MirrorWorld (32 page)

Focus on the here and now,
I tell myself.
Just get dressed, say good-bye, and leave.

But to where? I still have no memory. No home. No job. There’s no way in hell I’m going back to SafeHaven.

I start to feel light-headed and realize I’m not breathing.

Fear, in all its nuanced forms, is hard to manage.

With a steadying breath, I turn away from the mirror and look at my clothes. At least they’re familiar and comfortable. I slip into the perfectly fitted ensemble of jeans, T-shirt, and brown sneakers. Fully dressed, I splash cold water on my face and look in the mirror one last time. A little more human. A little less mousey.

“Everyone on the planet lives like this,” I say to my reflection, the words coming out as an unintended whisper. “You can handle it.”

I leave out the fact that everyone else on the planet has had a lifetime of learning to manage fear, and even then people fail at it all the time. But I’m a trained assassin, right? A killer. I’ve conquered the unthinkable. I can conquer fear.

Standing a bit taller, I grip the door handle, give it a twist, and push.

A ball of gray snaps around, revealing two wide eyes. I jump back, bark out a raspy shout, and raise my arms defensively.

“She wasn’t kidding.”

I recognize the voice. Allenby. I lower my arms. She stands on the other side of the door. Her hair, freed from the elastic that had been taming it, billows around her head. A bandage covers half her forehead, but she seems otherwise unscathed.

“W-where’s Winters?”

“Probably headed back to Lyons,” she says. “She was just here to make sure you were actually … you know.” She frowns in a sad sort of way. “Come out of there, poor boy.” She reaches her arms out, and I all but fall into her embrace, her hair tickling my ear. “It will get easier. With time. Practice. And some hardening.”

Her hand rubs slow spirals over my back, and I feel myself calming again. A lack of fear means I’ve also never been comforted before. This is all new. And not bad.

She pushes me back, looks me over. “There’s something I think you should see.”

I barely register her comment. “Where’s Lyons?” I thought the man would want to know every detail of what I saw and did, about the new Dread, about the colony’s insides. I don’t take his absence personally, but it
is
confusing.

“He’s not here.”

“Not here?”

“They’ve relocated.” She raises her hand, stopping the question forming on my lips. “I didn’t know about the second location. I found out an hour ago. From what I understand, it has more of an … offensive focus. Whereas Neuro is primarily research focused.”

“And he didn’t want me to—”

“I’m afraid he’s cast you aside. There was security footage of what happened on the roof…” She pauses to give me a sympathetic look. “For the record, few people have stood against a full Dread onslaught and recovered, let alone had the wherewithal to take action. I think it’s too soon to count you out, but now that you can feel fear again, Lyons sees you as a liability, and not able to take part in whatever he’s been cooking up at this second location.”

“Even with my ability to move between worlds?” Despite the question, I’m feeling a bit of relief.

“Strangely, yes.”

I sit on the bed. “Well, I agree with him. I can’t do this.”

She leans down, hands on knees, and levels a hard gaze at my eyes. “You can. And will.”

I find a drop of bravery left in the once-full bucket and return her stare. “Not. A. Chance.”

“Aren’t you curious about what happened while you were gone?”

Now that she mentions it, I am.

“First, the larger ramifications.” She sits on the bed beside me and lifts a tablet from her pocket. She turns it on and accesses a saved video. The image is split down the middle showing two locations. I recognize both, but Allenby explains anyway. “The footage on the left is from New York City. On the right is the security footage from the roof. Pay attention to the time stamps.”

She hits
PLAY.
The videos have no sound, but it’s not required. On the left, an angry mob marches down 42nd Street. It’s a familiar scene, and the people are framed by riot police and sky scrapers on either side, though the mob contains a good number of police officers, too.

The video on the left shows an empty rooftop, and then me. I zoom into the picture atop an ATV, taking to the air and landing in dramatic fashion. And then, in a blink, I’m gone, disappeared into the mirror world. I watch the time stamps, keenly aware of what is happening in the now-empty security feed.

And then, I reappear, curled up on the rooftop, looking pitiful and afraid.

