“What? Who are you?” Davidson asked.
“You can call me...Mr. Smith,” Smith knew after what the Johnsons had dealt with in Michigan, getting Nik Davidson out here talking was huge. Smith thought to himself that Davidson didn’t look like a mass murderer, but then again, they rarely did. He decided to go for a little honesty, but not too much.
“As for everyone else, who we are doesn’t matter. In fact, there are only a handful of people in the entire country that know what our agency does, so don’t worry about that.” It was time to change tactics and get this conversation back on track. “What you need to worry about is what you have done.”
“And what is that?”
“You’ve unleashed a force with untold power and ferocity on the entire world,” Smith said, being mindful of what he had seen in Tennessee and Grand Rapids. Smith didn’t know what was going on here. For all he knew Davidson could have his whole family’s bodies buried nearby. Maybe he didn’t, but until Smith had him in custody, no one was going to be able to find out. “I know about your family, but there are bigger things at stake now.”
Nik Davidson blinked.
It wasn’t much, but in Smith’s line of work, he had to trust his instincts. His told him right then that Davidson wasn’t a murderer—at least not that Nik was aware of. If somehow Nik was guilty but didn’t know it, they could sort that out in court. But the two men weren’t communicating—Smith was talking, but Davidson wasn’t hearing it.
“Mr. Smith? Is that it?” Nik asked. Smith gave a slight nod. He continued, “Okay, I’m willing to talk, but what I am not willing to do is leave my property. You tell me what you know right now.”
What Smith knew? Well, Smith knew a lot about the anomalies: there were events all over the country, leading to massive holes in the ground in North Dakota and Virginia. The event seemed to have its beginnings in Arizona, but the most action was in Tennessee where the entire Hall family was missing and in Michigan where Frank Caplan butchered multiple people. Smith knew a lot.
On the other hand, Smith and his team really had no idea what was actually happening. Why were the holes opening between this world and another one? What was Alter-Smith’s agenda? Who was Agent Green and did Davidson know him?
Smith felt what he knew would fit in a cup, but what he didn’t could span an ocean.
For now, Smith decided to play his cards close to the vest.
“Mr. Davidson, I don’t think you’re really in a position to argue,” Agent Smith said with a small laugh, hoping to put him a little more at ease. “You need to get into the back of the vehicle with me right now. I’d be glad to have a conversation with you, but this is not the place.”
Smith held out his arms, motioning to the other houses in the small town. “I wouldn’t want to...alert your friends as to what is really going on here. But, I will if I have to.”
_____
Nik started backing up. He couldn’t leave. Not yet. His entire family was trapped on the other side of a mirror in the master bathroom of this house and no matter what this man said, he hadn’t lived through the last several days. How did he really know what was going on with his family? Right at that moment there was only one man that he knew of that he trusted and it wasn’t the guy dressed like a mortician. He reached the door and grabbed the knob with his left hand.
“There is a man positioned just above the two-story house across the street, Mr. Davidson. Can you see him?” Mr. Smith said.
Nik froze. He looked over and he didn’t really see a man so much as he saw a barrel of a long-range sniper rifle. He thought it a bit of overkill considering the distance, but it made the point. The problem was: he had nothing to lose.
“I see your man, Mr. Smith, but I think if you really had any intention of killing me, you would have done so without showing your face at all. You claim to be from some secret government agency, and that many be true, but why talk to me at all?” Nik asked. He saw Smith hesitate. “I think you need me. Obviously the laws don’t mean anything to you, or else how would you know about me and my family? But the missing link must be me. I’m the key, right?”
Without even waiting for an answer, Nik swiftly opened the front door and sidestepped into the house. He dove in, hoping he was right in calling the bluff. No shots rang out, so he assumed he was safe. For the moment at least.
_____
Smith’s first inclination was to slam something on the ground, but he knew he needed to keep it together. He immediately decided to keep Wesson positioned across the street. It was still a mystery what Davidson knew, or what he had planned, so having Wesson there with eyes on all of them was their best bet. Smith might have had a gut feeling about the man, but gut feelings had been known to get people hurt.
After seeing all the freshly excavated graves just a few days ago—the aftermath of Frank Caplan’s time with one of those mirrors—Smith wasn’t about to let Nik Davidson get away that easily.
He poked his head back in the SUV, where Anna was still huddled over her tablet. “Doc, you still got that satellite running over Davidson’s house?”
She looked over her shoulder, then flipped her tablet over and showed Smith the image on the screen. It was still the infrared she’d shown him before, but now the lone figure inside was moving around.
“It’s live, in case you were curious,” Dr. Anna said. “As you can see, there is still just one person inside the home. He’s pacing around the kitchen right now, but we need to be ready to move if he goes to the bathroom. That’s where I suspect the portal is.”
“Got it. Let me know when his situation changes,” Smith said, turning to the other team members. Ford, Plymouth, Dodge, and Schwinn were all waiting, alongside Barney, Black and Tinker. None of them had their weapons out, but that needed to change. Perhaps Davidson would respond better at the end of a gun.
