MirrorWorld

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.”

“Copy that.” Colby waits, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

“DS Active, this is DS Home. Bossman is requesting visual confirmation that dinner is cooked. Over.”

Colby turns his attention to the empty cemetery, the camera mounted on his head revealing what he sees. There are fifty-odd gravestones spread out among tall pines and oaks. He shifts into the Dread world, taking the camera with him. In the dim purple light, a papery domed colony is surrounded by strange-looking trees, all of it covered by green veins. “Copy. Watching the oven now. Over.”

“Stand by…”

It’s just fifteen seconds before wisps of smoke seep through the top of the colony. Then the roof bursts into flame. Dread spill from the exits, stumbling, falling, grasping as their bodies are cooked and cracking, seeping bright fluids.

A microwave bomb, my present mind realizes, despite the weapon being unknown to my past self.

They fall into the swampy water, but there are no flames to extinguish. No amount of water can stop the microwaves blasting the area. In fact, the water around the colony has begun to boil. Inside sixty seconds, the colony has imploded. Not one of the writhing Dread has escaped alive. And then, the colony rises up again, shattering outward. A massive creature resembling a giant mole rises from the colony. It spasms hard, its back arching, and then spills forward, into the boiling swamp, as still and motionless as the rest of the now-dead colony.

“DS Home, this is DS Active. I have visual confirmation. Dinner is cooked, goose and all. Over.”

“Copy that, DS Active. Come on home. Over.”

Colby shifts back to the real world to find the cemetery in flames. The blaze is violent, swirling high in the sky and already leaping to nearby trees. “DS Home, this is DS Active, cooking also burnt the crust. I repeat, the crust is burning.”

“Crust is burning,” Katzman says. “Understood. Bossman wants to know if you were ID’d.”