MirrorWorld

This isn’t my first trip to New Orleans. In a cruel irony, the city is where Maya and I spent our honeymoon. Not the usual place for a pair of newlyweds, but we both like the food, music, and atmosphere. We spent two weeks exploring the bayou, the city, and the culture. When the memory returned, it felt like recapturing some of the happiest days of my life … a life I want returned.

My childhood is almost a complete picture, much of it fading back to the recesses of my mind. My years as a young man are spotty, but I remember my training and a good number of special ops missions, and CIA … assignments. More recent memories are fewer, but several early years of my life with Maya and Simon are nearly complete. Each new memory—a birthday, anniversary, quiet night at home—stabs a fresh pang of sadness into my gut. But the knowledge that my sweet boy was brutally slain by his own mother’s forced hand transmogrifies grief into rage.

And I welcome it.

I’m going to need it. The memory of what the Dread can do, the kind of fear they can push into a human mind, is still fresh. But anger, I’ve learned, is one of the best ways to overcome fear. And right now, I’ve got anger to spare.

The most recent years of my life, a year ago, are still full of holes, some small, others gaping. I decide not to worry about them. My path is already set and they’ll come in time, if I survive.

Allenby pulls my eyes away from the TV, showing what appears to be a vicious gang fight, but is actually the British Parliament. I point to the small screen mounted to the seat in front of me. “Have you seen this?”

She glances at the screen but seems almost uninterested. Her downturned lips hint at grim news. “What is it?”

“I’ve just got word,” she says, motioning for me to move over. I do, and she slumps into the seat beside me, wincing from the effort of sitting down. “The president has given Russia an ultimatum.”

“Let me guess,” I say. “Putin needs to pull his troops back from the borders of former USSR states.”

She shakes her head. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that. Russia invaded Ukraine, Georgia, and a handful of ‘stans’ this morning. They’ve been waiting for the chance, so it didn’t take much prodding. The only silver lining is that those nations were smart enough, or maybe too afraid, to fight back. The real problem is that, as of twenty minutes ago, Russia’s nuclear arsenal went hot.”

She doesn’t need to finish the thought. If Russia was prepping for launch, so was every other nuclear nation in the West. Things are escalating. “The Dread know Lyons is coming,” I guess.

Allenby says nothing, which I take as agreement.

“How long did the president give them?” I ask.

She looks at me, fear in her eyes despite the absence of Dread on this plane. “Three hours.”

“How long until we land?”

“One hour.”

“Shit.”

“Indeed.”

“And if they don’t back down?” I ask. “What was the threat?”

“Open-ended,” she says, meaning that all cards were on the table. In two hours, things are going to get out of hand.

I set a timer on my watch. Two hours and fifty minutes, adjusting for the time it took for the news to reach me. Then I say, “I’m going to sleep,” knowing I’ll need all the energy I can get when we land.

She chuckles, pats my knees, and grunts as she stands. Despite the news she’s just delivered, I’m out in five minutes.

Cobb wakes me as we begin our approach. I look out the windows, shifting my vision into the mirror world. The world above is purple, the land below hues of darkness, pocked by several small colonies, almost the size of houses, but nothing significant. In the real world, it’s all swamp. Our approach to the airport brings us in east of the city, and flying around it for a look will take time we don’t have. We’ll recon from the ground, I decide.

According to Allenby and corroborated by my returning memory, Lyons had identified New Orleans as the location for what could be the largest Dread colony in North America. Allenby believes he’s out to destroy it with the hopes that the loss of a large colony will essentially switch off the smaller colonies and hordes of Dread in the same way that the destruction of our local colony did to the Dread in the area. But it’s not really the colony that needs to be destroyed, it’s the Dread mole hiding inside. They’re the task-masters. If he’s right, and this can be done, it could work, instantly freeing the United States from their influence. But then what? Could we act fast enough to free other nations, focusing on the ones with nuclear arsenals? Or would the attack have the same effect on the Dread as the nuclear assaults on Nagasaki and Hiroshima had on World War II imperial Japan? That’s what he’s hoping for, I think, and wonder if I shouldn’t resume my roll in his plan—after Maya is secured.