May 7, 6:42 am, Queanbeyan, Australia

"We ready to go?" said Medina. She slung her oversized backpack on, looking back at the boys. Gadiel stretched his arms across his chest, and Tarik was cleaning up some trash. They both looked up when she spoke.

And nodded.

Medina turned around, and they set off.

The Target was dark and gloomy; they had to use Gadiel and Tarik's phones as flashlights to light up the way. Medina's phone had been melted beyond recognition in Tarik's inferno.

"I had to change my clothes too," Medina had told them when they asked what happened to it. "They completely disintegrated!"

An image of a naked Medina had popped into Gadiel's mind which he had quickly suppressed. Some things were better left un-thought.

The trio walked through the store, weaving through the aisles. The route they took made no sense to Gadiel, but he trusted Medina enough to let her lead the way. After all, she had watched her teammates navigate through this labyrinth before.

Slowly, they made their way into the children's toys section. They walked into an aisle full of action figures on one side, and dolls to the other. Gadiel felt a weird sense of nostalgia; he remembered begging his parents for the same action figures when he was a boy.

"Alright, this is the first gate," said Medina, taking out her gun. "If things are the same as last time, then we should go through some sort of trial here."

"Trial?" asked Gadiel.

"We're gonna get attacked by all the dolls," Medina clarified.

Gadiel immediately backed away from the action figures. Suddenly, it seemed as if a thousand eyes were all looking at him.

"We should be fine, right?" said Tarik, seemingly unbothered. "They're just dolls."

"Some of them are action figures," muttered Gadiel.

"There's just a lot of them," said Medina, ignoring Gadiel. "And we'll need to completely destroy them in order to move on. Don't worry, I've got a plan."

She quickly explained her plan while walking though the aisle. It seemed simple enough.

"How did you know we can do that?" Gadiel asked, surprised.

"I figured it out while watching you both fight yesterday," said Medina, keeping an eye on the shelves of toys as she walked. "It wasn't too hard to figure out what you could and couldn't do."

Gadiel couldn't help but be impressed. Despite his first impression of her, Medina did seem quite reliable when it came down to it. He looked over at Tarik, who was frowning. He didn't seem as pleased as Gadiel for some reason.

"You okay?" he asked. Tarik looked up, surprised, then confused.

"Yeah? Why wouldn't I be?" he said.

"Just checking in," said Gadiel, smiling. Tarik gave a tired smile in return, and they both went back to keeping an eye on the dolls.

They reached the end of the aisle, and stopped. From the layout of the store, there should be a large wall of toys in front of them, and an aisle leading left or right. Sure enough, there was a wall of soccer- and basketb.a.l.l.s on the wall.

But no way to go left or right. Instead, they were cut off by large, gray blocks of concrete.

"NOW!" yelled Medina.

At the same time, a weird, cool breeze blew through the aisle. Gadiel blinked; it seemed like his vision was getting blurry for some reason. A fog slowly rose up from the tiled floors.

One by one, the dolls started to fall off their shelves. Slowly, mechanically, they picked themselves up. Their movements were jerky and robotic, as if they were not used to moving. As they got up, their heads all jerked into the direction of the trio.

Every single one of their eyes glowed black, s.h.i.+mmering like deep s.p.a.ce.

The horrifying beauty plastered onto cheap plastic and wool sent a s.h.i.+ver of revulsion through the trio. This was...wrong. Dolls weren't supposed to be like this. Teddy bears shouldn't have eyes deeper than the ocean.

Gadiel was frozen. His heart was in his throat; the toys' gazes had immobilized him in his tracks. He knew he needed to move, to do something, but his body wouldn't listen to him. A paralyzing fear coursed through his body, rooting him to the spot.

A toy bear leaped towards them. Gadiel watched it as if it were in slow motion, moving through the air...

...towards Tarik.

Panic rose up in Gadiel's chest, and suddenly, he found he could move. He raised a hand, face twisted into a grimace.

"FREEZE!"

Instantly, a burst of cold blew out, covering a five meter radius. The toy bear also froze mid-air, falling and shattering into a million pieces.

