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City of Mirrors

A DarkSF Short Story by John Argo

A young adventurer and rebel named Kanon returns to Terraform City after a stretch in Hammerkill Prison. Alone, adrift on the night streets without a job or a place to live, he escapes the hideous Unmen who stalk about hunting their prey.

The unseen Authority harshly rules the city by day, while these carnivorous beings from hell (the Unmen) rule the streets at night. It is a place where (to borrow an immortal line from the Cream song In A White Room) "the shadows run from themselves."

Kanon finds refuge with a young, pretty sylph named Rin, who dwells underground amid the tombs of dead bishops. Rin lives by her wits, flitting among the shadows--but she seems to have a thing for Kanon. He, in turn, cannot resist her warmth and need, as well as her many talents and skills on the dark side of a city that seems perpetually steeped in twilight.

Together, Kanon and Rin in their quest for survival end up confronting the city's corrupt and omnipotent power structure…high up in the skyscrapers of glass and gloom whose sad windows look down upon a steamy, smoky, foggy world of uneasy dreams verging on nightmares.

Take a night train, open some strange doors, prowl the deadly streets, and find out what lurks in Terraform City when the lights grow dimmer and the Unmen come out to play (and eat). Yet it is the human predator within System Hammerkill that we must avoid all the more.