MirrorWorld Part 27

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 b.i.t.c.h." She glances back, grinning wide.

Despite the circ.u.mstances 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 ... b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. 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.

"Crazy," Stephanie says with a knowing smile. "Good to see you again."

I have a hard time looking her in the eyes as I now remember our first meeting with severe discomfort. That I could just strut around naked, in front of a woman I'd just met, now seems like a distant impossibility.

"You two know each other?" Allenby asks.

"We've hung out," the neurologist says as she approaches. She elbows my arm like we're pals, but the best I give her admittedly funny joke is a sheepish smile.

"When I fell through the floor, I landed in her lab." I spit out the words, finding myself taking deep breaths despite a lack of physical effort.

"Ooh," Allenby says. "Hung out. I get it now. You were in the buff."

I grip Allenby's arm. My throat feels like its swelling, my breathing growing labored. "What's happening to me? Feels a little like I'm being strangled."

She looks me over, still grinning, but also concerned. "Looks like a touch of embarra.s.sment-induced anxiety. You're not used to being teased."

Cobb puts a gentle hand on my back. "Take a deep breath. Count out seven seconds."

I do. My chest feels about to explode it's so full.

"Hold it for seven seconds." He counts this out with her fingers. "And now let it out for seven seconds."

I exhale slowly, feeling a measure of calm return as the breath seeps from my lips. I repeat the process twice more until I feel better. When I look up again and see the operating table, my throat starts to close up again. Visions of Stephanie opening the back of my head mix with memories of the Dread mole probing my brain.

Allenby puts her hand on my arm. "You won't be having surgery if that's what you're worried about."

"I won't?"

"Just one injection," Stephanie says.

"But in my brain."

"From what I understand, there's already a small hole in your skull." She pauses for a moment, when I quickly find a seat and all but fall into it. "There are no pain receptors in the brain. You're not going to feel a thing."

"But something could go wrong." I point to Cobb. "That's why he's here."

"And because you trust him," Allenby says, and gives the man a look.

"I wouldn't support this if I thought your life was in danger," Cobb says, and I believe him. Out of everyone at Neuro, he's the only one whose integrity I don't doubt to some degree. I don't even fully trust dear ol' Aunt Allenby.

I turn to Stephanie. "You're not touching my head until I understand what you're going to do."

"I'm going to restore your memory," she says.

"How?"

"It's complicated."

"Humor me."

"The way your memories were erased ... the procedure was ... archaic. I can't actually believe you requested it." Stephanie glances at Allenby, who nods for her to continue. "Memories are stored in the cerebral cortex, which is the outer layers of the brain. Sometimes, when the cortex is damaged, like in a car accident, neurons will die or degenerate. Glial cells, which are most easily explained as the nervous system's overprotective glue, swarm to the injury sites, protecting the brain against bacteria or toxins. The side effect of these reactive glial cells rushing to protect the mind is that the scar tissue they form effectively blocks the growth of new, healthy neurons, trapping memories in the cerebral cortex. So memories aren't lost so much as blocked. By studying and comparing numerous traumatic-injury amnesia cases, my predecessor was able to identify the specific neural pathways used to recall memories as well as the regions of the cortex itself that store long-term memories."

She looks uncomfortable with what comes next.

"I can handle it," I tell her, only half believing it. But I have seen and survived worse, including what she's now explaining. If I keep reminding myself, maybe I won't curl up on the floor.

"They basically raked the surface of your brain in the regions controlling memory. And they caused trauma to the areas responsible for transmitting those memories. They couldn't really destroy the memories without killing you, so they forced your cerebrum to do the job itself, creating vast amounts of memory-blocking glial scar tissue."

The news makes me uncomfortable, but since it happened to a version of me I can't remember, it doesn't feel any different than if I'd read about it in a magazine. "And you're going to what, remove the scar tissue?"

"In a way," she says. "We're going to turn those glial cells into functioning neurons, which will reopen neural pathways to the portions of your cerebral cortex that have been segregated."

"How?"

Stephanie sighs. "Seriously?"

"It's my brain."

"It's not going to sound fun."

I stare at her until she complies.

"Fine. We're going to inject the glial cells with a retrovirus."

She's right. That doesn't sound fun at all. "You're going to give my brain a virus?"

"Retroviruses can-"

"I know what they can do," I tell her. "I'm part Dread, thanks to a different DNA-altering retrovirus."

Stephanie just shakes her head. "Well, this retrovirus contains the genetic code for the NeuroD1 protein, which, in the hippocampus, turns reactive glial cells into nerve cells. The virus can't replicate for long. It doesn't destroy healthy cells. And it can only infect glial cells. The rest of your functioning neurons will remain intact."

"That ... doesn't sound too bad, but I'm not sure I want my memories back. I forgot them for a reason, right?" I turn to Allenby. "You said that life had become so painful I opted to erase my memory rather than live with it. What good will come from me regaining memories so painful that even my fearless self couldn't handle them?"

Allenby is suddenly in my face. "Because pain hones us." She shoves my chest. "It gives us purpose." A solid slap across my face staggers me back. "It makes us stronger." She slaps me again. I try to dodge, but she's fast and I'm on the defense. "Pain teaches us lessons." She swings hard once more, but this time I catch her wrist in my hand. She glares at me. "And sometimes, if we're lucky, or brave, pain can push us past our fear."

She yanks her hand out of my grasp. "You can't run away from your past, and I don't think you ever intended to."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Why would a man without fear run away? Sure, it hurt. We lost your parents, your son, who happens to be my nephew, and we lost my husband. I've been living with that pain all these years. It's what drives me to keep fighting. But you ... you retreated from it? Bulls.h.i.t. That's not you. It never was. You wouldn't have gone through with it without a good reason. Or a bad one. It wasn't the loss of your family you were meant to forget, it was something else."