MirrorWorld

The old man twists his lips back and forth, which I now know means he’s thinking. “I believe we’ve answered enough questions for now.” He stands over me, breathing.

“You sound like Darth Vader,” I point out.

He grins. “Most overweight men do.” The operating table groans when Lyons leans over and uses it to support his weary-limbed girth. “Now then, tell me what you saw.”

While I haven’t been told everything, Lyons has been forthcoming. I decide to keep the exchange of information going. “I can see them in several different ways. First, in our world, or dimension, or frequency. Whatever you want to call it. Then there is the world between. It looks similar to the real world, but is intercut by glowing green veins, which also cover the Dread. I think it’s blood, like an external vascular system. The sky is purple. There are also black trees, some intermingling with the trees from our world. Basically, all the really solid, immovable stuff from both sides is there.”

“It all matches his previous description,” Katzman says.

“Yes, yes,” Lyons says, nodding quickly, moving his hand around in circles, urging me to continue on. “Stationary objects of concrete reality tend to stretch between frequencies further than living, moving matter, overlapping with the next fully realized frequency. We know all this already.”

I pick up the ice packs on my stomach, flipping them over one by one. They’re getting warm.

Lyons loses his patience. Snaps his fingers at me. “The mirror dimension. That’s where you went, isn’t it?”

“I killed it there, yes.”

Lyons steps back a bit, finds a chair, and sits. He doesn’t seem surprised, and I think I know why. Despite his claim that all the specimens were trapped while entering Neuro, some of them came from me. I’ve killed them before. “Good,” he says. “This is good. Give me details.”

“I’ll give you the whole story,” I say, and I break the details down for my entranced audience, telling them about the trail of green blood, the veined trees and earth, and my crash with and travel through the pine tree, and the muddy landing in the Dread’s world, which I describe in detail. I tell them how I killed the bull but leave out the pugs and colony. We’ll get to that soon enough. I finish with an explanation of how my pendant made the leap between worlds with me, confirming that all matter can change frequencies; oscillium just does it more easily.

“Show me,” Lyons says.

“Show you what?”

“Look into the world between.”

“Isn’t this old news?” I ask.

“You were very private about this before,” Lyons says. “Didn’t want Maya to know. Or Simon.”

With a flex of my new eye muscles, I feel the shift in my vision into the world between. The pain caused by this subtle shift—though slightly less intense than my previous experiences—forces my eyes shut, but I grit my teeth and push past it, opening my eyes again. The room’s structure is the same, but the people are gone, as are the less solid elements of the room—chairs, supplies, papers. I focus on my vision, shifting back to my home frequency without instigating a physical change, seeing the real world with Dread eyes. The room appears again. Everyone in the room, minus Katzman and Lyons, has taken a step back.

“What?” I ask.

“Your eyes,” Winters says.

Katzman is the least shocked, and Lyons just looks interested. He produces a small flashlight and shines it back and forth between my eyes. “Have you noticed any other changes? Perhaps less overt. Increased strength, or stamina, or—”

I shake my head. “I didn’t even know my eyes could look different.” There’s a mirror above a sink at the back of the room. I slide off the table, letting the now warm ice packs fall away, and head for the mirror. I can see something is wrong with my eyes, even from a distance. Up close, the truth is revealed. My once-circular pupils have split into two vertical rectangles, connected by a small dash. Like the bull. But they’re not glowing from within. My blood, it seems, is still human.

Not all of me, though. I really am part Dread.

But how much?

I still feel human. Like myself. My experience of the string-theory frequencies I call home hasn’t changed at all.

Except that I can choose to change that experience. I can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel what a Dread can, but can I really do those things like a Dread? And if so, are there other things I can do?

Only one way to find out. I decide to make the others my guinea pigs. I turn, face the group, and try to intimidate them. At first, nothing happens. Everyone just stares.

“You’re kind of freaking me out, man,” Cobb says.

“What are you doing?” Winters asks.

Katzman, hand on his sidearm, is nervous but tries to relieve it with humor. “Looks like he’s trying to shit his pants.”