MirrorWorld

“Mike was a security guard here. Trained to deal with tough situations, yes? With the Dread?”


I take Katzman’s lack of reply as confirmation.

“But he was acting like a panicked mouse. I don’t know the man, so I’m just guessing, but that’s a bit out of character for Mr. Magnan.”

“It is,” Katzman says. “You think the Dread got to him.”

“I know they did.” I stand up and turn to Winters. “Help Katz stand Mike up.”

She listens, and the pair hoists the unconscious man up.

I walk behind them. “Try to keep him still or I might not be the only person with a part of his brain missing.”

“Wait, wh—”

Ignoring Katzman, I slip into the world between, focusing past the pain. The small Dread, like some kind of headless bat with hooked talons on the ends of its leathery, red-veined wings, hovers in the air, little tentacles lowered into Mike’s head. Whether the tendrils are making physical contact inside his head, I can’t tell, but it looks that way. I snap out with my hand, grab hold of the Dread, and yank. It comes free in my hand, flailing without a sound. The thing has no mouth.

Clutching the Dread in both hands, I slip back out of the world in between, focusing on the little creature, feeling its frequency resisting my influence, and then bending to it. I’m winded, tense with pain, and once again naked except for the plastic pendant. I really need to start trying to bring my clothes along for the ride.

But this time, no one is interested in my statue-of-David impersonation. They can see I’m holding something, and I can feel it, still struggling to escape.

“Fair warning,” I say. “There is a small Dread in my hands. I think only one of you should take a look, just in case. Would be a shame if all of you went mental at the same time.”

“Don’t look at me,” Dearborn says, already peeking through his fingers.

“I’ll do it,” Winters says, while she and Katzman lay Mike on the floor.

“Not a chance,” Katzman says. “It’s my job to—”

“You’ve been exposed too many times already,” Winters argues. “I’m your shrink, remember? I know how hard the strain is, and I know more coping mechanisms than—”

Fuck it.

I open my hands.

They all see it.

There is a fraction of a second when everyone leans back, collectively draining half the room’s oxygen, when I think I’ve made a mistake. But they recover quickly, one by one, leaning in to look at the small Dread, whose natural ability to instill fear has been negated by being fully present in this frequency. But it’s also not pushing fear at the moment. There’s no whispering. Maybe that won’t work here, either?

“Why isn’t it going back?” Allenby asks.

“Perhaps the Dread need to be tethered to the mirror dimension.” Lyons looks excited, on the verge of discovery. “Even when they physically attack, they never fully emerge from their world.”

“That would explain why physical confrontations in myth never end with the monster simply disappearing,” Dearborn says. “If they fully enter our world, maybe they’re stuck here? That would also explain why they don’t launch a full-scale physical assault.”

“But I can move between worlds,” I point out. “Why not them?”

“You are no longer just human,” Lyons says. “Though you are no less human than you were before. You are more than human, in tune with multiple frequencies.”

“So it can’t leave?” Katzman asks.

I pinch both of its wings, about to snap the life out of it.

“No!” Lyons says. “Don’t! I need to study it.” He reaches out his shaking hands, and I drop the little creature onto the soft flesh of his palms. It tries to flap free, but he folds his meaty digits over the thing, holding it in place.

“Josef,” Allenby whispers to me. She points at me and then the floor, waggling her finger up and down, without actually looking directly at me. Clothes, right. I quickly cover myself with Stephanie’s lab coat while Lyons heads to the door. Slightly more decent, I take hold of his arm and ask, “What should we do about them?”

“Huh?” He’s lost in thought, more confused by his return to the here and now than I am when I move between worlds. Granted, my quick adjustment to the strangeness that is my life is thanks to a malformed amygdala, but you’d think he wouldn’t have forgotten the angry mob ready to reenact the storming of Dr. Frankenstein’s castle. “Oh,” he says, looking at the large monitor. “Right.”

“Reasoning with them will be impossible,” Winters says. “If they were driven here by the Dread, they’re already beyond logical thought. Whatever fears they might have had about this place already—the strange building with armed guards and an electrified fence—have been magnified to an irrational level.”

“Have we heard from the guards at the front gate?” I ask.