Gharnem would be more surprised if she hadn't already witnessed the extent of the absurdity to which miracles can descend. Dordio's Alleyway Manipulation had been the last miracle to have surprised Gharnem in any way. However, although she felt no confusion or surprise, one emotion unexplainably clouded Gharnem's mind and every one of her senses.
Dread.
Gharnem was left silent. Admiring the accuracy of the form that this invisible girl had taken.
"Well, not really an invisible girl." She thinks to herself, crossing out the miracle portion of the girl's file.
Gharnem watches as the girl, or her own self, realizes the dread in Gharnem's expression,
"Hm!" The girl laughs; Gharnem, betrayed, laughs in ways she had not consented to, moves in ways she had not allowed, and talks to her, as if a mirror had a conscience.
"What are you thinking right now? No two people who have ever seen my miracle have had the same reaction."
Gharnem has no reaction, not due to shell shock of witnessing a miracle, but because she can't comprehend the folly of talking to an identical self, not identical like twins are to each other. Identical, like looking into a mirror, though the sense of similarity vanishes with each word that the girl says.
"What, you've never seen yourself before?"
A voice like hers, talking in a way ever so slightly different from how she would.
Gharnem is trying to keep her thoughts in check as the reflection continues, trying to elicit a reaction from her.
"Oh come on, you have to talk back to me; the other guys have tried so hard to get to where you are right now."
Gharnem scowls at the tone she is convinced she would never use.
"I have questions to ask you," Gharnem says, mimicking the formal way in which she had seen her coworkers talking to other prisoners,
"First, sit down," Gharnem demands.
"I'll sit down when my legs get tired," Silia says, reflecting Gharnem's demanding tone.
"Look, I think you're forgetting: I'm the researcher, and you're the prisoner," Gharnem says, trying to sound like what she's heard Kulibren sound like.
"Oh wow, intimidating, hear you boss." The girl jokes as she sits down on the bolted-down chair in front of Gharnem
"So let's get started. What is your name?" Gharnem asks,
Unimpressed by Gharnem's investigative prowess, the girl doesn't answer the question.
"Answer my que–" Gharnem is cut off.
"I'll answer in a second, but first, tell me about yourself. I wanted an investigator like you because I want to feel comfortable here." The girl states.
"So you asked for a single researcher?" Gharnem asks.
"Exactly," the girl answers, smiling to herself.
"And it had to be a woman?" Gharnem adds
"That was because it feels dishonest to take the form of a man when I'm a girl," she responds, before her–or Gharnem's–face becomes red in realization that she's given a key point of information.
"What do you mean? Couldn't you just conduct the interview invisibly, or… wait…" Gharnem pauses as she tries to connect the dots of how the girls' miracle works
"Exactly, my miracle isn't invisibility or shapeshifting; my miracle is a reflection; it allows me to take the form of any human with whom I talk."
Gharnem writes down everything she hears in an empty notebook she brought with her. Noticing this, the girl fills the silence,
"If I can be honest with you, you don't exactly seem cut out for this job."
Hearing this, Gharnem again reminds herself of how this is an undeserved position that was given to her because she is deemed useful,
"Well, truthfully, I'm not, but there is a reason I'm here," she says, trying to convince not just the invisible girl, but also herself that she brings value to floor zero.
"I see, so you're a Miracle-Born?" The girl asks
"How the hell does she know?" Gharnem thinks to herself in a manic state. Instead of confessing,
"What are you talking about, me? A Miracle-Born?" she says, feebly.
"It's pretty obvious; they sent an incompetent researcher as the sole interrogator for my case. There must be something about you that makes you more valuable to my case. Kulibren is childless, so it isn't any sort of nepotism."
Gharnem tries to hide how shook she is by the comment, but her ego gets in her way.
"Don't act like you're all that. Your file says you were crying when you were arrested; doesn't sound like much of a trained assassin to me."
The invisible girl seems to jot that down mentally.
"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone you told me this, as long as you tell me something I want to know." The girl says, "Gharnem," only now remembering that a researcher isn't allowed to tell any floor zero prisoner anything the prison knows about them.
"Yeah, and what is that?" Gharnem asks
"Just one simple question," The girl continues
Gharnem starts to get suspicious, "Ask the question; if it is simple, I'll answer it."
Gharnem watches her reflection smile back at her, eyes devoid of an original soul
"Here it goes." The girl jokes, pausing to keep Gharnem on edge,
"What is?" She pauses again to watch Gharnem begin to stress,
"Your name?" Gharnem is unable to control herself as she breathes out a sigh of relief.
"I'll answer if you answer," Gharnem negotiates.
"Oh, so that isn't written down in your file?" The girl jokes.
"Well, I already have something on you, you know. I don't know if a name for a name is worth it for me; I want more from you." The girl continues.
"Okay, how about this: I'll answer this question and your next question if you tell me your name," Gharnem says, continuing to negotiate.
"Hm, interesting, so my name is something important to you; why is that?" The girl asks
"You told us your name when you were arrested, but that person has never existed, so who are you, Silia?" Gharnem answers while avoiding the question.
"That still doesn't answer my question if an oil company wants to buy your house, it means there's oil, if you ask me for my name you must need it for something, how about this, I'll tell you my name, if you let me see your file, that seems fair, you have a file on me I should have a file on you." The girl points out,
"You're gonna have to say yes. Let me guess: your boss will kill you if you don't find my name out. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone how you got it."
