MirrorWorld (45 page)

Without a second thought, I do the one thing no one expects. “Lyons!” I try to look unruffled by his appearance and the knowledge of what he did to me and head toward my father-in-law.

Several of the Dread Squad members aim their weapons at me. They’re hopped up on drugs, barely in control, and look confused by the appearance of a man. I hold out my empty hands so they can see I’m not armed, while simultaneously taking stock of the weapons I have in reach. The Dread left me with the two trench knives, the Desert Eagle, and Faithful. They took a big risk trusting me. I hope it wasn’t misplaced.

“Stephen,” I say, getting Lyons’s attention.

Confusion fills his eyes, quickly replaced by surprise. “Crazy?” He steps closer to me, fearless despite knowing what I can do. And it’s not without reason. He’s nearly a foot taller than me now.

“Josef,” I say.

“You … remember?”

“Everything … Dad,” letting him know that our previous relationship is no longer a secret. I only called him Dad to rib him. He’s always hated it. I hope the casualness of this old gag will lower his defenses. I wave my hand dismissively, even though I really just want to punch him in the face. But if I can get Lyons to listen, maybe back down, I am willing to delay the introduction of my knuckles to his nose, and to the rest of him. “You had to make tough choices. I understand that now.”

He flexes his chest, watching me with predatory eyes. Dread eyes. “I know you better than that.”

“Not anymore.” I stop ten feet from him, within the reach of his men but not his meaty hands.

“Why are you here?” he asks.

“I came for Maya.” I can see he’s about to argue, so I point her out. She’s two hundred feet away, between the two mammoths. “They took her to lure me in.”

His surprise becomes suspicion as he seems to forget his own daughter. “Lure
you
in?” He turns those hungry eyes back on me.
“Why?”

The Dread never said they were luring me in. It’s entirely possible that she really is here as a human shield and to deter Lyons. When I was attacked earlier, I might have been seen as just another advance Dread Squad member. But when they caught me … the strategy changed. “To help me understand.”

He turns away from me, casually looking at the Dread all around us. “And do you? Understand?”

“They’re not what you think,” I tell him. “They don’t want a war. They—”

“Are monsters, Josef. Murderers. Of our family. Of countless others. They are little more than territorial bullies hiding in the shadows. They have nearly destroyed me. Twice.”

I take a step closer. Weapons follow my movement, trained on my head. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“They got to you,” he says.

“What?”

A smile forms on Lyons’s lips. His teeth … they’re black. “They got inside your head. Messed with your memories. Didn’t they? Made you their puppet.”

I say nothing because it could be true. Have I been manipulated? I suppose there is no real way to be sure. But Lyons quickly reinforces that he screwed with my mind first.

“You really are the perfect puppet, Josef. Your fearless nature made you quick to accept orders. You’re not afraid to believe what you’re told. You’re quick to obey and slow to question. It’s what made you the perfect assassin and the best man to handle the Dread. That’s not the case anymore, as you can see.” He motions to the men around us.

“The drugs will wear off.”

“We have time.”

Time … I look at my watch. “We have thirteen minutes.” He says nothing so I fill in the blanks. “In thirteen minutes, the president is going to attack Russia’s nuclear arsenal. When that happens, Russia will launch. We’ll launch. And just to put a cherry on top, everyone else will launch.”

“Then it’s time we get started,” he says. “Don’t you think?”

“What’s your goal, here? You kill the Dread, destroy a major colony, and then what? The Dread will—”

“Do nothing,” he hisses. “I know what you think. That they’ll push the president into some world-ending military action. That they’ve got their fingers on the button. And maybe they do, but there is a reason they haven’t already hit that button. No one, not even the Dread, wants to cook the entire planet.”

“They won’t have any other choice.”

“It’s a bluff. They drew first blood, and now they’re—”

“
We
drew first blood!” I shout. “
You
did. You destroyed their colony, cooked them alive. They have families, just like us.
Children
. And our family paid the—”

“You naive little boy.” He looks down at me, hatred in his eyes. “They’ve been—”

“Evolving. Like us. Trying to understand. But mostly hiding from men like you.
And
me. We’re as monstrous to them as they are to us.”

