MirrorWorld

“Can you delay the assault?” I ask, already suspecting the answer. He barely gets a chance to start saying no when I wave off the question and sprint across the traffic circle.

As I leave the macadam behind and enter the lush Couturie Forest, he shouts to me. “They’re going to shoot anything that moves! Don’t be in there when they arrive!”

I don’t doubt his warning. Amped up on BDO he very nearly shot me. Probably would have if he hadn’t recognized me. The potent mix of chemicals might help a human being overcome the Dread fear, but when there’s nothing to be afraid of, the drug sends the user into a manic state. Facing the Dread without it allows me to think more clearly, which is essential, but it also leaves me more susceptible to their effect, not that the drug did wonders for Katzman’s performance.

My pace is slowed by the thick vegetation growing everywhere, but it’s faster than slogging through the mirror-world swamp. I speed up when I come across a footpath headed in the right direction, but I only get thirty feet before I’m struck by an invisible freight train. I’m lifted off the ground and thrown into a marsh.

I’ve pulled my body and armor fully out of the mirror world. They shouldn’t be able to strike me, unless … They’re pushing themselves into this world, just for a moment, just long enough to strike.

I stand, dripping wet, and ready my weapon. Then I slip between worlds, ready to put another Dread out of its misery.

Nearly waist-deep in water, I spin, searching for my target and finding absolutely nothing. I’m just a hundred feet from the curved wall of the colony. Like all the others, a series of arched entrances lines the outside wall, one every fifty feet, raised up just above the waterline by an earthen ramp. Like the city of New Orleans, the Dread colony is barely keeping the water out.

After ten seconds of searching for whatever struck me, I lower my weapon. I’m alone, and the entrances to the colony are unguarded.

A sudden fear clutches my insides.

I spin again, ready to pull the trigger, but am still unable to find a target. With my back to the colony, I search the black, hanging tree line. I see no motion, just bunches of dangling, wet foliage.

A ripple of water rolls past. I spin and fire three shots—into the water.

I’m being toyed with, my fear increasing with each close encounter.

But encounter with what?

I get my answer as the water, twenty feet away, bows up and slides away from a rising form. Four yellow eyes, all atop a flat head, break the surface. Four feet closer, a snout rises, blowing a hiss of air through two nostrils.

I take a step back. If you’d asked me, at any point in my life up until yesterday, whether I was afraid of crocodiles, the answer would have been no. Today the answer is yes; I am most definitely afraid of crocodiles. I don’t think that what I’m seeing is an actual croc, but if it’s anything like the man-eating reptiles, the distance between its snout and eyes mean it’s absolutely massive. A good thirty feet long.

The eyes glide toward me, unblinking, moving through the water so smoothly that they don’t create a ripple.

A metallic-purple light slips through the water to my right. It’s in my periphery, but I don’t look at it. I can’t take my eyes off the monster coming my way … until it stops. The submerged Dread freezes, going perfectly still.

I glance at the purple thing moving beneath the water, gliding casually between the Dread and me. I can’t see much of it, but it looks like a long fish of some kind, its shiny scales reflecting the sky’s purple light.

The four large yellow eyes flicker and turn black as the thing slides beneath the water.

I’m paralyzed, watching the fish swim by, oblivious to the danger. When it’s ten feet in front of me, a shadow moves over the fish and snaps down. Water explodes into the air. The Dread rises from the water, thrashing the fish back and forth. Its eyes flicker brightly, and then the veins covering its wide body come to life like iridescent bulbs, blinking before going solid.