by James Axler
“I put the wheels in motion before I left.” Hammersmith guzzled more vodka. “And the shifters aren’t all morons. I can think of at least one of them who could take the program the rest of the way without me, sooner or later.”
“What happens when the program’s done?” J.B. asked. “What will they be able to do with it?”
“Make all hell break loose,” Hammersmith said. “Bring about unlimited pain and suffering. That’s all you really need to know.” With that, he clunked the bottle on the counter. “I suggest you follow my plan and get the hell outta Dodge before then.”
“Not leave till rescue friend,” Jak said. “Going to core.”
Hammersmith smirked and shook his head. “That’s the one place you don’t want to be when the shit hits the fan, Casper.”
“Handling shit not problem,” Jak said.
“You’ve never encountered shit like this before,” Hammersmith said. “Take my word for it.”
“So you’re saying the shifters are going to make all hell break loose because of something you started? They’re going to cause a world of hurt because of your invention?” Mildred stared at him with narrowed eyes. “Sounds to me as though you ought to be running to the core instead of away from it.”
Hammersmith laughed and chugged more vodka. “Why the hell would I do something like that?”
“Because you want to stop the destruction before it starts?” Mildred suggested. “Because you have a conscience, maybe?”
“Did I say I have a conscience?” Hammersmith drank again and snicker-wheezed his amusement. “I just want to get the hell away from this place before the crazy starts, capisce?”
“Or you could man up and take responsibility for your role in this,” Mildred said. “Maybe you could do something about it, since you’re the one who set it in motion.”
“Look, honeybunch,” Hammersmith said. “If you’re looking for someone to man up, you’ve come to the wrong misanthrope. I suggest you take your misplaced faith elsewhere.”
“But we could work together,” Mildred stated. “Pool our knowledge and resources.”
Just then, Union interrupted. “Don’t waste your breath.” This time, she had an auburn braid and sounded like Rhonda. “I’ve seen this prick in action. He doesn’t believe in cleaning up the messes he makes.”
“Listen to her. She’s right.” Hammersmith nodded and hiked a thumb in Union’s direction. “I’m a total piece of shit, and she knows it.”
“But you live in a place of constant change.” This time, it was Krysty doing the talking. Sometime during the conversation, she’d awakened from her deep sleep. “Perhaps there is no better place for you to forge a new beginning and make up for the mistakes of your past.”
Hammersmith held off on the sarcasm and seemed to consider her words, but only for a moment. “I’m starting to regret saving your ass, you know that?”
With a snort, he stomped across the lab and disappeared through a door, which he slammed shut behind him.
“That guy sure has issues,” Ricky said.
“You think so?” Mildred asked as she moved to examine Krysty. “But I have to admit, he’s no slouch in the medical-treatment department. Our girl here is alive only because of him.”
Ryan held Krysty’s hand and smiled down at her. He’d moved in close as soon as she’d started talking. “We’re lucky we found him.”
“All right, then.” Ricky turned to Union. “Mebbe you can fill us in. What’s all this about a ‘shared history’?”
“I’d rather not talk about it,” Union said coldly.
“But whatever happened between you might be important in helping us find Doc,” J.B. told her.
“It’s none of your business,” Union snapped. “And it won’t make any difference in finding your friend.”
At that, Ryan looked up from Krysty. “We’ll be the judges of that, Union.” His voice was even and numbingly cold, laced with threat and conviction.
As Ryan watched, Union’s face shifted from aloof to openly hostile, then to the most surprising expression yet: a big, serene smile. “I was his human guinea pig,” she said, her voice sunny…sunnier than it should have been, given the words she was saying. “A volunteer guinea pig, actually. He tested the Shift technology on me, to make sure it wasn’t harmful to humans.”
Ryan nodded slowly, putting two and two together. “You said you’ve been broken ever since you lived in the core. Hammersmith’s tech is what broke you, isn’t it?”
“We thought exposure to it was safe. I had no idea what it might do to me.” Union, whose braid had turned brown, scrunched up her nose, raised her hands with palms toward the ceiling and nodded energetically. “In the end, it made me what I am today.”
“But you got away,” J.B. said.
Union nodded again. “I didn’t fake my own death, but I slipped away from the core. Or should I say ‘we’?” She tapped the side of her head. “Four women in one body, remember?” Her smile widened.
“And you’re the fourth, I take it?” Mildred asked. “What’s your name?”
“Dulcet.” Union fluttered her fingers in a friendly wave. “Great to meet you!”
“What happened after you escaped from the core?” J.B. asked.
“We ran for the border of the Shift,” Union said. “We thought the farther we got from the core, the less fragmented we’d be.” She shrugged. “But it didn’t work that way. The four of us didn’t reintegrate into one personality. If anything, we became more divided.”
“So you came back?” Ricky asked.
Union nodded. “We thought mebbe we could fix ourselves by returning to the core instead of running away from it. Mebbe we could find a way to fix our broken mind.”
“Now here you are,” Ryan said. “With the man who caused your condition in the first place. The man you thought was dead.”
“Second-chance revenge,” Jak said. “Take out one who ruined life.”