Gharnem starts to grow impatient; however, the girl is right: for Gharnem, finding out the invisible girl's name is the most important thing at this moment.
"My name is Gharnem."
"My name is Lyclin."
Chapter 28
Visitors and tourists that come in every year like to say that the city streets of Kilder feel alive. Like the dense interconnected alleyways that resemble the veins of a heart, to Korven, the only semblance of life in the city died long before she had been born–that's only if it ever existed in the first place. Now, the only similarity between a heart and Kilder is that one day a heart will stop, dry up, and wither away; only then will a heart resemble Kilder.
Those very void-of-life alleyways Korven had gotten used to, the alleyways that Korven wanders when looking for leads. When she has nowhere to go. When she's lost emotionally.
Except this time she isn't. Korven wanders these alleys, not because she has no leads to follow, but rather because she has a lead she doesn't know how to follow. Korven had spent her day looking into Sinxu, the correctional officer who held her at gunpoint, claiming to be trying to protect his brother by stopping her. However, Korven was not looking into Sinxu because of Sinxu, but because of her brother, Quyin.
Looking into Sinxu allowed Korven to research the early lives of the Wylin brothers.
Quyin, of course, is one of the many lesser-known Miracles residing in Kilder due to the lack of a 'flashy' ability, so to learn his current whereabouts, she had to find any surviving family members.
"Obviously other than Sinxu." Korven had joked. However, that joke had turned out to be quite a major limiting factor for her investigation, as the only Wylin family member who knew Quyin's location, residing in Kilder, and wasn't in active contact with Sinxu–who Korven wanted to keep out of the loop–was a cousin who had refused to speak on the phone, asking to meet Korven in person.
"This man is lucky I don't have anything better to do," Korven says as she maneuvers through the garbage dumps, looking for the address the cousin had sent her.
"There is admittedly a major chance of this being a trap," Korven tells herself, unmoved by what should be a horrifying statement.
"At least I never have to worry about getting killed in a trap," Korven says as she stops trying to hold back a cheeky smile while her right hand grips the loaded handgun in her pocket.
"No one will be able to stop me from finding out my truth." Korven smiles,
"I am Korven. I see through the secrets of Kilder, and it is up to me to cut through them."
Korven turns another corner, deeper into an alleyway; every turn that brings her closer to the cousin only adds fuel to the blaze of doubt raging in her mind.
"With where this address is, it's probably more likely that it's some sort of trap than the truth," Korven says, placing her finger beneath the trigger of the gun tucked away under her hoodie.
Korven circles around a man sleeping on the street, a man looking, another forgotten relic of the city. Korven tiptoes around him, so worried about his comfort that she doesn't notice she is right next to the arranged meeting spot.
"Looks like all the telltale signs of a trap," Korven says, in case she ever decides to look through this specific memory.
Korven looks around, trying to find the door shown in the picture Quyin's cousin had sent her earlier.
"It seems that other than the man sleeping beside me, I am the only person this deep into the alleyway," Korven notes hyperbolically. Although truthfully, she had always enjoyed the silence of the forgotten parts of Kilder, the corners that people refuse to bring up when talking about the city.
Korven spots the door from the picture and walks towards it, the dusk moonlight illuminating its rotting wood. She opens it with her left hand, keeping the handgun tightly clenched in her right.
The door awkwardly glides into the house after Korven messes around with the rusted doorknob.
"Hello?" Korven asks the pitch-black room, the moonlight from outside partially illuminating just a mat.
"I knew it." Korven thinks, slowly drawing her pistol from her waistband.
"This was a trap," Korven says, accidentally out loud out of habit.
Before Korven even has the time to react, the lights in the room turn on, the man Korven had contacted online standing in front of her,
"No,no, sorry, I was expecting a knock, not you coming in with a handgun." The man says, actually more of a boy; Korven notices, looking anywhere between 16 and 19.
"Oh uh… sorry," Korven says, flustered by the boy's ever-present cheerful look. Quickly placing the gun back into her pocket.
"Sorry, sorry, this isn't going well, uh, you are Yunuh, right?" Korven asks, her face, ruby couloured in embarrassment.
"Yeah… and I'm assuming you're Korven?" Yunuh says, returning the question.
Korven nods
"You're younger than I thought you would be," they say at the same time, hoping to break the awkward tension in the room. Both of them giggle at the coincidence.
Korven is the first to talk after the laughing dies down.
"Well, I guess so; it's very complicated, you know." Korven jokes.
"You told me you lived alone; you also live in quite a run-down part of town." Korven adds,
Yunuh smiles before responding, "So are you only here to call me poor?"
Korven jumps to defend herself, "No, no! Far from it, actually; from inside this place if pretty nice"
"Chill out, I was just joking," Yunuh says, laughing at his own joke,
"Please come in, sit down, I'm sure you have a lot of questions to ask about my miracle of a cousin," Yunuh jokes, gesturing for Korven to sit down on a shabby but tasteful couch in the middle of his one-room basement apartment.
Korven sits down, looking around the rest of the apartment. She wouldn't have been able to tell this room was in the same neighbourhood she had just been walking in. All the walls were covered with shiny gold-coloured metal objects. Each object, when examined up close, had many flaws, either in the paint or the craftsmanship, but they were all placed next to one another, making the room look like an art museum. A Kitchenette being the only other piece of furniture in the room.
"Where does he sleep?" Korven thinks to herself. As she sits down on the couch, Yunuh comes over and sits in front of her.
"So, you wanted to ask about Quyin?"