Nik knew to be afraid of Smith before, but now he was witnessing something amazing. Smith had total control of the room. His doppelganger had no leverage.
“So, while you were over there pretending to be unconscious, listening to me dicker around with your twin here, I’m sure you were trying to concoct some sort of plan, weren’t you? That’s why you brought the guns through—for a situation like this. So, instead of playing dumb, why don’t you tell me what’s going on, instead of your oblivious friend here,” Smith said, indicating Nik Davidson.
“Fine. I’ll say it, since Nik here apparently doesn’t have the guts to accuse you to your face,” Nicholas said. “You...Smith...in my reality abducted my wife, and we believe you’re behind his wife and kids’ disappearance in this one as well. That’s why we came back through with guns—to confront you. To get his family back.”
A Matter of Trust
It was as if someone sucked all of the air out of the shed. Nik and Nicholas sat still, waiting for a response from Agent Smith, or his counterpart, Agent Wesson. After Nicholas just accused Smith of basically kidnapping Nik Davidson’s family, the entire room seemed to stand still.
Finally… “What did you just say?” Smith asked.
“I said, the Agent Smith in my world took everything that mattered to me, and we believe since you’re just like him…that since you are him, you did the same thing here. Shoot, maybe you’re working with him,” Nicholas said. His voice was steady, almost too steady for a high school teacher unaccustomed to dealing with potentially life-threatening situations. Nik was amazed at his other self, and hoped he could one day be like him.
Smith took a couple steps towards the two men, but stopped when Wesson reached out and grabbed his upper arm.
“Smith, hold up. Gotta talk to you outside,” Agent Wesson said.
A look of annoyance flashed across Smith’s face. He scowled at the prisoners for a moment before turning around. “Fine. Let’s go,” he said to Wesson, then flipped up his walkie talkie, talked into it. “Ford, Dodge, keep an eye on the outside of the shed for a few minutes. Wesson and I are going to take a walk.”
The two federal agents left the shed, leaving Nik and his opposite alone together for the first time on this side of the mirror. After the door shut, Nik was silent for a few beats, then turned towards Nicholas, and hissed, “What are you doing? Trying to get us killed?”
“He’s not going to kill us. He needs us alive. If he was going to kill us, or even throw us into a deep, dark hole, he’d have done that already while we were unconscious,” Nicholas said. He released a sigh, the first sign that the situation had affected him at all.
“Really?” Nik asked, more of a statement than a question.
“Yes, really. Look, I get you. I am you. High School history teacher, meek and mild, but they didn’t write the Constitution to protect the cops. You have rights, too—Hamilton made sure they put those in before he left Philly that summer,” Nicholas said.
“No he didn’t. Not here. The Bill of Rights was added later. It isn’t in the original text of the document, but you’re right. It does protect us—well, me at least,” Nik said, a little bit encouraged.
“Besides, you want your wife back, right? Your kids?”
“Yeah…”
“Then act like it, man! I heard what you said when you first woke up. Your wife and kids are gone, but you just ask about your house. Really?” Nicholas asked.
Nik blinked a few times. His world had gotten turned upside down in just a matter of hours and he was focusing on all the wrong things. Sure, his house was gone, but before that, Penny and kids were gone. But…
“Maybe Smith was destroying the evidence when the house went up in flames,” Nik proposed.
“Maybe, but that’s gone now. You can find another house later, if we make it through this. It’s us against them. Who do you trust? Me, or the guy who kidnapped your family and blew up your house?”
Nik hesitated. Nicholas was certainly not what he expected, but there were a lot of differences between the two worlds. Perhaps their personalities were just another aspect of the changes between realities.
He looked straight into Nicholas’s eyes. Eyes that he had seen hundreds of times throughout his life. If he couldn’t trust those eyes, there wasn’t much point in trusting in anything.
“You. I trust you.”
What to do with the Mouse?
