AN: This chapter is one of the very best I feel I've written. It's thanks to God alone this chapter exists, and I'm more than pleased with the results. I hope you all enjoy this first chapter, the build-up to the season finale.

I look forward to your readership, and I hope you read, review, and as always, enjoy.

Pagliacci-11

Chapter 80

The day of class commencement had come. The Lyoko warriors had done the very best they could to adapt to the two-day reversal, but admittedly, it was more challenging than they thought it would be. All the Lyoko warriors across Lyoko's activation felt the effects, and it had taken the better part of a full day to come to grips with the effects. It had knocked most of them out, making them extremely lethargic at best. Even Jeremy noticed the horrid aspect of losing nearly an entire evening of potential work and progress to find a chink in North-Gate's armor.

He'd gone to bed at either twelve or one in the afternoon, even that he couldn't be sure of, and he'd woken at half-past ten at night. The same had happened to Aelita, Odd, and all involved. Even Jim, despite his suspicions, thought them to be ill and asked for Yolanda to give them an overview.

She'd performed a courtesy inspection for the sake of appearances and explained to Jim; it simply was as it was, a genuine case of unexpected fatigue, and they would wake in their own times. So, they did, and even then, the reset's last lingering residue knocked them out after only an hour awake. They awoke again at three in the morning, and this time they had no fatigue in them whatsoever and were fully alert.

Jeremy of all the warriors was dismayed. The reset was one thing, and he had learned mainly to accept this newfound ability of the supercomputer, but something still felt genuinely off. He couldn't explain what it was, but something had been altered. He couldn't tell if it were good or bad, but it was unease to say the very least.

The resulting Sunday was used by the warriors to get the very finishing touches and attempt to coordinate a plan of escape should it be required. That said, even though all knew that Sylvia said she'd get them out of their classes if need be, they felt it better to have a plan in case Sylvia couldn't be trusted, which was in their minds most likely, or communications went down as in the event of the blackout.

The blackout itself was a curious thing. Aelita more than knew that this was Sylvia's doing and had told her fellow warriors as much. But something in of itself made Aelita suspicious. She remembered the dream beforehand, the horrid dream and the feeling of being used as genuine autopiloted puppet. It was horrifying. She didn't dare tell the warriors the dream, at least not yet. It was hard enough for Aelita herself to comprehend. Additionally, she'd tried getting into contact with Sylvia through thought in a desperate attempt to figure out what was going on. But there was no response and for the first time, Aelita didn't feel the lack of the response was intentional.

As Aelita reflected on this in her Sunday afternoon in her dorm, she felt a bizarre sense of satisfaction. It was derived from the knowledge and the confirmation that Sylvia was, in fact, human. There was something that despite her power and strength and skills with the North-Gate program, she was still prone to enemies outside of herself, outside the warriors, and this was comforting. It was comforting because Sylvia was not a machine pretending to be human. She had a powerful machine and program at her behest, and that was something but she wasn't Artificial Intelligence. This comforted Aelita because it showed that Sylvia, whoever she was, or in fact stood at present, she could be negotiated with, she could be reasoned with.

But—who was Natasha? Natasha seemed in her dream to be a great object of Sylvia's venom and just how they yelled back and forth, showed that they knew each other from tactics to mindset and philosophy. It was terrifying. But equally, neither of them as Aelita had listened to their barbed banter, seemed desirable for leaders. Natasha from her own lips sounded truly angry with Sylvia's games. Yet, Sylvia called Natasha her sister. How?

Aelita, in reflecting on the evidence, knew that there was only one sibling that Sylvia had and that was her. That had been stressed very much so in their conversations. But, despite this, there was an air of difference, a chilling difference. One of hate at worst and cynicism at best. There was true genuine anger, rage even. But, Aelita couldn't' contact Sylvia and she knew instinctively that to go to the factory wouldn't be wise at present. Aelita, therefore, had spent the remainder of the day organizing her portion of the room as best she could in accordance with her subjects and at the end of the day, she was as ready as she could be.

The first tone rang and given the massive swelling of Kadic's numbers even the new staff dormitory had to give way to some of the students much to the teachers' chagrin. The tones were the only thing Aelita thought that had been salvaged from Sylvia's prior program. However, she could see definitely their practicality now. The entire day had been mapped out in sessions. Grades from Six to Nine would be given first shift and priority while the subsequent grades and staff from Mercier would take over at the second half of Ninth's hour to teach the upperclassmen to senior year.

