MirrorWorld

I do as instructed, making myself a little more appropriate, and step backward out of the elevator. She gives a wave, and the doors close.

Alone in the hallway, I turn toward the sound of voices. A door before the Documentum room is open. I pad my way over, bare feet silent on the floor. It’s a security center. Everyone from the lab, minus Cobb, is there, huddled together, backs to me. Monitors display images of the inside and outside of the building. But a large screen at the center of the display shows an angry mob. They’re watching the news?

“Hey,” I say.

The group turns around as though one entity with a unified mind.

“Where were you?” Winters asks. She sounds genuinely concerned.

“Sixth floor. Then fifth.” I turn to Lyons. “You were right about the laws of physics. They definitely work the same on the other side.”

“You fell two floors down?” Allenby asks.

“One at a time,” I say. “But yes.”

“Awesome.” Dearborn grins. “Our very own demigod.”

“Hardly,” I say, and point at the monitors cycling through images of the building’s interior. Stephanie appears on screen, talking to some people, a smile on her face. Probably joking about me. “You should have seen me on the screens.”

“We were distracted.” Katzman sounds tense. A little angry, which is nothing new, but you’d think he’d also be impressed. I did just fall through a solid floor. He motions to the angry mob on the big screen. Like the march in Manchester, I see protest signs, masks, and weapons. The people in whatever city this is plan to get violent.

“Where is this?” I ask, thinking it must be somewhere in New Hampshire. Concord or Nashua, maybe.

Lyons, red-faced, eyes like an angry bull’s, rounds on me. “This is right outside our doors! In the parking lot!” He leans toward me. “What didn’t you tell me?”





29.

I’m about to explain that I came across pugs in the colony to the south and that the Dread understand English. Probably all human languages if they’ve been around for as long as Lyons thinks. But when a security guard enters, pale with fear, freckled face dripping sweat, I don’t need to.

“They’re here!” the man shouts. He’s hysterical. A real mess. Right up until the moment I punch him in the face. He drops to the floor, out cold.

“Whoa!” Dearborn says, raising his hands and stepping away, like he might be next.

“Hey!” Katzman yells, shoving me out of the way as he assesses the damage.

“Josef,” Allenby says. “You promised!”

She’s right. I did promise her I wouldn’t knock anyone out. But the guard isn’t just a guard.

“You have a security problem,” I say to Lyons.

“No kidding,” Katzman says, glaring up at me. He turns to Lyons. “He’s out of control.”

“Stop,” Winters says, stepping between Katzman and me, but the emphasis is directed toward me. She knows that if an altercation is unavoidable, I’ll act first, and that I’ll win. She also knows that’s not going to help anyone. “Please, everyone stop and think. We all know he’s impulsive, to say the least, but he never does something without good reason … or at least what he thinks is a good reason.” Looking back and forth between Lyons and Katzman. “You’ve read my profile of him. You both know this. So why not have a little talk before resorting to violence, which we all know is going to end poorly for anyone who isn’t a fearless world-class assassin, who, may I remind you, can move through solid objects.”

In the silence that follows, I whisper to Winters. “Thanks for calling me Crazy.”

“It’s what you prefer right now.”

“So you wrote a profile on me?”

“Part of my job is to psych eval the people that—”

“Do you normally sleep with—”

She puts her hand on my chest. Speaks quietly. “I know you have no fear, and that leads you to say whatever is on your mind, but that’s not an excuse to be inconsiderate of others. What we had … We both needed it.”

“Sorry,” I say. She’s right. And though I have no memory of what there was between us, the tension that exists when we’re together says that some part of me remembers. The feel of her hand on my chest is …

Distracting.

I lift her hand away. “Later.”

Lyons and Katzman still haven’t made up their minds, so I decide to give them a visual aid. I kneel down next to the fallen guard.

Katzman is giving me a “don’t you dare touch him” stare, but he should know that such tactics have no effect. I turn the guard’s head away from me.

“Did you notice how the guard—what’s his name?”

“Magnan,” Katzman says. “Mike Magnan.”

“Did you notice how Mike was acting when he came in the room?”

“Squirrelly,” Dearborn says, and I think he already understands what the others have failed to grasp. When he takes two steps back, I’m sure of it.

Katzman motions to the video screen showing the angry mob, who is now encircling the building. “Everyone in this building should be afraid.”