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 chute 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?”
“That’s right.” She grinned at him. “I did say I was going to do that, didn’t I?” Then she spun and swung the crowbar into the control panel again, kicking off the loudest crackling and the biggest sparks yet.
Jak stepped closer, keeping a knife palmed in one hand and the other hand near the butt of his holstered .357 blaster. “What ’bout multiple personality problem? Also said wanted machines fix that.”
“Is that what I said?” She swung the crowbar again, smashing more controls. “And you believed me?”
Another quake struck, and Jak teetered. “Not understand. If not doing those things, what want? Why smash?”
“What do I want?” She was wild-eyed when she looked his way again. For the first time since he’d met her, the braid that hung from her left temple had turned bright purple. “I want to destroy the whole damned Shift and everyone living in it!”