by James Axler
Chapter Forty-Seven
When the tremors started, sending dirt trickling into the shaft, Krysty sounded the alarm with her cries. “We’ve got to get out of here! It’s coming! It’s coming!”
In those first seconds of distraction, Union made her move. With a sudden burst of energy, she charged for the open doorway in the dirt wall, bowling over Hammersmith and slipping away before anyone could lay a hand on her or get off a shot in her direction.
Without hesitation, Jak bolted after her. The others were still processing what had just happened when he sprinted through the doorway.
Fortunately, his night vision was excellent. Even without a portable light of any kind, he could still glimpse Union’s fleeing form in the darkness up ahead.
His hearing wasn’t bad, either, which also helped. Even as the darkness thickened further from the shaft leading down from the surface, he could hear her running footsteps on the packed dirt floor in the distance. The rumbling of the quake didn’t block them from his sensitive ears.
He homed in on those footsteps as if they were beacons and raced after her, determined to stop her from doing whatever it was she meant to do.
* * *
“UNION’S GONE, AND Jak went after her!” Mildred had to shout to make herself heard over the rumbling in the shaft.
“At least they’re headed in the right direction,” Hammersmith said as J.B. helped him to his feet. “We need to follow them.”
“So there’s an earthquake, and we’re going deeper underground?” J.B. asked.
“Unless you’d rather waltz in the front door?” Hammersmith switched on the lantern, then dropped it in the next big tremor. “Son of a bitch!” He quickly snatched the lantern up again but had to shake it twice before the bulb relit. “We need to go!”
Ryan leaned close to Krysty, who was moaning from the pain in her head. “Can you keep going?”
She met his eyes and nodded forcefully. “Hell yes.”
“Come on!” Lantern in hand, Hammersmith darted through the doorway. As he entered, clumps of dirt fell down from the shaft above.
Mildred realized that if the quakes kept up, that entrance might soon be blocked. But what alternative was there?
Ryan and Krysty plunged into the opening after Hammersmith. J.B. gestured for Mildred to go next. “After you.”
Dirt continued to fall. “Let’s do it.” Mildred swallowed hard, then nodded once and ran into the darkness, hoping she hadn’t seen daylight for the last time in her life.
* * *
EXO YANKED THE swordstick from a loop on his belt as he stormed across the mat-trans chamber. Fixie, still consumed by his work on the control panels, didn’t even hear or see him coming.
“Fixie, watch out!” Even as Doc raised the alarm, he knew it was too late. He scrambled to his feet as he called out, only to fall back down when the next tremor kicked in.
Fixie turned just in time to see the silver lion’s-head top of Doc’s swordstick hurtle straight at his head. He tried to block the blow, but his arms made it only halfway before the silver lion’s head smashed down on the middle of his skull.
“No!” Doc grabbed a length of pipe from the floor and used it to help himself up. He intended to use it further to give Exo a taste of his own medicine.
But the earthquake and the white light raging within him were throwing him off his game. He weaved drunkenly over the heaving floor, stopping at every large solid object to steady himself and rest.
Unfortunately, Exo did not share his unsteadiness. In the time it took Doc to get halfway across the room, Exo whacked Fixie three more times with the cane—once more on the head, then once on the chest and once on the back as he went down.
“How dare you operate this sacred technology without my permission?” Exo snarled. “This is my weapon, not your toy!”
“Stop it!” Doc roared. “He was only testing the device! It’s all yours!”
“Test this!” Exo clubbed Fixie harder than ever on the back of the neck, then giggled like a lunatic. “Whoops!” Pulling back the swordstick, he held up the silver lion’s head, which was drenched in blood. “I guess you failed, little bitch!”
“No!” Doc hauled back the pipe and let it fly. It struck Exo on his left shoulder and bounced off, clattering to the floor.
