Doc blinked furiously as he was dragged from the pitch-blackness and dumped in a space awash in bright white light. For a long moment, he couldn’t see a thing beyond a few dim outlines in the flaring brilliance.
Then, as his eyes adjusted, things slowly took shape around him. He saw that he was in a round, stone-walled chamber, open to the sunlight overhead. He lay on a dirt floor at the feet of a group of muties, unarmed and at their mercy.
The question was, what did they want with him? And why had they brought him here, wherever here was?
“Oh, dear.” As Doc looked around, the muties stared back at him with great interest. They couldn’t take their eyes off him; even as they giggled and tittered in childlike voices, their stares never left him for an instant.
At least they didn’t seem to be exuding hostility. Doc smiled as he sat there, and many of them smiled back at him. The crimson skin of their faces crinkled around their mouths and the corners of their eyes, suggesting a response that was the polar opposite of hostile.
“Well, then.” Doc slowly got to his feet. “Perhaps I have made some new friends after all. Perhaps this has all been an unfortunate mistake.”
Just then, a familiar high-pitched voice piped up over the noise from the crowd. “Not a mistake at all. And we are old friends, not new ones.”
Instantly, Doc recognized the voice as that of the first being who had grabbed him in the lightless stone cell. Turning to look at him, Doc saw a mutie with skin as red as a burning ember. He stood taller than the other muties by at least a head, and wore different clothing, as well. The muties in the crowd were dressed in scavenged predark clothes, while this one wore a gray uniform and boots that were practically in mint condition. Was he a leader, perhaps?
“I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage.” Doc bowed quickly at the waist. “Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner, at your service.” Straightening, he raised his eyebrows at the apparent leader of the muties. “And what shall I call you, pray tell?”
The leader sighed and shook his head. “What have they done to you?”
“They? They, who?”
“Your captors, of course. The ones who took you from us.” The leader spread his arms wide. He held Doc’s silver lion’s-head swordstick in his left hand. Doc’s LeMat revolver was holstered at his hip. “We took you back, but they must have done something to you first. Taken your memories or senses. I only hope they didn’t ruin you for your holy work.”
“What sort of holy work is that?” Doc asked, marveling at his command of the English language.
The leader just stared at him with apparent pity and worry. “Have no fear,” he said coolly. “We will heal you, my friend.”
Doc cleared his throat, uncertain of what to say or do next. The only thing he knew for sure what that he’d never seen these particular muties before in his life. “If, as you say, we are friends, perhaps you could humor me. Perhaps you could tell me your name.”
“Though it hurts me to have to tell you, I’ll do it,” the mutie said. “My name is Exo. And yours is Dr. William Hammersmith.”
“I suppose it is.” Doc shrugged. “What else can you tell me about myself, friend Exo?”
“You have been a naughty boy, Dr. Hammersmith.” Exo ticked Doc’s ebony swordstick back and forth. “It’s a good thing you’re so important and such a good friend.”
“Naughty?” Doc straightened. Without the swordstick and LeMat revolver, he felt utterly naked. “In what way was I naughty?”
Exo pulled a stick of red-and-white-striped peppermint candy out of the vest pocket of his uniform. “You ran away. If you hadn’t done that, the interlopers never would have taken you.”
“I see.” Doc nodded, thinking how appropriate it was that his doppelganger had a penchant for escape. Doc himself, after being snatched through time from the nineteenth century to the twentieth, had tried numerous times to get away from his whitecoat captors. “And you say these interlopers seized me against my will?”
Exo peeled back the plastic wrapper and slid the candy stick between his lips. “Why else would you have stayed away so long, leaving your critical work unfinished?”
“Hmm.” Doc frowned and rubbed the gray stubble on his chin. “And what is this work to which you refer, precisely?”
“Perfecting the Shift, of course.”
“Ah, the Shift.” Doc nodded, then tipped his head to one side and squinted. “Which is, of course…?”
Exo took the candy stick out of his mouth and swept it in a semicircle. “All around us! The deadliest place in the Deathlands!” Stomping forward, he jabbed the swordstick at Doc’s chest. “And you are making it even deadlier.”
The mutie’s breath was rancid enough to choke a horse, but Doc stood his ground. “Is that so?”
Exo narrowed his gaze. “I can see by the look on your face that you still don’t remember it all. But no matter.” The mutie reached over and cupped the right side of Doc’s face in his hand. “You still have time for it to come back to you. The journey to the core will take days, and we have other business to conduct on the way.”
Doc couldn’t help leaning his head away from Exo’s hand. “What business is that?”
Exo laughed that high giggle of his, the one that so belied his threatening personality. “Teaching your kidnappers a lesson, dear Doctor. Teaching them the price of intruding in the Shift, where they are not welcome and never will be.”
He was talking about Ryan and the others, and Doc knew it. “What price is that?”
Exo paused a moment, his face completely unreadable. Then, suddenly, he lunged forward and shouted in Doc’s face, “Death! Torture, mutilation and death at the hands of the shifters!”
Doc cleared his throat and took a step back. “I do not suppose you would consider letting bygones be bygones?”
Exo giggled and tossed away his candy stick. This time, when he lunged, he threw Doc down on the ground and pummeled him with his fist and the head of the swordstick until Doc started fading again.
“The Children of the Shift never forgive!” As Exo said it, the other muties roared in agreement. “We understand only one thing! Swift and brutal retribution without hesitation or mercy!”
It was then that Doc lost consciousness. His last thought before he went under was if this was how Exo treated his friends, then Ryan and the others were really in for it.