Jeremy Robinson - MirrorWorld

Tendrils snake out of the water, glowing yellow, eager to influence my thoughts. I don’t give it the chance. A burst of fear, sent into the thing’s core, makes it shake. The four eyes widen, just a touch, the rectangular pupils narrowing.

Armed only with my bare hands, I flicker out of the mirror dimension, punch downward into empty space, and then reappear atop the Dread. My fist has occupied the space at the center of the Medusa-hands’s head, shifting matter, destroying stationary matter. I splay my fingers out, further shredding the Dread’s brain. The monster spasms and falls still.

Then I’m back in the real world, no trace of gore coming with me. That is, until I turn around. Bloodred gore, glowing and inhuman, covers the street. The mothman lies beside the SUV, hacked to pieces. Cobb stands there, breathing hard, Faithful in hand.

“Feel better?” I ask him.

“Much,” he says.

I push the mothman parts back into the mirror dimension. I don’t think seeing a dead bogeyman lying in the streets of New Orleans would do anyone any good. When I’m done, I turn my attention to Blair. He’s definitely dead. I place my hand on his chest, offer up a prayer for his soul, and hide his body beneath the waters of the Dread world swamp.

“We can come back for him if we survive this,” I tell Cobb, upon seeing his surprised look.

I take one last peek into the mirror world, watching the colony and the air around us. There are no reinforcements en route. The two Dread must have stumbled across us, perhaps having recognized the significance of a vehicle made of oscillium. I heard no whispering communications, so they must have acted without instruction and without calling for help.

With the bodies taken care of, I have Cobb drive back toward the art museum and pull over. Checking to make sure we’re alone in both dimensions, I head for the back of the SUV, gear up, and then approach Cobb, who is sitting behind the wheel. He rolls down the oscillium-tinted window. “Don’t get out of the car. Don’t do anything to draw attention to yourself. Better yet, pretend you’re asleep. You’re not going to feel the Dread unless they make physical contact with the car, so don’t assume they’re not around just because you can’t feel them.”

He nods. “I’ll be ready when you need me.”

“Cobb… thanks. For everything. You’ve done more than anyone could have asked.”

“Protecting life is my business,” he says, and I realize that in many ways, Cobb is my antithesis, not just physically but professionally. Where I once took life for a living, he saves lives. And I’ve learned a lot from him, about facing fears, about honor and trust. He’s a better man than me. Unfortunately, I’m not yet done taking lives, and that probably means that Cobb isn’t going to get a break from saving them.

“Besides,” he says, “helping you has been the most important thing I’ve ever done. No matter who you used to be, I know who you are now, and am glad you took me captive.”

I smile. “I did give you beer.”

He nods. “You were a conscientious captor.”

I pat the door twice and step away. “Stay safe.”

The window begins rising up. “I’ll be here when you need me.”

I give a wave and step off the road. The slap of my boots on the sidewalk picks up speed as I jog, then fall silent as I move to the grass, hoping no one spots the armored man with two handguns, an assault rifle, two trench knives, and a machete, about to wage a one-man war.

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.”