You are the carrier. The vessel. Through you we speak to the world. Spreading our message. Entering the mind of all with ears to hear and eyes to see. You have a space inside for us to fill. Through these acts it has opened. The time for us to enter has come.

The voice grew louder the longer I looked, and I felt myself falling back into that trance-like state. I rushed forward and cleared the mirror with my hand, muting the voice like a radio signal going out of range. Something about mirrors. Mirrors had been used to activate the clones in Professor O’s early studies. Mirrors in almost every room, beware of them. Well, that decided my next move. I grabbed the towel from the bathroom window, thank God there wasn’t some cave dude on the other side staring in, and wrapped it around my elbow. After a few deep preparatory breaths, I smashed the mirror to pieces. Collected the shards and threw them in the trash. I can still see the image I saw reflected back in that mirror as I prepared to strike it. Grey whiskers filling in the beard around my goatee. Wide eyes more scared than angry. Puffy cheeks with purple bruising that would soon turn yellow and green. Age that I hadn’t noticed before. Weakness. Lack of conviction. Cowardice.

I trembled from that brief act of violence. My elbow hurt. You think you’re the same testosterone-fueled maniac you were as an early man until you experience the fear of failing muscles. The atrophy spiral toward death. Nature abhors weakness, and here I am out in the wild. How the hell am I supposed to save myself, much less win back my wife and son?

By becoming the man capable of doing it, is how. Pretend like I’m in some ill-conceived movie where a hero is needed and fulfill that role. What would Batman do? Maybe that should be my new mantra whenever faced with one of this maniac’s twisted tricks. Trouble is, Batman has a billion-dollar utility belt and washboard abs, and all’s I’ve got is a saggy gut and an aching back.

I spent that day reading back through Priscilla’s journal, looking, perhaps, for connective threads. There was some comfort in knowing another person had been out here, alone, under the same circumstances. And she had prevailed, presumably. She had at least gone out swinging. Or fucking, rather. Either way, she’d gone out on a high.

Got me thinking about Malia. Had she been my protector as she claimed or just another bit actor in this…what? Game? Experiment? Punishment?