MirrorWorld

16.

I scream.

This alone is highly unusual. I don’t scream. When people are injured, and all that air gets shoved against their vocal cords, it’s not the pain that does it.

It’s fear.

Of death.

Of injury.

Of deformity.

But not the pain itself. For the most part, shock wipes the agony away better than any painkiller. At least at first. But the knowledge that something has gone catastrophically wrong sets the imagination ablaze, and adrenaline-fueled fear blossoms like a nuclear mushroom cloud.

I’ve never experienced any of this, mind you, but I see it in people’s eyes. And the shriek coming out of my mouth sounds afraid. But it’s not fear. It’s something else, beyond my control. As my body flails on the floor, my mind watches like a spectator. Fear, after all, is a product of the mind, not the body. My body is screaming because it’s being controlled by whatever substance I just slammed into my bloodstream.

“Hold him down!” Katzman shouts. “Don’t let him injure himself!”

As I suspected, I’ve just made myself invaluable.

But at what cost?

My mind slams back into my body.

The world feels different. Hot and then cold, soft and then prickly. For a moment, I can see the soldiers above me, and then they’re gone, replaced by darkness streaked with blurry green lines. I can still feel the soldiers’ weight on me. Can feel their breath on my face—my mask has been removed—and hear their shouting. But it’s like they’re not there.

And then they are.

“Did you see that?” one of them shouts.

“Look at his—”

“Holy shit!”

“Sedate him,” Katzman shouts. “Someone sedate him!”

The hallucination returns, but only in part. The darkness flickers in and out of view. Shapes move about the room, vague but alive, dancing among the men. To my knowledge, I’ve never taken LSD, but I’m pretty sure this would qualify as a bad trip.

“Strange,” I hear myself say. My blurry hand comes into view, reaches for the darkness, which swirls away, slipping through one of the soldiers. When the hallucination grazes him, he shivers.

“We’re not alone,” he says. “Katzman, we’re not—”

“Stow it!” Katzman shouts. “Every single God damn one of you get a grip. Tamp down your fear and get your shit stuffed back up your asses. You know how to do this job—now do it!”

Despite the man’s stature, his voice commands respect, not just from the men around him, but my hallucination as well. The flickering darkness recedes. A chill runs through my arm. Then it’s free, released by the men who held it.

“Damn,” a man says. He looks at Katzman, fear in his eyes.

Katzman reaches out to the man. “Give it to me.” He takes a small syringe and steps above me. He glares down at me. “Sometimes your unpredictability is too predictable. You did this to yourself. I want you to remember that.”

Katzman jabs the needle into my neck.

The flickering slows down.

The world feels solid again.

The hallucination fades to black.

The soldiers’ voices fade.

In the silent darkness, on the edge of unconsciousness, I hear something else—whispers. And then nothing.

I wake to the grating sound of a blender chewing through ice. Despite the racket, I’m actually quite comfortable. I open my eyes to a bedroom that feels familiar but isn’t. The bed is plush, the soft cotton comforter is warm with body heat. Sunlight sneaks past the shades, filling the room with a warm twilight glow. If not for the grinding ice, I might have just said, “Screw it,” rolled over, and gone back to sleep.

The blender slows and stops.

Someone is whistling, but I wouldn’t call it a tune. Whoever is in the kitchen is nervous.

I sit up and take in the bedroom. The décor is immediately recognizable. The funky, bright paintings. The earth tones. I’m back in “my” apartment. Back at Neuro Inc.

And I’m not sedated.

These people are crazier than me. They must know what I’ll do. Unless they believe whoever is in the next room can convince me otherwise. I throw off the covers and find myself still dressed, though my shoes have been removed. I find them beside the bed and slip them on.

I’m about to stand and leave when I decide to snoop. Something about the bedroom is wrong. A detail is off. There are two dressers. I’m a T-shirt-and-jeans guy. One dresser would have been enough. Moving quietly, I tug the drawer of the nearest dresser. Boxers and socks. The next drawer reveals T-shirts. The next, jeans.

I move to the second dresser and open the top drawer.

Empty.

All of them are. So why have the dresser at all? I turn to the closet and open it. There are a few pairs of nicer pants. Button-down shirts. A pair of slippers, well worn, and a pair of dress shoes, also well worn—and my size—rest on the floor. All of it is on the right side of the closet. The left side is empty.

The bedroom holds no answers for me. Only more questions.

I step into the small master bath. The room is clean. Several items litter the side of the sink: a stick of men’s deodorant, a bottle of shaving cream, a razor, and a tube of toothpaste. Hanging above it all are two toothbrushes.