Aelita had seen this in practice in attempt to fully implement everything over the past few days and she was surprised to see how effective and orderly it somehow was. Aelita couldn't believe her eyes at first. But then she thought back to several files regarding human interaction she'd read extensively and its relation to humanity's more modern history from Lyoko's data drives.

Humanity liked its segregation, not so much in race, but the workplace, despite its protests to the contrary. At the end of the day, this bizarre use of tones through training alone was a sad confirmation of this mindset in motion. The upperclassmen stayed away from the younger children, who they saw as young, stupid, and subsequently annoying. The younger children feeling somewhat slighted were shown to prefer to stick to their own, correctly thinking the upperclassmen deemed themselves too intelligent and too suitable for the lowerclassmen.

As Aelita had listened more and more to the younger children, they prided themselves on getting "first portions" thus;, they got the choicest food is how they saw it. They saw that their aspect of being served first meant they got their food, and it was the freshest of all food, leaving what could be termed as the dregs for the upperclassman. However, the upperclassmen were not in such dire straits, but they did have to wait longer while Rosa and her newly appointed kitchen staff from Mercier prepared the lunch trays. The women worked hard in that kitchen, and more than a few of them Aelita saw smoking off-campus to relieve their tension. It was not a job Aelita would desire herself.

However, a troubling notion came to her mind. Time and time again, Sylvia had spoken of humanity with hardly any praise but mostly contempt all around. As Aelita had listened despite Sylvia's insistence that she didn't, she realized a bit of what Sylvia was saying as she saw portions of it with her own eyes. Yes, Sylvia was sadly right. There were inevitably those in nature and mankind that believed themselves above others. The aptly termed 'others' believed the opposite in animosity towards their seniors in age or experience.

This was being shown to Aelita on a fundamental level with her own eyes; she couldn't believe what she saw. Because of this, she feared that if a counter to this mindset were implemented on a grander scale as Sylvia all but directly said was her vision, Aelita knew there would be so much bloodshed it would be catastrophic.

A knock was heard at her door, and Aelita replied, "Come in."

Ulrich entered, and he said, "Hey, Princess, how are you? It's almost time for breakfast."

Aelita replied after a short sigh, "I'm as good as I can be, I suppose. How are you?"

"Eh, the same. The grades have moved up; the teachers haven't. I suppose I should feel a sense of progression, but given our situation, well—"

"I know." Aelita turned from the window to face Ulrich. "It feels like we're almost frozen in place."

"Yeah." Ulrich replied softly, and he then looked at her, "Listen, about Yumi, do you feel it's right we keep her in the dark? She's been with us for a very long—"

"Ulrich, we've been over this. Until Sylvia sounds the horn to action, we won't exactly need to worry about her. Equally—" She went to her notebook and wrote something hurridly down on a piece of paper. After tearing it out, she folded it and gave it to him, "we have to trust her. I'm heading to breakfast. I'll see you in a bit."

Ulrich unfolded the paper and read, "Sylvia's afraid. There's another threat around us, and it's not one we can see. Talk to Jeremy."

Ulrich put the paper in his pocket, and he said he looked at Aelita, who just vanished through the double-doors. "Enemy of my enemy, huh?" he thought to himself, "If Sylvia has an enemy—I'm not sure I'd want it as a friend."

Ulrich headed down to Jeremy's room, and just as he began to knock, Jeremy opened the door.

"Oh, Ulrich," he said, gesturing rapidly twice with his eyes to go down the hall, "we're just coming along to breakfast."

Ulrich nodded, "Alright, you might want to hurry. With all that's going on, we might not even get a plate."

Jeremy tagged alongside him after getting a head start on Al. "Sorry, my roommate's been suspicious ever since the blackout."

"I don't blame him. A quarter of the grid went down all over the country two days ago; you don't think that's of notice? Speaking of, Aelita said Sylvia's afraid, of what?"

"I couldn't piece it all together myself, but if Sylvia's afraid, it shows something didn't go as she planned it to, and that's why we had the hard reset. For a long time, Sylvia was adamant that nothing be changed without her say so. To have a rollback as we had, and so sudden, something had to go wrong. Aelita said she'd tell us more during rec."

