"But what do they want?" Cobb says. "And if they hate us so much, why don't they just kill us?"

"Because they can't," Lyons says. "Not overtly. Fully entering our world and engaging us is against their nature. They prefer to hide between frequencies. At heart, they're cowards."

"We don't know that for sure," Allenby says. "It's possible they simply don't want to kill us."

Lyons waves the comment away like a foul smell. "They're bullies whose longtime victim is on the cusp of growing stronger. They might have enjoyed tormenting the human race for centuries. But the writing is on the wall. We're going to expose them. We're going to fight back. And they mean to stop us." He turns back to Cobb, shifting gears. "Just a hint of a Dread is enough to make people afraid. We feel them around us all the time. As a cold draft, or an unexplainable feeling of being watched, or a creeping paranoia that someone means you harm. We've all felt those things. Some of us more than others."

"Can you see them out of the corner of your eye?" Cobb asks.

Lyons eyes the man. "Only if they are close to our frequency. Why do you ask?"

"Nothing," Cobb says, looking a little sheepish. "Just something from Doctor Who."

"Doctor Who?" Lyons asks.

"The TV show," Dearborn says.

Lyons sighs and rolls his eyes.

"We most often attribute their actions to ghosts," Dearborn continues, oblivious to Lyons's annoyance. "Or if they do affect the physical realm, poltergeists. They're also often reported as UFOs and / or aliens, but if there is a Dread species resembling the typical gray alien, we have yet to encounter it. But the abject, paralyzing fear most abductees report is consistent with a Dread encounter."

"So the Dread are abducting people?" Cobb asked.

Lyons shakes his head. "Abduction reports are likely a result of fear-induced hallucination. Shifting between frequencies of reality is taxing, and taking a body along for the ride, while theoretically possible, is probably not what the Dread can do."

It's not theoretical. I've already proved that but decide to keep my cards close to the vest. I don't know if it's something the Dread can do, but if I can figure it out in a day, it seems likely the Dread would have figured it out by now.

"Probably," Cobb says. "But you're not certain."

"We're not certain about much," Lyons says. "Other than we can no longer afford to ignore our neighbors, and they are not happy about it."

"Humanity's brief encounters with the Dread are simply a by-product of sharing the planet with them," Dearborn says. Because they live in another plane of existence, or frequency-another dimension, for lack of a better word-we can literally occupy the same time and s.p.a.ce. And we often do, accidentally. Most day-to-day interactions with the Dread are coincidental, but some, the ones that result in the creation of mythology, especially sustained mythology ranging hundreds of years, is intentional on the part of the Dread."

"Why?" I ask.

"To frighten us," Lyons says. "To harm us. a.s.serting dominance. It's a natural instinct for most lower life-forms on Earth, like hyenas hara.s.sing lions."

"So they're a.s.serting dominance by frightening people?" I ask.

Lyons raises his voice a little. Clenches his fists. "Fear is more powerful than you could possibly know, especially given your condition. It is the perfect tool to keep the human race from reaching our full potential. It keeps us primal. Afraid of the unknown. Flight wins out more often over fight. And it sets us against each other. The Dread don't need to touch us to kill us. We happily do that for them with the right motivation. Lives are lost. Wars are waged." There's a little bit of fire in Lyons's eyes. "Every person on this planet is a puppet to be played with. Or discarded. When they want to hurt us, all they really have to do is get close enough to our frequency of reality and push their fear into our minds. Sometimes, when it's dark, we don't see them. But when we do, when that shadowy thing rears up, combined with the fear they implant..." A shiver shakes the old man's body. He's speaking from experience.

The whispering that isn't actually sound, I think. They get in your head.

"That's how you found them," I say. "They found you first."

Lyons's head lowers to the floor, lips twitching. Finally, he says, "Yes. I suppose, like many children, I experienced their presence through the frequencies as typical unexplained events. What child doesn't have stories of hidden monsters, of being watched, or stalked, of fearing what lurks in the dark. But on one particular night, after seeing a shadow slip from one side of my room to the other, I made a terrible mistake-I confronted it. The fear I felt when that shadow stopped moving..." He shakes again. "I tried to stand up to it. It was my room. My world. I believed the monsters were real and wanted them out. So I told them that. Demanded it.