Suddenly, the spell was broken. Tarik placed a hand on one of the shelves and immediately set it on fire. Meanwhile, Gadiel placed a hand on the opposite shelf, and froze everything he could, while Medina began taking shots at all the dolls that had managed to get to the floor.

The plan was to destroy most of the dolls before they fell; Tarik's fire would work well for that. Not to mention, it would work best when all the toys were bunched together, as they were on the shelves. Medina knew from the last time that the dolls all fell slowly, so they would have a window of opportunity to get them all while they were still on the shelves. The plan was to use fire and ice to burn and freeze them like that, and for Medina to pick up the stragglers by shooting them.

BANG!

Smoke blew out from the barrel of Medina's gun as she shot the final doll. It shattered into pieces.

"Okay, that went well," she said. "Though I wasn't expecting them to be so...y'know."

The creepiness of the dolls hadn't been factored into the plan. Luckily, Gadiel had been able to snap them all out of their reverie.

"Was it just creepiness, or was that some kind of...immobilizing power?" Tarik wondered. "It felt a little like some kind of magic to me."

"Probably just creepiness," said Gadiel, looking around, trying to see where they were supposed to go next.

Medina didn't join in the conversation. Instead, she looked back at the shelf of b.a.l.l.s. Tarik and Gadiel also looked over, wondering what she was waiting for.

CLICK!

Suddenly, the shelves all flattened into the wall. The b.a.l.l.s all fell, bouncing down the aisle. As the b.a.l.l.s rolled past the trio, the wall they were facing suddenly opened up at the center; a small, straight line of darkness, promising nothing but s.p.a.ce on the other side.

"Let's go," said Medina. Silently, she walked over to the former wall, and pushed it open.

Gadiel blinked in surprise. Of all the things he was expecting...

...this was exactly what he had in mind.

It looked exactly like a labyrinth; high, stone walls, lit up with torches every few meters. The path split off into three after a few meters, which was also typical.

Medina walked into the labyrinth while reloading her gun. Tarik followed, and after a small hesitation, so did Gadiel.

Gadiel tried to keep track of where they were in his mind as they followed Medina, but he gave up after the tenth turn or so.

"How do you remember all the turns?" he asked her at one point.

"Hmm?" said Medina, not looking up. Gadiel peered over her shoulder and realized that she had her sleeve rolled up. On her arm were detailed instructions, all the way from her elbow to her wrist.

"Never mind," he said, shaking his head.

They kept walking through the labyrinth following Medina's lead. Occasionally, they would walk into a large, decorated room. Usually, Medina would stop in these, and tell the boys to prepare, only for them to walk through it and get out the other side without even seeing a monster.

"Maybe all the monsters moved out of the labyrinth, into the first stage?" suggested Tarik after the fifth empty room.

"There were more monsters out there than I expected," Medina conceded after a short while. She sounded uncertain.

They kept walking through the labyrinth, pa.s.sing through rooms at what Medina a.s.sured them was an unprecedented rate.

"We spent hours here last time," said Medina as they exited another room. "The statues of the knights all moved so fast...they already killed Jason before we could do anything..."

Gadiel didn't know what to say. He kept walking as Tarik walked over to Medina, and put a hand on her shoulder, startling her.

"We'll get through this," he said. "And we'll beat her."

Medina smiled sadly, then consulted her arm again.

"This way. We're almost...we're almost there."

At this point, Gadiel noticed something different about the walls.

"What are all these paintings?" he said as they walked past a landscape painting.

Medina looked up and frowned.

"I don't remember anything about paintings..." she said slowly, looking around her. Sure enough, every few meters, there was a painting of a landscape, or a group. All of them depicted some sort of scenery, like a lake or a beach, or some kind of event, like a dinner, or a discussion by a fireplace.

Gadiel frowned and stopped in front of a particular painting that seemed oddly familiar. It showed the sunset on a beach, the sky and water intermingling into a beautiful splash of color.

"Gadiel?" called Tarik.

"I think I...never mind," he said. "Coming!"

He quickly made his way back to the trio, frowning. That beach scene...it looked a lot like a beach he went to as a child with his family.

