Jeremy Robinson - MirrorWorld

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 button. 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 assume 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 pass. 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 massive 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 bastards 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.”