"It was ten years before they got bored with me. They left me alone long enough to join the CIA, rise through the ranks, and gain access to some of the most amazing minds on the planet. Many of the first people working on string theory were actually working for me. By nineteen seventy, we had a basic and rough string theory model that suggested the existence of other dimensions. Over the next twenty-five years, our research led to the first and second superstring revolutions that revealed eleven dimensions of reality, otherwise known as M theory. At this point, the math revealed the potential for pocket universes, but it was just numbers and symbols without concrete evidence. That would come later ...

"By seeing them for what they were, I invited their torment. Other people might have been driven insane, but they only strengthened my resolve. I knew they were real. I just needed to prove it. They set my path all those years ago. This is still my world. And I still want them out."

The room is silent for a moment, but Lyons recovers, lifting his head and turning toward me. "A quick burst can freeze the bravest man in his tracks. Sustained exposure can drive the most strong-willed person mad, or even stop a heart. Whether or not they can, or would, invade our reality isn't the point. The point is, they don't need to. We are already at their mercy, defeated without ever really knowing the enemy. But we know them now. The only reason humanity didn't find them earlier is because we never thought to look."

"So, these things," Cobb says. "The Dread. They're in another dimension. I get that, but how are they able to move between them?" He points at me. "How is he? Is it like an Einstein-Rosen bridge to parallel worlds kind of a thing?"

Several surprised gazes turn to Cobb.

"Doctor Who?" Lyons asks, a trace of impatience lining his voice.

Cobb just grins.

"It's nothing so grand," Lyons answers. "And it's not really a parallel world. They live on the same planet Earth as we do. They're just ... immaterial to us, to our perceptions, like high and low frequencies our ears can't detect, or wavelengths of light our eyes can't see. Humanity, and most of our animal counterparts, are capable of detecting and interacting with a limited number of string frequencies. The frequency, or dimension, the Dread inhabit is just beyond our sensory reach. Do you know anything about string theory?" Lyons points at me and speaks to Cobb. "Him, not you. Maybe a doc.u.mentary while sitting on the SafeHaven couch?"

"Not that I can remember," I say.

He continues. "String theory proposes that the universe is composed of miniscule vibrating strings of energy."

I glance at Allenby. "So I've been told. Like musical notes."

He seems to not hear me. "It's a mathematical theory of everything that attempts to explain how the universe is bound together, including the vast amount of energy that must exist but is un.o.bservable. According to string theory, the world as we know it is just a small part of something larger and unseen. Unexperienced. Traditional string theory reveals there are at least six more spatial dimensions that are hidden from us, on Earth and throughout the universe, though I believe there are more, where the frequencies overlap."

"B flat," I say, getting Lyons's attention. "I call it the world in-between."

"Exactly," he says, his eyes moving from me to Allenby. "You told him more than we agreed."

Allenby raises her eyebrows in defiance, up to the challenge. "That was before we were facing a bull and you sent him off after it."

Before the conversation gets off track, and I stop getting my answers, I pull it back on course. "So no one has actually seen these dimensions? Not even with computers?"

"There are computer models, and at Neuro we've developed methods of detecting the Dread, but when it comes to the larger world they inhabit, we're still trying to interpret the data in a way that our senses can understand. Based on our limited data, we believe they inhabit a mirror dimension of reality. String theory predicts the existence of pocket dimensions, which would be imperceptibly small, but contain bits of reality beyond our perception. As it turns out, the theory is only partly right. Pocket dimensions exist, but they're a match for our own, a reflection of our reality. Not a perfect reflection, mind you, but a physical one, meaning the physical laws governing the mirror dimension, time, gravity, ma.s.s, etcetera, match the laws of our reality. The rest of it, like life, evolved in its own unique way."

"But you really don't know any of this for sure, do you?" I lean up a little to better look Lyons in the eyes. "Everything you think you know is based on what, mathematical models and computer simulations? Even Michael Crichton didn't believe things like that qualified as scientific evidence."

"You remember Crichton?" Allenby asked. She's a little surprised.

"I did a lot of reading over the past year," I say, and then decipher the true meaning of her question. "Wait, I met Crichton?"

"At Caltech. January 2003." She smiles. "You were always a fan, but on that day he gave a lecture called 'Aliens Cause Global Warming' and warned about using computer models to make scientific predictions."

"You were there, too?" I ask.

"And Maya." She smiles. "It was a good day, despite the long cross-campus line."

