Chapter 13: Two Faces In The Glass

The first blow came like thunder in the dark.

Sue braced as the sledgehammer struck the unfinished wall, the shock of it rattling the floor beneath her boots. Dust rained down from the ceiling in a fine, choking mist, and for a moment she paused, tasting plaster on her tongue behind the mask. A line of light bled through the crack she'd made, a promise of the space beyond.

She swung again.

The hammer jolted in her grip, shuddering through her arms. This time the wall groaned, surrendering a fist-sized hole that spilled a narrow shaft of daylight into the gloom. Through it, her own reflection stared back in fragments with the goggles fogged, hair matted with sweat, eyes sharpened by determination.

It almost felt like breaking through her own skin.

Elsewhere, music.

Wooden floorboards echoed with a clap of rhythm, a dozen dancers snapping into formation. Legs bent, split, extended in unison as Sue's voice cut above the beat: Again! Stronger this time! She didn't just teach them the steps, she breathed urgency into them, the kind that lived in her bones and in the hammer waiting at home.

The bathroom filled with dust as she struck again and again, the hammer punctuating her heartbeat. Behind the crumbling plaster, darkness opened up and there was an empty cavity that looked like a hidden space. Her chest rose and fell in ragged rhythm, each breath a mixture of triumph and exhaustion.

The neighbor's knock came like an interruption from another world.

Sue wiped her brow, pulled off the goggles, and opened the door to find him there: Oliver, middle-aged, perpetually disheveled, the kind of man who always looked surprised by his own existence. He started to bark out a complaint but faltered the instant he saw her, his words tangling on his tongue.

She smiled with a smile that could level him faster than the hammer ever could.

"She moved out," she said simply, watching him deflate. "I'm the new tenant. Sue."

Oliver hesitated, blinking, his mouth working uselessly until he managed to fumble his name out. She caught the nervous glisten on his forehead, the way his hand trembled when he shook hers. He tried to recover with an offer of help, words spilling faster than he could control, clumsy and earnest.

"Anytime," he finished lamely, retreating with an awkward gesture, the door closing behind him like a curtain after a failed audition.

Sue shut her own door, laughter escaping before she could stop it. It wasn't just the absurdity of Oliver's performance, it was the sudden release of pressure, a reminder that for all the walls she was breaking, for all the secrets she was unearthing, life still had its moments of comedy.

Sue swayed as she moved back down the narrow hallway, her laughter still echoing faintly in her chest. The floorboards creaked under her slow steps.

When she entered the living room, the air seemed to shift. Sunlight poured harsh and white through the picture window, and there it was, very impossible to miss.

A towering billboard had appeared outside overnight, plastered with her own face.

She stopped, caught in the gaze of the giant image. Her likeness grinned back at her, frozen mid-pose, a glossy pink leotard stretched across her hips, her hand cocked sassily at her waist, smile wide enough to crack glass. NEW SHOW — COMING SOON.

For a moment, Sue felt her pulse stumble. That smile, the one she knew too well, looked both alien and familiar, a mask polished smooth until nothing of the woman beneath remained.

She turned away, forcing herself back to the task at hand.

On the floor, the matrix lay in stasis, motionless under the shadow of Elisabeth's framed poster that still clung to the wall. The contrast was absurd, almost cruel, Elisabeth's image, serene and eternal, squaring off against Sue's billboard outside the window. Two women, two versions of ambition and of survival, locked in a silent duel across glass and paper.

Sue crouched, adjusted the IV bag across her belly, and slid her arms beneath the matrix's shoulders. The body was heavier than she'd expected, a dead weight that forced her to dig her heels into the floor. Slowly and painfully, she began to drag it toward the hallway.

Behind her, Elisabeth's glowing eyes seemed to watch. Ahead of her, Sue's sparkling billboard eyes gleamed down, wide and triumphant.

The standoff was absurdly cinematic, like two gunslingers frozen at dawn, except here, the duel was inside her own skin.

And Sue, sweating under the strain, couldn't decide which version of herself she feared more, the ghost of Elisabeth staring her down from the wall, or the plastic perfection of the smiling stranger in pink outside.

Sue's grip on the Matrix had shifted. Less careful now and less gentle. As she dragged the figure down the hallway, the body jolted against the corner of a dresser with a dull, wooden thud. One limp arm hooked briefly on the edge, slowing her forward momentum. Sue exhaled sharply, an impatient hiss, and wrenched it free. She wanted this over. The weight and the presence, it was beginning to gnaw at her nerves.

The bathroom door swung open. Beyond it, the hidden seam in the wall waited, indistinguishable from the tiles around it unless you knew exactly where to press. Sue did. She slid the panel aside and revealed the narrow chamber, a hollow carved out behind the walls, a secret no architect had ever intended.

The air inside was stagnant. Only a sliver of circulation through a pinhole vent broke the suffocation of the dark. The chamber was deep, black and cavernous. To anyone outside, it didn't exist.

She hauled the Matrix into the room, laying it down where the shadows swallowed it whole. The wall closed with an unnerving perfection, the faintest beam of light narrowing across the still body, shrinking, then dying. The silence was heavy, until it wasn't. A low hum grew, vibrating through the dark, swelling into a roar that devoured the quiet.

And then the spotlight snapped on.

Pink, a blinding pink.

A curve of glossy balloon letters filled the frame of the camera, shimmering under the studio lights. Music erupted, brash and intoxicating, as the letters pulled apart to spell: PUMP IT UP — With Sue.

The crowd roared.

And there she was.

Sue's body gleamed under the lights, sculpted and magnetic, surrounded by dancers whose hips and thighs moved like a choreographed heartbeat. Blue leotard, yellow leotard, pink leotard, the rhythm pulsed through them relentlessly. The air smelled faintly of hairspray and overheated stage equipment.

Sue lifted her leg high, every motion sharp and certain. Once. Twice. Thirty times. Each repetition a claim, a declaration that the spotlight was hers now, not Elisabeth's. Never again Elisabeth's.

Her smile pierced through the camera lens and multiplied across the control room monitors. It wasn't just performance anymore. It was a conquest. Every pair of eyes in the studio was locked on her, and she knew it. She basked in it.

It was time for a new era. Her era.