of Elynn’s voice. “But we’re not talking about some random humans. We’re talking about, like, chosen humans or something.”

“Archetypical humans. Yes, quite. Those would be the lymphocytes of reality. Specialized killers.”

“Uh, what’s an archetypical human?” he asked himself in his feminine voice.

“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? What is an archetypical human? First suggested in conjunction with intersecting cosmoses over two centuries ago, Dr Young suggested that the universe somehow chooses a select few humans based on key traits.”

“Woah. So you mean reality takes beings as complex as humans and reduces them to stereotypes?”

“Well, archetype and stereotype have always been synonymous, while antonymous at the same time. A strange peculiarity that and accurate to most perceptions of humans.” He paused. “But bearing the key trait is not enough. There has to be connection too. A natural binding force between the chosen humans…”

“So, like… If you’re the archetype explorer… Ooh! Could I be an archetype?”

“I don’t know if it’s that simple, Elynn. I’d need to have met people that fulfilled the archetypical role in reality. And so far, no one has ever come forward. Although, with improving technology, perhaps it’s only a matter of time until we connect… Assuming there were ever others.”

“Do you think those teenagers you were with are also Gaderian’s own?”

Liam came to a stop.

“But I don’t feel connected to them.”

He fell silent.

Liam opened his mouth to answer as Elynn, but nothing came out. He didn’t know how the real Elynn would respond to that. This was where the conversation ended. Where he couldn’t simulate it anymore.

He fidgeted, then let out a deep sigh. The tiredness of this sub-reality was weighing down on him. It was starting to make his head feel heavy. He held his forehead and closed his eyes, trying to will the tiredness away.

A phone was ringing. He looked up. He’d walked all the way to Hermann Square. He could see the telephone booths lined up nearby. Mobile phones had not yet made the booths redundant, although with the way his generation had taken to the mobiles, it was likely a matter of time before they were things of the past.

He walked up to the ringing phone booth. He couldn’t help but notice it was littered in missing person posters.

Not thinking clearly, he picked up the phone. “Hello?” he asked. As he spoke, his eyes landed on a missing person’s poster, where the person had whitened eyes and a grin too wide for her face. And beneath the photo, it read:

Have you seen me?

I’ve seen you.

“Have you seen me?” asked a feminine voice. Liam dropped the phone, but he still heard her say, “I’ve seen you.”