Two.

One blue. The other, pink.

Someone missed a detail.

Time to meet my guest.

The bedroom door squeaks when I open it.

Whoever is waiting for me in the kitchen freezes. “Hello?”

The word, pronounced as “Alloh?” along with the gentle, feminine voice, help me identify Allenby before I reach the kitchen.

I enter the kitchen like I actually own the place. Allenby’s head swivels in my direction, her wild hair swaying as it catches up with the twist of her head. There’s a bruise on her cheek where Katzman kicked her. She tries to conceal her nervousness with a smile, then hides the abysmal job she’s doing by lifting the glass pitcher to her mouth and taking a long drink of the pink liquid.

“Morning,” I say. “Or is it afternoon?”

She pulls the pitcher away, just enough to speak. “Morning, actually. You slept through the night.”

I open a cabinet. There are bowls and glasses inside. I take a glass and hold it out to Allenby. She looks a little surprised and says, “Thank you.”

“It’s for me,” I say, nodding at the pitcher. “Whatever that is you’re drinking, I know it isn’t drugged.”

“Right,” she says, filling the glass and handing it back.

I smell the drink. “Strawberry?”

“And blueberry.”

I take a long drink, quenching my thirst. “It’s good.”

She’s probably unaware that she’s squinting at me. Trying to figure me out. I decide to keep her off-balance. I motion to the small kitchen table. “Have a seat?”

She takes a chair, and I sit across from her. For a full minute, we sip our drinks. When my glass is half empty, a subtle flavor emerges. “Did you put strawberry syrup in this?”

She smiles. “A guilty pleasure.”

“Yours or mine?” I’ve already discovered that I have something of a sweet tooth, and Allenby doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who enjoys American junk food. Tea and tarts maybe, but not liquid-chemical strawberry and corn syrup.

She clears her throat and adjusts her seat. “How about this… I’ll ask you a question. If you give an honest answer, you can ask me a question.”

“If I fail whatever test you’re about to give me—”

“It won’t end well,” she says, being honest, “for either of us, I’m afraid.”

“Have they threatened you?” I ask.

She smiles. It’s honest, too. “I’m afraid I’ll simply be caught in the cross fire. Perhaps used as a shield—again.”

I look around the apartment. I don’t see any cameras or listening devices, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. “Is this a private conversation?”

To my surprise, she nods. “There are ears nearby, behind thick doors. They will hear me if I scream, but if we keep our voices low, no one will hear us. We’re not being actively monitored.”

“Why not?” It seems like a poor security choice.

She clears her throat. “As you might have noticed, as unpredictable as your behavior might be, there are some situations in which we are able to quite accurately predict your behavior.”

“How? Or is that a trade secret?”

She smiles. “It’s your moral compass. Your fearlessness makes you erratic, but it’s your sense of right and wrong that guides you. Having Big Brother in the room with us is not a good way to regain your trust.”

“You never had it.”

“Right.” She motions to the apartment. “You’re welcome to check, if you like.”

Not sensing any trace of a lie, I decide to trust that this talk is private. “And if I decide to not have this conversation? If I decide to leave?”

“Well then, you’ll have to deal with Betty and Sue.”

“Betty… and Sue?”

She raises her fists. Shakes the right. “Betty.” Shakes the left. “And Sue. Now, choose your fate. Have a pleasant chat or be emasculated by a cheeky British tart.”

I smile, open my arms, and bow my head in mock subjugation. “I’m at your mercy.”

“Now then,” she says, “first question?”

“I’ll go first,” I say, then ask my question before she can argue. “How did they find me?”

She ponders this for a moment, perhaps already questioning her commitment to honesty. Then she says, “The… woman has a GPS tracker embedded beneath her skin.”

I nod, believing her, mostly because it’s not an answer she’d give if she were trying to win me over. I open my hands, motioning my readiness.

“How are you feeling?” she asks. “Any dizziness? Headaches? Nausea? Hallucinations?”

“That’s five questions,” I point out.

“Try to hear it with commas instead of question marks.”

I take stock of my body. “I’m a little sore. The hallucinations have faded.”

“So you were hallucinating?”

“That’s two questions,” I say. “My turn.”

She groans and sighs. “Go ahead.”

“Who is Simon?”

She lowers her drink toward the edge of the table. Her face is a frozen mask of shock. The glass slips from her fingers, twirls along the table’s edge, and falls. I lean forward, catch the glass and put it on the tabletop. When I lean back and look Allenby in the eyes, she gives me a one-word answer. “Bollocks.”