Chapter Sixteen

The night of the living pug

Thor snorted as he looked at the mess in the streets. At least the monster dog wasn't hard to find. All he had to do was follow the trail of some of the people running in panic, and the sound of glass shattering and regenerating with each of his footsteps.

The police tracking drones had a clear view of him for the moment, but from time to time they would suddenly lose sight of the animal in the streets, only to appear a little further away.

"This is not good at all," Philip said.

"You don't say," Thor replied, with some derision.

The SID, the police and SIGN continued their chase through the streets, trying to cut off the enormous animal, but it was able to avoid the obstacles that stood in its way with an absurd ease, for its enormous size. Worst of all, he was in the old city, an area well known for its tranquility, and Philip only prayed that the animal would not cause so much damage to the place or hurt people.

After running over Thor vehicle, the animal had run down Holyrood Road, then turned the corner and ran south down Dalkeith Road. It had leapt over rooftops, through green parts of greenhouses in St. Clerk's Street, and from there it ran like a meteor straight up the A7, where they were finally able to catch up with it.

But, try as they might, the animal simply jumped back and forth while dodging obstacles.

Philip and Zi had been looking at the technical reports from the drones and found, that those who had attacked the animal, had been knocked out in a matter of seconds after engaging it.

"How are we going to stop it?" Zi asked. "The drones looked like they had self-destructed when they tried to attack it."

"Yes. By the type of attack, they were destroyed by their own ammunition."

"It's reflecting the attacks…"

"That's all we need," Philip snorted.

The dog turned a corner and took Nicolson Street. Thor, who was almost right on his tail, followed him and skidded as he turned right again, all the way down Potterrow Street. The hunt was moving through the old historic building of Edinburgh University, converted into the Museum of Education.

The SID truck could not go down those streets due to its size and continued its westbound course down another wider street, while dispatching new drones. If at least these were not enough to stop it, at least they could serve as a distraction. Although that was of no interest to the animal, who was having an entire sightseeing tour of the local buildings. Thor was quite busy following it and changing course as the animal jumped from place to place.

On one of the runs through the place, Thor lost sight of it before entering Princes Street. The dog had made a feint and had tricked him by taking one of the nearby streets. They entered the new part of the city.

Calling it a new part was relative. The new city had almost the same architecture, but there were only a few skyscrapers in the western part of the district. The problem was that this part of the city was already one of the busiest parts of the city, since the nightlife was underground.

One of the reasons that the city had changed so little over the years was that Edinburgh had been developed completely below ground, as a post-war plan in case the Fractus threat returned. Down there were luxury hotels, restaurants, pubs, and hundreds of other establishments that contrasted rather more with the style of the city on the surface.

"Where are you?" Thor asked angrily, as he made his way down Princes Street.

The alarm that something was loose in the city had already gone off and, in a matter of seconds, many of the cars had tried to find a quick parking spot and abandon the vehicles, while their owners tried to get down to the subway entrances as quickly as possible.

Thor looked sideways but could not find him, and the drones gave no sign of him either. Maybe he's already crossed over to the other streets, he thought.

He pressed the accelerator once more, as he watched some passersby leaving the streets, and that's when he saw him again.

"Son of a bitch!" he shouted, when he saw a shadow on the ground that seemed to have no owner.

The dog was in the same street just a few meters away from him. Thor slammed on the brakes just inches away from touching it. Seeing what had happened with the drones, he didn't feel like rolling over a second time that night.

The bastard had stood still in the middle of the street. From a distance, his mirrored armor blended in with the surrounding environment, creating a perfect reflection. It gave the impression that he wasn't there, unless were too close. The shadow was the only thing he could see before he realized it was there in front of him.

The dog got up, looked at the car curiously and started to run to the next street, with Thor following behind and cursing.

Philip and Zi were just less than a hundred meters behind and saw the animal change direction so they changed streets as well.

At that moment several questions popped into Zi's mind. "Take care of him," said the fey girl who had cold-bloodedly murdered Sil Moore. Take care of what? And she had also said "take care of all of them?" Zi couldn't figure out what that was all about. For one thing, if that girl was the killer, she didn't understand how she could have left a message for her, knowing that she would be caught in the mirror the day after the grisly murder. Unless it was someone who could have had foreknowledge of it.