"Yeah, speaking of which, what do you think of these period fluxes? I understand making sure we all get our teaching and stuff done but stretch our entire academic day out until six in the evening? That kills all social life."

"Well, think of it as the teachers see it. They're working double-shift, and it's not like we don't have a social period; we can easily get out and away from the school. The only problem is making sure nothing happens that could jeopardize us during the time leading up to the shift change for the grades."

"Easier said than done. Our only choice, if we want a bit of privacy, is to meet somewhere early in the day but be back before the switchover at twelve."

"It's not too bad. From the time we get up and shower to the time we have to switch over is six hours, we have as much time to ourselves as we did in the evenings. More so. Considering—."

Ulrich put his hand on Jeremy's shoulder, "Mercier's conduct and sports direction still carry over from their curriculum, Jeremy. I was spared remedial, but unfortunately, I learned that Ms. Hertz's appraisal and of every other teacher's academic review of me, it seems, I've been put under a major watch in the morning. Because many of the teachers here are busy with the little ones, I am stuck in that practice field and in the study hall to boost my academic performance from seven to eleven in the morning. My only free time is at night."

Jeremy groaned and silently mouthed, "Fuck." He took a breath, "Alright, come on." They headed down the stairs, a more direct path to the cafeteria. "The only thing that we can see if we can manage is to find out just who and what Sylvia's nervous about. Equally, I've been working on something with Aelita, but the last casual return to the past undid an entire near days' worth of work. But with what we've worked on, I've been able to crack a few things in North-Gate's code.

The programmers are good, insanely so, but I was able to crack a small portion of code that should buy us some incognito status in North-Gate's biomes. So long as we don't trip anything, Sylvia won't know anything, and we'll be able to creep around and get a full mapping status of what does what.

You weren't there, but Sylvia said that there were sensors in Lyoko that acted as passive alarms on the last trip. I've been able to mark the same way bankers can put dye packs in bundles of bills to stain the bills. If we can get in, but we'd have to coordinate it, we can see just that North-Gate's genuine vision is made of. For the first time, I'll be able to see it as well."

Ulrich was surprised, "Wow, you guys have been busy."

"We had to do something. We couldn't let North-Gate go unchecked fully. We tore apart Aelita's bot because Sylvia already recognized it, so that was sadly out the window before we got a chance to make the most of it."

"So, what? We're you're bots now?" Ulrich asked as they exited the stairwell out into the lobby.

"Fully independent functioning bots with so many variables that Sylvia can't get a genuine lock on you. Additionally, as I said, if we keep away from the dyed sensors, we don't set off any alarm; the plan won't be a bust."

"You forget something, though. Sylvia has the supercomputer, and she has direct access to the scanners. No way in hell is she not going to notice this."

Jeremy chuckled, "That's where you're wrong. See, Sylvia gave me a traditional RTP before the major hard reset we all felt. However, before the hard reset, I had an entire disk independently made in a lock state. In the common tongue, this means that no matter what Sylvia does, apart from breaking the disk directly, she can't erase what I've been able to glean from her servers from the last return to the past.

See, Sylvia indeed has control over the scanners, but there's a way we can cloak within the scanner into the Lyoko and back out again without any the wiser. Let me show you, take a detour with me to the sauna near the pool."

Ulrich was confused at first but decided to follow. As they came to the sauna, Jeremy opened the sauna and kept Ulrich at bay. Jeremy the water spoon and proceeded to pour the cold water over the hot rocks. And to Ulrich's amazement, Jeremy vanished before him in the mist, and in his place stood Jeremy but in a lightweight silver suit.

"With this, Ulrich," Jeremy said as he gestured to the suit.

Ulrich was stunned, "What the?!"

Jeremy said, "It's simple. Aelita and I figured out the Specter protocol from XANA, and we realized that we could fool Sylvia the same way XANA fooled us."

Ulrich was stunned, "What's with the suit?"

"The suit is the key." Jeremy said with a smile, "Aelita and I, once we locked onto the signal of the alert systems of North Gate, we found there was another similar code, a mirrored code, in fact, the exact reverse in the original Lyoko format under XANA's subroutines for infiltration. When we deciphered the code, we were able to figure out how he had all manner of specters at his call, including the polymorphic variant.

You see, XANA had to have a natural element belonging to a person of some kind. Hair, spit, bowel movement flecks, even. However, because he had that, he had nearly an endless supply of samples to pull from; he had an infinite playlist shall we say, of specter visages to project."

