MirrorWorld

Maya, on the other hand, stands by my side, hidden in the woods of New Hampshire. She’s been eating well over the past month. Recovering, body and soul. My body is recovering, too. I required a blood transfusion, which nearly didn’t come in time, thanks to all the violence ravaging supplies. But there was an outpouring of goodwill following the cease-fire of Dread fear, and I pulled through. And now I’m not even sore. Whatever part of me is Dread still heals fast. At least physically. Despite the return of my memory and fearless nature, there are things I would like to forget. Things I’ve done and that I’ve endured.

Mostly things I’ve done. I can justify them, sure. I was one of the good guys, preventing terrorism or international organized crime. But the truth is that I don’t know. Being fearless means not being afraid to carry out orders. There’s no way to know if someone took advantage of that. I take solace in the knowledge that I saved the world.

Two worlds.

Things have been good between Maya and me. Rough, but good. A lot of the rough has to do with my unfettered honesty. I say what I think. But it also leaves no doubt about my honesty, and when I tell her I love her, she believes me. We’ve talked a lot. About Simon’s death. About her father’s quest for vengeance. About Winters. To my surprise, she understood and forgave me. Life will never be in short supply of painful memories, but we’re moving forward. Together. And that’s a gift. I thought I’d lost her forever.

And we’re not the only ones healing. The heavy blanket of fear driving people to the streets and nations to the brink of war has lifted worldwide. I’ve gone over the timing and, as best as I can figure it, the Dread removed its influence from humanity, worldwide, when the matriarch spoke the words, “It is finished.”

While I’m sure people are still getting the chills when they pass a Dread, I don’t think the mirror world will be poking the human race anytime soon. We might not have the natural ability to move between worlds yet, but humanity is no longer a slave to the slow machinations of evolution. Technology allows us to do things we’re not quite ready for and don’t fully understand. Maybe we’ll be ready to play nice with the Dread someday — they’ll need a different name — but until then, I’m going to do what I can to slow the process.

“They’re everywhere,” Maya says, lowering the binoculars.

We’re looking at the outside of the Neuro building. The branch of the CIA that supported Lyons’s quiet war has descended on the facility. Where there was once a collection of black and gray vehicles in the parking lot, they’re all just black now. I look for a splash of orange, remembering Winters’s sacrifice, and a little bit more.

I take the binoculars from Maya and scan the area. There’s plenty of security. Far more than before. But the building is still being repaired. There are chinks in the armor. All I really need to do is get beyond the damn electrified fence, which still exists in both worlds.

I stand from my crouched position, ready to make my move.

“Are you sure you need to do this?” Maya asks.

“Everything is in there,” I say. “I don’t think the Dread will be so merciful a second time around.”

“Let the boy go,” Allenby says from my other side. Her poofy hair is tied back. The look in her eyes says she’d like to do this herself. She’s been by our side since we returned to the airport, bloodied but alive. We’ve been staying in the home she’d lived in with Hugh, the home she couldn’t bring herself to sell, just fifteen minutes from Neuro. “He might not be able to stop the demons haunting our souls, but he can at least remove them from this world.”

Allenby, like me, was more deeply involved in Neuro. She feels the weight of what happened and is determined to prevent it from happening again. Today was her idea. I only hope I can do what she’s asked.

Maya sighs, gives me a sheepish smile, and kisses my cheek. “Be careful.”

“Have no fear,” I say and slip into the mirror world. Hand on Faithful, which is sheathed on my back, I scour the surrounding area. Not a living Dread in sight. There are plenty of dead, though, corpses from my encounter with the local matriarch. Her flesh has fallen away, leaving a large skeleton rising up the side of the oscillium building.

Thanks to the mirror world’s disregard for the landscaping of men, I quickly find a tree with long, sweeping branches. I climb up slowly, trying not to break the veins covering the tree, but failing. I’m still not sure how this world works, but my best guess is that the Dread and this world are interconnected: all part of one big ecosystem, driven by fluid veins rather than the cycle of decay and rebirth that governs what I still think of as the real world, despite all frequencies of reality being equally real.