He stares at me, one eyebrow cocked slightly higher than the other. “I am far more monstrous than you know.”

A flicker of red illuminates his skin from the inside. He leans down so our faces are inches apart. “Everything you think you know is wrong. The Dread will not destroy both worlds. This will be a conventional war, and which side of the mirror do you think will win
that
fight?”

“You’re wrong. I’ve seen it.”

“When I destroy this colony, the control it exerts over the others will be severed. All of the Dread and colonies connected to this one will be lobotomized. You’ve seen it for yourself. How can the Dread hurt us then?”

“Preemptively,” I say. “How long do you think it will take the Dread to push the world into nuclear war. Minutes? My bet is on seconds. You haven’t seen what they can do. Not like I have.”

Lyons shakes his head. “You’re grasping. Weak. You shame yourself. The time for action has come.”

“Is that why Katzman has a microwave bomb strapped to his back?”

He pauses to glare at Katzman, but the man doesn’t notice. He’s too busy looking at the silent Dread surrounding us. Lyons turns back to me, black smile returning. “If the big one doesn’t come out to say hello, we’re going to burn it out. We are not simply here to destroy, Josef. Today is our D-day. We are here to
invade
. And the best way to start an invasion is to kill the leadership. You know that. Then I’m going to wipe out the resistance, capture the weak, and turn the young against their own kind. They started a war with humanity, and now
they’re
going to truly understand what that means. I’ll destroy this place if it comes to that, but you and our enemy have underestimated my true intentions.”

The full ramifications of the D-day name come clear. This isn’t a simple assault, it’s a beachhead into the Dread world, the first step of an invasion. “What about Maya? She’ll be killed.”

He glances toward Maya, his face softening a touch. “She has been dead for a long time. She is now as lost as you. I can see it in her eyes, just as I see it in yours. Death will be a mercy.” He turns to his men. “Kill him.”

I raise my hands as Lyons takes a step back. The men hold their fire for a moment. They probably didn’t count on shooting a man with his hands up.

“Are you there?” I think, hoping the matriarch will hear my thoughts.

Whispering fills my head, much of it beyond my comprehension, but a single line is for me. “There is a natural cavern sharing this space.”

“Get Maya out of here, please,” I reply, and glance at my wife as though to say good-bye. “Thank you,” I think to the matriarch as Maya is whisked away by a bull. It retreats toward the archway on the far end. She’s safe. For now.

Me, on the other hand, not so much.

Lyons loses his patience.
“Kill him!”

I slip into the real world and dive to the side, but it’s unnecessary. The men and their weapons have shifted fully into the Dread frequency of reality. Their bullets can’t reach me here.

And then, in a flash, they can. Five Dread Squad men wink into reality. I see them for a moment as they pop into the darkness, but then I’m blind. Rather than fight in the dark, I let my vision slip into the world between. Luminous veins, some as thick as a man, cover the walls. “You don’t have to do this. You can still walk away.” But then the five men, who must have also adjusted their vision, take aim and fire.

57.

The bullets pass through empty space. At least, I’m assuming they do. I’m no longer there. I’ve slipped back into the mirror world, taking a soldier by surprise.

I don’t know who these men are or whether they have families or children who will miss them. But I do know they heard what I said: that peace is an option, that no one else needs to die. Maybe it’s the drugs, or they’ve been brainwashed to not think, or they simply believe Lyons’s Dread doctrine. I don’t know. But I do know that they are still willing to threaten the safety of every man, woman, child, and Dread on this planet in service of my father-in-law. So when I act without hesitation, it’s also without guilt.

The shock at my sudden appearance lasts just a fraction of a second. The soldier is already spinning his weapon toward me. But he’s not quite fast enough, even pumped full of drugs. My fist finds his jaw, sprawling him back, directly into the path of a soldier pursuing me between dimensions. The falling man is nearly cleaved in two by the newly arrived soldier, who has shifted from the real world to the mirror world
inside
the other, destroying the matter that was the man’s gut, cleaving a hole in his body just as I did the lab table back at Neuro. The falling soldier dies instantly and without a sound. The new arrival sees what has happened and screams. No one hears him, though. The chamber roils with the sounds of battle. Roaring, explosions, gunfire. Both sides have launched attacks.

