On a whim, Harry decided he could take another look at the mirrors for himself. Yet he was not left all alone with what he set out to do. As he walked down one of UNIT's corridors towards the storage, he bumped into Benton, who just so decided to tag along and only a minute later, they found themselves standing in the open door of the dusty storage room once more. Exactly like the other time, there was no hint of strange activities going on, except maybe for the broken lock.

The minister's mirror, which had been added to the small collection recently, was indeed a gorgeous, although very time-worn piece of wall decoration. Its frame was carved into beautiful floral-like patterns and had originally been painted golden. In some place however, the paint had come off and now revealed dark brown wood underneath. The mirror had been found by UNIT when they had gone to investigate the murder, but surprisingly, again, no one knew just how the object had found its way back to the building it was stolen from. Some of the people at the minister's residence claimed the owner himself had brought it with him, but even they were not certain.

"I never quite understood what it is that draws people towards mirrors.", Benton began to ramble while Harry knelt in front of the one with the golden frame to begin the inspection. "I suppose it's old-fashioned vanity, isn't it?"

The mirror's silver surface was full of scratches and although it still showed the medical officer's reflection, it was a largely blurred image, unable to reproduce his features in great detail. For some reason, which he did not dwell on for long, Harry was a little relieved not to be staring back into his own eyes all too plainly. It seemed to make the investigation a bit easier, if not less unnerving, so to speak. Very quickly Harry discovered a triangular shape in the mirror, the same one he vaguely remembered having seen in the manufacturer's. The other time, he had assumed the ochre colour to be the mirror's backside shimmering through a missing piece in the silver layer of the glass surface.

Harry got up to check the second mirror for the damage which he deemed to be identical. And, indeed, it was very similar. Both triangular shapes had the same colour and approximate size, but were not located in the same section of their respective mirrors. Frowning, he stepped back to compare once again. It was only then that he noticed that these shapes were more than just flat images. A look from afar revealed them to be the reflection of three-dimensional, ochre coloured tetrahedra about the size of one's hand, approximately. One of them, according to the reflection in the minister's mirror, had to lie underneath the shelf to its opposite, and the other one sitting on top of one of the boxes on another shelf. Curious, Harry began to search the shelf for the strange pyramid-like thing.

Seemingly unaware of his discoveries, Benton was walking around the room and, in his own way, looking for clues himself, although with much less determination than Harry. The Warrant Officer stopped in front of the manufacturer's wooden-framed mirror. "It's probably just natural for women to be a bit vain, but personally speaking, I have seen enough of myself after the obligatory look into the shaving mirror each morning." He watched himself chuckle in the mirror's reflection.

Yet Benton's idle chat remained disregarded by Harry, who simply failed to find the tetrahedron in the shelf which should have been all too plain to see. He reached out his hands and touched each of the boxes' covers just to double-check, but there was nothing there, not even something invisible. It was a trick, he had to realize, a trick by the mirror. But his curiosity was not satisfied yet. "Benton, would you help me to move this thing a little to the left?", the Medical Officer asked his helper, but as he placed his hands on the frame and turned to look for Benton, the soldier was not around any more. While he had been looking around the storage, the other UNIT member must have wandered off somewhere.

"Never mind...", Harry quietly said to himself. The mirror was just very unhandy, but not too heavy for one person to move, especially since he just intended to push it across the floor far enough until the tetrahedron would have been gone out of the mirror's view. This little experiment turned out more interesting than expected, because once Harry had moved the mirror over, the strange object remained out of view at first, but was then reappearing in front of his eyes in the mirror's reflection. The tetrahedron re-integrated itself into the picture of the room like it should have always been sitting on the shelf. It might have been mistaken for another curious object in UNIT's storage, but the truth was that this object didn't even exist to begin with…

A small shiver ran down Harry's spine. This was definitely unusual and strange, and worse of all, it solidified the feeling he has had ever since the murder.

Suddenly, a pounding noise coming from behind caught his attention. He rose to his feet and turned to see where it was coming from as Harry gasped at the sight he was met with. To his opposite was still the manufacturer's mirror on the table, but inside of it was the reflection of Warrant Officer Benton trying to break out. Its counterpart in the real world, however, was still missing and the face of the man looked distressed; His mouth formed silenced calls for help!

"Benton!", Harry called for him, fearing that this was no mere reflection, but the man himself.