“Ford, I want you to suit up, along with Plymouth, Dodge and Barney. I’ll keep Schwinn here with me and Tinker and Black can go around to the back of the house. We need to go in, but you guys need to get dressed,” Smith told the assembled men.
“Smith, I know my men. I’d prefer to have Schwinn instead of Barney,” he said, then looked at Barney, “No offense.”
“None taken,” Barney said with a shrug.
“Yeah, I understand, but I need someone in there who has seen firsthand what’s going on. He’s been at two scenes already that are precursors to this and he knows what to look for. I’d go in myself, but I think Wall would frown on that. Besides, if I can get him on the phone, perhaps I can talk him back out here,” Smith said. “Now get your jackets on and get ready. I’m afraid you’ll probably be going in there.”
Ford was a good agent. He protested once, but once the situation was fully explained, he took it well and got his team into position. Schwinn understood he was to shadow Agent Smith and did so, but at a safe distance.
“Smith,” Dr. Anna called from the back seat of the SUV. Smith jogged back over.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“It’s Davidson.”
_____
Nik slipped quickly through the kitchen and grabbed the cell phone off the charger. He was about to head to the bedroom when he saw the Bluetooth earpiece and slipped it into his pocket.
He finished getting dressed in the bedroom—quickly, because he didn’t know how much time, if any, he had earned with that speech on the front porch.
Next stop: the bathroom.
Nik walked into the room and immediately felt a sense of hopelessness. Something had gotten through and had managed to take Penny and the kids with it. How?
How had it all happened in his own house while he was sleeping? He hated himself for letting it happen, but now wasn’t the time to berate himself. He had strange government agents breathing down his neck. He needed to act.
Nik leaned over the pane of formerly-reflective glass and studied the edges of the cracks. The tape he had put up the day before was still there, bu
t there was a flimsiness to it. He touched the edge of the tape and it all fluttered down to the floor. It wasn’t holding anything. The mirror was truly gone and all that was left was the portal between worlds. Somehow he had created a door of sorts. Nik stuck a hairbrush in the void, turned it, and pulled. He felt the air around the event horizon swirl and change.
Nik stepped back and saw a clear view of another bathroom, nearly identical to this one, somewhere in another universe.
Nik took a deep breath, and reached for the other side.
That was when his phone rang. Nik stuck the Bluetooth earpiece over his ear and answered.
“Hello?”
_____
“He’s in the bathroom,” Dr. Anna said. “He isn’t moving, but he’s standing in front of the mirror. I think he might be thinking about an exit strategy.”
Smith swore under my breath. “Okay, can you get me his phone number?”
“I thought you might want it, so I went ahead and dialed it on your phone,” she said, handing him his government-issued phone. It wasn’t the most advanced model, but it had served the agent well. Smith stared at the phone for a second, then back at his men. They were still halfway through their preparations.
“I’m calling Davidson. Everyone, stay on high alert. Ford, as soon as you and your team are ready, get into the house, ready to go into the master bathroom,” Smith directed. “Oh, and don’t break any mirrors, okay?”
Ford simply nodded while pulling on a pair of gloves.
Smith swiped to unlock the phone and pressed the big green button.
“Hello?” Davidson answered.
“Nik?”
“Yeah, but you know that already,” Davidson said. He was agitated and desperate. Not that Smith could blame him. Two squads of government officials had arrived on his lawn just minutes before, after all.
“Don’t do it. Let us help.”
“Are you watching me? Have you bugged my house?”
Davidson wouldn’t have known about the satellite and the infrared, so it must’ve seemed as though Smith and his team had some secret knowledge of his activities. Paranoia is very real when it comes to secret government agencies, as Smith knew too well.
“Look, Nik, you can get mad about the privacy violations later, but for now, we are the best chance you’ve got. We came as soon as we realized what had happened. We didn’t expect you to really make contact with the other dimension,” Smith pleaded. “This has happened before, is happening elsewhere around the nation and world.”
_____
And something came through the mirror and kidnapped Nik’s family through that? He hesitated. “Smith, something is different here…”
“Mr. Davidson, it doesn’t matter what’s different. What matters are the consequences. Stay here and let’s sort it out together.”
Nick stared at the remains of the mirror and the other room beyond. What was so dangerous that it had priority over his family?
The voice on the phone prodded, “Mr. Davidson, listen to reason. Nothing good has come of these mirrors. We don’t even know if it will be safe for you to go through. You have to stop.”
Nik continued to stare at the mirror. So what changed? Was it his fault? Did he somehow let them in? Was it the hammer? Did the hammer hit allow them through? He was suddenly horrified that whatever came through and took his family came because of his actions.
“Mr. Davidson, we’ve had two explosions, a family that simply vanished and a serial murder spree that resulted from these mirrors. The one person that we can confirm has used the mirrors to transport himself multiple times is…not right anymore. We think he went crazy when the mirror broke. There’s no guaranteeing your safety.”
Nik considered that thought. No, that wasn’t right. When the mirror broke, it freaked him out a bit, but no more than he had already been the few days before the mirror broke. There was something else in this case. Something else was a factor.