Ulrich was surprised and entered the sauna with Jeremy as others were heard to approach, "Okay, Einstein, bullet points, what are we looking at?"

"A lot but for the sake of what we're doing. We can become invisible to Sylvia. We can have clones, designated Specters of ourselves passing off as us. That's why I'm not concerned for you in your practices. The Specters are physical and visual; we know this. I will make you a specter just as I made one for our demonstration just a moment ago. These suits are more than a cloaking device for the scanners. Instead of being destroyed by water, it's a living technology amplified through water in all three physical states. Why do you think we're talking in a steam-room and I'm not being fried?"

"So, we scan in this thing; we can make a clone of ourselves to go around as us for as long as we need? We can be in two places at once?" Ulrich clarified.

"There you go. See, we just need to scan everyone involved, and we can get into North-Gate's Lyoko. We can scope the area, look around, and none be the wiser. We have the alarms, but Aelita and I, if we get time enough, can code these suits to act in the computer as dummy guard suits, so we'll blend it far more obviously, provided we don't do anything off the beaten path such as become aggressive.

The best part is this is the whole bodysuit, and you don't need it. The suit proper needs to be the size of swimming trunks to work at its best. This is just for amplification to extend the clone's range through our nearest broadcast point."

Ulrich's eyes went wide, "The antenna."

Jeremy nodded, "Yep. The clone can go literally across the city with the swimming trunks size of this suit alone. If we set up appropriate relay points through cellular towers, we could extend the range indefinitely until we hit a dead zone."

Ulrich nodded, "So, what about the scanner proper? I mean, we can't just replicate that."

"We can. I was stuck on it as well, but I reflected when I was out one night with Aelita, and well, it kinda' clicked. You'll see tonight when we set up your clone."

Ulrich nodded, "Okay, well, I'm going to get some breakfast. I advise you do the same after you change out of your spacesuit."

"No need." A knock was soon heard at the door, and Aelita stepped in with three apples, three waffles, and three cold water bottles in a bag.

"Hello, boys. So, Jeremy, did you brief him on the plan."

"I did. He has the general run-down."

Ulrich was surprised but replied casually as best he could, "It's a good thing you're cute, Aelita. Because if you were beautiful, it'd be like giving Einstein Godzilla, he wouldn't know what to do with you to benefit people."

"Aw, you give him too little credit. I know exactly what he'd do. Destroy all those who kept him from science fair victory when he was a little boy—and that's just the warm-up."

Ulrich rolled his eyes, "I'm out of here, sweating like a pig already."

"You know that's a popular misconception as they don't sweat as perceived—" Jeremy began.

"Hey, nerds, I'm going to salvage breakfast. We'll go into computer ghosts later." He got out of the sauna and headed for the cafeteria.

Unknown to him, a figure watched him from the doorway and, having observed the meeting, withdrew into the nearby showers as Ulrich passed.

The day was unique for all students. The studies for Mercier, as most of the warriors discovered, was no joke. It was indeed a cut above the rest. For their first week, they had to read two acts in either Shakespeare's Othello or Golding's Lord of the Flies. This variation hinged on if you were in an advanced class or remedial, respectively. The English teacher, Mr. Gregory Fitzwater, was much akin to their own Ms. Kensington, passionate about Shakespeare's realms. Still, at least to Aelita in the advanced class, it was clear that Fitzwater was more a fan of political satire in the form of allegory. These works he was not abashed in the slightest of sharing: Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984, various Johnathan Swift pieces, Voltaire, Plato, and countless others.

It was a quickly sprouted seed that many students thought that Fitzwater and Kensington should at least hook up to see if they rubbed off on each other. This was said for a variety of reasons, but namely, so the Kensington's less ruthless streak would rub off on Fitzwater, and his approachability despite his sternness rub off on her. In Aelita's opinion, Fitzwater was indeed one of the best in the subject of advanced literature. Still, he believed in the old school, a method that had clung to even Aelita when she was homeschooled, that the teacher should be given respect automatically. Such a mindset, however, was not so easy a given on the children around her.

Hertz's life and physical science were up next for the respective categorizations of advanced and remedial. In many ways, Hertz's double-shift for both classes somewhat burned her at both ends, but her lesser minions, as the children termed them, helped her with the overall workload. She'd gone from sixty on average to upwards of ninety, and this split between remedial and advanced seemed a bit much. It wasn't that she was against such a system, but she'd have preferred she not have to teach and oversee both elements like many of her occupation.

