MirrorWorld

20.

Boots thud down the carpeted hallway as the men dressed in riot gear storm toward a neighboring apartment, two doors down. I follow Katzman with Allenby on my heels.

“Copy that,” Katzman says, hand against his ear. He turns back. “It’s in the west stairwell. Headed up.”

I catch his arm and stop him. “What is?”

He looks from me to Allenby. She gives him a nod.

“The enemy,” he says.

“One of the Dread?”

Katzman glances at Allenby, eyebrows raised in question.

“It worked,” she says. “He saw one on the building. It must have found the broken window. Got inside.”

He yanks his arm from my grasp. “You will either do what I tell you or stay out of the way.”

While Katzman storms away, I turn back to Allenby.

“There isn’t time to fully explain the situation,” she says. “It’s complicated. And strange. I promise you will get answers, some probably sooner than others. What you need to know now is that you’re going to see something that doesn’t make sense. And when you do see it, I want you to kill it.”

I stare at her.

“You’ve done more for less in the past.”

I frown. “Fine.”

When I step inside the apartment two doors down, I feel like a kid who has just stumbled across Santa’s workshop. It’s not an apartment at all. It’s an armory. The room is a mix of modern weapons, bladed weapons, nonlethal armaments, armor, and high-tech gadgets. The men in riot gear stop as I enter, watching me with suspicious eyes.

Katzman points to me. “Dread Squad, this is Crazy.” He sweeps his hand toward the seven men. “Crazy, Dread Squad.”

While the tough-looking men of “Dread Squad” go back to their business, arming themselves with a variety of weapons, I scout the room. A machete mounted on the wall catches my attention. The twenty-inch cleaver blade is straight with a chisel tip and the back side, which slopes in a smooth line back to the handle, is wickedly serrated. The entire weapon is black and slightly textured. Like Teflon. But it’s not just the machete. A case of knives, bayonets, and less-brutal-looking swords are all black, too. A nearby Dread Squad member loads fresh rounds into a magazine. The bullets are black. So are the guns.

“It’s made from an alloy called oscillium,” Allenby says. She lifts the machete and its sheath off the wall.

“Never heard of it,” I say.

“No one has. It’s a mix of nickel, aluminum, and titanium, along with a few things I’ve never heard of and don’t care to remember, formed into whatever we want and bombarded with intense bursts of laser light, which is what turns it black. You were part of the trial-and-error program that created it.”

I’m starting to feel like I’m living in my own shadow and I’m getting pretty annoyed with my past self. I have more questions, but the alarm keeps me focused. I look the machete over, admiring the fine blade forged from some top-secret exotic alloy. The ridiculousness of the situation is not lost on me. “So what are we fighting then, werewolves? Is this alloy like our silver bullet?”

“That would be easier,” she says. “Oscillium is important because of the way it vibrates, or oscillates, hence the not-so-creative name.”

“So, the machete vibrates?”

“Not in any way you’ll ever feel,” she says. “I’m not a physicist, but the way I understand it is, all matter vibrates, but at different speeds. Different frequencies, from very low to extra high. Normally, people might talk about atoms and electrons, but around here it’s all about string theory, which basically says all matter is composed of teeny, tiny strings that vibrate at different frequencies. And like the frequencies of sound waves, there are vibrations we can detect as physical matter, or light, or heat, and some we can’t. What you thought were hallucinations are simply frequencies of reality that are normally undetectable and intangible to humanity and most common elements on Earth.

“Think of reality as musical notes. Each note on the scale is as audible, as real, as the next, but vibrating at different frequencies. The world as we experience it is an A. But the Dread experience the world in a different frequency. To them, reality is a B. On the same scale, the same planet, but distinct. The difference is that they are longtime musicians, able to move between notes, whereas we are still children, striking only a single note. Unlike us, or even the Dread, oscillium can vibrate in a single frequency, or multiple frequencies, and it can shift back and forth with ease.”

“And how does that work?” I ask, unwilling to hide my sarcastic tone.

“Bioelectromagnetism.” The confidence of Allenby’s voice says she’s up to the task of facing my scrutiny, but this is starting to feel new-agey. “The magnetic field generated by a human being pulsates up and down between .3 and 30Hz. The field measured at the hands matches the field measured in the brain, all of which can be affected by the mind. It’s been shown that people can change their field simply by focusing on it. At the low end of the spectrum, the magnetic field will pull the oscillium fully into sync with our frequency. On the far end of the spectrum, the oscillium will shift out of our frequency. Everything in between will have no effect.”

“Is that dangerous? Can’t the Dread affect the frequency?”

“Even if they knew it was possible, their bioelectromagnetic field is different from our own. The frequency shift only works for people, and even then only with practice. Once you know what the bioelectromagnetic field shift feels like, you can change the frequency of oscillium just by thinking it.

“The weapons you see here, like the walls and windows of this building, were designed to oscillate between A and B so quickly that they exist in both frequencies at once. But they can also be in one or the other, depending on the electromagnetic field of the person in contact with them, though there has never been a reason to not have the weapons exist in both worlds. It allows us to attack them without moving between frequencies like they do and keep them out of the building. Theoretically, all matter can make the jump between worlds with a shift in frequency, but oscillium does it naturally.”

“Here, there, and everywhere,” I say.

Allenby pauses. Sighs. “Your uncle used to sing that song to me.”

“Sorry.”

She forces a smile and waves off her sudden melancholy. “It’s a horrible song, but an accurate description of the alloy.” She holds the machete out to me, the blade resting in her open palms. Back to business.

I accept the offered weapon. When my fingers wrap around the handle and the machete comes up in my hand, a smile creeps onto my face. “Was… this mine?”

