MirrorWorld Part 35

"Just watch," the midwife says.

Maya tenses, gripping the sides of the tub. Her forehead furrows, but it's the only outward sign of pain I can see. She's doing this drugless, focusing her will and body, letting things happen naturally. I didn't think it would be possible, but here she is, overcoming pain I can only imagine and fear I will never know.

My jaw drops when a small, naked body appears in the water, flowing up and out of the water, carried aloft by Fairhurst's skilled hands. And then she says three words that put a permanent c.h.i.n.k in my thick armor. "It's a boy."

Before this moment, if you had asked me if I wanted kids, I would have shrugged and said, "I don't know." I was indifferent. I felt happy when Maya told me she was pregnant, but wasn't moved by the news. I saw a child as just another one of life's challenges to overcome. Fairhurst announced the s.e.x because we chose not to find out earlier. But something about those three words: "it's a boy..."

I weep for the first time since joining the military. It's just a single tear, but its presence feels like Noah's rainbow, a promise of something greater than myself, of continuing generations of Shilohs and ... a son.

My son.

I reach for him and find only darkness.

I'm out of the memory, which was returned to me by the Dread mole. I can't see or sense the world around me, but I can feel it in my head. But why would it give that memory back to me? Of all my memories, that poignant moment reminds me of exactly what I lost. What the Dread took from me. And why I hate them. If they were looking for brownie points, they don't have a very good understanding of what makes people tick.

An image begins to resolve. Another memory.

I'm walking with my son. Just the two of us, out experiencing the world, sloshing through a swamp. He steps up beside me, rubs his head into my side.

"Are you ready?" I ask.

"Yes."

"Your strength and courage honor me," I tell the boy.

He bristles with pride. "Now ... let's go."

We move together, pushing through the mire until we reach the other side, where a desert awaits. It's flat, brown, and barren. But there has been activity here lately, and I've been tasked with understanding it. Walking casually, son by my side, we head for a collection of buildings. They're new but lack all the other things that normally indicate habitation-power lines, paved roads, and other types of infrastructure.

We stop a mile out, watching the activity in and around the small collection of buildings. And then, at once, the people there leave. A parade of vehicles heads north. Curious, I start toward the buildings but notice my son isn't following.

"What is it?" I ask him.

"I'm afraid," he confesses.

"No one will see us," I tell him. Though he is young, he understands this. He just hasn't experienced it yet. "You will be safe. They cannot harm you."

"But I don't like this place."

"And you shouldn't. But we have been asked to understand it. To ensure it is not a threat."

"Could it be?" he asks.

"They have sought us out in the past," I tell him. "But they cannot see the world as we do. They are limited and lost to emotion, conflict, and primitive thoughts."

"Like we were." My son is intelligent for his age, which is why the matriarch requested his training begin early.

"Yes," I say. "During the dark years, we ... tormented these people. Made them afraid of us. And as you know, some of us still choose this path. But not me. And not you. Understanding is more important than control, and making them afraid of us only draws their attention. Our worlds are connected, but our paths must remain separate."

My son begins his reply but cuts the thought short with a huff. His head snaps up, eyes wide. He's sensed something I missed. Danger. Intense and close.

Before I can give the command to run, a distant light blazes on the horizon. It locks us in place, blossoming in all directions, full of raw and terrifying energy, the likes of which I have never seen and have no knowledge about. As the distant buildings are enveloped by the explosive light, I feel warmth on my skin.

No ...

I take hold of my son and return us both to the swamp. "Run!"

But it's too late. The energy rips into our world, boiling the swamp. Anguish fills me, not because of my blistering skin. I have been trained to withstand pain. It's my son's agonized wail that stabs my soul. He's dying, painfully, curled up in the flash-dried muck beside me. Before my vision fades, I catch one last look at my son, his sleek and n.o.ble domed forehead, his brilliant green eyes, now flickering. I send him on his way with one last push of affection. Then he's gone. No longer part of me.

Why? I think. Why is this happening? And then, connected to the matriarch, I send one last request: avenge us.