Motion in the left video feed draws my attention. It started just before I reappeared. The scene in New York has taken a turn for the worse. Chaos erupts, but it’s not what I expected. The mob has turned violent, but the brawling isn’t between mob and riot police, it’s every man and woman for themselves. Even the riot police are taking part, attacking the mob and each other.

Allenby switches the video to a playlist of saved videos. She scrolls through various video clips, some from phones, some from the news, and some from security cameras. Those with time stamps show different hours, but the minutes match up. They’re videos from around the world. In different time zones. But I understand what I’m seeing. They were all recorded at the same time. Angry crowds, in all of them, seem to snap and go wild all at exactly the same time. The psychic bond shared by the Dread allows them to stay in contact instantly and globally. Killing that monster set off a global response from the Dread.

“Where there was violence before,” Allenby says, “there is now chaos. Cities are burning. War is imminent. The world is on the brink.”

I look away from the videos. “What happened here?”

“They got inside,” she says. “Those who were caught either went mad or killed themselves or the person closest to them. Some of us made it to the oscillium-walled panic room. Sealed ourselves inside. They were nearly inside that when you…” She sighs. “Not everyone made it to the panic room.”

She holds my gaze, waiting to see if I’ll understand.

“Not everyone could walk. Not everyone was
awake
.”

“Maya,” I whisper. “Is she … dead?”

“Worse,” she says.

“Worse?”

“I went for her. Carried her by myself. But they reached right out … There were tentacles. I dropped her. Couldn’t look. Couldn’t control myself. But I could see her. She was here, and then she wasn’t. Just like you.” She takes my chin in her hand, squeezing hard, forcing me to look at her. “They
took
your wife, Josef, and, God damn you, you’re going to get her back.” She lets go of me. “You’re the only one who can.”

41.

Allenby sets a stalwart pace down the hall. I struggle to keep up at first but push through the aches, and my body limbers up, feeling strangely renewed. I’m not sure where she’s leading me, but the innards of Neuro are a mess. Burn marks, bullet holes, and smears of dry blood mar the floors, walls, and in some places the ceiling. Allenby told me that fifteen people died when the Dread infiltrated the building through the elevator shaft. Would have been worse if the mob had gotten inside. Speaking of which …

“What happened to the people outside?”

“The Dread influence faded. Slowly. But within an hour, most of the people outside lost steam and left. When only a few remained, I went out and spoke to a woman. She was just sitting on the pavement, rocking back and forth. Her knuckles were bloody from pounding on the walls.” She glances back at me. “She was twenty years old. A college student. Poor thing had no memory of why she was there or what had happened.”

“Why the big show?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“The Dread can make neighbor turn on neighbor.”

“Family against family,” she adds.

I motion to a spatter of blood. “To the death.”

She stops walking. “What’s your point? Or is it a question?”

“Both.” I use the pause to stretch. “They could turn everyone against each other, like they are in the cities, but not everywhere. The human race could literally murder itself into oblivion. So what’s with the mobs? The government standoffs? The slow build toward global chaos? What’s the point?”

“I’m not sure there is a—”

“They’re smart,” I say. A chill runs through my body as the memory of the Dread mole’s mental intrusion surfaces. I push the images from my mind. “If they’ve chosen to attack us with such a slow build to annihilation, there’s a reason.”

“You might be right, but it’s too late for speculation now.” She starts moving again, double-timing it.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a reason you’re still here, and I’m here with you. Lyons hasn’t said so outright, but I think he’s done studying them. He’s out for blood.”

“He can do that?” I ask. “I thought I was—”

“I’m not sure you’re as unique as we believed, at least in terms of being able to move between worlds. If the fear can be overcome with drugs, he might not need you … at least not for a single assault. He has spoken, in the past, about creating a kind of mirror dimension WMD. Something that would affect their world but not ours. I didn’t think he’d done it, but now I’m not so sure. It makes sense that he’d keep it from me. I always opposed the idea, which is probably why I’m here now. Left behind, as it were. Mass destruction in either dimension will be catastrophic. The effects are totally unknown. Not even theoretical. But extermination is never the solution.”

