MirrorWorld

“They let us peek between frequencies, but just a peek is sometimes too much. You won’t need them. Hopefully.” She flashes a grin. “Move it, soldier.”

With a confidence born of obvious naïveté and lack of fear, I head out of the room and turn right. I feel a flash of déjà vu. It’s not the hallway that feels familiar. It’s the anticipation. Of battle. Of facing chaos and reining it into control. I’ve done this before. What does it say about me that I can remember this feeling, but not what it’s like to have a son and lose him?

“Cut the alarm,” Katzman says behind me, talking into his hidden mic. A moment later, the blaring whoops fall silent and I can hear the heavy breathing of Dread Squad’s Alpha team behind me. They’re not winded already, just amped. Or are they afraid? If they are, they’re pretty good at hiding it.

Eight apartment doors later, we reach the end of the hall and turn left. The stairwell entrance is forty feet ahead. I don’t know if anyone lives in these units. Maybe just the Dread Squad guys. Either way, the doors don’t open. No curious eyes peek out. Could be that the residents have been trained to hunker down when they hear that alarm. Could be that they’re just afraid.

I stop by the stairwell door, draw my weapon, and flick off the safety. Katzman stops next to me. “I hope Lyons is right about you.”

“Let’s find out,” I say, and look back at Alpha Team. “Teams of two. No bunching up. Katz, you’re with me.” I point at the next two men in line. “You two enter when we hit the first landing.” I point at the last two. “You two stay put with Allenby. If it’s not us that comes out the door…”

The four men under Katzman’s command all turn to him.

He’s clearly annoyed but gives a curt nod.

I open the door and step into the stairwell. The walls are gray. So are the railings. And the concrete steps. It’s woefully bland in an industrial-Russia kind of way. No windows. Wire-encased bulbs line the walls. Whoever designed the rest of Neuro’s HQ really skimped on the stairwells. Of course, this is the modern world. How many people still use stairs?

The landing ahead is empty, so I track the steps down and around with the barrel of my gun. Seeing nothing, I lean over the railing and look down.

Nothing.

The stairwell is empty.

“There’s nothing here,” I say.

Katzman grabs my arm. Hard. His sleeve pulls up a bit. The hairs on his exposed arm stand on end. The hairs on the back of his neck spring up, too. He puts a finger to his lips and then mouths, “It’s here.”

I look over the railing again. There’s not a damn thing in the stairwell besides us.

Katzman slides the strange round goggles over his eyes. He inches toward the railing. Painfully slow. Then, with a quick motion, he glances over the edge, just for a moment, and springs back. His chest heaves. His weapon lowers. His eyes, behind the tinted goggles, go wide.

What. The. Hell?

Katzman is a brave man. He’s stood up to me twice. But that man is gone. He’s withered into a child just woken from a nightmare. He manages to find his voice, though. “Three stories down.” A gasp for air. “Use your eyes. Like you did earlier.”

I remember my strange look out the window. What it felt like. What it looked like. Dark. Tinged with green. Otherworldly. The living shadow. But I’m not sure how to trigger … whatever that was, again.

I lean over the edge, looking for a target. Eager to pull my trigger. To draw my machete. To tame the chaos.

But there is nothing in my repertoire I can do about a drab stairwell.

That’s all I see.

I blink hard, trying to alter my vision. Trying to see what’s not there.

Allenby told me to “see what you want to see.” She might not understand how to control the changes my body is going through, but she probably knows how it’s supposed to work.

I lean over the edge again, aiming down at nothing.

See, I think.

See!

I relax my thoughts. Focus my attention on what I can’t see. Then I feel it. That strange new muscle. I flex. My eyes tingle, then sting, and suddenly, like a light switch has been thrown, I can see what’s not there. And it hurts. The pain nearly cripples me, exploding from my eyes and roiling through my blood, but what I now see keeps me upright and focused past the physical discomfort.

I’m looking at my target, which is very much not a shadow, straight in the eyes.

And it’s looking right back.

21

I empty the P229 at the thing. Twelve .40 caliber rounds. It should be dead. Most everything else on the planet short of a blue whale or armor-plated rhino would be. Then again, it’s about the size of a rhino, and the way it’s flickering in and out of view makes the details hard to discern. It could be armored. Or thick-skinned. Or who knows what.

I have no idea what it is.

But it’s there.

It’s real.

And then it’s not.

I blink and it disappears. I’m about to ask where it went but then realize I’m focusing on what it is rather than seeing it. I narrow my eyes, willing them to see what is unseen, and feel a shift in my vision. This muscle just needs exercise.