MirrorWorld

It stings like ammonia and is foul like death, but is new. And heinous. I breathe through my mouth but can taste it, too. Fresh agony swills through my core as my other senses are … What? Changed? Expanded? Twisted? Whatever is happening, Allenby was right. It hurts like the mother of all bitches.

Despite the foulness of the scent and the pain of detecting it, I know it’s not harmful. It’s always been there, in the air, in my lungs. I just couldn’t detect it before. This whole new world was just beyond reach. And if Allenby is to be believed, I came to understand that on my own once, without Lyons’s help. These things are real and apparently observable to those not afraid to look. The problem is, that’s pretty much just me.

I glance back at the building. Allenby is there. The staggered pyramid behind her is like an obsidian megalith, a sheet of impenetrable black, except for two squares of light marking my escape route and the failed attempt to stop me. There are men inside, trying to position new squares of tinted glass.

Attuned to the world just beyond our own but still physically present in the real world, I gun the throttle and follow the long drive out to the security gate, past the fence. The guards must be expecting me, because they just wave me past the newly repaired gate. Beyond the fence, I speed into the woods. Happily, the scent of crisp pine needles, which carpet the forest floor, still exists and helps drown out the foul tang. The pain eases, too, diminishing to a dull headache. It’s the shifting of senses that hurts. Maintaining the shift is easier.

The forest, cast in shades of gray shadow and purple light, is strangely beautiful. There are pine trees, but they’re intermingled with other, strange black trunks rising up to empty branches. Some of the trees occupy the same space, twisting in and out of each other. Some stand solitary. Green veins, like those on the Dread bull’s hide, but not nearly as bright, cover the ground, connecting everything. Am I just seeing both frequencies at once, or is this a separate place? I can’t tell, but I’m pretty sure I’m still physically located squarely in my home frequency, not in Lyons’s mirror world.

I follow the trail of blood for twenty minutes, crushing a path through dense forest. While the many streams, saplings, and fields of ferns don’t stand a chance against the ATV, I have to navigate around fallen trees, two ravines, random granite boulders, and a hundred-foot cliff, which, if the blood trail can be believed, the bull scaled.

The beast fled in a straight line, due south. According to Lyons, it was headed toward a colony. While he didn’t explain what that is, I get the implication. If I don’t catch the bull before it reaches the colony, I’m going to be facing more than just one of these things.

But what can they do?

Their weapon of choice seems to be fear, to which I am immune. It appeared to be capable of significant physical harm, but what good is all that nasty potential if it can’t touch me? Maybe it’s not a matter of can’t, but won’t. If that’s the case, the oscillium weapons provided by Neuro give me an advantage, provided the bull doesn’t come across some hunters and frighten them into shooting me.

Or a mob, I think, remembering the people in Manchester. Could all of that fear, and the resulting anger, really have been fueled by these things?

My rumination is cut short by a cloak of black rising into my field of view.

The bull! It swipes out with one of its thick arms.

I swerve left, but the shape moves with me, blocking my view.

Then it leaps aside, revealing a thick pine tree, five feet ahead. I hit the brakes, but I’m moving at forty miles per hour. There’s no avoiding the impact. The front of the ATV slams into the pine’s armorlike bark. For a fleeting moment, I think that I should have worn the helmet, but then I’m lifted up and propelled forward, straight into the tree.





24.

There shouldn’t have been time to think about the pain I would feel upon kissing the tree, but I do. It’s not long, just a second, but when the words, this is going to hurt, flit through my thoughts, I realize I’ve somehow passed the point of impact unscathed.

And then the pain comes late. My body arches, going rigid as though in the grip of fifty thousand volts. The pain is so overwhelming that I think I should be dead, or at least unconscious, but there is no escaping it. So I do my best to reach beyond it.