Chapter 115: Removing Context
Amara had been gone for less than ten minutes when the water left behind by her departure began moving the wrong way.
The last of it should have disappeared into the roadside drain by then. Instead, a thin stream remained across the cracked pavement beneath the shelter lamps. Marek was still near the curb when it slowed before reaching the channel, trembled against the slope, then began creeping back toward the place where Amara had vanished.
The others had already started settling back into the shelter, but Marek stayed where he was and watched it come closer.
Rhovan looked down and immediately told Marek not to touch it. Marek reminded him that he had already touched the water after Amara left, which earned him a flat look.
"Grief is not a protective glove."
"She is not dead."
"I did not say she was. I said your judgment is currently biased toward doing something stupid with your hands, oh Dear Ophiarch." Rhovan sighed dramatically. "It pains me to see you reduced to this."
Marek decided that ignoring him would be easier.
The water stopped moving altogether before Rhovan could continue.
Amara appeared inside it as a reflection, though there was nothing above the channel that could have produced her image. She wore the same gray jacket and carried the cloth strap over one shoulder, but the water showed a road that did not exist beneath the shallow concrete. She was walking somewhere else, her figure moving through a dark path that seemed to continue far beyond what the channel could physically contain.
His chest tightened. "Mom?"
The reflection did not react as another figure entered behind her.
Marek recognized the narrow face before the man raised his head. Dark clothing covered most of his body, but near the right side of his waist, where his coat shifted with each step, part of a Scorpius Astral Mark became visible. A thin black defect cut across one edge and remained perfectly clear even when the water distorted everything around it.
Sareth Venn.
The second gray Scale beneath Marek’s clothes pulsed, and Amara’s image disappeared at once while Sareth remained standing on the road, visible beneath the water.
"Witness found," the man said.
The water split down the middle with a sound that made several people near the shelter entrance turn.
Rhovan moved before Marek did. Gold-white light struck the channel and pressed the surface flat so violently that water jumped against both concrete walls. Dario caught Marek by the arm and pulled him several steps back while the others reacted to the sudden noise.
"Reflective surfaces," Marek said. "Cover them."
Rafe headed toward the rear of the shelter while Nadia moved people away from the windows. Silas and Kellan took opposite sides of the room and searched the entrances, while Eren watched the black line beginning to form beneath the water.
Sareth’s reflection smiled.
"He followed my mother?" Marek asked.
Rhovan kept one hand extended toward the channel. "I don’t think so. He already had a trace connected to you."
The gray Scale pulsed again, and Marek understood which trace Rhovan meant.
Sareth’s voice then came from the water. "A mother who is two. A daughter accepted by both sides of a divided mirror. And an empty Sign carrying traces other people would have preferred gone."
Marek stepped forward before thinking better of it, and Rhovan blocked him with one arm. "He said that because he wanted you closer."
"He is talking about my family."
"Yes. That is why it worked."
Rhovan’s arm remained in front of him. There was none of his usual amusement now, and Marek remembered Venielle’s answer at the ruined department store.
Cycle VIII, Degree V.
Stronger than Rhovan in his current body.
"A Sentence Bearer..." Rhovan muttered. His attention remained fixed on Sareth. "That’s the Cycle VIII Identity under the Way of the Scorpius."
Before Marek could argue, Sareth placed one hand against the other side of the water.
The shelter windows changed.
A dark pane near the treatment area showed a volunteer opening a locked medicine cabinet and slipping a bottle beneath his shirt. Another reflected a father dividing food between two children and giving one noticeably more. Farther down the wall, a woman appeared burning a handwritten note over a metal basin while looking relieved when the last corner turned black.
People noticed almost immediately.
"What the hell is that?"
"That’s one of the supply volunteers!"
"He stole medicine?"
The volunteer in the first reflection turned pale. "No. That isn’t what happened."
More voices rose around him until people near the cots sat up to look.
Marek watched the images instead of the people. Something about them was too clean. Each showed an act from beginning to end, but nothing before it and nothing afterward.
The volunteer had taken the medicine, but when people began accusing him of stealing it, he pointed toward an older man resting near the treatment area.
"It was for him! His name wasn’t on the list!"
The father in the second reflection pulled both children closer and explained that the younger one had missed several food distributions. The woman who had burned the letter was louder than either of them.
"That shelter was already taken," she said. "There were armed men there. The letter had the location written on it."
None of that had appeared in the glass.
Sareth was not showing lies, which made the effect worse.
"He’s removing context," Marek said.
Eren’s Libra Mark had already begun glowing. His eyes moved from the reflection of the medicine cabinet to the frightened volunteer standing several meters away.
"The act is real," Eren said. "The record around it isn’t complete."
Someone near the cots shouted that theft did not need context.
Eren turned toward him. "Then ask who the medicine was for before you decide what you saw."
That stopped a few people, though not enough to quiet the room.
Nadia climbed onto one of the low benches. "Everyone away from the windows! Move toward the center aisle and keep walking!"
Several people obeyed immediately. Parents pulled their children away from the walls while volunteers began covering the lower panes. Silas reached the largest window first, while Kellan struck a small mirror near the treatment table before anything could appear in it.
It shattered across the floor.
Six pieces landed face-up.
Every one of them showed a different secret.