MirrorWorld

26.

Before I can answer, we’re inside the lab where several familiar faces wait. Allenby is there, a look of relief in her eyes. She takes my hand and gives it a pat but says nothing. Next is Cobb. After abducting him, forcing him to care for my kidnapped patient, and putting him in danger, I didn’t think I’d ever see him again. Most men would have run the other way. But here he is, sitting in a chair, eyes on the floor. Not that he looks happy about it. He’s so pale it looks like Dracula had a go at him, but I suspect he’s just been told the truth. Then there is Katzman, the Dread Squad leader who managed to corner and capture me. I can’t remember if that’s ever been done before, but it still impresses me. He’s all business, leaning against a counter. He offers a professional nod. I think my victorious return has earned a little respect. That will probably change when I tell them about the pugs, but I don’t care. Behind Katzman, but towering over him—in scale more than presence—is a new face. Standing at least fifteen inches taller than Katzman, the man’s shaggy face is easy to see, despite his best attempt to not make eye contact. He’s young, lanky, and dressed like it’s still the ’90s—jeans, T-shirt, open plaid flannel. The way his brown eyes dart everywhere but toward me says that he’s like Cobb and doesn’t really belong in this group. Looks more like he should be playing video games than discussing monsters that live just beyond our perception. I decide to spare him some social discomfort and not introduce myself just yet.

Last in the line is Winters, the CIA overseer and my former… what? The tightness of her scowl matches her crossed arms.

“Not happy to see me?” I ask her.

She huffs. “You knocked me out, gagged me, and cuffed me to a bed.”

“The gentlest way I know how,” I say. “And you did try to kick me in the face. And tase me. Do they know why you’re really upset at me?” I motion to the others.

A circle of confused eyes stare at me. Except for Winters. She looks something close to mortified. I think. I can recognize fear, but the subtleties of it are hard for me to pick out. But she definitely looks uncomfortable.

“Was it after Maya lost her mind, or before?” I ask Winters.

Her eyes slowly widen. She’s trying to tell me to shut my mouth without making it too obvious. But the implications aren’t hard to miss. Even the new guy gets it. He’s folding in on himself, trying to disappear.

“Josef,” Allenby says, shaking her head.

“Do you remember?” Lyons asks. He either knew already or doesn’t care.

I shake my head. “She didn’t flinch when I groped her breast.”

“You didn’t?” Allenby says to me, covering her mouth with her hand.

“I lack impulse control,” I say.

Winters pounds her fist into a desktop. “We’re not here to discuss the past.”

“It was just a few days ago that—”

“Josef!” Winters’s use of my real first name somehow confirms that we once had a relationship of some kind.

“The transgressions of your past are not why we’re here,” Lyons says, though I can see he’s not thrilled about the development, either. He might even be hiding his reaction so I don’t learn that we’re family.

I hold up my hands to Winters and offer a peace-treaty smile. “It’s ancient history, right?”

She forces a grin that says it isn’t, but we both move on.

I approach Cobb. “So, did they blow your mind?”

He looks up at me. “You could say that.”

“Still up to being a paramedic?”

His slow nod doesn’t exude confidence, but he’s here, and I trust him. “Great. Paramed me.” I pull off my T-shirt to gasps of surprise. My stomach and back are bruising from impacts with the bull and the tree.

Cobb stands, the cobwebs of confusion cleared. “Medical supplies?”

Allenby points to a tall cabinet. “There.”

Lyons leans in close, inspecting the purple skin. “What did this?”

“The Dread bull.”

He reels back. “It touched you?”

“Hard,” I say. “Is that unusual?”

“It’s rare,” he says, deep in thought. “But it’s not unheard of. Despite their ability to move between frequencies, they seem to avoid moving fully into our perceptual realm. We think it makes them uncomfortable. It might even be painful. It must have fully understood the threat you present. That is, unless…”

I know what he’s thinking and nod. “We weren’t here.”

Lyons seems both surprised and pleased. But he stays quiet, letting Cobb do his job.

Cobb throws a sheet over an operating table. One by one, he squishes four instant ice packs, mixing the chemicals inside. Then he lays them out on the sheet. “Lay down on these. Fifteen minutes.”