“Or mebbe he can help you,” Krysty suggested. “Mebbe he can help you heal.”
“That would be great, wouldn’t it?” Union beamed and gave her platinum blonde ponytail a toss, then sank into a scowl. “If he was a decent human being instead of a total selfish bastard.”
Snarling at the door through which Hammersmith had gone, Union spun on her heel and stormed toward the hatch that led outside. Without another word or a look back at the team, she threw the hatch open so hard it slammed against the wall, then bolted through the opening and let it crash shut behind her.
“So.” J.B. cleared his throat. “Now what?”
“Can’t tell which crazier,” Jak said. “Doctor or Union.”
“Beats me.” Ryan, who was still holding on tight to Krysty’s hand, shook his head. “But one thing’s clear. We need to get them to cooperate.”
“Good luck with that,” Mildred said sarcastically.
“If the shifters are taking Doc to the core, we need to get there, and we need to infiltrate the place,” Ryan said. “If Hammersmith and Union both help us with that, we’ll increase our chances of extracting Doc in one piece.”
“Seem like tall order,” Jak stated.
“We’ll figure it out,” Ryan replied. “Mebbe they just need a little time to cool off.”
“Sure,” Mildred said. “Or maybe Union never comes back.”
“She’ll be back.” Krysty sat up on the examination table and swung her legs over the side. “There’s a reason she’s stayed with us so far, I think. As for Dr. Hammersmith…” She boosted herself down off the table and stood for a moment, gaining her equilibrium. “I’ll handle him.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Doc was two hours out of the ville of Struggle, marching with Exo and his troops as always, when he first got the funny feeling.
“Doc.” Ankh, who was once more glued to his side, looked at the old man with mild concern. “Are you well? You look a little green around the gills, as they say.”
Doc frowned. The feeling had
started in the back of his head and was quite unfamiliar—not that he intended to give Ankh any information about it. The less his shifter babysitter knew about his situation, the better. “No, no. I’m fine. But thank you for asking. Your concern is much appreciated.”
Ankh stared a moment longer, then shrugged. “You are welcome, of course. Please don’t hesitate to let me know if the time comes when you do feel less than good.”
“Certainly.” Doc smiled, but his distraction over the strange feeling was great. As he walked on across the sand, surrounded by Exo’s forces, the back of his head fizzed as if someone had pumped carbonated soda into it.
Doc tried to shake it off and kept walking, looking as trouble-free as he could. But then the feeling grew stronger and spread around the sides and top of his head, as well.
“By the way,” Ankh said. “Why do they say ‘green around the gills,’ if norms don’t have gills?”
“Actually, norms do have gills during certain stages of fetal development in the womb.” As Doc said it, the fizzing sensation moved into his eyes. His vision began to blur.
“Is that so?” Ankh chuckled. “And here I thought perhaps it was only a figure of speech.”
Doc managed to get out one forced chuckle, and that was all. He was too busy trying to keep his eyes focused and steady in spite of the fizzing and agitation going on inside them.
Then, suddenly, everything seemed to flicker and turn bright yellow. The fizzing became an audible crackling sound, and a wave of warmth flowed down from his head to his toes.
Doc took a few more steps, and then the warmth intensified, as if he were moving closer to a fire. Another few steps, and the heat surged and changed, becoming a blaze of pure white light.
Overwhelmed, Doc stopped in his tracks. For a moment, he felt as if his body had burned away, leaving his soul wavering in the flood of light like a single frond of grass in a mighty, rushing river.
Then the shell of his body seemed to resolidify around him, encasing his bright white essence and cutting it off from the powerful tide washing over that particular time and place.
“Doc?” Ankh’s voice was like a distant echo at first, but then it shot closer as Doc returned from his experience. “Are you sure you’re all right?” He reached for the old man’s arm.
Doc brushed him off. “Of course I am.” It wasn’t easy after what had just happened, but he managed not to tremble and kept his voice from shaking. “Everything is very much all right, I assure you.”
Just then, one of the shifters shouted, drawing Ankh’s attention away from Doc.
“Excellent.” Ankh nodded. “Our sensitives just picked up the first trace of an impending change to the landscape.”
Doc made it a point to act indifferent, but the news caught his interest in a big way. It could have been no more than coincidental timing that the sensitives picked up traces of a Shift change just as Doc experienced his funny feeling. Or it could mean something altogether different and more staggering.
Ankh chatted with other shifters for a moment, then turned back to Doc. “They think a new shortcut is about to open up. A kind of underground chute we can slide through for miles.”
Doc raised his eyebrows. “Intriguing,” he said, but all he kept thinking was that perhaps he felt the phenomenon approaching.
“Get yourself ready.” Ankh strapped the Winchester longblaster to his back and checked the rest of his gear. “If this does turn out to be a slideway, things will move pretty fast. You don’t want to be left behind.”
Doc looked down and patted his pockets, but he didn’t have any gear to check, unless he counted the razor blade. That left him free to focus on what mattered most at the moment, which was the accuracy of his funny feeling.
Because if he really was making a connection to the Shift, he’d been given a truly game-changing ability.
