MirrorWorld

Allenby takes my arm. “Are you okay to do this?”


I chamber a round, slip my arm out of her hand, and step into the hallway. It takes just a moment for me to confirm the targets are not friendly, and then I sweep the muzzle back and forth, finger held down hard over the trigger. It’s some of the poorest, old-world-style gangster shooting I’ve ever done, but the sheer number of rounds makes it effective. All three soldiers drop.

I take one last look into the armory, at the woman who might have loved me, and then turn to Allenby. No words need to be said. We’re going to get Maya back and rain down hell on anyone stupid enough to get in our way. She nods and we head out together.





46.

After meeting Cobb, Blair, and Stephanie, we race to the airport. While Allenby coordinates with Winters’s CIA contact, Cobb tends to her shoulder. Stephanie, who’s already done everything she can to help, parts ways with us at the airport, taking the car and heading west to stay with family in Vermont, one of the few places on earth to still be largely free of violence.

After passing through a security check, we’re escorted onto the tarmac by two silent men in suits and head for an open hangar. Blair stops, mouth open, when we reach the doors. “Is that a—”

“Concorde,” Allenby says.

The plane’s sharp, downward sloping nose makes it easy to identify. The Concorde is the fastest passenger plane to have every crisscrossed the Atlantic. It was decommissioned after a few well-publicized crashes and more than a few complaints about the sonic boom generated when the plane breaks the sound barrier, tearing through the sky at Mach 2, more than twice the speed of the fastest troop transport.

Ten minutes later, we’re in the air, cruising at 1500 miles per hour and escorted through the FAA-emptied skies by three F-18s. Our man at the CIA is getting things done, and quietly. Lyons will have no idea we’re coming.

I spend part of the three-hour flight catching up on global news, which is dramatically grim. The way global events are being presented leaves little doubt that a nuclear holocaust is imminent; the government is days, if not hours, from being overthrown; and better make friends with your gun-carrying neighbors because militia frontier life is the only hope for survival in the soon-to-be nuclear wasteland. For once, all the drama is justified. Cities are imploding, the violence chaotic and without reason. Militaries are still largely under control, but there are troop movements on the borders of too many countries to count. The Dread need to be stopped through whatever means necessary, meaning there is a chance that Lyons’s aggressive option is justified. It is, after all, a proven tactic. If Maya is safe and her father really has a way to remove the Dread threat from our world, then I hope he succeeds. And when he’s done, he’ll answer for Winters.

Violence has escalated out of control in major cities around the world, and tensions between nations are reaching the point where a few navies and air forces have skirmished, leaving nearly two hundred dead and a Japanese maritime self-defense force destroyer limping back to port, courtesy of the Chinese. If it weren’t for the trouble brewing in the major cities of most nations, I think the world would have already rushed headlong into war. The threat of civil war seems to be the only thing tempering militaries, just in case they’re needed at home. Alliances are breaking down as paranoia runs rampant. An every-man-for-himself mentality has taken hold of governments.

It’s a brilliant strategy. No one outside Neuro would even think to consider the real cause of all this chaos. People are afraid and, like good mammals, are focused solely on the clear and present dangers, rather than the ones lurking just beyond perception. All the Dread need to do is pull their influence from one area and apply it to another. Send the rioters home, and the world goes to war. Turn government attention inward, and the riots become civil war. Maybe they’ll do all of the above?

Allenby thinks that the only way out of this for the human race is for the Dread to back off. I’m not totally convinced, and the memories of what they took from me and how they did it fuel a deeply personal desire for vengeance.

When I’m not watching the news, I’m remembering.