They moved on, but every now and then, Gadiel would see a painting that seemed weirdly familiar to him.

"Hey...these paintings," said Gadiel after seeing a painting of the playground he used to visit as a child. "Do they seem...familiar to anyone else?"

"Oh thank G.o.d it's not just me," Tarik sighed with relief. "I thought I was just going crazy! They all look like France, right?"

"France?"

"Yeah, like that one is definitely Nice," said Tarik, pointing to a painting of a painting of what looked like a busy market street.

"And that one is the university I go to in Paris..."

He pointed out a couple more paintings, telling them about how they were all places he had been to before. Gadiel then pointed out the paintings that he recognized, and explained how he knew them.

"So this place is showing paintings of...places we've been to?" said Tarik, confused.

"I think it's a little more than that," said Gadiel slowly. "At least for me, all these places have some...good memories a.s.sociated with them."

"...you're right," said Tarik, nodding an his eyes narrowed. "I remember...yes, good memories..."

But that didn't explain the rest of the paintings. The paintings of the castles, the rooms, and the dinners. Those all seemed like places and people lifted straight out of some fantasy novel. Neither Gadiel nor Tarik had been to places like this before...

The boys turned to Medina. She was too engrossed in her arm to notice them, and turned a corner before they could call out to her.

"Medina, wait up!"

Gadiel and Tarik chased after her around the corner, only to find Medina standing still, looking up ahead of her.

"We're here," she whispered. "This is it."

Gadiel blinked only to find that he was looking at a large, wall-spanning mirror. Upon closer inspection, he realized that the mirror was actually a set of double doors.

There were a couple of paintings leading up to the mirror door. It was those that Gadiel noticed first.

Because there was a portrait of him.

On the wall he next to him, a portrait of him, smiling up at the painter. It looked more like a photo than a painting, but the closer he looked, the more he noticed the brushstrokes and paint on canvas.

It was a simple portrait, of him sitting alone on a chair in a black void, looking solemnly at the painter. The look in his eyes gave Gadiel the creeps. He didn't really want to look at this version of himself.

"It's just a painting," he muttered to himself. "Just a painting. Focus."

He turned his attention back to the mirror-door, but his eyes immediately went to the reflection of his painting.

To his shock, the mirror reflected a different painting.

A painting of Gadiel sitting with his parents and Tarik. He and Tarik were holding hands, smiling at the painter. Behind them, Gadiel's parents were standing, looking a little old, but proud. On Tarik's lap sat a small girl, sucking her thumb.

Gadiel blinked. He looked between the painting, and the reflection. He rubbed his eyes, and looked again.

Sure enough, they were different.

He narrowed his eyes. What was going on here? Why were the paintings different?

He walked over to the painting of himself, and looked up at it. His painted self looked back, eyes cold. Gadiel sneaked a glance over at his reflection, who was looking up at the painting of his future family.

Or, what Gadiel hoped his future family to be.

He sighed, looking up at the painting. His emotions were mixed. He knew that these paintings showed his past, and where he had been. They showed all his good memories...and now that they were in the final room, was he supposed to believe that this was what it all culminated into? That all those happy memories would lead to this?

Him sitting down, alone, eyes cold?

Was that really his future?

...if he could, he'd much rather have the future in the reflection.

As soon as he thought that, the painting in front of him started to change. Gadiel blinked, but it looked like...the painting in front of him was becoming the one from the mirror. Soon, the painting in front of him became the one that was in the reflection.

For a brief moment, Gadiel looked back at the reflection, and sure enough, the one there was the one that had been in front of him. He opened his mouth to say something to the others.

But he couldn't.

Instead, he stared at his reflection, and watched as his reflection slowly grinned at him.

Gadiel copied his movement, grinning the exact same way back. He didn't want to, but his body moved on it's own.

Copying his reflection.

If his eyes could widen, they would have. But Gadiel couldn't even control that. His heart felt like it was in a boxing match against his ribcage as he watched and copied his reflection stretch his body a little.

Except that wasn't his reflection anymore. Gadiel was the reflection.

They had swapped places.

"Hey guys, have you seen these paintings?" he heard Not-Gadiel say to the others.