MirrorWorld

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, Chernobyl, Fukushima, 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.

54

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.”