Black Mirror

Chapter 18 - Buzzcut Season

***FIONNA***

Whatever the fuck kind of natural sedatives they have in dark energy, they're gross. Waking up after a few hours of having those dark bags on your heads, I'm dizzy and my stomach is churning. Same with that guy Jay, who wakes up alongside me in an office with the name "Dominic Park" plated on the desk in front of us.

I'm actually awakened by the sound of Jay groaning as he pushes his hands under his glasses to rub his eyes. "If my stomach wasn't empty right now..."

"What, you'd puke?"

He jumps out of his seat and crawls on his hands and knees over to a trash can in the corner. I turn away as I hear him heaving, but it's the dry kind, I think. No sounds of semisolid wet stuff impacting inside the trash can. Then he looks up at me, his face ashen and a tad bit sweaty. "Not making much of a good first impression on you, am I?"

I tilt my head. "So now you get that I haven't met you before?"

"It's hella confusing," he mutters. "I've met you, I've talked with you a couple of times. But then we went and fixed up that Black Mirror - or, uh, you and Kensi fixed it with your light and fire powers - and you saved your human. But then, out of nowhere, you and Gabe and his brother started saying you didn't know me."

I stand up, feeling instant head rush. "I'm sorry, but it's true. Before I used the Mirror, you weren't there. Gabe's partner was Harris McCallum."

"So, what, saving your human means trading Harris' life for mine?" He gets back to his feet. "Not that I'm complaining - Harris is too weird to live and too rare to die. He deserves to live more than I do."

"Yeah. He also deserves someone who loves him. And Gabe...where the hell is he? I need to tell him I'm sorry. I need to tell him I'm gonna get him Harris back."

Jay takes off his glasses to polish the lenses with the hem of his T-shirt. "You'd kill a guy just to ship him with your bestie?"

"Well, when you put it that way..." I cross my arms, leaning against Park's desk and gritting my teeth. "Shit."

"I know. Confusing, right?"

"And morally questionable in so many ways."

Jay frowns at the floor. "I mean, when I was alive...hell, even after I died, I never really stopped being depressed."

"So you're saying it's better that you're dead?" I want to grab him by his shoulders and shake some sense into him. "Being depressed doesn't make you less worthy of living."

"And does it still count as living when you're technically undead?"

I'd keep on going with this convo, but I'd really like to know more about where we are. I get the feeling we're in the Second 'Verse, though. Park's office has windows, but they're tinted super, super dark. No, it's not like we're looking out over a nighttime view of Second 'Verse Bearville or wherever. It's tinted. How do I know? Because there's a control panel next to one of the windows, a panel I've seen before in Russell's office. He couldn't resist showing it off, my and Gabe's and Harris' first day in the Guardian program. It tinted the windows, Blade Runner style.

On closer inspection, I see the brand name on the controls.

Peppermint.

So they make the Black Mirror - or, at least, the old-timey TV it was disguised as - and a bunch of other sci-fi shit that doesn't exist in Prime.

How have I never heard of them before? Have I just not paid attention? Is it another symptom of me being an entitled piece of Millennial shit, not noticing what's important in the world around me?