“We are almost at the core, are we not?” Doc asked, though he didn’t say how he knew. He didn’t tell Ankh that the fizzing feeling in his head had become more or less constant at that point.
“That’s right,” Ankh told him. “It’s less than a mile away now.”
“Good, good,” Doc said matter-of-factly as he trudged along through the high late-morning heat. The temperature had forced him to take his frock coat off and carry it over his shoulder from a hooked finger. The clothes he’d been wearing underneath were soaked with sweat anyway; he found himself wishing he could take some of those off, too.
Just then, Ankh cleared his throat. “What we talked about earlier.” He spoke in a low voice, though he didn’t need to. Doc was moving so slowly, he was keeping the two of them well back from the squad of shifters, out of earshot. “Are you clear on your part in the plan?”
“It could not be clearer.” Doc nodded. “Though I feel compelled to remind you that I am not any kind of expert on whatever equipment my predecessor might have developed.”
“Just follow my lead and keep a clear head, and you’ll do fine.”
“Good,” Doc said, though his head was anything but clear at that moment. Was the rising intensity of the fizzing due to the core’s proximity, or another landscape change waiting to happen?
“Remember, once the action starts, things will happen fast,” Ankh stated. “But I’ve got plenty of friends among the troops as well as the core station guards. Exo and his people are outnumbered, and our victory is assured.”
Doc thought of saying something about how quickly an assured victory could become the opposite, but then he decided to keep that one to himself. “That is most excellent news, Ankh,” he said instead. “Your plan seems to me quite sound indeed.”
Suddenly, Doc felt the ground shudder underfoot. Exo, at the front of the ranks, shot a hand in the air, and all the shifter troops immediately stopped in their tracks.
Was another transformation in the making? Was that the source of the fizzing in Doc’s head? All he knew for sure was that the earth was shaking, and the shifters were very much on alert.
“What’s happening?” Doc asked. “Another change in the Shift?”
“Yes and no,” Ankh replied. “You’ll see.”
Just then, fifty feet away between two big hills, the sandy ground lifted up, revealing a pitch-black gap underneath it.
“What spontaneously generated landform will this be, I wonder?” Doc asked as he watched the slab of ground continue to crank backward.
Ankh looked at him as if he was stupid. “It’s not spontaneously generated. It’s a hidden door, is what it is.”
“Ah. I see.” Doc nodded as the slab reached a forty-five-degree angle and stopped. Its underside was mounted with machinery—giant gears and levers that stopped turning and left the great weight propped above its socket in the ground.
“This is it, Doc,” Ankh said. “Congratulations on returning to the core after too long away.”
Doc was distracted by the entryway before him. He’d never been there before, but it looked very familiar to him nonetheless.
“Don’t worry.” Ankh elbowed him in the side. “It’s a lot more impressive once you get through the door.”
“That’s good to know.”
“Just remember,” Ankh whispered urgently, “Hammersmith has been here many times before, so don’t act as if this is your first time seeing the place.”
“Understood,” Doc replied.
Up ahead, Exo started toward the entrance, signaling with a wave for the other shifters to follow. Ankh and Doc fell in step, moving as quickly toward the opening as the rest of the troops.
“This is a massive complex,” Ankh whispered. “Hammersmith was brilliant, creating it as his base and staging ground.”
“So it would seem.” Doc peered into the gaping dark cavity up ahead, wrestling with the nagging feeling that it was somehow familiar to him. “I take it you’ve spent a good deal of time here yourself, Ankh?”
“You might say that. I know the place like the back of my hand.”
Exo was the first one over the threshold. As soon as he set foot on the ramp leading down from the edge of the entryway, lights flashed to life on the underside of the slab above him.
“Motion sensors,” Doc said. Technology like that wasn’t common in postdark times; he’d rarely seen it outside caches of predark equipment that had survived the apocalypse for one reason or another.
“Wait till you see what else is in this place,” Ankh said. “Exo chose it as the base of his new empire for a reason, you know.”
Doc followed him down the ramp on the heels of the troops. The slab lowered back into place behind them, automatically closing the door when the last of the visitors had gone inside.
When Doc descended to the first level with the shifters, he saw there was a wide, short hallway ahead, well lit and ending in a pair of giant blast doors. The layout suggested a shelter of some kind, designed to keep out the extreme force of a nuclear explosion and its aftermath.
Exo walked to an intercom panel set into the wall near the doors. He used the silver lion’s head of Doc’s swordstick to tag the button that would connect him to whoever was on the other side.
“I have returned!” Exo shouted into the panel. “And I’ve brought back our runaway whitecoat and hope for the future.”
As soon as he said it, the shifter forces cheered. Every one of them roared with approval, which made Doc wonder how much support Ankh really had. He claimed to have Exo and his people outnumbered, so victory was assured, but those pro-Exo cheers sounded pretty genuine.
“Open the doors!” Exo ordered. “Let’s not waste another second in setting my glorious empire in motion!”
Again, every shifter soldier cheered. Blasters were raised and shaken overhead in martial jubilation.
Exo turned from the intercom and faced the crowd. “We shall rule all the Shift and then the lands outside the Shift, as well! A new era is about to begin!”
The troops chanted his name over and over. The sound of all those voices raised to the ceiling filled the corridor with a deafening roar. Doc put his hands over his ears to take the edge off, but it didn’t do much good.
It was then that a siren howled, overriding the cheers, and lights along the gray metal walls began to flash. With a boom of separation, the big blast doors began to slide apart.
“This is it.” Ankh rubbed his hands together eagerly. “We’re going in. How does it feel to be on the cusp of destiny, my friend?”
Doc didn’t answer. He was too busy gazing at what lay behind the opening doors.
His breath caught in his throat as the doors moved farther apart. The hairs on the back of his neck sprang up, but the reaction had nothing to do with what Exo had claimed was history in the making.
At that moment, Doc was much more focused on the past.
“By the Three Kennedys!” he whispered to himself. “This place…”
When the blast doors had parted most of the way, he saw the view beyond them with clarity. He saw crimson-skinned muties gathered in the extension of the hallway, cheering as the doors parted before them.
But Doc wasn’t nearly as interested in the new batch of muties as he was in the layout of the place…the walls, the tunnel.
“Ah, yes.” Ankh was grinning at him. “I see you are awestruck already, and this is but the entrance to our magnificent complex.”
“Awestruck, yes.” Doc nodded slowly. Up ahead, the shifter muties from both sides of the blast doors were rushing together, hugging and laughing as they reunited at the threshold. Someone on the other side was playing a musical instrument that sounded like a cross between a guitar and a dying cow, and the happy muties were dancing to the music.
But all Doc could focus on was the blast doors. They meant something to him, something unexpected, something that cast this place in an entirely new light.
“This is where it will all happen,” Ankh said. “A new beginning, though not quite the one that Exo expects.”
Doc did not reply. His mind was too busy racing, processing the new information about the core and the Shift, considering what it meant to him and his friends. The implications were staggering.
If the core of the Shift was a redoubt, and the shifter muties were in control of it, as they appeared to be, Doc’s life had just gotten a good deal more complicated.