Jericho was certain he’d landed on the right idea when the streets started looking to suburban. Actual parking spaces for the cars. More than few trees littering the street. Houses with a little breathing room between properties. That sort of spacing was unthinkable, even in the outer limits of the city.

  The “people” had dissipated as well. He was truly and utterly alone. No traces of a doppelganger either, but Agent Ride wouldn’t lie to him. She was far too straitlaced for that.

  He scrutinized each house, peering at the darkened windows, but nothing stood out just yet. While the whole area was out of place, as a collection they were coherent. He could do nothing more than advance. A corpse wants to be disposed of. A corpse wants to have eternal rest. It would lead him, if he let it.

  The air was still. At the corner of his eye, something drew his attention. In a lifeless street, motion itself was all the sign he needed. The closer he got, the more he could make out the strange glowing from inside the house. And the face framed against the window, staring to the outdoor world.

  He approached the house, certain that this is where his investigation continued. The building had seen better days. The pain was chipped, roof tiling in shambles. The lawn was overgrown, filled with weeds.

  The presence in the house continued to watch.

  Jericho pulled up his gun and arrived at the door. He took a deep breath and kicked open the decrepit wood. It splintered under his feet, revealing an all too familiar face. His own.

  “Stand down,” the pair said in tandem. Both of their eyes widened. Jericho moved to shoot, and the bullet flew overhead into the staircase. ‘Jericho’ ducked down, swiping at baseball bat sitting by the door. ‘Jericho’ took a mighty swing—Jericho jumped over the trajectory, rolling further into the living room.

  It was once a well-lived space. A lumpy beige couch, dotted with stains from years of stray liquids. A grandfather clock, the pendulum missing. The tv, with its bent antennas and glowing screen, knobs missing from the display.

  Now, all it a war zone.

  Jericho reached out and kicked the couch, subsuming it into the ground. The soft floor ate his momentum, just in time for ‘Jericho’ to follow through with another slam of the baseball where Jericho was moments prior.

  “Fuck,” Jericho grunted, shooting another salvo at his doppelganger. The bullets were already astray, flying out the side of the house into the neighborhood.

  He slammed at ‘Jericho’s arms, the baseball bat noisily slamming into the grandfather clock. Splinters burst from the shattered wood, splattering into both Jerichos, but they paid it no mind.

  One had no reason to stop. One needed to press on heedless of the price.

  ‘Jerico’ left the other Jericho alone, scrambling towards the front door. He flung open the knickknacks drawer and pulled out a compass, slamming it into the baseball bat. The metal rod subsumed the smaller item.

  Jericho’s eyes widened. He popped off another shots, but the other ‘Jericho’ understood his aim all too well, already moving out of the trajectory. He swung the bat with all his might, aim unnecessary. The metal rod tracked Jericho’s twisting and turning. No amount of dodging would shake it off.

  With a groan, Jericho stomped the floor and ducked. The couch ejected from the floor, the bat meeting the soft cushion and eating the impact, but that was only a stop gap. He knew his other self wouldn’t stop. He either needed to kill it, or find the entrance to the Mausoleum.

  Agent Ride was lucky. Her doppleganger would ask questions first and shoot after. She had at least enough common sense to not even let it take an opportunity to attack, let alone copy her oracle.

  Jericho scrambled for the kitchen, flinging the door behind him just in time to eat the impact of the bat, but not enough to properly absorb the full impact. The swing shoved him across the room, tumbling into the worn down cabinets.

  His hand scrounged around, feeling for anything. It was worthless. Pots and pans had no useful properties to borrow.

  They would, however, be able to buy a smidgen of time. He chucked them at ‘Jericho’s feet, and ‘Jericho’ danced around the clutter, careful to avoid tripping.

  “Finally,” Jericho grunted. He scrambled back to his feet and clasped for a magnet from the fridge. He cocked his gun to the side, the manhole cover sliding out onto the ground, and pressed the magnet into the gun.

  A salvo of shots fired from his gun—fuck, he just knew he was running low on ammo for this magazine—and the bat was inevitably pulled towards the trajectory of the magnetic force of the ammo.

  The salvo was staggered as to wrench the body around in as cumbersome a fashion as possible, and in this brief window, Jericho took the opportunity to scramble past ‘Jericho’ back towards living room.

  He rolled on past, scanning the room for the entrance to the mausoleum. Not the mirror on the wall. It was dark. Not the front window, even thought it was porous enough to let through that glow…

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Jericho’s eyes widened and he dived for the television just as ‘Jericho’s’ bat slammed where he once was. On the other side of the television he locked eyes with his reflection, confident that it couldn’t get to him in within the mausoleum.

  The independent contractor took a moment to catch his breath, lick his wounds and reload his pistol while taking stock of the situation.

  He certainly didn’t expect to be in the midst of an open prairie. The television hung in the air, reflecting the small exit to the rest of the unreality, but if one couldn’t see it? They wouldn’t be wrong to think that they were out in the Midwest.

  But across from the television? A drab house. Two floors, but maybe two rooms a piece each, per the outside layout. It was pristinely preserved.

  Jericho just hoped it lived up to the rank 2 danger rating that it had on the outside.

  He walked up to the door and flung it open, confident that he could weather whatever the house had to throw at him. What he wasn’t expecting was a full on birthday party.

