MirrorWorld

I say nothing because it could be true. Have I been manipulated? I suppose there is no real way to be sure. But Lyons quickly reinforces that he screwed with my mind first.

“You really are the perfect puppet, Josef. Your fearless nature made you quick to accept orders. You’re not afraid to believe what you’re told. You’re quick to obey and slow to question. It’s what made you the perfect assassin and the best man to handle the Dread. That’s not the case anymore, as you can see.” He motions to the men around us.

“The drugs will wear off.”

“We have time.”

Time … I look at my watch. “We have thirteen minutes.” He says nothing so I fill in the blanks. “In thirteen minutes, the president is going to attack Russia’s nuclear arsenal. When that happens, Russia will launch. We’ll launch. And just to put a cherry on top, everyone else will launch.”

“Then it’s time we get started,” he says. “Don’t you think?”

“What’s your goal, here? You kill the Dread, destroy a major colony, and then what? The Dread will—”

“Do nothing,” he hisses. “I know what you think. That they’ll push the president into some world-ending military action. That they’ve got their fingers on the button. And maybe they do, but there is a reason they haven’t already hit that button. No one, not even the Dread, wants to cook the entire planet.”

“They won’t have any other choice.”

“It’s a bluff. They drew first blood, and now they’re—”

“We drew first blood!” I shout. “You did. You destroyed their colony, cooked them alive. They have families, just like us. Children. And our family paid the—”

“You naive little boy.” He looks down at me, hatred in his eyes. “They’ve been—”

“Evolving. Like us. Trying to understand. But mostly hiding from men like you. And me. We’re as monstrous to them as they are to us.”

He stares at me, one eyebrow cocked slightly higher than the other. “I am far more monstrous than you know.”

A flicker of red illuminates his skin from the inside. He leans down so our faces are inches apart. “Everything you think you know is wrong. The Dread will not destroy both worlds. This will be a conventional war, and which side of the mirror do you think will win that fight?”

“You’re wrong. I’ve seen it.”

“When I destroy this colony, the control it exerts over the others will be severed. All of the Dread and colonies connected to this one will be lobotomized. You’ve seen it for yourself. How can the Dread hurt us then?”

“Preemptively,” I say. “How long do you think it will take the Dread to push the world into nuclear war. Minutes? My bet is on seconds. You haven’t seen what they can do. Not like I have.”

Lyons shakes his head. “You’re grasping. Weak. You shame yourself. The time for action has come.”

“Is that why Katzman has a microwave bomb strapped to his back?”

He pauses to glare at Katzman, but the man doesn’t notice. He’s too busy looking at the silent Dread surrounding us. Lyons turns back to me, black smile returning. “If the big one doesn’t come out to say hello, we’re going to burn it out. We are not simply here to destroy, Josef. Today is our D-day. We are here to invade. And the best way to start an invasion is to kill the leadership. You know that. Then I’m going to wipe out the resistance, capture the weak, and turn the young against their own kind. They started a war with humanity, and now they’re going to truly understand what that means. I’ll destroy this place if it comes to that, but you and our enemy have underestimated my true intentions.”

The full ramifications of the D-day name come clear. This isn’t a simple assault, it’s a beachhead into the Dread world, the first step of an invasion. “What about Maya? She’ll be killed.”

He glances toward Maya, his face softening a touch. “She has been dead for a long time. She is now as lost as you. I can see it in her eyes, just as I see it in yours. Death will be a mercy.” He turns to his men. “Kill him.”

I raise my hands as Lyons takes a step back. The men hold their fire for a moment. They probably didn’t count on shooting a man with his hands up.

“Are you there?” I think, hoping the matriarch will hear my thoughts.

Whispering fills my head, much of it beyond my comprehension, but a single line is for me. “There is a natural cavern sharing this space.”

“Get Maya out of here, please,” I reply, and glance at my wife as though to say good-bye. “Thank you,” I think to the matriarch as Maya is whisked away by a bull. It retreats toward the archway on the far end. She’s safe. For now.

Me, on the other hand, not so much.

Lyons loses his patience. “Kill him!”