Wesson got Smith outside into the January air. The temperatures were a bit warm for January, but they were both still clad in winter coats. Their breath was just barely visible. Wesson pulled Smith along until they were closer to the decimated blast site of Nik Davidson’s house than the shed.
“Listen, I know you’re the agent in charge here, but you’re looking at the situation all wrong,” Wesson said at last.
Smith felt his blood rise, and decided to keep walking around the property. “Why do you say that?”
Wesson followed Smith, matching him step for step. “Because it doesn’t really matter what they say—either of them. We know what we saw in Michigan. Caplan was insane and clearly one of these guys is as well.”
Agent Smith nodded along. “Okay, but that doesn’t mean I don’t try to get a confession out of them—whichever one did it.”
“But isn’t that kind of the point? I mean, we can leave Ford and his team here. They can process the scene, take care of any of the forensics, and find out if Davidson or his double is lying. We’re the A team. We don’t have to worry about the minutiae. We leave that up to the other teams. What are we supposed to be doing? What is Wall’s top agent supposed to be doing right now?”
Smith stopped, looking back at the small crater they’d left behind where Davidson’s house once stood. In the wreckage was a million pieces of a mirror that once hung on the wall in Davidson’s bathroom. A mirror that he used to cross over to another reality and bring a double of himself back. Regardless of what happened to Davidson’s young family, the larger issue was pressing in.
“We need to find out the truth behind the mirrors—the portals. What is going on and how can we stop it. Why are they coming through? What is the purpose behind it all? And what do I—I mean, the other Agent Smith—what part does he have to play in all this?”
“Yeah...he asked us to come down here, but I haven’t seen any shred of evidence of his involvement. Just two somewhat ordinary school teachers, one just happens to be from another reality,” Wesson said.
“Yeah...you’re right,” Smith said. In the craziness of losing Davidson, and then getting two of him back within a matter of hours, Smith had almost forgotten how he had come to learn about Southern Indiana in the first place.
“So, do you see what I’m getting at?”
Smith scratched his chin, nodding again, more confidently this time.
“Yeah. We’ve got these two in custody. They can say what they want and maybe they’ll accidentally let something slip. Meanwhile, we need to figure out the big picture. Davidson’s family doesn’t matter squat if the world collapses in on itself because of these portals,” Smith said.
“Yep,” Wesson said. “Thanks for…”
“Agent Smith! Agent Wesson!” a voice called out, interrupting their conversation. They looked back to find Dr. Anna racing towards them. She almost put her foot through a nail-riddled two by eight board left over from the explosion. She had no regard for the danger all around, her need to get to them was that urgent.
“Dr. Anna,” Smith said smiling. “You know we’ve got phones. You could have just sent me a text.”
“This is bigger than a text. Look at this message I just got. It actually took a couple days to get to me, bouncing off servers all around the world before arriving in my inbox. Even then, it went to my junk folder, so I didn’t notice it until just now. Take a look!”
About to Jump
Agent Smith peered at the device in Dr. Anna’s hands. Agent Wesson stood off to t
he side, waiting, knowing if he was supposed to know, Smith would show it to him momentarily. On the screen, Smith was able to make out a few sentences, but the overall meaning was unintelligible.
“Anna,
I’m about to jump. I don’t know.
They aren’t them. I don’t have any more time. They know.
-L”
He turned to Anna. “What the heck is this?”
“It’s a message from Liszt. I just know it,” Anna said, her voice cracking a bit. Liszt was Dr. Anna’s partner at The Agency. If there was anyone she had a close relationship with, it was him. They weren’t romantically involved, but Smith knew she viewed him like a younger brother.
“Liszt,” Smith said. He turned the tablet over, almost as if he expected to find some hidden message on the underside. He flipped it back over and looked at it again. “Why do you think it’s him?”
“Even though it came to my junk folder, it was stamped from a few days ago. From Northern Arizona. Liszt went with Agent Jones and his team to investigate in Arizona,” Dr. Anna said.