Lyons clears his throat. "Josef's past is hardly relevant to our current situation, and in response to your query about mathematical predictions of the mirror dimension, you are correct. They're educated guesses, at best. To really observe and interact with the other world in a way that allows us to make real measurements and observations, we have to alter our physical state. We have to become capable of interacting with all frequencies of reality."

"We would have to become like the Dread," I say.

Lyons stares at me, curious. "Precisely."

His confirmation hangs in the air for a moment, until the implications of what he's said sinks in.

"Is that what you did to me?"

"It's what you did to you," Lyons says, "when you decided to inject the-"

"But that was the plan all along, right? Turn me into one of them?"

"Not one of them," Allenby says. "We need people like you to fight them. And we needed you to still be human."

"So who else but me could?" I ask. "That's your justification."

"Once again," Lyons says. "It was you who decided to-"

"You brought me here under false pretenses," I say. "Created a scenario that you knew would end the way it did. You didn't put the needle in my leg, but you convinced me it was the only course of action I had left. There isn't much difference. All because I'm the only guy who can fight these things."

Katzman takes a step forward like a recruit volunteering for duty. "Dread Squad can fight them. It's not impossible. Fear can be overcome, through training-"

"I've seen how well that works."

Winters speaks up for the first time since I embarra.s.sed her. "And drugs that temporarily block the amygdala's function."

"Drugs?" The question comes from Cobb.

Winters rolls her neck, cracking the tension from it. She's got an edge, and is undeniably beautiful, almost sculpted. I can see what I liked about her, physically at least. We haven't exactly hit if off yet, but that's my fault. "BDO. It's a mix of benzodiazepine, dextroamphetamine, and OxyContin."

"Geez." Cobb laughs a little "Sounds addictive as h.e.l.l."

"It is," Winters concedes. "But the Oxy inhibits the amygdala."

"And the rest?" I ask.

"Makes you feel like Superman," Katzman says. "The cravings for more after a single hit can take months to go away, so it's a last resort."

Katzman has clearly tried the stuff. The thirsty look in his eyes as he speaks reveals the truth: the craving for more never goes away. Good thing I don't need it. Of course, I'm now part monster from a hidden dimension. A drug addiction might be preferable. I doubt the genetic changes made to my body can be undone.

Speaking of which. "If you can't really see or interact with the Dread, how did you change me?"

"The process of genetically altering a human being is actually quite simple. Dread cells are broken down though a process called sonication. We add a detergent to remove the membrane lipids, remove the proteins by adding a protase, then the RNA. We purify the remaining DNA, isolate the genes with traits we want to pa.s.s on and-"

I wave my hand around in circles. "Fast-forwarding..."

"Transgenesis, the process of taking genes from one organism and injecting them into another, was accomplished using a gene gun."

"That sounds horrible," Cobb says.

Lyons waves him off. "The DNA is combined with a genetically altered retrovirus that causes no outward symptoms but modifies the host's DNA with the new code."

"But that's not what Crazy used on himself," Cobb says. "That was an ordinary syringe. And how could DNA injected days ago already be changing his body? That would require-"

"Time." Lyons turns his attention from Cobb back to me. "The changes made to your DNA were made four years ago. You stuck yourself with that needle, too, though it was a far more informed decision. You volunteered."

Of course I did. A lack of fear is sometimes the worst enemy of sound decision making. Even now, the revelation that I've been part Dread for four years hardly fazes me. I don't appreciate the not knowing. The lies. My feelings of right and wrong begin to fuel a smattering of righteous indignation, but the ramifications of being not fully human for years don't rattle me. The biggest reaction I can manage is a simple question. "How did I not know?"

"When we took care of your memory," Lyons says, "we also inhibited your new genes. The drug you injected, the one we let you believe was important and irreplaceable, simply unlocked those latent abilities. It's why you felt them right away."

All of this makes a strange kind of sense. I get what he's telling me. But it doesn't answer the original question. "What I meant was, if you can't really see or interact with the Dread out there"-I motion toward the Doc.u.mentum room-"all you had was mathematical theories, and I hadn't yet been ... altered, where did you get your original DNA sample?"

"That ... came from you, too." Lyons stands above me. Points at my chest. "Do you remember how you got that scar?"

I glance down. There's a large round scar from a puncture wound in the meat between my shoulder and heart.