Shadow people.

What did they want? And if they wanted something, did they have a way to determine in the past what would happen in the future? Or was it as the studies said that they had a certain manipulation of time? Zi didn't quite believe it. She had always trusted much more in what she saw in front of her. But that night there was the proof. She had become one of the lucky few who had seen one of them up close and had lived to tell about it.

Zi wasn't stupid enough to trust advice from a hostile source, even if it could cross time and space. That sounded too mystical for her taste. But still, there she was, once again with Philip in the middle of a case like so many other nights over the years. Chasing a monster across town. Philip, Oxy and Thor's conversation brought her back to reality.

"How on earth can it move so fast?" Thor asked.

[I think it might be due to his staying in the mirror. Maybe that changed it somehow. The store owner said he'd been hearing noises for a long time,] Oxy explained.

"Do you think he was inside for a long time?"

[Yes. I mean, we all know what happens to a creature when it disappears on the Other Side. It changes. The longer the permanence the greater the change. The mirror box could be that it acts as a sorft of miniature of the Other Side.]

"That doesn't sound right," Zi muttered.

"If it's attacking everything it reflects, couldn't we just attack it from above with one of the tactical satellites?" Philip suggested.

[And risk losing a satellite? We don't know what range it might have.]

"We could call in an Orbital Knight," Thor said.

No one said anything, remembering just a couple of days ago what happened to Carissia's mech. Landing in the middle of the city was out of the question.

[You can't reflect an attack when there's nothing to reflect…]

"What?"

"Couldn't you raise a security dome with a force field and force it to stay in place?" asked a policeman from one of the patrol cars.

[That's what happened at the SIGN building. That thing went through the force field, it didn't override it, it's like it wasn't there. Who knows, maybe staying inside the mirror changed it somehow. We could try, though I'm not sure if it would work.]

"Damn," Thor mumbled, spinning across the wet asphalt. Again the dog had left him behind. "How I wish that girl who can manipulate empty spaces was here."

"Who?" asked Zi.

"Gina. The girl with the black holes. Unfortunately she's not here," Philip replied.

"Can't I just fight him?"

[The last time you used your fists seriously you destroyed conductivity for a mile around. Nigeria, remember?]

Thor snorted remembering the event. Claris, meanwhile, along with the others, were following the pursuit of the vehicles and drones through the truck's screens. She was too busy counting in her head how many charges they were going to be blamed for this time. She had been right to stay. She was going to get a nice bonus for the job. Better make a list for Cleo, she thought.

[You can't reflect on something you don't see coming,] Oxy said, and materialized his augmented reality avatar in the seat that until a few minutes ago had been occupied by Claris.

"Excuse me?" Thor asked.

[An optical cloaking attack I think might be a good option. If the mirror cloak acts as something protective and reflects anything that tries to attack, then something it can't reflect should give us an advantage.]

"If that's so, he shouldn't have been able to jump through the force field in the parking lot," Zi said.

[It's worth a try at least.]

"Good plan, except for one detail," Thor said, pointing at the dog's butt. "See the speed of that thing? We have to stop it first before we make any attacks on it."

[You want to give me the lead and jump on top of it?]

"Excuse me? I'm not going to jump on that. I don't have fakir training," Philip said.

"I mean Thor."

"I think I could do that, I've spent a good part of my life hunting monsters after all."

"That thing is going to blow holes all over you with the mirror shards," Zi warned him.

"I have my bio-armor circuit with me."

"Well... then let's try it. What's the plan?" asked Philip.

[Thor will try to stop it and, if you can do that, let's try to catch it with a dome.]

"You just want me to hit it?"

[Hard enough to stop the run. When you do that we can bring down a force shield made with the drones.]

"Sounds good to me," Thor said, raising his eyebrows.

"Are you a monster hunter?" was asked from the police car.

"No. Or something more like it. I'm Australian," Thor said smiling.

The coppers following the conversation looked at each other in concern. "These chaps are nuts."