It's not that the whole weight was on her shoulders of both, far from it. Instead, the issue was being essentially inside with the kids, the unapologetically pungent stink bombs until the change-off in the afternoon. It was a traditional full-day across the lesser and some of the upperclassmen. The tradeoff, she supposed, she was getting a significant raise, so she'd not too much room to complain.

Equally, the new headmaster Erikson had listened to her far more than Delmas did but possessed a bizarre sense of what Suzanne could only term as vindictiveness. He was all for Hertz's mindsets in terms of discipline and wanting to see discipline enacted. But what she'd not anticipated was she would have to apply said discipline herself. This was very much a move on the part of Erikson because despite his gentle and charming and seemingly mellow demeanor, within him beat the heart of a true lion.

Erikson very much dressed to disarm equally and to kill. Taking a leaf from Jean-Paul before him, he appeared to be the gentle and mellow hippie from a bygone era of ease and less rigidity. But many mistook his presentation of brown slacks, brown penny-loafers, button-up shirts of precise color, and modest-pattern sweater-vests to be that of gentleness and a laisseiz-fare attitude. It couldn't be farther from the truth. As every teacher he listened to, he not only heard, but Erikson was patient and, like the predators of the jungle, stalked, surveyed, and waited for his prey to see what their actual patterns were despite their pretenses insisting the opposite of their proclamations.

Suzanne Hertz was no different than many before her with Erikson. She merely was being initiated in how he functioned with the staff with their litany of demands regarding the student body and "order, respectful conduct, and uniformity." Erikson knew the type, having known the type his whole life and knew just as there were genuinely good teachers with a lot of stress; there were teachers who couldn't relate to kids as well as teachers like Suzanne who had such glaringly transparent views of favoritism that she was as much her own enemy as she perceived the unruly and unretentive pupils to be.

Jim's Physical Education courses had doubled down on the older kids. As the Lyoko warriors noticed their first day out, the cooler afternoons and evenings allowed them to endure the exercise routines, harsh as they could be far more manageable. However, this degree of harshness in raising standards for Jim's class, the Lyoko warriors knew was Jeremy's doing. Because he had not negated Jim's memories for his own vanity's sake during XANA's boar attack, that element of Jim persisted, and this carried over to the far harsher but because of the weather, equally more bearable regimens.

For the upperclassmen, Jim's rule with co-coach Francis at his side was a force that through endurance training, cardio, and training for genuine marathon running, that every single one of them the first day was the epitome of done in with assurance of soreness in the morning.

However, the benefit of being the last class with real rigorous physical fitness was that the upperclassmen were the first to fully savor the homecooked meals of Rosa and the new staff. The fragrant melody of meat, vegetables and, and fresh-baked puddings had been filling their lungs for the better part of half an hour, and after all their hard work, a watering mouth was hardly an apt description for their appetites. However, Jim and Francis ensured the children, despite their famished conditions, proceeded into the cafeteria in an orderly fashion.

The feast that the children beheld was a genuine sight to behold authentic spaghetti and meatballs. Instead of the frozen rocks that they ordinarily had, the students had natural meatballs that were the size of their upper palms, and the spaghetti they could tell was handmade in massive amounts. The assistant cooks, men for the evening shift, as they found out, asked what each student wanted, and turn by turn, they would either give some cajun seasoning for an additional kick to the meatballs or fresh-grated Parmesan. The veggie selection was minimal, but the produce that was there was genuinely fresh. The garlic bread that accompanied the meal was also handmade, and it was the scent of this very bread that had equally tantalized and tormented the children earlier as they climbed underneath the logs.

As they ate, Ulrich said, "Oh, this is amazing! The food is unbelievable!"

For the first time, Jeremy had no comment apart from a satisfied agreeing grunt, so ingratiated was he with the food before him. Aelita likewise was similarly in love with the food before her. Many of the children failed to realize that having been so long since breakfast proper and being steeped in their classes and gym class as the final shot, it had built them up so much that all this food to their tired minds felt like a second-wind to them.