Exo didn’t even acknowledge the hit. Instead, he swung up the swordstick for another strike, giggling the entire time. “Don’t worry, Hammersmith!” He lashed the cane downward, thumping the heavy head in the meat of Fixie’s side. “I’ll clear aside this deadwood so you can get to work again!”
Suddenly, a blastershot exploded in the room. The shot was meant for Exo but went wide, punching into a control panel on the wall instead.
Doc whirled to see Ankh standing inside the doorway, aiming his Winchester longblaster at the man who was supposed to be his leader.
“Ankh?” Doc said.
“Son of a bitch.” Ankh shook his head, looking disgusted, somehow holding perfectly steady in spite of the latest round of tremors. “I can’t trust you people to do anything, can I?”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Jak followed Union through a labyrinth of dark tunnels, using the sound of her footsteps on the packed earth as a guiding signal.
She swooped around one turn after another, staying always just far enough ahead that he couldn’t catch up. Nailing her with a throwing knife or a shot from the Colt Python wasn’t an option, either; getting a bead in the darkness, with the continued quakes and so many twists and turns along the route, would be next to impossible.
So Jak just kept running and hoping for a break. Maybe the tunnel would open up soon into a well-lit area, and he would have a better chance of stopping her with a blade or gunshot.
But when he got his wish and followed her through a door into a big, bright space, he had no more luck bringing her down. The room they emerged in was full of shifters, a whole mob of them standing stiffly, staring in the direction of the opposite corner from the door Jak and Union had come through.
So much for getting a clear shot with a throwing knife or a round from the Python. There were too many bodies in the way.
Union sprinted through the crowd as if it wasn’t there. The shifters made no effort to stop her, nor did they try to obstruct Jak when he waded through them.
But when Union reached the other side of the room, she whipped around and shouted at the top of her lungs for all the muties to hear. “Stop the intruder! Stop the intruder!” She jabbed a finger at Jak. “He has brought destruction down upon the Children of the Shift!”
All eyes turned to Jak, who kept heading for the side of the room where Union had landed. He felt the spreading tension all around him, fanning out over the assembled muties like poison gas.
Then, before he could reach the wall where Union was waiting, she opened a door and slipped through. Just as she left the room, the first of the shifters to lift a hand against Jak made his move, stepping in front of him with shoulders squared and arms folded across his chest.
“You’re not going anywhere.” The shifter slowly shook his head. “Except hell.”
“Been there.” Jak grinned and took a step toward him, accessing a throwing blade in the sleeve of his jacket. “Not all cracked up to be.”
* * *
“DID YOU JUST shoot at me?” Exo shook the swordstick in Ankh’s direction.
“Of course not.” Ankh raised the Winchester and aimed it at Exo. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
Just as Ankh pulled the trigger, Exo leaped behind a welding unit a few feet away. The bullet pinged off the unit’s metal case, missing the true target hunkered down behind it.
“What the fuck?” Exo howled. “You work for me.”
“Absolutely.” Ankh cranked the action on the longblaster, ejecting the spent cartridges, and loaded fresh ones. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. What about you, Dr. H.?”
Doc, who’d ducked behind a tool cart that only partially concealed h
is form, called out over the continued clamor of the quake, “Likewise, of course.”
“Fixie’s your man, Ankh!” Exo said. “Yet he activated devices that it is only my right to operate!”
“Terrible. Just terrible.” Ankh swung up the Winchester and kept it aimed at the welding unit. “He must be reprimanded most severely.”
“I’ve already beaten him to death. What else could we possible do to him?”
Ankh started walking toward Exo’s position. “Don’t worry, brother, we’ll think of something.”
Was Fixie dead? Peering out from behind the cart, Doc spotted his inert form on the floor under the control panel where he’d been working. His body was drenched in blood, though it was impossible to tell from a distance if he was definitely dead.
Doc’s own future looked pretty bleak, given the circumstances. Whichever of the shifters survived, Doc thought his own chances of survival were poor. He’d double-crossed them both by working with Fixie to switch on the device; once one was killed, it wouldn’t take long for the other to murder Doc for his betrayal.