The soldier was aware of his presence, tried to reach out and pounded on the mirror's inside to break free. The glass seemed to shake, but it was holding. Instinctively, Harry's eyes searched the room for something heavy he could break the mirror's surface with, but just as he took a step towards the opposite shelf, something suddenly grabbed at his ankle, causing him to fall. Lying on the floor, he turned to look at what had caught his foot when he was met with yet another disturbing sight. Out of the minister's half-blind mirror leaned a copy of himself! It looked unfinished, with blurred edges where there should be a stark contrast, and lacked the finer features of his face, like the lively shimmer in his eyes and the unique twist of each of his short curls. The arm of this three-dimensional reflection of his was protruding from the mirror and pulled on Harry's ankle now. It attempted to yank him towards the mirror, into this other dimension beyond. Fearful, he tried to crawl away, yet the copy of him possessed a supernatural strength. Harry kicked at the hand of his attacker and his fingernails scraped over the hard cement floor in his attempt to find a hold somewhere. He was not ready for life in two dimensions! Only after he somehow managed to cling on to one of the storage rack's legs, he managed to free his ankle from the hold. Panting more out of shock than stress, the Medical Officer pulled himself up by the frame of the rack.

His reflection attempted once more to leave the mirror world, but failed to stretch its limbs further out of the frame. It quietly retreated then, and just vanished within the next second to leave behind only the picture a mirror should show.

In fear that it might come back, Harry hurried back to the antique and threw it over with such a force that a shattering was heard. But he was in no mood to lift it back up just to check whether he had managed to break it or not. The important thing was that the reflection could no longer stare back at him! But what about Benton? As Harry jerked his head around, the manufacturer's mirror in which he had seen his fellow UNIT member was back to normal as well.

"Mister Benton?", the Medical Officer called out again, but there was no reaction. Was the imprisonment also just a trick of the mirror? He secretly hoped that Benton would just appear around a corner, saying that he had wandered off and gotten lost around the storage. But Harry's wish was not granted. Instead, for all he knew, Benton might still be trapped in the mirror world and had simply disappeared from sight. These strange, inexplicable happenings… only one man sprung to Harry's mind who could help with this.

After slamming the storage door shut behind him, Harry ran to the next wall phone as fast as he could and immediately dialled the number of Dr. Smith's office again.

"Dr. Tony Smith at Amber-", the deep voice of a man answered, but Harry did not let him finish.

"Doctor!", he called out immediately. "Benton has just been swallowed by a mirror, and it almost dragged me in, too!"

"...Are you feeling quite all right, Harry?", the Doctor wondered about the younger man's panicked tone.

"Yes, I do! The mirrors – there's something seriously wrong with them!"

"You sound like you've woken from a nightmare.", the Doctor calmly decided. "You're a man of science, too, aren't you? You ought to know better than most people that mirrors don't attack anyone. It's not like you to jump at shadows."

Harry sighed annoyed. Right now he was not in the mood to accept the Doctor's loss of memory and even less having to discuss the authenticity of the matter with him. "Nonsense, Doctor! It's not a nightmare! I know what I've seen! I say, the mirror's reflection came alive in front of my eyes!"

In the background of the line, Sarah rose her voice. "What's the matter?", she asked worriedly.

"Harry's stammering something about people disappearing through the looking glass, like the little Alice!", replied the Doctor to her, with a chuckle in his voice.

"Let me talk to him." The line cracked as Sarah forcefully took the receiver out of the former time traveller's hands. "Don't laugh at it.", she sternly requested of him, before she turned to her friend at UNIT. "What has happened, Harry?"

"Benton and I were looking at the mirrors by ourselves, when I turned around and suddenly he was trapped in one of the things. I was almost pulled into one by my own reflection, too!", he repeated for her, a little more clearly this time around. "I managed to destroy one of them – I think – but now Benton has vanished completely, and I don't know what to do with the cursed things!"

"If he's still trapped, you better don't break another one...", Sarah figured and Harry pictured her furrowing her brows in worry. "I think I better come over quick as I can."

"I'd be much obliged, Sarah."

"While I'm on the way, you should tell the Brigadier about it.", she suggested.

Although it was invisible to her, Harry nodded.

"Yes, of course.", he agreed.

==== ==== Sarah-Jane Smith ==== ====

"Take care!", the young woman advised as she put the phone down. Within seconds, she collected her bag and autumn coat under the watchful eyes of the Doctor.

"You're leaving already? And YOU are telling me not to skip courses?", he actually dared to question her motives.

But Sarah did not bother to answer. She just shot him an annoyed glare and shook her head at him as she hurried to leave the office.
"What, Sarah? What is it?" Despite his disapproval, he made no attempt to stop her from going.

He did not understand, and unfortunately, Sarah could not expect him to just yet. She might not have reacted much different a few years back if someone would have come and claimed to have been attacked by a common household object. But now, she knew that pretty much everything was possible, and that people rarely ever had to make these stories up.