  Two parents and a smattering of children sat around the table in the kitchen. The birthday girl didn’t look a day over four. She stood on her chair, staring at the simple cake in front of her, a giant smile on her face.

  “Happy birthday, Daisy!” Jericho crept further into the room, but no one present paid him any mind. He was like a ghost. It was too ironic, to be the sole incorporeal being within a demesne that manifested from an improperly disposed corpse.

  The little girl took three attempts to blow out the candles. The last attempt her mother leaned behind her, but the success was all Daisy’s. She beamed with pride, and why couldn’t she be proud? She had a family that loved and celebrated her.

  And then the room reset.

  Without any moment's notice, the aggregated family split up. The mother stood over the kitchen counter, putting the finishing touches on the cake. She laid the four candles into the skimpily frosted cake, burying them deep to ignore the years of usage reflected in the shrunken wax.

  The father kept the small girl off to the side of the room, covering her eyes with his calloused hands. At this angle, Jericho could make out the dark circles embedded under his eyes, the effort required to remain upright.

  The siblings were moving chairs about, setting the table for their dear baby sister. A simple task for simple children. Any issue they caused could be mitigated, if need be, by the free hands of their parents.

  But it all came to pass as Jericho saw when he first entered the room. The father lead the small girl to the table, and she cried with joy at the bridleway cake before her. Her siblings and parents gathered behind her.

  “Happy birthday, Daisy!” It played out just as it did before, only to reset once more.

  Jericho sighed, falling down against the wall. It looked like luck was on his side this time. This room was worthless though. He looked for how to progress, but the neighboring doorways were dark, empty, devoid.

  He inched over to the threshold and put the tip of his foot over, gasping at the emptiness that threatened to swallow him. Going off the correct path would lead to death if not something worse altogether. No matter. He could handle finding the right path. He’d already done it once before.

  Kitchens aren’t usually home to the most reflective surfaces, although that could be a consequence of the ease of creating a mess. There were no mirrors. A farmhouse couldn’t spare such luxury. If the house had any, they were probably in the bedroom and bathroom. There was only one thing that could carry a proper luster, and Jericho ran for the kitchen sink. He vaulted onto the counter, ignoring the chills of the specters he passed through, and dipped his foot into the surface of the sink.

  It submerged, and while there was a great chill, it wasn’t the emptiness of the door. This was the way. He knew it.

  He slid his other foot in and let the surface swallow him whole.

  The next room felt as though it was submerged in a cool mist. Goosebumps erupted under his shirt. If it was going to continue like this, the real challenge would be enduring the accumulated sensations by the time he arrived at the corpse, as opposed to watching yet another history replayed within the room.

  This time, Jericho had been spat out in what he presumed was the same house’s bedroom. The family gathered around the bed. Based on Daisy’s age, it’d been more than a few years. She was no longer a toddler, but a proper child, still with a ways to go before adulthood dragged her kicking and screaming, although it looked as though that option was going to be taken away from her.

  Her father laid in bed, clearly on death’s doorstep. His eyes were sunken, skin pale as corn silk. The family was spread in equal parts between trying to refrain from bursting into tears and openly bawling, hands clasping to their patriarch. Daisy was part of the former, tightly gripping the hem of her mother’s dress. Her eyes were puffy. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her eyes contained the entirety of her father.

  There wasn’t much left to reflect.

  Jericho watched the progression out of the corner of his eyes while scouring the room for the next entrance. The way things were going, the last ‘room’ had to be the one containing Daisy’s death.

  “The holy man’s coming soon,” the mother said, stroking the brow of the father. “Don’t worry, &$&@#, you’ll rest easy.”

  His name was garbled and unintelligible. Jericho hoped it was just a fragile memory, instead of the space deteriorating around him. If the mausoleum was already collapsing, then he was utterly and totally fucked.

  Fortune was on his side. The memory continued on for a moment, before resetting to much the similar state. His stomach twirled at the sight.

  This is what Mordecai was deprived of. He didn’t get a proper chance to say goodbye. His parent’s commingled unreality stay laid unresolved in the former heart of Baltimore, and the Bureau was willing to abandon that area if only to deny it from expanding further.

  Mordecai deserved a proper disposal for his parents. He deserved an opportunity to say goodbye. He deserved a world where one didn’t have to panic when people died, but that was beyond his reach, so the next best thing Jericho could do for him was to give him that closure. One day. When he was strong enough.

  He almost wished that he didn’t let them bring him into the business in the first place. They were ready to be retired. They didn’t need to do any further jobs. There were always towns looking for new oracle users when their former ones left—the Bureau couldn’t set up disposal sites everywhere, and no prudent town would persist without a backup planned for months in advance.

  But no, Jericho needed to get into the business. He needed to change his life, and he dragged the others down with him, and they were never coming back. He promised that he would look after Jericho, and if nothing else he was willing to fight hours on end in the courts to keep his promise, because what else could he cling to? How else could he make things right?

  They were dead and gone, and he would always miss them. And that’s why he couldn’t die. He couldn’t leave Mordecai alone again. He would tackle the commingled unreality when the time was right, and not a moment sooner.

  But for now, he steeled his heart and headed to the bathroom, hands pushing through the mounted mirror, past the freezing cold underneath, hoping that this would be the final stop in the mausoleum. He couldn’t bear to linger any longer.