MirrorWorld

“Copy that.” Colby waits, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

“DS Active, this is DS Home. Bossman is requesting visual confirmation that dinner is cooked. Over.”

Colby turns his attention to the empty cemetery, the camera mounted on his head revealing what he sees. There are fifty-odd gravestones spread out among tall pines and oaks. He shifts into the Dread world, taking the camera with him. In the dim purple light, a papery domed colony is surrounded by strange-looking trees, all of it covered by green veins. “Copy. Watching the oven now. Over.”

“Stand by…”

It’s just fifteen seconds before wisps of smoke seep through the top of the colony. Then the roof bursts into flame. Dread spill from the exits, stumbling, falling, grasping as their bodies are cooked and cracking, seeping bright fluids.

A microwave bomb, my present mind realizes, despite the weapon being unknown to my past self.

They fall into the swampy water, but there are no flames to extinguish. No amount of water can stop the microwaves blasting the area. In fact, the water around the colony has begun to boil. Inside sixty seconds, the colony has imploded. Not one of the writhing Dread has escaped alive. And then, the colony rises up again, shattering outward. A massive creature resembling a giant mole rises from the colony. It spasms hard, its back arching, and then spills forward, into the boiling swamp, as still and motionless as the rest of the now-dead colony.

“DS Home, this is DS Active. I have visual confirmation. Dinner is cooked, goose and all. Over.”

“Copy that, DS Active. Come on home. Over.”

Colby shifts back to the real world to find the cemetery in flames. The blaze is violent, swirling high in the sky and already leaping to nearby trees. “DS Home, this is DS Active, cooking also burnt the crust. I repeat, the crust is burning.”

“Crust is burning,” Katzman says. “Understood. Bossman wants to know if you were ID’d.”

I’m expecting a negative reply, but Colby says, “Affirmative. I let one of those snake-handed bastards get a look at my face and gave it time to spread the word before putting three between its four eyes.”

Why would he let the Dread ID him? my present self wonders, while the me in this memory seethes with anger. He’s expecting something I don’t yet remember.

Just then, Colby turns and looks into the rearview mirror. Instead of a young man with close-cropped hair and a killer’s eyes, I see a more familiar reflection — my own. Colby pushes his hands into the perfectly molded mask of my face and starts peeling it away. “Think this will keep him on board?”

“The Dread will seek retribution.” The voice is new. Lyons. Bossman. He speaks more openly, unaccustomed to the cloak-and-dagger speak used by Katzman and Colby. “My daughter and grandson are safe here. But the others … Their loss will force a change of heart. I will mourn them, but perhaps it’s for the best. After all, a wounded predator is far more dangerous.”

As the memory starts to fade, I ask myself, When did this happen? When! I see the video’s time stamp. This was the day before Simon died. Before Maya killed him. Before the Dread … avenged what Colby, what Lyons, did that day, in my name. The blood of my son, my parents, and Uncle Hugh, along with Maya’s sanity, is on his hands.

The memory comes clear again, just for a flash, which is long enough to see Colby turn to the left and see a steaming, cracked-open, and bleeding mammoth charge between frequencies for just a moment and crush the young soldier. The mammoth is just a blur really, but I recognize it, and that Colby died for his actions that day.

A fresh memory replaces the last.

I’m in an office. Lyons’s. He’s ranting about the attack on our family. Fuming about how the Dread have just declared war. How he will do everything in his power to destroy them. He doesn’t know that I know the truth. He doesn’t know I’m seconds away from using the handgun tucked behind my back. But he quickly figures it out when I raise the weapon toward his head. “The Dread are not to blame for what happened. You brought this on our family. You killed my son.”

Lyons stops his tirade and looks at me. I can see he’s about to play dumb.

“I saw the video. Colby wearing my face. You killed him, too, you know.” My finger slides around the silenced weapon’s trigger.

He slumps and sits, the ruse up. His feigned anger melts away, replaced by honest despair and tears. “They weren’t supposed to be there.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Maya and Simon. They were supposed to be here. I thought they were here! They would have been safe.”