Doc was in shock as Ankh led him through the underground complex that the shifters called the core. As a repurposed redoubt, the place was very familiar in terms of layout and design. A few times, as Doc rounded a corner or looked into a particular room, he felt a twinge of déjà vu at how much it resembled other redoubts he’d visited.
There were offices, armories and garages, much as there were in other redoubts, as well as barracks, bathrooms, dining halls and an auditorium. When the tour finally ended on the third level down, things got really interesting…and cold. Doc had to pull on his frock coat against the chill.
Doc was led to a nondescript door at the end of a long featureless corridor. Ankh punched a code into a numbered keypad, then the door slid open.
“This is it.” Ankh stepped aside and gestured for Doc to enter. “Your laboratory, Dr. Hammersmith. I think you’ll find that everything is exactly the way you left it.”
Doc knew he should enter the lab warily, but he couldn’t restrain his curiosity. He ambled through the door without another word.
Looking around on the other side, he did not at first realize the significance of the place. He was too dumbstruck by the level of the mess that surrounded him on all sides to wrap his head around the obfuscated details.
Cables hung from the ceiling and sprawled across the floor like enormous tangles of spaghetti. Equipment squatted around the large room in various stages of disassembly, with open panels revealing ruined circuitry, jumbles of wiring, broken probes and scorched and shattered computer monitors.
Ceiling lights flickered, and paper printouts fluttered in the breeze from the open door. Books and notebooks were stacked and spread open on counters, crates and flooring. Not to mention, there were spare parts, hand tools and garbage everywhere, scattered hither and yon with seeming abandon.
Plus, the place reeked of rotten food, urine and what he knew was marijuana. Someone—the real Hammersmith or maybe the shifters—had to have smoked a lot of marijuana in there.
Doc was just about to comment on the smell when the configuration of the room finally got through to him. Frowning, he counted the amber-and-green walls. Armaglass walls.
Six. The room was hexagonal.
“Dear God,” he muttered. His gaze fell to the floor, but it was too cluttered for a clear view. He nudged aside a fat cable with the toe of his boot, then also pushed away an open bucket full of screws, nuts, nails, bolts and tacks.
What he saw in the space he’d cleared made his heart beat faster. It took everything he had not to react visibly and clue in Ankh about the importance of what he was looking at.
“Did you find something, William?” Ankh asked from the doorway.
“No, no, not yet,” Doc replied, even as he stared down at the silver disks set into the floor. “Just taking a quick mental inventory.”
The truth was, though, that the armaglass walls, hexagonal layout and silver disks set into the floor all added up. Finally, he knew what he’d stumbled into, and how it might be connected to the Shift.
If only he knew what to do about it.
Behind him, Ankh walked into the room. “Helpers are available, if you like. Until now, we refrained from touching anything in here in case it was important, but you’ll find our people aren’t afraid of hard work on behalf of the new empire.”
“Fine, fine.” Doc made a point of looking away from the disks in the floor. Turning, he folded his arms over his chest and raised his eyebrows at Ankh. “Then, I suppose I ought to get to work, eh? Don’t want to keep destiny waiting.”
Ankh cocked his head for a moment, as if something seemed wrong, but then he seemed to shake it off and smiled. “Be sure to let us know if you need anything, Doctor. Just tell whichever attendant is assisting you, and he or she will see to it that you get what you need.”
“Don’t want to hold up the project,” Doc said cheerfully, though the truth was, Ankh didn’t expect him to work miracles with the equipment. His work in the lab was actually intended to be a delaying tactic, and then a distraction while power was seized from Exo.
But Doc’s new secret was this: he might actually be able to use what was in that room to his advantage. He wasn’t a whitecoat with mastery of predark tech, but he did know a little about the room. The good Lord knew, he’d used it often enough, along with Ryan and the others.
Because the truth was, he was standing in the middle of a mat-trans chamber, much like the ones that had transmitted the companions all over the Deathlands and beyond.
“Aren’t you going to ask what happened in here?” Ankh kicked a metal pipe, sending it clanging into the base of some kind of diagnostic device. “How it all got to be such a wreck?”
Doc looked back at the doorway, making sure no one was lurking and listening in on their conversation. “I assumed it was Hammersmith’s doing. My doing, I should say.”
“It was his top assistant, actually. Heir to the throne,” Ankh said. “There was an accident, and she was badly damaged.”
“This is the aftermath of the accident?” Doc asked.
“The aftermath of her temper tantrum when she took off out of here. She was completely out of control, let me tell you.”
“So she ran?”
“For a while.” Ankh nodded smugly. “But now she’s come back to the fold. She wants to make amends for what she’s done.”
“I see. And how will she do that, I wonder?”
“By infiltrating and betraying your comrades,” Ankh said. “She has already set them up for the slaughter.”