This effect was planned, however, by Erikson after many lengthy discussions with the teachers. The endeavor was to have the children so tired that to fill them with food would be a blessing to them. But under Yolanda's careful critique of the food types and portions, the caloric shock to their systems would be so impressed with the quality of food that, in time, the students would be tranquilized naturally. The effect would be that the halls would be mostly silent, easing tensions sure to rise in the long term with the security to aid Jim in securing Kadic.

The renewal element, which Erikson had mulled, was that this mindset would be switched that in time at every major semester junction, the upperclassmen would get quality breakfast first. The underclassmen would be given dinner and negate a massive majority of Yolanda termed "Ball-Lightening energy in the students," which many of the faculty agreed with the premise immediately. Until the semester change over, the younger children would be given hot chocolate to truly sedate many of them. Simultaneously, for those with lactose deficiencies that Lactaid tablets couldn't cure, a sweet and soothing brew of Jasmine tea would be provided.

Erikson, the headmaster who had more than seen his fair share of the mire; the wars against pre-teen and teenage rebellions innate to Kadic were designed to be waged against the dissenters via stomachs. While the class sessions were admittedly longer, with the help of Meyer and a few outside sources from Mercier, they had arranged the Kadic schedule in a block-schedule akin to how universities functioned.

This mindset was equipping the children for the world to come. A world where parents were henpecking them would seem a luxury that went unappreciated; it would also teach them one of the greatest life lessons, self-reliance. The students had three major classes per day, and those classes alternated. In so doing, this mindset demontstrated to the students, they have a window to procrastinate, but they'd only have themselves to blame if they did.

As Jim and Francis watched the children, Jim gently nudged Francis, "What'd I tell you, Frankie?" Jim said softly, "I had a feeling the old man's idea would work. Soon these kids will be out, and we'll have true quiet."

"That's the hope, eh? But we'll see. If everything's this way, well, have them largely under control but without raising our voices. Oh, when does the disciplinarian aspect come in? I missed that part of the meeting."

"Mr. Erikson will tell us when it is to be implemented, and then we'll see just how they react. His philosophy is that discipline will incentivize the children to outperform each other to introduce them to the business world. Pretty ingenious, but we'll see how it works in practice. During my days in the corps, we had many generals who wanted to implement this kind of thing, and on paper, it seems great, but in practice, it's different. But that said, I'd rather not talk about it."

"Understood." Francis replied while he thought, "It won't take much to loosen your lips, however. Much like Erikson, appeal to your vanity, and you'll be as predictable as these kids."

That evening, Jeremy was resting peacefully in the dorms; Yolanda's caloric layering element started to act. A knock was heard at the door; both Jeremy and Al, for a change, were too tired to attempt to open it.

"Come in," Jeremy replied, and Ulrich entered; even he felt the food's effects but was soldering on a bit more than even he thought possible.

"Hey, Jeremy. We were going to talk about the party for Yumi tonight; we still on?"

Jeremy nodded slowly, "It's alright, Ulrich. Aelita's eager for it, but it can wait until tomorrow. It's not a major rush right now. I'm just gonna' get some sleep."

"Here, here," Al said as he let his head sink deeper into the pillow.

Ulrich nodded, "I'll see you both tomorrow then." He closed the door and headed back towards his room.

Ulrich couldn't blame Jeremy. The food was excellent and today was hard already, so Ulrich felt this genuinely could wait. He wasn't in a hurry because there was no need to be. He opened his door and, sighing contentedly, sat at his table. For once, things seemed to be looking up. They had a plan to get into Lyoko and get in without anyone knowing. They could scout and get a layout of the area and how best to move around it. It wasn't going to be as easy as all that, and Ulrich knew it, but for right now, he settled for the hope that it could be a whole lot easier down the road, provided he and the rest of the warriors knew what they were dealing with.

Ulrich got up and turned out the lights but saw someone from his window standing at the Kadic wall. The figure was standing at attention, the same he'd seen his father's friend Jethro do when he saw him every so often. He saw this figure stand perfectly still, and he was watching the figure for the better part of ten minutes. Still, the figure stood.

Ulrich took out a bright laser pointer and aimed at the silhouette but only here at this junction did he see the figure move and take out something. As he continued to shine the laser-point, the figure opened a small thing that Ulrich realized too late was a very powerful compact's mirror. The reflected light seemed so much brighter than he'd anticipated, and it blinded him for a second. Ulrich recoiled, eventually regaining his sight. He returned to the window, and the figure was gone.