The memory ends as my life fades. But it wasn't my life. It was a Dread bull and his son. The location was the Jornada del Muerto desert, better known as the White Sands Proving Ground. The explosion, which I recognize from recordings made of the event, is known as the Trinity explosion. It was the United States' first test of a nuclear weapon. In 1945. That memory is seventy years old but still feels fresh to the mind of the matriarch. And now it's fresh in mine.

A new surge of memories begins, but, unlike the last, they're overlapping, snapping into my mind. I'm not just witnessing the events, I'm living them through the minds of the Dread, who are connected to the matriarchs. Sometimes it's individual Dreads, sometimes entire colonies. Bombs explode. Nuclear fallout poisons both worlds. Species of Dread I haven't yet seen, living in the oceans and on island colonies, are decimated by more than 2,011 nuclear tests and scads of accidents. I see Three Mile Island, Chern.o.byl, f.u.kushima, and the SL-1 meltdown in Idaho. There are also a number of less famous radioactive accidents in Costa Rica, Zaragoza, Morocco, Mexico City, Thailand, and Mayapuri, India. The stories of these events are well known in my frequency, but the human race is naive to the vast and horrible effects these events have on the Dread world. I experience these events the way every Dread around the world does. I feel the network of minds connected through the matriarchs. They are separate and with free will but connected and unified, though some-mostly immature youths-still act outside the network, following in the old ways of haunting humanity.

The explosion of memories, coupled with the overwhelming emotions of hundreds of thousands of Dread cut down by human ingenuity and warfare, tears me apart.

It's no wonder the Dread would see us as a threat. We've been waging war on them since 1945. While test sites might be empty in our world, in the mirror world we're wiping out entire colonies.

Like I did.

The deaths I've caused, even in the past hour, weigh more heavily now. But they still killed my son and still have Maya, which means I would make the same choices. That Dread bull would have done the same for his son. But would the matriarchs do the same?

The matriarchs ... I only have a vague sense of what they are, and I think the word is really just a loose translation enabling me to make sense of an alien memory. I suspect the Dread mole whose tendrils now embrace my still-senseless body is one of them.

Three new memories that belong to me begin to surface. They hit me all at once, snapping back into my mind. And they change everything.

Darkness resolves slowly, giving way to dim red light, both from my surroundings and the ruby-colored flashlights attached to the sides of my head, allowing me to see without killing my night vision. I'm crouched inside an alcove near the bottom of a small Dread colony.

But it's not me. It's someone else. This is a recording. I'm watching it on a large flat screen from within Neuro. I'm overflowing with raw emotion, not only from what I'm seeing but also because it's been two weeks since the deaths of Simon, Hugh, and my parents. After two weeks of heartbreaking agony, funerals, and the commitment of my wife to a violent-offender psyche ward, all I was left with was a single question: Why? A thin trail of suspicion led me here, to Neuro's field-ops monitoring center.

The name of the man, whose voice I recognize, slams back into my memory-Colby ... Rob Colby. He is hunched over a small black device, pressing a b.u.t.ton. Colby is like me, born fearless and recruited to Dread Squad straight out of boot camp. He's just twenty years old and has no business inside a colony. I never met him, but I knew he'd been vetted by Winters and was being trained by Katzman. When he was ready for active duty, I would have finished his training, in both worlds. The device's black domed top begins to hum. Colby toggles his throat mic and whispers. "DS Home, this is DS Active, over."

"I hear you DS Active. You are on with DS Home and Bossman. Over." It's Katzman's voice on the other end.

"Copy," he says. "The TV dinner is cooking. Over."

"Copy that, DS Active. Let us know when you're out of the kitchen and clear, but be aware: if we do not hear from you in twenty minutes, we'll a.s.sume you're not coming to dinner and cook it without you. Understood? Over."