I climb on the table and lay down. The ice packs are frigid against my back but hurt far less than the bruising will if it goes unchecked. Once I’m down, Cobb hovers over me, crushing two more of the flat ice packs. He lays them on my stomach and ribs, which makes me flinch a bit, but the discomfort is all but forgotten when Lyons stands over me.

“Know your enemy,” he says. “I assume that’s not a concept that’s lost on you.”

I nod. “But isn’t the second part of that quote to know thyself?”

“The only self you need to be concerned about is the one capable of defeating our enemy. The rest is background noise that you can worry about if we survive.”

It seems like a harsh point for Lyons to make, but I can’t say I disagree. Distraction is dangerous, and in this case not knowing myself might be the best thing.

Lyons steps back and motions to the newcomer, who’s leaning so hard against the wall that I think he’s trying to shove himself through, one molecule at a time. “This is Jonathan Dearborn. He’s an expert in mythology, both ancient and modern, as well as history and anthropology.”

Dearborn closes the distance between us with one long stride and extends his hand, rigid and fluid at the same time. “I specialize in differentiating history from mythology. In this case, identifying which myths bear enough resemblance to known Dread variants to be considered witness testimony rather than conjured tale or misguided belief.”

“To what end?” I ask.

“Knowing the enemy,” Lyons says. “Looking for patterns. Identifying goals. Hot zones. Potential targets. He’s helped us identify colony locations and has provided a comprehensive study of the Dread’s influence on human affairs.” He swivels his head toward Dearborn. “Start with Mothman.”

“Mothman, right,” he says. “Reports of the… creature were common in parts of West Virginia during 1966 and 1967. All black. Red eyes. Large wings. Those who saw it, only briefly, were terrified. There are many theories about what it was, including a giant crane. A folklorist named Brunvand came closest to getting it right. He believed the details present in the Mothman sightings were so similar to older folk tales that he’d cataloged and studied that the creature wasn’t something new, but something old being seen by a fresh audience.”

“I suppose you’ve identified a few of those myths?” I ask.

“A few thousand dating back to the beginning of human history.” Dearborn is emerging from his shell like a turtle that’s just had an energy drink. There’s an excitement in his blue eyes that wasn’t there a minute ago. “Many, like Mothman, have names. Ōmukade, the giant man-eating centipede in Japan. A real nasty one. Barguest, the black dog of northern England. The name comes from the German, Bärgeist, which means ‘bear ghost.’”

“Sounds like a bull,” I say.

Dearborn snaps his fingers and points at me. “Sasabonsam in West Africa. A man-sized black spirit with a twenty-foot wingspan that terrifies people with its cry and has bloodred eyes. Sound familiar?”

I nod. It’s a similar enough description to Mothman.

“Ahamagachktiat,” he says next. “Native American tribes had thirty-seven different names for what we now call the Bear of North America, not to be confused with an actual bear. This black apparition, which terrified tribes across the country, appeared as a horrifying, shadowy bear. Again, sound familiar?”

He knew it did and continued. “The Duende, with alternate names like Muah, Dominguito, and Duenos del Monte—the mountain lords—haunt South America. They’re small black creatures with flat, wrinkled faces.”

Pugs, I think, and understand what he’s getting at. “So, they’ve been around for a very long time, and they’re everywhere.”

“On every continent, living among us,” he says. “And they’re as old, if not older, than the human race.”

“But what do they want?” Cobb says. “And if they hate us so much, why don’t they just kill us?”

“Because they can’t,” Lyons says. “Not overtly. Fully entering our world and engaging us is against their nature. They prefer to hide between frequencies. At heart, they’re cowards.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Allenby says. “It’s possible they simply don’t want to kill us.”

Lyons waves the comment away like a foul smell. “They’re bullies whose longtime victim is on the cusp of growing stronger. They might have enjoyed tormenting the human race for centuries. But the writing is on the wall. We’re going to expose them. We’re going to fight back. And they mean to stop us.” He turns back to Cobb, shifting gears. “Just a hint of a Dread is enough to make people afraid. We feel them around us all the time. As a cold draft, or an unexplainable feeling of being watched, or a creeping paranoia that someone means you harm. We’ve all felt those things. Some of us more than others.”

“Can you see them out of the corner of your eye?” Cobb asks.

