She looked past him toward the shop’s front window. Light caught her face, highlighting the faint circles under her eyes that said she’d slept poorly. “Show me.”
Bastien moved to the window. Stood before it with morning sun at his back. The glass reflected everything—the street behind him, the buildings across the way, Delphine and Maman watching from inside the shop. But where he stood, there was only empty space. A man-shaped absence in the world’s doubled image.
Delphine’s breath caught. A soft sound, barely audible, but he heard it.
She approached the window slowly and stood beside him, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched. Her reflection appeared perfectly—auburn hair pulled back in a loose knot, her shirt wrinkled from sleeping in it, and exhaustion written in the set of her mouth.
His space remained empty.
“This is what you meant,” she said quietly. “When you said Gideon couldn’t track you anymore.”
“Part of it.”
“What’s the other part?”
Maman answered before he could. “He’s protected from observation, but vulnerable to distortion. Gideon can’t find him through mirrors, but if he suspects Bastien is near a reflective surface, he can manipulate what that surface shows to others.”
Delphine turned. “Meaning?”
“Meaning Gideon could make my reflection appear when it shouldn’t or place me somewhere I’m not.” Bastien kept his eyes on the window, watching Delphine’s reflection instead of meeting her actual gaze. Easier that way. “He lost his surveillance tool, but he gained a propaganda weapon.”
“That’s not a fair trade.”
“Gideon doesn’t trade fairly.”
Silence settled over the shop. Outside, a delivery truck rumbled past, its passage sending ripples through the puddles that still covered the street. Bastien watched those ripples in the window’s reflection, noting how water moved without him there to disturb it.
Delphine’s hand found his forearm. Warm pressure, grounding him to physical space when reflected space denied his existence. “Are you okay?”
The question surprised him. He’d expected anger about the lying, about going to the vault alone, about making decisions that affected them both without consulting her. Instead, she asked if he was okay.
“I don’t know yet.”
She nodded, accepting that answer without pushing for something more definitive. Her hand remained on his arm, and he found himself grateful for the contact. Proof he existed in ways that didn’t require mirrors to confirm.
Maman returned to her chair behind the counter. “The network is stable?”
“For now. I grounded it in artifact rather than living will. It won’t fluctuate with emotional resonance anymore.”
“But Gideon’s influence remains.”
Not a question. Bastien turned away from the window, breaking his study of absence. “He seeded distortions throughout the Quarter before I stabilized the network. Those don’t disappear just because the lattice isn’t pulling new energy.”
“So we still have contaminated mirrors,” Delphine said. “Just no longer getting worse.”
“Correct.”
She released his arm and moved to the counter, leaning against it with the posture of someone thinking through a complex problem. “What kind of distortions?”
Bastien exchanged a glance with Maman. The older woman’s expression remained neutral, but he read permission in her eyes.Tell her. She’s already too deep to protect through ignorance.
“Psychological interference,” he said. “Letters that appear in your handwriting but contain thoughts you didn’t write. Echoes of conversations that twist meaning. Visual distortions showing futures that make you doubt your own choices.”
Delphine absorbed this with the focused calm she brought to difficult archival puzzles. “Has he used any of those on me?”
“Not yet.”
“But he will.”
