MirrorWorld

“How could you track it?” Allenby asks.

“You’re standing in its blood,” I say, and, with a flick of my wrist, clear the green goo from the blade. Allenby looks down, and for a moment I see the floor the way she does — white, polished, and sparkling clean. She can’t see it. None of them can.

I slip the machete into the scabbard on my back. “I want answers. All of them. Now.”

22

“Not possible,” Lyons says. He sits behind his office desk, elbows resting on the mahogany surface. The room, like the living quarters, looks more like a cozy home office than something in a vast corporate, black budget headquarters. The only real aberration is that there are no windows. The office is located on the fourth floor, perfectly positioned at the building’s core. I glance around the space, looking for something expensive to destroy. And there is a lot to choose from. Ancient weapons from cultures around the world cover the walls, desktop, and shelves. It’s like a “history of warfare” museum. And it’s all tied together by a framed quote behind Lyons’s desk chair:

The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

— SUN TZU

“Please don’t break anything,” he says. To show that he doesn’t know me as well as he thinks he does — even though he does — I listen and take a seat across from him. Allenby, behind me, breathes a sigh of relief. Katzman stands beside the desk, not taking sides in what started as a request for answers. And yeah, you could probably call the kicked-in door, my loud voice, and thrust index finger a demand, but I was holding back.

“Why isn’t it possible?” I say.

“Because…” Lyons thrums his fingers over the desktop, three strokes of four. He stops and looks me in the eyes. “Telling you the truth now will set you on a path I’m not entirely convinced you can handle.”

“From what I’ve seen today, it’s not something you’re capable of handling, either.”

He nods slowly. “Setbacks are to be expected. Every war has its risks.”

“War?”

“War,” he repeats, nodding just once. “Did you know that this world has never really known peace? Not once? At every point in history, somewhere around the world, war has raged. Even today. Especially today. Here in the States, the population is insulated from this reality. We read about it. Watch it on the news. But only a select few really get their hands dirty. Men like you. And me. It becomes a part of you, mingling with your DNA, changing you from the inside out. When war rears up again, men like us see it coming before anyone else. And we can react first. Fight and win. It’s what we do.”

“I thought you were a scientist,” I say.

“In the modern age, science is capable of killing far more people than brawn.” He leans back, supporting a grim, heavyset brow. “War isn’t coming. It’s here.”

“You make it sound like Neuro is fighting this war alone. What about your bosses at the CIA? The government will—”

Lyons picks up a TV remote. Aims it at the flat screen mounted to the side wall. “I don’t suppose you’ve watched the news this morning?” He hits the power button and the TV comes to life, already tuned to a news channel. There are no pundits talking, just a news ticker at the bottom, scrolling tidbits of violent clashes around the world and clips of recent events. Soldiers in an eastern European city I can’t identify open fire on a crowd, gunning them down. Instead of fleeing, the mob rushes through the bullets, swarming over the men while armored units roll in. These are soldiers fighting the people they’re supposed to protect. The video changes to a studio. A tired-looking reporter with disheveled hair sits solitarily behind a desk like the last bastion of cable news. “That was the scene in Kazakhstan earlier today. We now take you to the White House, where the president is making a statement already in progress.”