I take a moment to look around, hoping to catch Lyons by surprise. But he’s already moved beyond my reach, running—actually running—toward the Dread mole, which has yet to rise from the ground. A wedge of soldiers frames him, firing at everything that moves.

A second Dread Squad soldier shifts from the real world to the mirror right in front of me, spinning, assault rifle raised. Ready to put a bullet in my head. But he’s too close for the assault rifle to be effective.

I grab hold of the still-hot rifle muzzle, pull the weapon out, twist it, and then slam it back into the surprised soldier’s face. While he’s stunned, I slip behind him and pull us both back to our home dimension, keeping my vision locked in the world between. The three remaining soldiers open fire, killing their comrade. While they continue the barrage, filling his oscillium armor with lead, I slip back into the mirror world and charge toward empty space. Hoping I’ve timed it right, I shift back, punching.

My fist connects with a man’s face. I’m back in the cavern, and then I’m not. While the punched man falls, I dive and roll through the mirror dimension before shifting again, grabbing hold of one of the still-upright soldier’s weapons, thrusting it up, and chopping him in the throat. While he starts to gag, I slip out of the real world once more, move to a new position, and return home again. I’m standing directly in front of the last soldier.

My strobelike assault, slipping in and out of view, slows the man, but the drugs keep him moving.

He discards his rifle and draws a blade, thrusting it at my throat. As the tip cuts a nick into my skin, I catch both of his hands in mine. We push against each other for a moment, maneuvering the knife away from and closer to my throat—that is, until I shift frequencies again, this time taking the man’s hands and the knife with me. When I shift back, the now-handless man is screaming. I silence him by turning his own hands around and plunging the blade into his heart.

Taking a moment, I flicker in and out of the world between, leaving behind the blood on my hands, not because it’s gross, but because it’s slippery. I recover a Vector assault rifle and several spare clips from the fallen men. I then take the headgear from the man with a knife in his chest, clutched by his own severed hands. The black mask and round goggles make me look just like one of them. Just another Dread Squad. After a quick check of the rifle’s chamber, I slip back into chaos.

The colony is a war zone.

More soldiers storm into the chamber, arriving in small groups. The Dread are being reinforced from the other side. Bulls thunder across the arena, taking streams of bullets before falling to the might of men. Men who are eventually going to run out of ammunition. Mothmen descend from above, tackling soldiers, tearing into them. Others simply carry the men up and release them, letting gravity do the rest. And still others are shot from the air. They’re swift, but in the enclosed space, facing men who have trained to hit moving targets, they’re dying more than they’re killing.

A cloud of Dread bats swirls around the chamber. They’re not attacking. They’re panicking, swirling upward toward the ceiling and the many holes leading out. They’re good for gathering intelligence, but I suspect they’re closer to trained animals than to higher functioning Dread.

The two mammoths are making a mess of the human soldiers, kicking, stomping, and charging through the Dread Squad ranks. An RPG cuts across the open chamber, snaking a trail of smoke behind it. The projectile strikes one of the mammoth’s flanks, detonating with a fiery explosion that sends a wash of gore over the men nearby. It also sends the remaining mammoth into a frenzy. Knowing what I do know about the Dread, I realize the two giants were probably friends. Maybe family.

An approaching buzz turns me around. A mothman descends toward me, clawed feet extended. I raise the Vector, but hold my fire and push a wave of fear at the thing while thinking,
It’s me!
The thing swerves away, picking another target, but is shot down in a splatter of bright red.

Are my thoughts part of the whisper?
The Dread whisper is now like a rushing wind. There are so many mental voices mixed together that I can’t tell if there is any kind of actual communication getting through. The screaming on the human side of things isn’t much different.

Until I receive a message loud and clear. A soldier punches my shoulder. “Weapons up, asshole!”