MirrorWorld

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?”

“I wish I knew,” she says.

“When did the world start going haywire?”

“Two weeks ago.”

“Before that, was Lyons here?”

She shakes her head slowly. “No. He returned a week after the first riots. Insisted on retrieving you.”

“To what end?”

“To… bollocks. I see where you’re going. He compared you to the Enola Gay. You were meant to be the delivery system. But now—”

“I’m obsolete. And they know who I am. They’d see me coming.”

“I’m sorry, Josef. I didn’t know.”

“I’m getting used to it,” I say.

“To me not knowing things?”

I shake my head. “My name.”

She smiles. “I’ve noticed.”

“I just wish I could remember something—anything from the past that might help.”

Her smile widens. “So now you want to help, do you?”

“Help, yes, but I won’t be jumping between worlds and fighting Dread.” I feel the sharp shame of cowardice, but know in my core I won’t be able to face another Dread and survive. “I’m not capable of that anymore.”

“Not in your current state,” she says, stopping by a door labeled NEUROLOGY. “But perhaps if you were properly motivated.” She pushes through the door, revealing a prepped operating table and three faces—Cobb, Blair the ice creambulance driver, and Stephanie, the woman who had been trying to determine whether my memory could be returned. Given the operating table and her presence, I think she found the answer, and it terrifies me.