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.