He reached up to his ear. The night before he had held his head against the glass to catch the sound of the tornado siren from the other side and had nicked his ear. He had bandaged it up, but not before some blood crept through the crack. Blood...that would match the Nik on the other side of the mirror. Was that the key? Oh no…
Nik put his foot up on the counter. He was going to head over. He needed to get his family back, no matter what Smith said.
Nik forgot he was still on the phone with Smith when he spoke up again.
“Nik, I again urge you to stop. There is another force at work here. Something came and took your family, yes, but there is a force you can’t possibly imagine that is operating.”
Nik paused, ready to listen when the bathroom door practically exploded. Smith was yelling in Nik’s ear and agents in black armor were storming through the doorway into the bathroom. Before he could learn more about the mysterious danger Smith was talking about, before the agents swirling around could even touch him, Nik leapt up on the counter and sprang through the mirror. His last thought as he crossed dimensions was: “They better pay for that door. Penny’s going to be mad when she gets back.”
Through the Looking Glass
Nik fell through and tumbled off the counter on the other side, his shoulder glancing off the toilet seat on the way down. Breathing heavily, he lay on the floor waiting for the agents to follow through the mirror. He rubbed his shoulder, hoping it didn’t bruise up later. As he lay there for a moment collecting himself, he realized that he knew innately that he was no longer in his home universe. Something didn’t smell right.
He wasn’t an expert on odors, but there was something different. This world just smelled different. There was a combination of smells that Nik had never encountered before and he was still in his own bathroom. Well...his bathroom. RepNika’s.
Nik suddenly remembered that Smith’s agents were right on his heels as he leapt through the mirror. What happened? Nik looked up at the mirror hanging above the sink. It was in rough shape—between the various cracks and tape (which was all on the opposite side—weird, he thought), the mirror still had a sheen to it where he had just jumped through. Nik stood up and found himself face-to-face with four men wearing head-to-toe black armor back in the bathroom on the other side of the mirror.
If it weren’t for the mirror (and portal between universes) between them, one might say that Nik and the agents were within spitting distance. As it was, the portal had closed. One agent was using a knife to remove the tape that still lined the edges of the mirror, while another tapped on it with the butt of a pistol. Nik could see it all happening, but could no longer hear anything from that side of the mirror. In a way, that confirmed his previous theory. If Nik’s blood had “opened” the door when he went through, the door must have “closed” behind him—at least, that was his working theory. An agent in the back was talking on a radio, presumably reporting all this to Smith.
Nik waved at the agents, enjoyed their exasperated reactions for a moment and turned around, ready to find his family. He decided he could deal with the thugs on his own side of the glass later. For now, he had to find himself—literally find this universe’s version of himself. He spotted the paper he had seen earlier in the morning and bent down to pick it up. The piece of paper that had the scrawled message, “I HAVE WHAT I NEED.”
Nik turned the paper over and discovered more to the message. On the backside of the paper—a place that he would have only seen had he come across the barrier, RepNika had also written another line.
“SORRY. I HAD TO.”
Okay...maybe that sounded a little more like Nik. Maybe RepNika was forced to kidnap Nik’s family. But why? What was the purpose behind it? Why take them at all?
As Nik pondered this, he folded the paper and stuck it in his back pocket.
There was only one way to find what he was looking for, and it wasn’t by staying in the bathroom. Nik went to the door and opened it. In Nik’s world it would have led to the master bedroom.
A queen bed on the right hand side of the door with a dresser for Nik and a chest of drawers for Penny. A secondhand TV in one corner that was better at broadcasting snow than an actual signal. He knew the room like the back of his hand.
But none of that was there.
There was still a bedroom, but everything was different. The bed was bigger: a king in the place of the queen Nik and Penny shared. A sleek 40-inch plasma TV hung from the far wall and the room was designed with a smart modern touch.
“Okay...so this definitely isn’t home,” Nike said aloud.
The words seemed to hang in the air for a few moments, as if his own voice somehow didn’t belong on this version of Earth, but had no place else to settle. Nik was dumbfounded at the room, but also knew Penny had wanted to upgrade their bedroom suite for quite a while. Perhaps in this universe she had gotten her way. Perhaps…
Nik shook his head, remembering why he had crossed the event horizon. Penny. Kira and Sisco. He had to keep moving. He had to find them.
As if his thoughts were read, Nik heard a voice across the length of the house.
“When you’re ready to meet, come to the living room. We need to talk.”
It took him a second, but Nik realized it was his own voice. He didn’t need to go very far to find his mirror self—he was already here.
_____
To say that Nik was nervous did not even begin to describe how he felt. With few exceptions, people usually don’t get to meet themselves. Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, perhaps. Maybe Lindsey Lohan and her twin from that Parent Trap movie, Nik thought with a laugh. In this case RepNika wasn’t even Nik’s twin. They were literally the same person in many ways. Their lives were different, but we were still the same person on the inside.
At least, Nik hoped so.
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