MirrorWorld

“I’ve seen how well that works.”

Winters speaks up for the first time since I embarrassed her. “And drugs that temporarily block the amygdala’s function.”

“Drugs?” The question comes from Cobb.

Winters rolls her neck, cracking the tension from it. She’s got an edge, and is undeniably beautiful, almost sculpted. I can see what I liked about her, physically at least. We haven’t exactly hit if off yet, but that’s my fault. “BDO. It’s a mix of benzodiazepine, dextroamphetamine, and OxyContin.”

“Geez.” Cobb laughs a little “Sounds addictive as hell.”

“It is,” Winters concedes. “But the Oxy inhibits the amygdala.”

“And the rest?” I ask.

“Makes you feel like Superman,” Katzman says. “The cravings for more after a single hit can take months to go away, so it’s a last resort.”

Katzman has clearly tried the stuff. The thirsty look in his eyes as he speaks reveals the truth: the craving for more never goes away. Good thing I don’t need it. Of course, I’m now part monster from a hidden dimension. A drug addiction might be preferable. I doubt the genetic changes made to my body can be undone.

Speaking of which. “If you can’t really see or interact with the Dread, how did you change me?”

“The process of genetically altering a human being is actually quite simple. Dread cells are broken down though a process called sonication. We add a detergent to remove the membrane lipids, remove the proteins by adding a protase, then the RNA. We purify the remaining DNA, isolate the genes with traits we want to pass on and—”

I wave my hand around in circles. “Fast-forwarding…”

“Transgenesis, the process of taking genes from one organism and injecting them into another, was accomplished using a gene gun.”

“That sounds horrible,” Cobb says.

Lyons waves him off. “The DNA is combined with a genetically altered retrovirus that causes no outward symptoms but modifies the host’s DNA with the new code.”

“But that’s not what Crazy used on himself,” Cobb says. “That was an ordinary syringe. And how could DNA injected days ago already be changing his body? That would require—”

“Time.” Lyons turns his attention from Cobb back to me. “The changes made to your DNA were made four years ago. You stuck yourself with that needle, too, though it was a far more informed decision. You volunteered.”

Of course I did. A lack of fear is sometimes the worst enemy of sound decision making. Even now, the revelation that I’ve been part Dread for four years hardly fazes me. I don’t appreciate the not knowing. The lies. My feelings of right and wrong begin to fuel a smattering of righteous indignation, but the ramifications of being not fully human for years don’t rattle me. The biggest reaction I can manage is a simple question. “How did I not know?”

“When we took care of your memory,” Lyons says, “we also inhibited your new genes. The drug you injected, the one we let you believe was important and irreplaceable, simply unlocked those latent abilities. It’s why you felt them right away.”

All of this makes a strange kind of sense. I get what he’s telling me. But it doesn’t answer the original question. “What I meant was, if you can’t really see or interact with the Dread out there” — I motion toward the Documentum room — “all you had was mathematical theories, and I hadn’t yet been … altered, where did you get your original DNA sample?”

“That … came from you, too.” Lyons stands above me. Points at my chest. “Do you remember how you got that scar?”

I glance down. There’s a large round scar from a puncture wound in the meat between my shoulder and heart.

“One of them slipped partially into our world and put a talon in your chest. It was aiming for your heart. But unlike you, it had no experience physically killing a human being, let alone a fearless special-ops-trained CIA assassin. You rolled, took the blow to your chest, and then removed the digit with a knife. The whole encounter lasted just seconds and left us with a Dread finger. Once in our dimension, separated from the body, the finger remained. You packed it in ice, brought it to me, and voilà, Dread DNA. That moment was like a quantum shift for Neuro. Physical proof at last. It changed everything.”

“You said the Dread avoided entering our frequency physically,” Cobb points out.

“I said it was rare,” Lyons says. “Not impossible. In this case it was likely the lack of a fear response that instigated a reaction.”

Something in me wants to argue this history lesson. It feels too simple. Too clean. But I have no memory, so how can I argue? “The severed finger didn’t have a negative effect on the people who saw it?”