If the earthquakes and the blazing heat and light inside him didn’t kill him first.
Even as Ankh continued his advance, Doc’s internal torment kicked into its highest gear yet. The white light flared stronger than ever, pressing against the restraints of his flesh as if it might blow him apart from within. The crackling noise in his head reached a deafening peak, drowning out the next exchange between Ankh and Exo.
Through tightly slitted eyes, Doc saw Ankh fire another round at the welding unit, then Exo fire back with Doc’s LeMat. But he barely heard the blasterfire through the crackling roar filling his skull.
Then, suddenly, the forces at work inside him rose in a tidal surge that seemed to wash away his physical form. He felt like a single, flickering candle flame whipping in a strong wind, barely keeping from being extinguished.
Seconds later, his body seemed to recrystallize around that single flame. The sounds and sensations of the outside world reasserted themselves, beginning with another pair of blastershots.
This time, Exo’s latest round found a home in Ankh’s belly, doubling him over. As for Ankh’s round, it punched into the heart of Fixie’s main control panel, sending sparks and shrapnel in all directions.
But none of that was Doc’s most immediate concern. The focus of his attention was a nearby section of the floor of the mat-trans chamber, to which he felt unmistakably drawn. Now that the sequence of “funny feelings” had run its course—from fizzing to crackling, from bodilessness to resolidifying—the attraction of that one spot could mean only one thing.
As he watched, the metal and plastic plating of that part of the floor buckled and broke. Cracks turned to fissures, fissures turned to gaps, and gaps widened into holes…all of which joined together in one big crater.
As Doc stared into that gaping pit, a vision of a winding tunnel leaped into his mind, a chute etched in yellow neon light. It took only a heartbeat for him to realize it was a diagram, a map of where the new hole in the ground led.
And the final destination, when he saw it, was reason enough for him to consider jumping into the maw of that newly formed chute. According to the map, the opposite end of the tunnel opened onto the outside world, aboveground and away from the buried redoubt.
At the sound of another shot, Doc looked away from the crater and saw Ankh take a second slug in the belly. He toppled backward to the floor, and Exo immediately marched toward him with the .44 raised, looking ready to finish him off.
With Ankh gutshot and Exo distracted, Doc realized he had a moment to run for the crater if he so chose. If the map in his head was right, the chute connecting to that crater would send him out of the line of fire, away from the worst insanity.
And the fact was, he instinctively believed in that map. Under the influence of the Shift, he’d been gradually tuning in to the region’s changing topography; now, perhaps because of his extended exposure to the core, his Shift sense had fully evolved. He believed he was experiencing what the shifters experienced when they communed with the transformations of the Shift, right down to the detailed diagram in his head.
Given those possibilities, he could think of no good reason not to take a leap of faith. It might be his only chance, his absolute last chance, to get to freedom.
Taking a deep breath, Doc got to his feet. Watching as Exo stood over Ankh and gloated, he tried to brace himself against the quakes and prepare to make a run for it.
But as soon as he took his first steps toward the crater, the ground shook more roughly than ever. Doc stumbled once, then twice, barely staying upright…then found himself with both feet off the floor as it seemed to drop out from under him.
But he didn’t go down. The floor lurched back up, and he regained his footing, then propelled himself with three quick steps to the crater’s edge.
He hesitated, on the verge of doing something he and his teammates would once have considered so completely un-Doc-like. Taking courageous leaps into the unknown was something that his companions would do. As much as he felt like a changed man since his abduction, as clear as the map in his head seemed to be, this was still a pretty big risk for the old man.
But watching Exo pump three more rounds into Ankh helped move things along. Doc took another step closer to the edge of the pit, preparing to jump.
The darkness beckoned. Would it lead him to freedom or extinction?
The floor rocked, nearly throwing him in. Doc spread his arms wide and steadied himself, which was the exact instant when Exo looked back at him.
