William Bayer - Mirror Maze

"Don't push me!" Clury looked confused as his eyes scanned the images skimming across the gleaming walls.

"Too much glass in here. Blow her up and you'll kill us all." Janek paused. "Maybe that's what you want." Janek, dancing, knew that if he stopped, Clury would shoot him down. "No, I don't think so,' he added.

"You're not the suicide type. You're a killer, Clury. But a bomb's a coward's weapon."

"Bullshit!" Clury twirled like an enraged bull.

I've got him now!

"Yeah, a coward's game. Wait till no one's looking, then set it up.

Back off, crouch down, watch it blow. Can't do that in here. You'll be sliced to ribbons."

Clury fired the Glock. Janek winced. The explosion, rebounding off the glass, echoed harshly in his ear. On the other side of the Great Hall a mirror panel shattered, then fell in pieces to the floor.

Janek crouched, pulled out his left ankle Beretta, fired back across the Great Hall as he rose. Then he was off again. Across the room a clone of Clury splintered and crashed.

Clury let go of Gelsey's leash. The moment he did, she ran to one of the walls. Now the three of them were separated, their images crisscrossing on every mirror.

"Don't stand still!" Janek yelled to her. "Move!

Move!"

A thousand Gelseys nodded at once. A thousand dreamsisters began cavorting through mirror world.

Clury fired at Janek again.

I can't Waste ammo returning shot for shot. He's got two of MY pistols, maybe another of his own.

Janek was also aware that this game of hide-and-seek could not go on too long. Concealment among the mirror figures was possible only as long as everyone moved. Once one of them slowed or stopped, he or she would become a t. The end game would be determined by fatigue.

"Get out of here!" Janek yelled to Gelsey. "Take off that damn pack and run!"

Clury laughed. "She can't take it off. And if she runs out of here I'll blow her up."

Gelsey's eyes, a thousand pairs, gleamed with fright. It was the same frightened look Janek had seen when she was booked-the panic that seized her when she was not in control.

No choice now. I've got to kill him.

Janek fired across the room. As Clury ducked, a panel bearing his image broke into shards. Janek saw Gelsey run to one of the walls, then, head down, push her tied hands against a mirror. When the panel sprang open, she crawled into the blackness. The panel shut after her.

Janek heard it click.

"Fuck! Where'd she go?" Clury, panicked, fired four times in four different directions, wheeling 90 degrees between each shot. Sheets of glass splintered and crashed to the floor in different parts of the Hall. Janek watched as four Janek clones. broke and fell.

He, of course, knew exactly where Gelsey had gone: into the chamber of the Minotaur. if I stop he'll stop, just to get off a good clean shot.

Janek rushed along the walls, watching his likenesses whirl around.

Suddenly he stood still. Then, assuming combat stance, he held out his pistol in both hands. Clury stopped, too, took careful aim. They fired together. Mirrors shattered at either end. They fired again.

More panels crashed. Janek became aware of something skidding across the floor but knew he mustn't turn to look.

Clury fired again. Janek fired back. At the end of the third volley, Clury cried out and fell.

Get to him before he sets off the bomb!

Janek ran forward, pistol outstretched, while Clury, bleeding, groped for his module.

Janek fired at his leg. Clury yelled in pain, but still had enough strength to grasp the module from the floor.

Kill him!

Janek, stepped closer, fired. This time he hit Clury in the stomach.

Clury rolled over, clutching his unit. Janek squeezed his trigger but his pistol was empty. Clury grinned. Janek leaped upon him. He had wrestled him over, was lying beneath him, his own back against the floor, when he felt the blast.

All he would remember afterward was the tremendous sound followed by a hard -shower of silver shards. He remembered pain in his hands and the feel of Clury's blood, warm, viscous, spurting upon him. He remembered the foul smell of Clury's body and the multiple images of himself that filled his eyes, broken images all around the wrecked room, reflecting his fear, pain, despair. He remembered thinking: I can lie here now and watch myself die.

Later, when he understood that only his hands had been cut, that he was lying beneath a badly bleeding dead man covered with slivers of shattered glass, that the blood all over him was not his own, he wriggled free, sat up, peered around dazed at the wreckage and saw nothing but broken mirrors. The mirrored ceiling had fallen in, exposing the catwalks, which, he was surprised to see, were still intact. Most of the stage lights were still on, illuminating the debris, and many of the wooden frames that had held the mirrors stood undamaged.

Gelsey!

She had been harnessed to the bomb. Had she gotten loose? He turned to look for the chamber of the Minotaur. Surveying the wreckage, he understood that the bomb had exploded someplace else. Then he remembered, in the midst of the shoot-out, seeing the backpack skidding across the floor. So, she had gotten loose and emerged from the Minotaur's den to heave it away.

Pulling himself to his feet, ignoring the wounds on his hands, he made his way through the rubble to seek her out amid the broken glass. He found her finally within what was left of the little room. She was dead yet her body was unmarred. One of Clury's bullets had torn into her chest.

He sat beside her, hugged her to him, and then he wept for her, the loss of her, the loss of her art to the world. He wept for a long time, until he heard the sirens. Then he let her go, walked out of the ruins of the maze and thought: The mirrors are all broken now.

It was cold and clear the day Gelsey was buried in a small, sparse cemetery near Richmond Park where many carnival workers were entombed.

Walking to the site, his hands still wrapped in bandages, Janek noticed a headstone marking the grave of his father's friend, Walter Meles.

Erica Hawkins attended, along with her gallery staff, several art collectors, a girl named Tracy, Netti Rampersad and the members of Special Squad. During the brief service a flock of crows broke from a tree, then streaked across the New Jersey sky.

After the burial, Janek and Netti spoke.

"Mendoza's being extradited to Texas on capital-murder charges," Netti said. "I've withdrawn from the case. I've decided to give up criminal-defense work, too."

Janek protested. "You're so good at it, Netti. Just because-"

She shushed him. "It's not because of that. Truth is, I hated representing slime. I thought it was a game. Now I see it wasn't.

I'm going to specialize in a different kind of law now: women's issues-domestic relations, spouse battery, workplace harassment-all stuff that turns me on. It's going to be great. I can get righteous as hell and break balls right and left."

"Yeah, I think you'll be very good," Janek agreed.

"I've decided to dump my Chinese accent, too," she said. "It doesn't amuse me anymore."

It took him a week to finish his report on Mendoza. As he wrote it he thought often of mirrors: mirrors of illusion, mirrors of deception, mirrors which, purporting to reflect the truth, had concealed it for nine long years.

At the end of his report he wrote:

All of us who, at one time or another, looked into Mendoza saw only what we wanted to see. For some of us that was a corrupt Department, for others a straight or ward if bizarre homicide case, for still others a puzzle of such complexity that it defied understanding, and, as we constantly reminded each other, made us crazy, too.

The truth is that Mendoza was a kind of mirror into which anyone who peered saw only himself and his belief. For nine years it reflected our diversity and humbled us because we could not comprehend it. It is time now for us to retire the file. The mirror is broken. Mendoza is finally closed One night a week later, when he came home and was unlocking his inner lobby door, he heard his name.