“Here it comes!” Ankh extended his arms in front of him and closed his eyes. He slowly turned from Doc, facing the ground where the old man had sensed the flow of energy.
It was then that Doc had a resurgence of the feeling, a second flood of fizzing, crackling warmth. It bathed him, feeling shocking and soothing all at once, reminding him of the electrical muscle treatments the whitecoats had occasionally given him during his captivity in the past.
Suddenly, an image appeared before his mind’s eye—hazy and fluttering like a reflection on the surface of an agitated pond. He saw darkness in the middle, surrounded by a ring of lighter hue. A tunnel?
It was still hard to make out, but it could have been the very “slideway” the shifters had predicted.
Just then, Doc felt a force pulling on him while another force pushed him away at the same time. There was a flash of light, a roar of misplaced air—and then a hole appeared in the earth, perfectly round, with a diameter of ten feet.
Doc stared at it in wonder. The hole was on the exact spot he’d been traversing when the funny feeling had swept over him.
“By the Three Kennedys!” he muttered.
He would not have thought it possible, given his minimal exposure to the Shift, to achieve some kind of sensitivity to its transformations. Could it have something to do with his proximity to the core? Or the amount of time he’d been spending around the shifters?
Even as he asked himself these questions, he realized another question was far more important. For he suddenly had much more than a razor blade with which to approach his future.
The question that mattered most was, what could he do with it?
“Come along, William.” Ankh gestured for Doc to approach the hole in the ground. Shifters were already hopping into it, letting out howls of delight as they slid away along its polished interior. “Just think of it as a big chute and tuck in your arms and hands. Stay as streamlined as you can and let yourself zip through it.”
Doc nodded, distracted by the many scenarios playing out in his head. For the first time since being abducted by the shifters, he was daring to let himself feel something that might get him through his ordeal.
He was daring to feel hope.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Hammersmith told Krysty to leave him alone seven times before he finally opened the door to his office. “What’s your problem?” he snapped.
“I’m breaking out in a rash from all those stings.” Krysty scratched her left arm with a vengeance. “And I need to get my friend back from the shifters.”
“Tough break,” Hammersmith said. “I’m not in the friend-saving business. Or the friend-having business.”
“Mebbe not.” Krysty shrugged as she glided past him into the darkened room. “But are you in the payback business?”
Hammersmith snorted and slammed the door shut. “I don’t give a fuck about payback. I just want out of this place before those mutie assholes turn up the gas.”
“You’re full of shit,” Krysty said as she plopped down in the only chair in the room—a black-and-chrome swivel chair in front of a bank of computer and video monitors. “If you wanted out so bad, you’d be long gone by now.”
“You’re talking out of your ass, lady,” Hammersmith said. “Maybe I gave you too many of the good drugs when I had you on the table.”
“You faked your death and went underground before Union got away,” Krysty said, slowly turning back and forth in the swivel chair. “You’ve been hanging around awhile now, haven’t you?”
Hammersmith shrugged. “I just needed to shut down some equipment and pack a few things.”
“Right.” Krysty smirked at how transparent he was. “Then, why does all the equipment in this place still seem to be running?”
“It’s on autopilot,” Hammersmith said dismissively. “I’ve already switched off the hardcore stuff to keep it from falling into those little pricks’ hands.”
“Okay.” Krysty folded her arms over her chest and tapped her chin with an index finger. “So you’re telling me that if you had a chance for revenge against the shifters, you wouldn’t take it?”<
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Hammersmith scowled. “I didn’t say that.”
Krysty narrowed her eyes and stared at him for a moment, still turning back and forth in the chair. “Here’s the thing about my friends and me, Dr. H. We’re really good at fighting our enemies.”
“Not so good fighting animals in the Devil’s Slaughterhouse, though,” Hammersmith commented. “From what I could see.”
“So we had a little trouble with the piranha-wasps and the invisible monsters. So what? We still fought them off and killed them, didn’t we? And we’ll do the same thing to those muties in the core.”
Hammersmith frowned. “You don’t seem much like coldhearts to me.”
“You can kill without being a coldheart,” Krysty said. “Just like you can be a genius without being a complete asshole.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Hammersmith replied.
“Let me ask you a question. How many other fighters do you have lined up to take down the shifters and stop your tech from tearing apart the Shift?”
Hammersmith didn’t answer. He just leaned against the wall and watched her with his beady, close-set eyes.
“And how many of those fighters will work for nothing,” Krysty added, “while freeing one of their own from captivity?”
“Who cares?” Hammersmith stuffed his hands in his pants pockets and jingled something that sounded like coins. “I’m not recruiting for the job.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Krysty got up from the chair and stepped toward him. Chin up, back straight, shoulders squared, she didn’t look like someone who’d been in a coma just a short time ago. “We’re going anyway, with or without you.”
“Good riddance.” Hammersmith jingled his change with increased agitation. “The sooner, the better.”
“However…” Krysty took a step closer and raised an index finger between them. “If you came along, we’d have a better chance of finding our friend. Your knowledge of the core would help us find who we’re looking for much faster. And your expertise would make it easier to shut down the tech they’re using to weaponize, as you call it, the Shift. You built it after all.”