“Then what is?”

She stops at the stairwell door, hand on the knob. “I don’t know.” She opens the door and steps into the stairwell, maintaining her pace while heading up.

I stand still, eyeing the stairs.

Allenby stops at the first landing. “What are you waiting for?”

“I’m in a bit of pain.”

“They made you feel fear,” she says. “I didn’t realize they also made you a whiney bitch.” She glances back, grinning wide.

Despite the circumstances and pain, Allenby manages to get a smile out of me and to sufficiently motivate me to tackle the staircase. Like the walk down the hall, each step simultaneously hurts and helps. By the top of the second flight, I’m in pain, top to bottom, but also feel stronger, more focused, and a little less fearful.

A little.

By the top of the sixth flight, I’ve worked up a question that’s been nagging at me. “How did it happen? With Maya.”

Allenby stops next to a door labeled 6. “What?”

“How was Maya taken?

She frowns. “All I saw were tentacles—”

“Medusa-hands.”

“Right. It reached out of thin air, wrapped her body in those…” She shivers. “It just yanked her away from me, and they both disappeared. I couldn’t do anything. They got to me with the fear.” She stares at the floor, shaking her head in shame. “I ran. Didn’t even look back.”

I haul myself up the final step. “It’s all in our heads. The fear.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Dread communicate without speaking. It’s like a network. Sounds like whispering, but it’s in your head. Not your ears. Thoughts are broadcast. The closer you are, the stronger the signal, and the louder the whisper. Their presence makes people uncomfortable. It’s like pressure waves moving through frequencies, rippling through to our world, where we feel them as brushes with the supernatural. The closer they are to our frequency, the stronger the overlapping ripple and sense of being watched, or followed, or hunted.”

Allenby grins. “Did they also make you smarter?”

“Just guessing. But that wasn’t the important part. It’s the whispers, the … psychic communication that does the real damage. It’s how they trigger the deep, irrational fear that drives people to do horrible things. But the Medussa-hands … they can get inside your head and push specific thoughts. Working together, they can make a person do anything.”

“Like kill their son or run into traffic,” she says.

“Right.”

Allenby pauses. Looks back like she’s waiting for more. “And?”

“What?”

“Was there a point to this revelation? A way to stop it? Happy thought or something?”

I shake my head. “I … just don’t want you to feel bad about Maya. There was nothing you could do.”

She looks a little stunned.

“What did I do?” I ask, feeling nervous.

“The intricacies of fear have always been lost on you,” she says. “You wouldn’t have noticed how I was feeling, and certainly wouldn’t have spent the time explaining things to make me feel better.”

“Do you?” I ask. “Feel better?”

She opens the stairwell door. “Not at all. But thanks for trying.”

We step into the sixth-floor hallway and turn right.

I walk beside Allenby, the exercise having limbered me up. In fact, the pain has almost completely subsided. I consider telling her about it, but Maya’s disappearance weighs more heavily on my mind. “The real question is, why did they take her at all?”

“To get at Lyons, I’d guess,” she answers. “They’ve infiltrated Neuro in the past. You revealed as much with the Dread bat. How many of them have made it inside over the years? They must know he’s in charge, that without him, Neuro will be less of a threat. That they took Maya reveals they know a lot about us. About all of us. Lyons never said he suspected this outright, but he spent most of his time locked in here. Over the past few months, he’d been leaving, traveling in the oscillium-protected vehicles—I suspect visiting this second sight. But I don’t think he’s stepped outside since…”

“A year ago,” I say.

“A year and a half,” she corrects.

“Is that when…?”

“The attack on our family, yeah. It affected you both. You became distant. Angry. Six months later, you retreated from reality and had your memory wiped.”

It still doesn’t feel right. “We’re missing something.”

She raises her eyebrows at me, waiting for an explanation.

“Lyons became Dread target number one. I erased my memory. You’ve been kept out of the loop on this second location. Something happened a year and a half ago. Something bigger than the attack on our family. Something that changed everything. What was it?”