"One of them slipped partially into our world and put a talon in your chest. It was aiming for your heart. But unlike you, it had no experience physically killing a human being, let alone a fearless special-ops-trained CIA a.s.sa.s.sin. You rolled, took the blow to your chest, and then removed the digit with a knife. The whole encounter lasted just seconds and left us with a Dread finger. Once in our dimension, separated from the body, the finger remained. You packed it in ice, brought it to me, and voila, Dread DNA. That moment was like a quantum shift for Neuro. Physical proof at last. It changed everything."

"You said the Dread avoided entering our frequency physically," Cobb points out.

"I said it was rare," Lyons says. "Not impossible. In this case it was likely the lack of a fear response that instigated a reaction."

Something in me wants to argue this history lesson. It feels too simple. Too clean. But I have no memory, so how can I argue? "The severed finger didn't have a negative effect on the people who saw it?"

Lyons shakes his head. "Once fully in our world, the Dread's effect on the human psyche is mostly negated, at least to a point where it can be overcome and recovered from. Some of the fear projected from a Dread comes from the way they vibrate. Their frequency. When so close to our reality, we can feel their presence in the very strings of reality, like the universe is suddenly out of tune. It makes us uncomfortable, disoriented, and, most often, afraid. But there is something else. Something more. We don't understand it yet, but they are able to magnify, and even direct, that fear response. To fully enter our frequency of reality, the Dread must be in sync with it. So the natural fear created by their presence is negated, and when they're dead, well, they can no longer push fear at anyone."

"Are you sure about that?" I ask.

Dearborn raises his hands, eager to share. "Not all myths are about specters and demons. Some include physical confrontation."

"Couldn't they just be ancient 'big fish' stories made up to get into a girl's pants ... or tunic?" Cobb asks.

"Since many of the stories end with the heroes' death, I'd venture at least some of them were genuine confrontations. There is Humbaba the Terrible, an ancient Mesopotamian beast whose job was to inflict human beings with terror. It had a face that looked like coiled entrails, or a lion's, depending on which hieroglyphs you believe. The monster was confronted by Gilgamesh and slain. Then there is Scylla, the Greek cave-dwelling sea monster described as a 'thing of terror.' The monster was slain by Hercules, who is undoubtedly a creation of legend, and recent information obtained by Neuro suggests the true slayer of the monster was a man named Alexander.

"These are all mythological battles with creatures that I believe were likely"-he raises a finger-"real, physical events." He raises a second finger. "Lacking any real knowledge of the Dread, ancient peoples attributed those events to already-existing myths, or brand-new ones conforming to whatever belief system or religion was prevalent at the specific time and place. And, of course, there is always a good amount of embellishment, or legend, that is added to these things over time. A Dread bull with no horns might have the huge horns of a Minotaur after two thousand years of oral tradition. So all we can really glean is that physical confrontations with Dread, while rare, have occurred in the past-in your case, the recent past-and the human involved had the wherewithal to fight back. Ipso facto, the fear effect generated by the Dread is negated or substantially reduced when they're fully immersed in our frequency of reality."

Dearborn's depth of knowledge is impressive, but is he overreaching? Who's to say that all those stories about monsters weren't just created by the ancient horror authors of the time, spreading their tales through oral tradition rather than the printing press? "Maybe it's just that a dead finger isn't that scary? Or the mythological heroes who fought back were born like me. I can't be the only one in the history of mankind to be born with deformed amygdalas."

The old man twists his lips back and forth, which I now know means he's thinking. "I believe we've answered enough questions for now." He stands over me, breathing.

"You sound like Darth Vader," I point out.

He grins. "Most overweight men do." The operating table groans when Lyons leans over and uses it to support his weary-limbed girth. "Now then, tell me what you saw."

While I haven't been told everything, Lyons has been forthcoming. I decide to keep the exchange of information going. "I can see them in several different ways. First, in our world, or dimension, or frequency. Whatever you want to call it. Then there is the world between. It looks similar to the real world, but is intercut by glowing green veins, which also cover the Dread. I think it's blood, like an external vascular system. The sky is purple. There are also black trees, some intermingling with the trees from our world. Basically, all the really solid, immovable stuff from both sides is there."

"It all matches his previous description," Katzman says.

"Yes, yes," Lyons says, nodding quickly, moving his hand around in circles, urging me to continue on. "Stationary objects of concrete reality tend to stretch between frequencies further than living, moving matter, overlapping with the next fully realized frequency. We know all this already."

I pick up the ice packs on my stomach, flipping them over one by one. They're getting warm.

Lyons loses his patience. Snaps his fingers at me. "The mirror dimension. That's where you went, isn't it?"