She grins and nods. “Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun samurai of Japan, once said that the sword was the soul of a samurai. The relationship between weapon and warrior, forged in battle, could never be broken.” Her smile fades. She puts the scabbard in my free hand. “Too bad that didn’t also work for family, eh?”

I slide the blade into the scabbard and slip the weapon over my back. Katzman approaches holding a belt with a holstered sidearm already in place. I identify the weapon with a quick glance: a black SIG Sauer P229. “What’s inside?”

“Point forty cals,” he says as I take the belt and strap it in place. “Try not to shoot any people. Your… senses are still adapting, so your target will most likely look like a shadow, but just because you can see through it doesn’t mean you can’t shoot it.”

“Oscillium,” I say. “Right.”

He nods. “There is a chance it could also appear as something more substantial. If that happens, try not to let this throw you.”

“Nothing throws me. Figuratively, though literally is also doubtful.”

Not amused, he heads for the door. “Two teams! Alpha, hit the west stairwell, work your way down. Take your time. Beta, elevator down and come up from below.” I’m sure he’s going to leave me out, let me tag along, see how the big boys do it. It’s the kind of silverback macho stuff you expect from a short man dressed for war. But that’s not what happens. “Crazy, you’re with Alpha. On point.”

“Katzman,” Allenby complains.

Katzman opens the door. The four-man Beta Team rushes out. “It’s why he’s here, isn’t it?”

Allenby racks the slide of her own handgun. Holsters it on her hip. She’s got two black knives on the other hip. She quickly grabs the wild poof atop her head that is her hair and pulls it back into an elastic that rolls off her wrist, there all along, waiting for duty. “Fine.”

Katzman motions to me. “Follow the hall to the right. All the way to the end and left. The stairwell door is straight ahead.” With that, he lowers a pair of strange round goggles over his eyes. The rest of Dread Squad does the same. I turn to Allenby to ask, but she’s pulling a pair over her own eyes as well.

“They let us peek between frequencies, but just a peek is sometimes too much. You won’t need them. Hopefully.” She flashes a grin. “Move it, soldier.”

With a confidence born of obvious naïveté and lack of fear, I head out of the room and turn right. I feel a flash of déjà vu. It’s not the hallway that feels familiar. It’s the anticipation. Of battle. Of facing chaos and reining it into control. I’ve done this before. What does it say about me that I can remember this feeling, but not what it’s like to have a son and lose him?

“Cut the alarm,” Katzman says behind me, talking into his hidden mic. A moment later, the blaring whoops fall silent and I can hear the heavy breathing of Dread Squad’s Alpha team behind me. They’re not winded already, just amped. Or are they afraid? If they are, they’re pretty good at hiding it.

Eight apartment doors later, we reach the end of the hall and turn left. The stairwell entrance is forty feet ahead. I don’t know if anyone lives in these units. Maybe just the Dread Squad guys. Either way, the doors don’t open. No curious eyes peek out. Could be that the residents have been trained to hunker down when they hear that alarm. Could be that they’re just afraid.

I stop by the stairwell door, draw my weapon, and flick off the safety. Katzman stops next to me. “I hope Lyons is right about you.”

“Let’s find out,” I say, and look back at Alpha Team. “Teams of two. No bunching up. Katz, you’re with me.” I point at the next two men in line. “You two enter when we hit the first landing.” I point at the last two. “You two stay put with Allenby. If it’s not us that comes out the door…”

The four men under Katzman’s command all turn to him.

He’s clearly annoyed but gives a curt nod.

I open the door and step into the stairwell. The walls are gray. So are the railings. And the concrete steps. It’s woefully bland in an industrial-Russia kind of way. No windows. Wire-encased bulbs line the walls. Whoever designed the rest of Neuro’s HQ really skimped on the stairwells. Of course, this is the modern world. How many people still use stairs?

The landing ahead is empty, so I track the steps down and around with the barrel of my gun. Seeing nothing, I lean over the railing and look down.

Nothing.

The stairwell is empty.

“There’s nothing here,” I say.

Katzman grabs my arm. Hard. His sleeve pulls up a bit. The hairs on his exposed arm stand on end. The hairs on the back of his neck spring up, too. He puts a finger to his lips and then mouths, “It’s here.”

I look over the railing again. There’s not a damn thing in the stairwell besides us.

Katzman slides the strange round goggles over his eyes. He inches toward the railing. Painfully slow. Then, with a quick motion, he glances over the edge, just for a moment, and springs back. His chest heaves. His weapon lowers. His eyes, behind the tinted goggles, go wide.

What. The. Hell?

Katzman is a brave man. He’s stood up to me twice. But that man is gone. He’s withered into a child just woken from a nightmare. He manages to find his voice, though. “Three stories down.” A gasp for air. “Use your eyes. Like you did earlier.”

I remember my strange look out the window. What it felt like. What it looked like. Dark. Tinged with green. Otherworldly. The living shadow. But I’m not sure how to trigger… whatever that was, again.

I lean over the edge, looking for a target. Eager to pull my trigger. To draw my machete. To tame the chaos.

But there is nothing in my repertoire I can do about a drab stairwell.

That’s all I see.

I blink hard, trying to alter my vision. Trying to see what’s not there.

Allenby told me to “see what you want to see.” She might not understand how to control the changes my body is going through, but she probably knows how it’s supposed to work.

I lean over the edge again, aiming down at nothing.

See, I think.

See!

I relax my thoughts. Focus my attention on what I can’t see. Then I feel it. That strange new muscle. I flex. My eyes tingle, then sting, and suddenly, like a light switch has been thrown, I can see what’s not there. And it hurts. The pain nearly cripples me, exploding from my eyes and roiling through my blood, but what I now see keeps me upright and focused past the physical discomfort.

I’m looking at my target, which is very much not a shadow, straight in the eyes.

And it’s looking right back.