"Solid copy. Beginning exfil now. Out." Leaving the device behind, Colby makes his way through the colony, undetected, using a mix of traditional stealth-hiding his scent by smearing his body in Dread waste and ducking behind natural or Dread-made elements. And when that fails, he slips out of the mirror world, calmly waiting in solid earth while various dangers pa.s.s. Moving efficiently and without conflict, he exits the colony and then the mirror world, strolling away through an old cemetery. He even pauses for a moment, pretending to mourn by a gravestone. The kid is good. A natural. The kind of calm ability that can only come from someone born without fear.

"DS Home, this is DS Active. Over."

"We hear you DS Active. Over."

Colby stands and walks out of the cemetery, stopping by a black car. "I am out of the kitchen. Feel free to cook when you're hungry. Over."

Colby slides behind the steering wheel of the already-running car, the hiss of air-conditioning audible.

"Stand by, DS Active. Over."

"Copy that." Colby waits, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

"DS Active, this is DS Home. Bossman is requesting visual confirmation that dinner is cooked. Over."

Colby turns his attention to the empty cemetery, the camera mounted on his head revealing what he sees. There are fifty-odd gravestones spread out among tall pines and oaks. He shifts into the Dread world, taking the camera with him. In the dim purple light, a papery domed colony is surrounded by strange-looking trees, all of it covered by green veins. "Copy. Watching the oven now. Over."

"Stand by..."

It's just fifteen seconds before wisps of smoke seep through the top of the colony. Then the roof bursts into flame. Dread spill from the exits, stumbling, falling, grasping as their bodies are cooked and cracking, seeping bright fluids.

A microwave bomb, my present mind realizes, despite the weapon being unknown to my past self.

They fall into the swampy water, but there are no flames to extinguish. No amount of water can stop the microwaves blasting the area. In fact, the water around the colony has begun to boil. Inside sixty seconds, the colony has imploded. Not one of the writhing Dread has escaped alive. And then, the colony rises up again, shattering outward. A ma.s.sive creature resembling a giant mole rises from the colony. It spasms hard, its back arching, and then spills forward, into the boiling swamp, as still and motionless as the rest of the now-dead colony.

"DS Home, this is DS Active. I have visual confirmation. Dinner is cooked, goose and all. Over."

"Copy that, DS Active. Come on home. Over."

Colby shifts back to the real world to find the cemetery in flames. The blaze is violent, swirling high in the sky and already leaping to nearby trees. "DS Home, this is DS Active, cooking also burnt the crust. I repeat, the crust is burning."

"Crust is burning," Katzman says. "Understood. Bossman wants to know if you were ID'd."

I'm expecting a negative reply, but Colby says, "Affirmative. I let one of those snake-handed b.a.s.t.a.r.ds get a look at my face and gave it time to spread the word before putting three between its four eyes."

Why would he let the Dread ID him? my present self wonders, while the me in this memory seethes with anger. He's expecting something I don't yet remember.

Just then, Colby turns and looks into the rearview mirror. Instead of a young man with close-cropped hair and a killer's eyes, I see a more familiar reflection-my own. Colby pushes his hands into the perfectly molded mask of my face and starts peeling it away. "Think this will keep him on board?"

"The Dread will seek retribution." The voice is new. Lyons. Bossman. He speaks more openly, unaccustomed to the cloak-and-dagger speak used by Katzman and Colby. "My daughter and grandson are safe here. But the others ... Their loss will force a change of heart. I will mourn them, but perhaps it's for the best. After all, a wounded predator is far more dangerous."

As the memory starts to fade, I ask myself, When did this happen? When! I see the video's time stamp. This was the day before Simon died. Before Maya killed him. Before the Dread ... avenged what Colby, what Lyons, did that day, in my name. The blood of my son, my parents, and Uncle Hugh, along with Maya's sanity, is on his hands.

The memory comes clear again, just for a flash, which is long enough to see Colby turn to the left and see a steaming, cracked-open, and bleeding mammoth charge between frequencies for just a moment and crush the young soldier. The mammoth is just a blur really, but I recognize it, and that Colby died for his actions that day.

A fresh memory replaces the last.

