MirrorWorld

“How can you be sure?” Katzman asks.

“Because this time, we’re telling him everyth—”

An alarm interrupts. It’s the same alarm that sounded when I escaped. I lift my hands off the table. “I didn’t do anything.”

Katzman puts a finger to his ear, pressing the barely visible earbud down tight so he can better hear the voice on the other end. The anger melts from his face as his listens. It’s replaced by fear, an emotion I’m getting really good at recognizing.

Allenby stands. “What is it? What’s happening?”

Katzman pulls his finger away. Turns toward Allenby. “Incursion. Third floor.”

“Here?” Allenby nearly shouts the word. “How could that happen?”

Katzman looks down at me. I’m positive he’s going to blame me, and to be honest I wouldn’t even argue the point. There’s no doubt my actions have compromised the security of this building. But that’s not what happens. Instead, he swallows his anger, and maybe some pride, and says, “We’re going to need your help.”

20

Boots thud down the carpeted hallway as the men dressed in riot gear storm toward a neighboring apartment, two doors down. I follow Katzman with Allenby on my heels.

“Copy that,” Katzman says, hand against his ear. He turns back. “It’s in the west stairwell. Headed up.”

I catch his arm and stop him. “What is?”

He looks from me to Allenby. She gives him a nod.

“The enemy,” he says.

“One of the Dread?”

Katzman glances at Allenby, eyebrows raised in question.

“It worked,” she says. “He saw one on the building. It must have found the broken window. Got inside.”

He yanks his arm from my grasp. “You will either do what I tell you or stay out of the way.”

While Katzman storms away, I turn back to Allenby.

“There isn’t time to fully explain the situation,” she says. “It’s complicated. And strange. I promise you will get answers, some probably sooner than others. What you need to know now is that you’re going to see something that doesn’t make sense. And when you do see it, I want you to kill it.”

I stare at her.

“You’ve done more for less in the past.”

I frown. “Fine.”

When I step inside the apartment two doors down, I feel like a kid who has just stumbled across Santa’s workshop. It’s not an apartment at all. It’s an armory. The room is a mix of modern weapons, bladed weapons, nonlethal armaments, armor, and high-tech gadgets. The men in riot gear stop as I enter, watching me with suspicious eyes.

Katzman points to me. “Dread Squad, this is Crazy.” He sweeps his hand toward the seven men. “Crazy, Dread Squad.”

While the tough-looking men of “Dread Squad” go back to their business, arming themselves with a variety of weapons, I scout the room. A machete mounted on the wall catches my attention. The twenty-inch cleaver blade is straight with a chisel tip and the back side, which slopes in a smooth line back to the handle, is wickedly serrated. The entire weapon is black and slightly textured. Like Teflon. But it’s not just the machete. A case of knives, bayonets, and less-brutal-looking swords are all black, too. A nearby Dread Squad member loads fresh rounds into a magazine. The bullets are black. So are the guns.

“It’s made from an alloy called oscillium,” Allenby says. She lifts the machete and its sheath off the wall.

“Never heard of it,” I say.

“No one has. It’s a mix of nickel, aluminum, and titanium, along with a few things I’ve never heard of and don’t care to remember, formed into whatever we want and bombarded with intense bursts of laser light, which is what turns it black. You were part of the trial-and-error program that created it.”

I’m starting to feel like I’m living in my own shadow and I’m getting pretty annoyed with my past self. I have more questions, but the alarm keeps me focused. I look the machete over, admiring the fine blade forged from some top-secret exotic alloy. The ridiculousness of the situation is not lost on me. “So what are we fighting then, werewolves? Is this alloy like our silver bullet?”

“That would be easier,” she says. “Oscillium is important because of the way it vibrates, or oscillates, hence the not-so-creative name.”

“So, the machete vibrates?”

“Not in any way you’ll ever feel,” she says. “I’m not a physicist, but the way I understand it is, all matter vibrates, but at different speeds. Different frequencies, from very low to extra high. Normally, people might talk about atoms and electrons, but around here it’s all about string theory, which basically says all matter is composed of teeny, tiny strings that vibrate at different frequencies. And like the frequencies of sound waves, there are vibrations we can detect as physical matter, or light, or heat, and some we can’t. What you thought were hallucinations are simply frequencies of reality that are normally undetectable and intangible to humanity and most common elements on Earth.