“Yeah, but I checked the mission reports myself. There were no anomalies reported in Arizona. Jones said they chalked it all up to the heat of the desert. I read it just a few hours ago when we were on our way down here,” Smith replied.
“I know, I know. I read the same thing, but I was worried about Frank, so I called his cell,” Anna said.
“And?”
“And nothing. It went straight to his voicemail,” Dr. Anna said.
“Okay, well, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. I know Jones. He wouldn’t do anything to Liszt. I’ll give him a call right now,” Smith said, pulling out his own cell phone.
“Stop.”
“Why?”
“I got his voicemail, but he must’ve known I’d eventually be calling. Listen to his message,” Dr. Anna said. She dialed Liszt’s number from memory and put it on speaker for both of them to hear. Wesson, just a few feet away, could also hear the recorded greeting.
“Hello, you’ve reached Dr. Liszt. If you need to get ahold of me, please visit The Roadrunner Rest Area just north of Sedona, Arizona. Anna...I need you. Please help.”
BEEP.
Smith was silent. He couldn’t deny what he’d just heard—obviously Liszt was working outside the team framework of the mission to Sedona. Why? What was going on? Why was he at the Roadrunner Rest Area? Judging from the voicemail message, there was no way to get ahold of Liszt on the phone, so going to him was going to be the only way.
He turned to his second in command. “Wesson, get Tinker and Barney. We’ve got to get to Arizona. Leave Agent Black here to help Agent Ford and his team clean up this mess.”
Wesson sprinted off towards the blackened remains of Nik Davidson’s house. Smith turned on his heels and began walking back to the shed. Dr. Anna hurried to catch up.
“Thank you,” she said. “You don’t know what this means to me.”
“It means more than you know,” Smith mumbled, right before he burst back into the shed.
“Okay boys, you’re getting a small reprieve. We’ve got to go to Arizona and you’re coming with me. Both of you,” Agent Smith said. He gauged their reactions; every facial tic was important right now. Nik Davidson showed surprise. His opposite sat stone-faced. Perhaps that meant something. Smith didn’t know either of them well enough at this point to know what either expression meant. Maybe Nik was playing him for a fool. Maybe his mirror double was smarter than all of them. At this point, he didn’t know, but he had one thing. He had them.
“This doesn’t mean I believe you,” Smith continued. “We’re going to get to the bottom of things—including your family, I just have bigger fish to fry right now. I’ll sort you two out later; believe me, this is not over yet.”
Flying
Agent Smith took the plastic restraints off Davidson and his twin’s wrists just after they all boarded the private charter jet. It was already dark in Central Indiana as the hours remaining of the holiday were coming to an end. Smith planned to chase the sun towards the western horizon, hoping to figure out what exactly was going on in Arizona.
Ford and his team were still combing over everything back at Davidson’s home. Number one on their priority list—get every single piece of the bathroom mirror (if there was anything left). Since The Agency was still unsure of exactly what the mirrors did, they couldn’t let even a sliver get into circulation among the general population.
Meanwhile, Smith watched Nik and Nicholas from his seat at the front of the plane. It was a small jet, just a dozen seats in total. With his two “special” guests, recently freed from their restraints, along with his team and Dr. Anna, they took up half the seats. Agent Barney had already taken his seat in the cockpit, the pilot for this trip—one of his additional qualifications that made him such a valuable addition to the team.
Smith walked over to Agent Tinker. “Hey, can you keep an eye on these two? I’m going to shut my eyes for a few minutes. Been a long day.”
“Sure can, boss,” Tinker said, leaning back in his seat, swiveling it around to face the two Niks and pulling back the edge of his coat to show his holster. “I don’t think I’ll have any problem. Why don’t you sit and forget about them for a little bit.”
That was just what Smith intended to do. He walked by the seat occupied by Dr. Anna, figuring she would want an open seat next to her, instead taking a seat in front of the analyst. After buckling in, he closed his eyes, Within seconds, he was asleep, missing the takeoff completely.
