MirrorWorld

48.

The distance from our parking spot in front of the art museum and the edge of Couturie Forest is nearly two miles if you follow the roads. I reduce the distance a little bit by cutting through patches of woodlands, but there is no avoiding the several bridges along the way, not without going for a swim. The trip takes me fifteen minutes, all of it spent in the real world, visually monitoring nonhuman frequencies. Each passing minute weighs on me, drawing my eyes to my watch again and again, watching the timer tick down to ninety minutes. So far, I seem to be moving unnoticed. The colony is either not afraid of being attacked, has defenses I can’t see, or is too busy elsewhere. Possibly all of the above.

I stop at the edge of the forest, hiding in the foliage at the center of a roundabout, the last real road I’ll see once I enter the trees on the other side of the street. But before I do…

I take out the phone and, with a swipe of my finger, open the tracking app. Maya’s position hasn’t moved. She’s definitely inside the colony, smack-dab at the middle but still registering on the GPS, still in this world. Or maybe it’s just the tracking device. They could have taken it out of her. I slip into the mirror world and watch the signal disapear. I nearly drop the phone in the foot-deep water when someone speaks behind me.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

The voice is distorted, gravelly, and deep.

Hair on the back of my neck stands tall. The Dread can speak?

“Turn around,” says the voice. “Slow.”

I comply, hands out to my sides.

I’m expecting a bull to lunge or tendrils to stab into my head, but the figure behind me, while all black, is human. The oscillium armor matches mine, but the man’s head is covered by a mask and he’s wearing the round goggles that allow humans to see the Dread, which is generally a very bad idea. He’s pointing a sound-suppressed handgun at my chest, shaking slightly.

“The hell are you doing here, Crazy?”

While I’m glad he’s not Dread, the gun at my chest makes me nervous. I have a hundred memories of situations far worse than this. In them, I’m cool, collected, and thinking about solutions, most of which are absolutely nuts. Now, I’m having trouble looking away from the weapon’s barrel.

“Who am I talking to?” I ask.

The man tugs his mask up with one hand.

Katzman. And he looks even more nervous and squirrelly than me. So much so that I ask, “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he says, his head twitching. “It’s the drugs.”

I nearly ask, but then remember BDO, the mix of benzodiazepine, dextroamphetamine, and OxyContin. Makes the user feel invincible, even in the face of the Dread. That’s when I realize something startling: Katzman is in the mirror dimension. He’s got split pupils just like me.

He sees the surprise in my own Dread eyes and explains. “All of Dread Squad can move between worlds.”

“How long have—”

“A year. We’ve been training for D-day ever since.”

A year… I think, but ask, “D-day?”

“Dread-day. You were supposed to lead this little party, but last I heard, you had lost your marbles, which makes me wonder, why are you here?”

“You mean, why am I not dead along with Winters?”

He’s genuinely startled by this news. They had, after all, been his colleagues. Maybe even friends. “What?”

“Lyons had her killed. They tried to get Allenby, too.”

“Bullshit.”

“Right after they restored my memory.” Speaking of which, I have a few memories of Katzman. There was a time when he served as my second in command. Dread Squad had been my idea. “You were already on your way here.”

He doesn’t argue the point. The timing fits.

“I don’t blame you,” I say, letting him know I’m not here for personal vengeance. I hold up the phone, allowing him to see the tracking app. Since we’re in the mirror world, there is currently no signal, but it’s still a useful visual aid. “Maya is here.”

He shakes his head. “She’s dead. Lyons wouldn’t lie about that.”

“There’s a chance he believes it,” I admit, “but there is no proof. He could be wrong. Why would they bring her here if she was dead? Also, he killed Winters and tried to kill the only family he has left. I’m not sure he’s seeing things clearly.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he says. A thick vein on his forehead twitches. “We’re doing the right thing, and I have my orders. We’ve been planning this for—”

He closes his mouth.

“Planning what?”

I follow a subtle shift of his eyes and see the strap of his backpack. When he looks back at me, his face is twitching, his mouth pulling in and out of a smile. He shakes his head like he’s having a seizure, but I think he’s refusing to answer.

“Destroying the colony might not stop a war with the Dread,” I tell him. “It could start one.” I don’t know if Allenby’s position on this matter is right or not, but if it hasn’t been considered, it needs to be.

You’d think I just told him I was pregnant. He gapes at me, the drugs exaggerating his reaction. Then his mouth slaps shut, and he pulls himself together. “We’re already at war. Once upon a time, you knew that, too.”

I can’t argue about what I don’t yet remember, so I ask, “What if everything happening around the world is a warning? A shot across the bow.”

“A warning?” He scoffs. “For who?”

“Who do you think?”

It takes him only a moment to understand. “You think all of this… everything that’s happening around the world is a warning—for Neuro?”

“Not Neuro. Lyons. You don’t find it odd that they took his daughter? That they brought her here, to his first target?”

“If she really is here, they’re using her as a human shield. They’re desperate. Afraid. We can end this today, and they know it.”

I don’t argue. He could be right. The tracker signal might just be exposed to let us know she’s here, because they think that will stop Lyons. “I’m not going to get in your way, and I hope you’re right about all this, but if there’s a chance she’s alive, I need to at least try to get her back. How long do I have? Give me that much.”

“Ten minutes,” he says.

“Until what?”

“Let’s just say we’re going to do this the old-fashioned way first.”

“World War Two–style,” I guess, and he doesn’t argue. “Just tell me it’s not a nuke. There’s already enough talk of that.”

“Not a nuke,” he says, lowering the weapon. “What do you mean? Enough talk about what?”

“Russia’s nukes are on standby. Ready for launch. Which means everyone else’s are, too. The president issued an ultimatum: stand down in…” I look at my watch. “Eighty-six minutes, or else…”

“Or else what?”

“Nothing good,” I say, “but it won’t take much more than a nudge from the Dread to make sure it’s the worst possible ‘or else.’”

Katzman slowly shakes his head. “Then we need to stop them. Here and now.”

He’s right about the here and now, but the method is still up for debate.

“Look,” he says, “if you’re not out of here in ten, you probably never will be.”

“Anyone else I should worry about?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “We’re holding a perimeter until the—” He closes his mouth, realizing he almost gave me too much information. “No. Beyond me, it’s just th—”

His eyes go wide. The weapon comes up. I dive to the side as he fires, feeling the zing of bullets passing inches from my cheek. My roll is slowed by the foot-deep water, but I manage to get my feet under me and draw my sound-suppressed P229 handgun. Too bad it’s the wrong weapon for this fight.

Four bulls charge through the swamp, their massive mouths hanging open with worm-covered tongues, and green veins pulsing with energy, charge through the swamp.

“Oh my God,” Katzman whispers. “Oh my God.” The drugs do the trick. Katzman stands his ground and fires. The problem is, he’s about to become a mirror-world pancake.