Page 107 of Lovesick Titan

“It’s just the landscape,” Andre said quietly.

But Mal had to be there. Somewhere. Danny’s fatherhad to be there.

Yet they weren’t.

Jumping back to the edge of the trap, Danny was followed by a cavalcade of voices.

“Danny!”

“You can’t!”

“It’s what he wants!”

Even Captain Shan came over the comms, “Damn it, Grant, don’t do anything stupid!”

But Danny had to. He had to. Looking back at his friends, at his extended family—at Dom, Lucy, and Priestly too—he steeled his nerves. “I’ll bring them home. I promise,” he said and dove back into the lion’s den.

R

The first thing Danny noticed when he surfaced on the other side of the mirror was the quiet. Had it always been like this inside the mirror world when Ludgate wasn’t taunting him? Reminding himself that he was being watched, he envisioned the whole city with its eyes on him, but not even that would slow him down.

“Ludgate!” he screamed into the open blackness covered in sparkling mirrors and the occasional jagged edge of broken glass. They’d limited the playing field, but there were countless mirrors spanning into the distance. Danny had to stop Ludgate once and for all, or this would never end.

Nothing moved in the stillness. Ludgate was baiting him, but Danny couldn’t give in. He had to stay calm, had to think like Mal. Smart. Careful. Patient. Keeping his distance from any single mirror, he turned back to get his bearings on the mirror framed in ice, then he fanned out, moving slowly, taking his time as he searched for some sign of where Ludgate might be hiding. Glass crunched beneath his boots as he crossed the open area they’d decimated.

He saw a chair, and in front of it, an unmoving figure that looked to be covered in black. Danny approached it with equal caution, this still form almost like a man, but no…it was something else. When Danny finally reached it, he understood.

The black Zeus suit, The Invisible Man, covered a mannequin sans its head, and Danny’s jacket lay on the ground beside it.

Ludgate had mimicked John. He could fake his face, his voice, but to be physical and solid outside the illusions, he’d needed more the black suit without a mask and had to use Danny’s jacket to hide the lie. John might not even be here.

The sprinkle of red on the glass around the chair made Danny falter. He hoped and prayed that the stains were from Ludgate.

“Mal!” he cried. He couldn’t take Ludgate by surprise, but he could avoid being taken by surprise in turn. “Where are they?! Ludgate! If you hurt Mal or my father…”

A gurgling cough answered Danny, and he whirled around. Behind a mirror not too far away, he saw movement near the ground. His instincts were to jump forward, but he made himself take his time to maneuver around the mirrors with a wide berth.

The sounds the figure made were terrible, pitiful and weak, and Danny’s blood ran cold as he drew closer—to see the navy blue of a familiar duster.Mal, alone, coughing into the nonexistent ground beneath him.

A harsh breath caught in Danny’s throat as he cleared a set of mirrors to a fuller view of Mal rolling onto his back, sputtering bloodas he stared upwards unseeing, choking—dying—because of a shard of glass plunged into his chest.

Danny trembled, watching Mal convulse, spasm, and start to still…

“No…”

It isn’t real, it isn’t real—

“It isn’treal,” Danny finished aloud, moving cautiously closer to the figure on the ground, whose head lolled to the side and eyes stared up at him unblinking. It was a trick. It had to be a trick. “It isn’t real!” he screamed, and as the glass around him shook from his bellow, the vision of Mal faded like the mirage it was, projected from the perfect formation of mirrors around it.

“Getting smarter, Zeus?” Ludgate’s winded but cruel voice spoke from behind him.

Danny spun, ready for any deception, only to come face to face with another mirror, but it wasn’t Ludgate within, it was John. Beaten and tied to a chair, like Danny had last seen him, but with his head uncovered as he sat in the midst of the ruins of the power plant Thanatos destroyed.

Most of the wreckage had been cleared away over the months, but nothing had been rebuilt there. The city had rerouted power through other stations, other sources outside Olympus. All that remained was concrete and a few remnants of metal girders in a large open space not far from where Danny’s team was now. In fact, if not for one final standing concrete wall, Danny’s friends likely would have been able to see John in the distance.

As well as the explosives positioned all around the perimeter.

“Dad!” Danny screamed, seeing the picture like looking in on video footage. He knew it was foolish to reach out, but he couldn’t quell the compulsion. Moving to touch the glass, he found that his hand disappeared into it. It was a trap, it had to be, but he didn’t know where Mal was, and his father was rightthere, in danger, waiting to be rescued.

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