Their eyes met through the sparks and smoke. Exo sneered, and Doc knew instantly that the mutie would kill him if given the chance.
The floor heaved, but it didn’t manage to hurl Doc into the pit. When he jumped feetfirst off the rim and shunted down into the blackness, he did so of his own accord, taking a chance that he knew he never would have taken just a few days earlier if given the opportunity.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Ryan pushed through the doorway leading out of the tunnel right after Hammersmith. He found himself standing in a big, bright chamber, blinking at the aftermath of a major knife fight.
“Fuckin’ A.” Hammersmith let out a long whistle at the carnage around them. “Somebody kicked some serious ass in here.”
Krysty and the rest of the companions hurried into the room, eager to get out of the dark tunnel. The whole time they’d been in there, the earth had never stopped shaking, and the dirt had never stopped falling around them, suggesting a collapse was imminent.
Stepping over bloody bodies, Ryan found a victim who was still alive and conscious, a shifter male with a knife wound in his upper chest and a severely dislocated left arm.
“Was it an albino who did this?” Ryan asked sternly.
The shifter nodded. “The woman said he was an enemy of the Children of the Shift and had to be stopped.”
“And you believed her?” Ryan asked.
The shifter tried to shrug, then winced and gave up on it. “She is well-known here. We heard she’d returned to the fold after betraying our holy mission.”
“I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.” Ryan spun, found the exit and headed straight for it, calling to the team in his wake, “Let’s go!”
The floor shook as the others rushed after him. They all knew they had their work cut out for them, catching up to Jak and Union before everything went south. Rescuing Doc was the top priority, but they didn’t want to lose anyone else along the way.
Ryan waited in the hall outside the exit long enough for Hammersmith to join him. “Which way?”
Hammersmith swung left without hesitation. “This way.” The floor rocked, bouncing him off a wall, but he didn’t miss more than a step. And he didn’t waste time whining about it. “Look alive, bitches!” he shouted to the people behind him. “We’re almost there!”
* * *
MOMENTS AFTER DOC started his long slide through the dark chu
te out of the mat-trans chamber, he heard the high-pitched voice behind him.
“Wait for me, Hammersmith!” It was Exo, calling from a distance. “I need to teach you a very important lesson, my friend!”
Suddenly, Doc’s ride through the chute took a darker turn. Exo’s voice was staying with him, keeping pace—that meant he was riding along after Doc, not calling from the mouth of the tunnel.
And that meant Exo would catch up to Doc at the end of the chute. The man who’d just brutally killed his own brother, Ankh, in cold blood would pop out of the chute right behind Doc.
The old man had escaped the mat-trans chamber but hadn’t gotten away from Exo at all. And this time, there would be no one else to distract the insane mutie leader from taking out his frustrations on Doc.
* * *
JAK DIDN’T HAVE any trouble finding the mat-trans chamber, thanks to the trail of mutie bodies strewed through the corridors. He was moments behind Union, thanks to her dirty trick of pitting a mob of shifters against him, but the bodies of the muties who’d gotten in her way were like bread crumbs.
By the time he ran through the doorway into what appeared to be a large mat-trans chamber, Union was already hard at work wrecking the place.
She didn’t see him at first as she swung a crowbar into a control panel, shattering glass displays and plastic control surfaces. That gave Jak a chance to quickly size up the room, taking in the crater and the two mutie bodies sprawled on the floor. One had been gutshot, the other bludgeoned. Had Union killed them? Had she grabbed a blaster from a shifter in the corridor, then shot her way into the room?
The big question on his mind, though, was why was she demolishing the equipment?
She was in midswing when she finally saw him. “Grab something to smash with!” she shouted over the firecracker snapping of blown circuits and the rumbling of earthquake tremors. “Give me a hand!” Her Russian accent was gone as she called out to him.
Jak stepped closer, weaving through debris and bobbing as a spike from the latest quake shook his footing. “Why smashing?” he shouted back at her. “What about triggering collective intelligence, bringing back Soviet Union?”