As an agent who was needed at a moment’s notice all around the country, Smith had long ago trained himself not to dream. It was necessary for the job. The life he had chosen didn’t allow for dreams.
The flight to Arizona, though, lent him a kaleidoscope of images, flashing before him too fast to comprehend. Too numerous to remember. Too vivid to accept them as dreams.
In reality, Smith’s dream harkened back to his childhood. He often dreamt of a warehouse, empty save for sixteen gigantic pistons, pumping up and down in concert with one another, first the eight on one side of the building, then the other eight. The loud churning of the pistons filled the air and made it impossible to hear anything.
When he felt a tap on his shoulder, it shocked him to turn and discover his own face peering back at him.
“What?”
But before the image could respond, it faded away, revealing a mirror in its place. Broken. Shattered and scattered along the warehouse floor. The pistons still busily pumping behind him, Smith reached down for one of the mirror pieces, and the edges of the shard pierced his palm. Blood immediately beaded to the surface, dripping to the floor below and mixing and mingling with the tiny mirrors all around him. The instant a drop touched the reflective surface, Smith felt himself getting closer to the mirror. He wasn’t kneeling, or falling, but was instead melting. Drop by drop, he was absorbed by the mirror, which solidified and congealed with his blood.
It was a strange sensation, to see yourself melt and fall through a mirror, but once all of him had melted away on this side, he could see himself reforming on the other side of the mirror. Once he was fully recombined, he looked around. He felt as if he were upside down, gazing at the bottoms of the very pistons that were pumping away on his side of the mirror. Oil and grease lined the concrete floor with flashes of metal all around him.
Cutting through the noise of the pistons was a click-clack sound. Smith spun around, trying to pinpoint the location, but saw nothing at first. The noise grew until another person was in his presence. A woman. Hauntingly beautiful, but dressed professionally. With one glance, it was clear this woman was powerful—her look could stop a train. She walked along the upper catwalks, getting closer and closer to Smith’s position on the warehouse floor.
“Smith…” the woman called out.
“Yes…” Smith responded back. If he knew the woman by her voice, it was impossible to recognize. He shot a
look up to the balcony, where she continued on her path toward him.
“Agent Smith,” the female voice purred again.
“Yes…”
“Agent Smith, you need to wake up. I have a mission briefing to go over with you. Agent Smith?
The Right Question
Nik rubbed his wrists, feeling a bit of residual soreness from the restraints that had been on him since they left the shed. He stared across from him at what, until recently, was his mirror image. Nicholas was staring out the window as the plane flew over the Midwest, leaving his home state behind.
Home. What happened back there? Just a few days ago he was an ordinary high school history teacher married to one of the few lawyers in the county with two kids in tow. Life was good, and then that stupid mirror…
Penny, Kira, Sisco. Where were they? Were they even alive? He shook that thought away. There was no point in getting down now. They had to be alive. He had to believe it. Get through this. Just keep plugging.
No use thinking about the house either, the first edition books he lost, irreplaceable family photos, the only corridor he knew of back to the other side of the mirror. He could get lost in those thoughts.
For a moment he wondered whether anyone had told the school he wouldn’t be teaching the next day. Ack! It was all too much! He pushed that thought away, too.
And then there was that guy, staring out the window while rubbing the zipper of his coat—some sort of nervous tic? Nik didn’t have that one. He tapped on the closest table or armrest when nervous. He caught his fingers mid-tap and stopped. He looked back toward Nicholas. He might look the same, have his same bathroom and a strangely similar classroom on the other side, but there were differences. Key differences.
One thing for sure, he wasn’t going anywhere for a while. They’d separated them on the ride to the airport, but now they were on opposite seats for the duration with Tinker and Wesson for babysitters—and those two didn’t look super interested in them either. One had a gun magazine out and was showing something to the other. Smith disappeared behind a partition a while back, leaving these guys in charge.
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