Lyons eyes the man. “Only if they are close to our frequency. Why do you ask?”

“Nothing,” Cobb says, looking a little sheepish. “Just something from Doctor Who.”

“Doctor Who?” Lyons asks.

“The TV show,” Dearborn says.

Lyons sighs and rolls his eyes.

“We most often attribute their actions to ghosts,” Dearborn continues, oblivious to Lyons’s annoyance. “Or if they do affect the physical realm, poltergeists. They’re also often reported as UFOs and / or aliens, but if there is a Dread species resembling the typical gray alien, we have yet to encounter it. But the abject, paralyzing fear most abductees report is consistent with a Dread encounter.”

“So the Dread are abducting people?” Cobb asked.

Lyons shakes his head. “Abduction reports are likely a result of fear-induced hallucination. Shifting between frequencies of reality is taxing, and taking a body along for the ride, while theoretically possible, is probably not what the Dread can do.”

It’s not theoretical. I’ve already proved that but decide to keep my cards close to the vest. I don’t know if it’s something the Dread can do, but if I can figure it out in a day, it seems likely the Dread would have figured it out by now.

“Probably,” Cobb says. “But you’re not certain.”

“We’re not certain about much,” Lyons says. “Other than we can no longer afford to ignore our neighbors, and they are not happy about it.”

“Humanity’s brief encounters with the Dread are simply a by-product of sharing the planet with them,” Dearborn says. Because they live in another plane of existence, or frequency—another dimension, for lack of a better word—we can literally occupy the same time and space. And we often do, accidentally. Most day-to-day interactions with the Dread are coincidental, but some, the ones that result in the creation of mythology, especially sustained mythology ranging hundreds of years, is intentional on the part of the Dread.”

“Why?” I ask.

“To frighten us,” Lyons says. “To harm us. Asserting dominance. It’s a natural instinct for most lower life-forms on Earth, like hyenas harassing lions.”

“So they’re asserting dominance by frightening people?” I ask.

Lyons raises his voice a little. Clenches his fists. “Fear is more powerful than you could possibly know, especially given your condition. It is the perfect tool to keep the human race from reaching our full potential. It keeps us primal. Afraid of the unknown. Flight wins out more often over fight. And it sets us against each other. The Dread don’t need to touch us to kill us. We happily do that for them with the right motivation. Lives are lost. Wars are waged.” There’s a little bit of fire in Lyons’s eyes. “Every person on this planet is a puppet to be played with. Or discarded. When they want to hurt us, all they really have to do is get close enough to our frequency of reality and push their fear into our minds. Sometimes, when it’s dark, we don’t see them. But when we do, when that shadowy thing rears up, combined with the fear they implant…” A shiver shakes the old man’s body. He’s speaking from experience.

The whispering that isn’t actually sound, I think. They get in your head.

“That’s how you found them,” I say. “They found you first.”

Lyons’s head lowers to the floor, lips twitching. Finally, he says, “Yes. I suppose, like many children, I experienced their presence through the frequencies as typical unexplained events. What child doesn’t have stories of hidden monsters, of being watched, or stalked, of fearing what lurks in the dark. But on one particular night, after seeing a shadow slip from one side of my room to the other, I made a terrible mistake—I confronted it. The fear I felt when that shadow stopped moving…” He shakes again. “I tried to stand up to it. It was my room. My world. I believed the monsters were real and wanted them out. So I told them that. Demanded it.

“It was ten years before they got bored with me. They left me alone long enough to join the CIA, rise through the ranks, and gain access to some of the most amazing minds on the planet. Many of the first people working on string theory were actually working for me. By nineteen seventy, we had a basic and rough string theory model that suggested the existence of other dimensions. Over the next twenty-five years, our research led to the first and second superstring revolutions that revealed eleven dimensions of reality, otherwise known as M theory. At this point, the math revealed the potential for pocket universes, but it was just numbers and symbols without concrete evidence. That would come later…

“By seeing them for what they were, I invited their torment. Other people might have been driven insane, but they only strengthened my resolve. I knew they were real. I just needed to prove it. They set my path all those years ago. This is still my world. And I still want them out.”

