Mirror Majesty

5: The People in Black- MARCUS

Preston High buzzed with the weary worries of midterm exams. Marcus paid little attention to the stress of passing and more so to his missing best friend, Hope. She had vanished nearly a month ago in the alleyway of an abandoned building near her home. The last people to see her were the school beauty and bully, Nancy Meyers, and a crazed man who police arrested on charges of theft. In the end it did not matter who saw Hope last or what bizarre event occurred. What mattered was Hope had not turned up.

The math teacher, Mrs. Winslow, rattled on about the wonders of trigonometry and the many functions of sine and cosine. Marcus distracted by the empty seat next to him once occupied by Hope and her ugly green backpack found his eyes wandering out the window and his mind recalling the meeting he had with Sergeant Becker at the police station.

"A girl from your school came in here yesterday evening," said the Sergeant. "A Nancy Meyers. Pretty but harsh she was. Definitely informative." He leaned back in his chair. "Seems she saw Hope Martinez go into the abandoned lot on Pennington Avenue just after school. Said Hope was followed by a strange man. Mrs. Meyers saw the man chase Ms. Martinez into the space between the buildings. Then after a few moments heard a loud bang, a flash of light, and all the windows burst from the buildings. She saw the man exit soon after with the victim's green backpack."

Sergeant Becker would go on to inform Marcus that the man in question had been taken to the hospital with serious cuts across his body and a terrifying fear of anything reflective. Whatever he and Nancy saw that day the story was the same. There was a bright light and every window, every mirror in the area shattered, all but one. Sergeant Becker had shown him the mysterious pane of glass removed from the scene. The many dark and twisted hands that pushed from inside the tinted glass. Hands that had left permanent shadows in the tinting but no fingerprints. What could have happened in that alleyway that would lead a girl to vanish, windows to shatter, a strange pattern to form in glass, a grown man lose his sanity, and a bully to seek justice for a girl she so utterly despised? The answer was there in the details. He was missing something.

Marcus had not contacted the Sergeant in weeks. He felt that with no new leads the case had gone cold, and Hope might truly be gone for good. She would become another face on the wall of missing children haphazardly pinned and forgotten with the words, "Have you seen me?" Though like with most unexplainable occurrences, something much more bizarre was bound to come searching for it, and that bizarre arrival began with a screeching of tires and the glow of purple headlights.

A suspicious black car parked right outside of the school's entrance. The figures inside concealed by tinted windows appeared as silhouettes in a fog of purple haze. In the drab, cloudy afternoon air, the vehicle's headlights flooded the classrooms casting eerie shadows onto a purple background. Students strained their eyes to look and teachers paused their lectures. Every student that had a window facing the front entrance watched with curious eyes as the car doors opened.

Two individuals dressed in black suits and round purple aviator glasses stepped on to the pavement. A man wearing a fedora and chain dipping into this chest pocket held in his hand an unknown device. Its flickering red and green lights shone brightly with each step he took across the lawn.

The second individual was a woman clutching a large black briefcase. On the side of the briefcase a silver emblem of an old weight scale flashed in the light. The letters E and O rested on each side of the scale, perfectly balanced.

The woman looked up at the school windows noticing all the curious glances observing her and her partner. She smirked and pulled the briefcase close to her side.

"Come come," she barked at her partner. "We will have plenty of time to pick up the trail. We have to introduce ourselves remember?"

The man leaned over showing the results on the device.

"We are definitely at the source," he said excitedly. "I've never seen numbers this high. There is no doubt a Mirrorbender was here."

Marcus's eyes lit up. That term resonated with him. Hope had always avoided mirrors and even at school mirrors had shattered mysteriously. He wondered if she was the cause of it all since the mysterious events stopped as soon as Hope went missing. Despite his assumptions the real question at the moment was who were these people and what did they want with Preston High? His hair stood on end as he leaned closer to the open window. Deep down he sensed these two people in black were up to no good.

Mrs. Winslow tried to retain order and turn student's attention back to the topic, but many like Marcus strained to hear more of these people's conversation.

"Hmm," said the woman in black rubbing her chin. "A high school and a middle school. Where to start?" She began walking to the front entrance with her partner nonchalantly following behind. She stopped and swiftly turned her head. Her gaze found Marcus's face among the crowd.

His hand pressed on the glass feeling the cold winter wind shake the window. The woman peeked over her sunglasses. Her eyes glittered a faint purple hue. Marcus felt a twinge of fear ripple through his body and the glass beneath his fingertips suddenly crack.