Jeremy Robinson - MirrorWorld

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 God, 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.

“Do you remember?”

I spin around, looking for the source of the whispered voice. My eyes widen with realization. The whispering is in my head. I can understand it now. I turn and face the tendrils. “Did you do this to me?”

“Your mind has been restored, but it is not you who is understanding our language; it is I using yours.”

“Can all of you communicate in English?”

“Yes.” The tendrils slow. “Do you remember?”

“Remember what?”

“Your life. All of it?”

I think for a moment. For the first time in a long time, my memory feels complete. I know that I’m Josef Shiloh, I remember my decisions, and the true sequence of events that led to the deaths in my family. I also remember my time as Crazy, and living in SafeHaven, where I learned how to be compassionate and patient with broken people, and not just Shotgun and Seymour. Everyone, I realized during my yearlong stint in the loony bin, is broken to some degree, including me. Most people contain it, or drown it, but other people, like Lyons, are masters at hiding it. In the end, Simon’s grandfather is really a man obsessed with war, whose very human fear of the unknown and childhood trauma at the hands of independently acting Dread pushed him to make a horrible mistake. It left him broken and has driven him to seek his own kind of retribution, blaming the Dread for his pain, both externally inflicted and self-inflicted. I’m not convinced the Dread aren’t a threat, but where there are no doubt countless shades of gray, Lyons only sees black and white.

I don’t know if the Dread mole buried beneath my feet can see me through those tentacles, but I nod anyway. “I remember.” My thoughts drift to the Dread bull memory at the Trinity nuclear test. “I remember everything.”

One of the tendrils stretches out toward me in a nonthreatening way. An outer layer of skin peels back, unleashing a mass of smaller tentacles, similar to a Medusa-hands but tipped in glowing purple rather than yellow. The snaking things come right up to my face and stop. I don’t flinch away, despite knowing what they’re capable of. “What do you want me to do?”

“Remember… more.”

“What else is there to remember?”

“History.”

I’m not positive, but I think it means their history. Dread history.

“Why didn’t you do this before?” I ask.

“You were still our enemy.”

“And now?”

“You remember.”

“I remember that you killed my son.” A twinge of anger surfaces, but not enough to propel me toward violence.

“We have known you for a long time, Josef Shiloh. We have watched the man who did not fear. Such a curious person. You understand war. How they’re started. And how they’re prevented. You have been a party to both in the past.”

The matriarch is right. My actions have both started wars and ended them. The… jobs I carried out affected thousands upon thousands of lives, both as a CIA killer and while working with Neuro.

“You are responsible for the deaths of many,” the Dread whispers. “But you now have the opportunity to save even more.”

Distant gunshots echo into the chamber from somewhere far away in the colony. My head snaps toward the chamber entrance, looking for danger and seeing none. The tendrils remain focused on me.