Doc and Fixie had been back in the mat-trans chamber for less than five minutes when the door flew open and Exo stormed into the room.
“Hello, children!” Instead of a candy stick, Exo had what looked like a strip of leathery black jerky in a corner of his mouth. “You’ve been naughty, haven’t you?”
Doc froze, wondering if Exo knew what he and Fixie had been up to for the past few hours. Had he come to punish them for their unauthorized foray to the transmitter and their efforts to restore Hammersmith’s dream?
“Well?” Exo pulled the jerky strip from his mouth and flapped it at each of the men in turn. “Who’s been the naughty one? Dr. Hammersmith, or his lovely assistant?”
“Neither.” Fixie smiled and spread his arms. “We’ve both been working hard and keeping our noses clean.”
“That’s too bad.” Exo looked deeply disappointed. “I was going to give the naughtiest one a treat!” He held up the jerky. “A hunk of the last naughty one to get my attention.” He waved the jerky in the air, then brought it down and bit off the end of it with savage gusto.
Doc went on smiling but recoiled inside. Cannibalism. It never got old in the Deathlands.
Exo strolled the perimeter of the chamber, looking around at the parts and pieces in various states of repair. “So can we have this ready by tomorrow?”
“Of course!” Fixie saluted with a flourish. “We were just saying that was when we’d be ready, weren’t we, Dr. H.?”
Doc met Fixie’s gaze, which told him all he needed to know. Play along. “Yes, yes. No later than tomorrow.”
“I can’t wait!” Exo twirled Doc’s swordstick like a majorette’s baton. “Tomorrow, the Shift will be mine! And after that, the sky’s the limit!”
“Actually,” Fixie said, “we’ll need a little more time for the sky.”
Exo whipped around and glared Fixie, shaking the point of the swordstick at him. For a moment, Doc thought he was going to go ballistic and punish Fixie for his egregious comment.
But instead, Exo’s glare turned into a grin. “A little more?” He laughed. “So be it! But I expect the stars to be part of the package.”
“Done and done.” Fixie dusted off his hands and took a bow.
Exo hurried over and gave him a long hug. Then he turned to Doc, reaching out as if he was going to hug him, too.
Instead, as usual, he took a swing at him. The blow was an uppercut pumped deep into Doc’s belly, blasting the breath right out of him.
Exo bit off another hank of jerky, then threw the remaining piece on the floor between Doc and Fixie. “Here, fight over that for your dinner.” Laughing, he strutted out the door, twirling Doc’s swordstick at his side. “No time for a sit-down meal today! You can feast all you want tomorrow, after my empire has come to pass.”
As Doc watched him go, his hand patted the razor blade in his pocket. He wanted to fish it out and put it to use so badly, just to finish off that mutie monster.
But he knew the time wasn’t right.
“Don’t worry about him,” Fixie said after Exo had gone. “He’ll be out of the picture before you know it.”
Doc frowned as the pain from the punch in his gut began to subside. “What do you know about his brain damage?” he asked.
“From the fever, you mean?”
“I suppose.” Doc shrugged. “Ankh told me that Exo had experienced some form of brain damage and hasn’t been the same since.”
“You might say that.” Fixie nodded. “Everything in the Shift is subject to transformation, including diseases. Exo and Ankh caught one of the worst of them and nearly died. Only Ankh came out of it with his mind intact. Exo’s mind was twisted, many of his memories lost or altered. That’s why he thinks you’re Hammersmith, and he doesn’t remember the truth about Ankh.”
“Truth? What truth?”
“Ankh is family,” Fixie replied. “Ankh is Exo’s younger brother.” With that, he trotted across the chamber and opened a panel in the floor. “Hey, I could use a hand over here.”
Doc heard him but didn’t move. He was too busy processing what Fixie had just told him. “But…but Ankh is plotting to overthrow him.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Fixie grabbed a voltage meter and sat on the edge of the open floor panel. “He is one cruel, crazy son of a bitch. The sucker punch he gave you is nothing compared to the atrocities he’s committed since his mind went.”
“Then, why hasn’t anyone overthrown him until now?”
“Better the devil you know, right?” Fixie nodded knowingly and eased himself down into the opening in the floor.
“Until now.”
“Exactly.” Fixie raised his voice to be heard from under the flooring. “Things are finally about to change around here. Only they won’t change the way Ankh thinks they will. When it’s all over, he’ll be finished, too.”
“And who’ll be in charge then? You?”
“Not me.” Fixie laughed. “No one will be in charge.”
“You are referring to a state of anarchy?” Doc asked.
“We’re making a paradise here,” Fixie said. “Who needs tyrants in paradise?”
Doc couldn’t argue with his logic, though history provided far too many examples to the contrary. “So when will the device truly be ready? Tomorrow must be an overly optimistic deadline, but…”
“No, it’s not.” Fixie popped up from the hole in the floor, shaking his head. “If anything, it’s overly conservative. Not that I was going to tell him that.”
Doc frowned. “You can get it done sooner?”
“You better believe it, Theo. We’ll have the system online within the hour, barring unforeseen failures. I told you, I’ve been working on this for a while now.”
“Dribs and drabs, you said.”
Fixie shrugged. “I might have been playing it down a little, now that you mention it.”