The room is silent for a moment, but Lyons recovers, lifting his head and turning toward me. “A quick burst can freeze the bravest man in his tracks. Sustained exposure can drive the most strong-willed person mad, or even stop a heart. Whether or not they can, or would, invade our reality isn’t the point. The point is, they don’t need to. We are already at their mercy, defeated without ever really knowing the enemy. But we know them now. The only reason humanity didn’t find them earlier is because we never thought to look.”

“So, these things,” Cobb says. “The Dread. They’re in another dimension. I get that, but how are they able to move between them?” He points at me. “How is he? Is it like an Einstein-Rosen bridge to parallel worlds kind of a thing?”

Several surprised gazes turn to Cobb.

“Doctor Who?” Lyons asks, a trace of impatience lining his voice.

Cobb just grins.

“It’s nothing so grand,” Lyons answers. “And it’s not really a parallel world. They live on the same planet Earth as we do. They’re just… immaterial to us, to our perceptions, like high and low frequencies our ears can’t detect, or wavelengths of light our eyes can’t see. Humanity, and most of our animal counterparts, are capable of detecting and interacting with a limited number of string frequencies. The frequency, or dimension, the Dread inhabit is just beyond our sensory reach. Do you know anything about string theory?” Lyons points at me and speaks to Cobb. “Him, not you. Maybe a documentary while sitting on the SafeHaven couch?”

“Not that I can remember,” I say.

He continues. “String theory proposes that the universe is composed of miniscule vibrating strings of energy.”

I glance at Allenby. “So I’ve been told. Like musical notes.”

He seems to not hear me. “It’s a mathematical theory of everything that attempts to explain how the universe is bound together, including the vast amount of energy that must exist but is unobservable. According to string theory, the world as we know it is just a small part of something larger and unseen. Unexperienced. Traditional string theory reveals there are at least six more spatial dimensions that are hidden from us, on Earth and throughout the universe, though I believe there are more, where the frequencies overlap.”

“B flat,” I say, getting Lyons’s attention. “I call it the world in-between.”

“Exactly,” he says, his eyes moving from me to Allenby. “You told him more than we agreed.”

Allenby raises her eyebrows in defiance, up to the challenge. “That was before we were facing a bull and you sent him off after it.”

Before the conversation gets off track, and I stop getting my answers, I pull it back on course. “So no one has actually seen these dimensions? Not even with computers?”

“There are computer models, and at Neuro we’ve developed methods of detecting the Dread, but when it comes to the larger world they inhabit, we’re still trying to interpret the data in a way that our senses can understand. Based on our limited data, we believe they inhabit a mirror dimension of reality. String theory predicts the existence of pocket dimensions, which would be imperceptibly small, but contain bits of reality beyond our perception. As it turns out, the theory is only partly right. Pocket dimensions exist, but they’re a match for our own, a reflection of our reality. Not a perfect reflection, mind you, but a physical one, meaning the physical laws governing the mirror dimension, time, gravity, mass, etcetera, match the laws of our reality. The rest of it, like life, evolved in its own unique way.”

“But you really don’t know any of this for sure, do you?” I lean up a little to better look Lyons in the eyes. “Everything you think you know is based on what, mathematical models and computer simulations? Even Michael Crichton didn’t believe things like that qualified as scientific evidence.”

“You remember Crichton?” Allenby asked. She’s a little surprised.

“I did a lot of reading over the past year,” I say, and then decipher the true meaning of her question. “Wait, I met Crichton?”

“At Caltech. January 2003.” She smiles. “You were always a fan, but on that day he gave a lecture called ‘Aliens Cause Global Warming’ and warned about using computer models to make scientific predictions.”

“You were there, too?” I ask.

“And Maya.” She smiles. “It was a good day, despite the long cross-campus line.”

Lyons clears his throat. “Josef’s past is hardly relevant to our current situation, and in response to your query about mathematical predictions of the mirror dimension, you are correct. They’re educated guesses, at best. To really observe and interact with the other world in a way that allows us to make real measurements and observations, we have to alter our physical state. We have to become capable of interacting with all frequencies of reality.”

“We would have to become like the Dread,” I say.

Lyons stares at me, curious. “Precisely.”

His confirmation hangs in the air for a moment, until the implications of what he’s said sinks in.

“Is that what you did to me?”