Chapter Nineteen: A Lifeline

Camille still hadn’t managed to close her gaping mouth. As she finally came to her senses, she realized her facial muscles ached. She rubbed her cheek and, on the verge of tears, said,
“A strange experience... No, no, Lily, I don’t even know how to describe it anymore. Ever since you vanished after falling from the platform, I haven’t seen a single thing that seemed normal to me. Is there something wrong with my mind?”
Then, like someone clutching at a lifeline, Camille began to pour out everything she’d been through in those few minutes, as well as her jumbled thoughts.
Lily didn’t interrupt, listening intently.
She needed to tend to Camille’s emotions, but she also wanted to hear what these “strange phenomena” looked like from the eyes of an outsider.
Learning that she’d disappeared abruptly, and that the train doors beyond the platform had twisted into an odd, slanted formation, Lily grew curious about the “force” that had dragged her and John into that bizarre space. What was it exactly? Why was it connected to the Mist of Two Point Four? And why did it want to draw them into that strange world?
“So, Lily, where did you go? What happened? How come you’re not even a little shaken?”
Now that she finally had someone to talk to, Camille began to notice other oddities. She knew nothing of John’s circumstances, nor had she witnessed what happened that day or learned of his subsequent changes, so everything seemed incomprehensible. But even more baffling was Lily’s attitude—she was far too nonchalant...
“Well... it’s not something I can explain in a sentence or two. I’ll tell you on our way back. For now, let’s search this place again and see if there’s anything else useful.” Since Camille had witnessed her disappearance, Lily decided she ought to know at least some of the truth, and promised to explain on the walk back.
“All right,” Camille replied, dropping the subject.
Working together, Lily and Camille found a box of handgun ammunition in the station’s fire emergency room and a coil of rescue rope in the police room.
Once they were sure there was nothing else, they retraced their steps. This time, Camille didn’t jump straight from the platform, but instead took the staircase at the very end.
Lily found this rather amusing and teased her for being overly cautious.

Camille had truly been frightened, and was still waiting for Lily’s explanation.
As they walked back along the railway tracks, Lily explained that the orphanage children would, on their fifteenth birthday, likely be dragged by a mysterious “force” into a strange world to undergo certain experiences, after which they would gain some abilities.
She herself, for instance, had begun with some auxiliary abilities—greater dexterity in her fingers, a more convincing voice, and so on.
The glove she’d acquired had granted her a new, active ability—Distortion—which allowed her, within a certain range, to alter some “established facts” or “basic perceptions” accepted by sentient beings, or even deceive them briefly.
Speaking of the glove, Lily thought it was far too conspicuous. She glanced down at her right hand, where a dazzling, shifting light still glimmered.
Camille listened in stunned silence, her mind reeling. So, science couldn’t explain everything anymore, could it?
Lily, of course, had no idea what Camille was thinking. She was preoccupied with the problem of the glove—should she keep it on at all times, or only wear it when necessary?
She’d noticed that, as long as she concentrated while wearing the glove, she could briefly pierce the Mist of Two Point Four’s 24-meter visibility limit, seeing things up to about fifty meters away in the direction she was looking.
As for the Distortion ability—perhaps calling it a “skill” was more accurate (a habit she’d picked up from Ander)—its effective range was also fifty meters, provided she was looking directly at the target.
She couldn’t change anything too deeply rooted, though. For example, she couldn’t make Aiden believe the sun rose in the west, since everyone on Blue Star knew it rose in the east.
She wasn’t entirely sure what was meant by “basic perception,” though she had some guesses. It reminded her of certain things her other self had done to her in that other world—memories so vivid and painful that she didn’t want to recall them.
But now wasn’t the time for experiments—she couldn’t very well use Camille as a test subject. What if something went wrong?
Oh, right—she also felt she could, using the glove, “steal” something from a target at a distance, though this was just a hunch. She had no clear idea how it worked.
Suddenly inspired, Lily silently uttered the command “Rectify” in her mind and willed the glove to become invisible.

“Hmm? Lily, where’s your glove?” Camille suddenly noticed that the iridescent glove on Lily’s hand had vanished from the corner of her eye.
Lily smiled without answering.
She’d done it—the glove had turned invisible. Only she could feel it now; to everyone else, it was as if her hand were bare.
When they returned to the vicinity of Dunlun Eye, they found Dunn sitting on the tracks, a blade of wild grass dangling from his lips.
Hearing footsteps, Dunn quickly turned his head. When he saw that it was Lily and Camille, his face lit up and he hurried over, launching into a stream of stories about what had happened while they were away.
It turned out that not long after they left, Dunn, who’d been checking out the Dunlun Eye, had discovered something interesting—
It seemed some maintenance worker had left a few items in one of the cable cars above the Dunlun Eye, and after a collision, the objects had scattered onto the tracks nearby. There were all sorts of tools—hammers, wrenches, pliers—and among them, an ornate dagger.
As he spoke, Dunn jogged over to where he’d been sitting, fished around on the inside of the track, and pulled out what Lily’s enhanced perception recognized at once as the dagger he’d mentioned.
He brought it back to Lily and Camille. Camille only glanced at it before losing interest—such things weren’t to her taste—but Lily found herself unable to look away.
The dagger was a deep blue-green, not the usual stainless steel. Its design was hard to describe; the blade was gently curved, with grooves near the edge.
Strangely, there was no guard—or perhaps the guard was so tiny as to be negligible, just a thin ring. The handle, in contrast, was styled after the old British aristocratic fashion, slender and short, accentuated by a bulbous pommel.
The entire dagger was just under twenty-five centimeters long—enough to stir that “passive skill” of Lily’s into action.