Chapter 10
Judging by the cover
The sound of rain was cut so abruptly that for a second Selena thought she went deaf. The girl shook her head and slowly walked down the corridor. Now where? Doesn't matter... All doors are the same. Silver felt like she was playing the lottery, trying to guess by the back of the ticket what will be inside. It's just that instead of prizes there were punishments. All right, dragging this out won't help her. Summoning up her courage, she opened the nearest door.
There was a short narrow passage that ended with heavy curtains. Selena cautiously slipped through them and found herself on a wide and empty area with wooden floor. There was a well-lit semicircle from some invisible spotlight above, and everything beyond it sank in the darkness. Just great – you can't see anything, but anyone in the shadow can stare at you! Silver looked around nervously, raised the hand with the weapon and walked along the edge of the lit area. Blackness surrounding it was so thick that she couldn't even see her fingers when she stretched her hand out into it. Suddenly, a voice said:
– Walking in circles, as usual?
The girl turned around and saw a glowing figure approaching the semicirle. It was unclear how Gelia emits the light, but her body was enveloped in soft shining. When she left the darkness, it disappeared – or, rather, stopped being that noticeable.
“So what? I know it's some kind of a trap!” Selena looked at her double with suspicion.
“Are you scared? You shouldn't have come here. No one invited you,” Gold said caustically, slowly approaching.
“Nobody's asking you either,” the girl harshly replied, without even noticing that she also steps in the direction of her twin. When she was a meter away from the edge of darkness, some gritting sound was heard. Silver froze, but didn't even have time to look up – a cage without a floor and a door fell above with a loud sound, trapping her. It was about two meters wide and high, with bars the size of her wrist. Stunned, Selena huddled up, but in a few moments her fear turned into fury.
“Let me out!!!” she hit the bars with the revolver. Gelia just crinkled her nose and walked back, but this time, the invisible spotlight started to follow her. A piece of wall and the curtains disappeared in the darkness, and the edge of the lit semicircle was getting closer and closer to the cage. When Selena realized what this means to her, it made her flesh crawl. Ending up alone, trapped in the darkness till the end of time?! She pressed her back against the bars, as if it would help to get away from the approaching blackness. And almost lost her balance – the heavy cage slowly moved after Gelia, loudly scraping the parquet.
Gold stopped, but the spotlight moved further, suddenly illuminating the people sitting behind their desks – Shwuggering Shmug and his secretaries. Gelia loudly cleared her throat and spoke:
“Let me introduce the judges! The First Secretary,” she pointed at a young man who was sitting with his feet on the table, his nose buried in his phone. His pose didn't change since Silver saw him first. “Tolerable, if you don't need anything from him. But you have better luck getting a passionate kiss from a statue than making him do anything for you. Here's our Main Secretary – a quintessence of bureaucratic nightmares! And, finally... Shwuggering Shmug!”
Shmug was now sitting on a gilded throne behind the high desk with three mirrors standing on it. At the sound of his name, Shwuggering nodded and puffed his cheeks a bit.
“The great judge, the medium of the ultimate truth!..” it seemed like Shmug inflated a little when Gelia said that, like he took a deep breath and never exhaled. Selena blinked, unsure of what she saw. But it seemed that her double noticed the same thing, and cut her speech: “The jury is ready!”
“And who's on trial? Me?” Silver stepped back to the center of the cage, stroking the revolver nervously.
“No. He is!” her double threw her hand out. Following this gesture, the light shifted, and it turned out that the gunhand's barrel was pointing at a man sitting on a chair. Silver recognized the guy that called her “sunny”. Now she realized that he confused her with her twin, but this didn't make her any more sympathetic towards him.
“Who is that, anyway?” she looked at the man with distrust. He was stooping, his head hung low, his hands lying limp on his lap. His pose was conveying a feeling of doom.
“As I said, it's Pervert. Is it so hard to remember?” Gelia wrinkled her nose.
“Is it really how he's called?” the girl asked in surprise. “Is he on trial for harrassing you?”
“You'll see,” Gold grinned and snapped her fingers. The spotlight went out.