I'm in an office. Lyons's. He's ranting about the attack on our family. Fuming about how the Dread have just declared war. How he will do everything in his power to destroy them. He doesn't know that I know the truth. He doesn't know I'm seconds away from using the handgun tucked behind my back. But he quickly figures it out when I raise the weapon toward his head. "The Dread are not to blame for what happened. You brought this on our family. You killed my son."

Lyons stops his tirade and looks at me. I can see he's about to play dumb.

"I saw the video. Colby wearing my face. You killed him, too, you know." My finger slides around the silenced weapon's trigger.

He slumps and sits, the ruse up. His feigned anger melts away, replaced by honest despair and tears. "They weren't supposed to be there."

"What are you talking about?"

"Maya and Simon. They were supposed to be here. I thought they were here! They would have been safe."

"But they weren't," I say, but it comes out closer to a growl. "Because of you." I'm not sure if he thought this information would quell my anger, because while he might not have meant to get Maya and Simon killed, my parents, along with Hugh and Allenby, whom he knew would not be at Neuro, since he'd insisted they all take vacations, were clearly his intended victims.

Instead of begging for mercy, he digs his grave a little deeper. "The Dread have been waging a war against mankind from the very beginning, frightening us, keeping us afraid of the dark, of the unknown. You know what they did to me. All those years. And it's not just me. They've held us back and influenced history in tragic, murderous ways. Despite all this, you were going to walk away. The fearless killer who lost his taste for blood."

The gun in my hand raises from his chest to his head. "I was trying to protect our family. There are other paths to peace than war."

"My daughter made you soft."

I nearly pull the trigger, but am not yet done trying to understand. "You and I both know that their world has been-"

"I don't care about their world." He leans forward, fists pressing into his desk, face red. "I don't care how much they've suffered."

"You should," I say, and squeeze the trigger.

A pinch in the back of my neck stops me. As I slump to the ground and lose consciousness, I see Katzman standing above me, looking sullen. "Sorry, Josef."

The memory fades, picking back up a day later.

"Stephen, I swear to G.o.d, if you don't let me go-"

Lyons leans in close. "I am no longer Stephen to you, and you are no longer my son-in-law."

"What are you talking about?" I ask.

He works the wedding ring off my finger, nearly breaking the digit as I resist.

I try to slip into the mirror world, preparing myself for a drop. But it never happens.

He looks down at me, a mix of sorrow and anger in his eyes. "You don't think I would overlook your abilities, do you?"

"What did you do?" I ask. "Am I-"

"The DNA is dormant." He stands up straighter, as much as his hunch allows him to. "You no longer have the ability to move between worlds."

"I won't need Dread DNA to-"

"You won't remember. You're too important to actually kill, but Josef Shiloh is dead." He steps away from the table. "I sincerely hope that whoever it is you become will someday see me as a partner once more. Perhaps even a friend."

"Stephen..." I speak his name as a warning. Whatever he's about to do will have consequences.

"I'm going to forget you, Josef ... and so are you. You've left me no choice." He walks away. "Good-bye, Josef." A drill spins loudly behind my head. A door opens and closes. I can sense the medical team around me but can't see anyone. A mask slides over my nose and mouth. Ten seconds later, the memory ends and Josef Shiloh is erased.

Realization takes the memory's place. I never chose to forget. The e-mail to Winters was fake. Lyons erased my memories. Erased my son. And Maya. My entire life ... because I opposed conflict with the Dread.

I wake up in the mirror world. I'm on the floor. Two Medusa-hands stand above me. They no longer look threatening or concern me. I look from one to the other and ask, "What do you need me to do?"

"Stand up," a voice whispers. I turn, looking for the speaker, but see no one. I'm still in the large chamber, surrounded by Dread. Maya is there, too, but now stands far to the side, still flanked by mammoths, but no longer controlled by a Medusa-hands. She meets my eyes and gives a very lucid nod. Is she urging me to listen?

I obey the voice and stand while two Medusas slide away from me. The thick Dread mole, or matriarch tendrils protruding from the ground, undulate slowly, very nonthreateningly. They're just ten feet away.