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.
Ricky tossed a rock into the bubbling lava and watched it melt in an instant, casting up a plume of steam.
“That’s some hot stuff, man.” He elbowed Jak, who walked beside him at the front of the group. “Get too close, and it’ll give you a sunburn.”
“No want get close.” Jak was a good thirty paces from the lava channel, where he’d stayed since the team had started hiking. He was only too happy to let Ricky stay between him and the superheated flow. “Enemy not come that direction.”
Ricky raised an index finger. “Unless things change again, that is. It happened before.”
Jak snorted. “We ready. Learned lesson.” He smiled grimly. “Expect unexpected.”
Just then, Ryan trotted forward from the middle ranks. “Guys.” They parted, and he formed up between them. “What’s the good word?”
“All quiet for now,” Ricky said.
“All hot,” Jak added.
“What about back there?” Ricky bobbed his head toward the rest of the column. “Anything we should know about?”
Ryan shook his head. “Krysty hasn’t gotten a signal since we set out. No seizures, no funny feelings, nothing.”
“That good,” Jak said, “for her.”
“Not so good if we want to find Doc, though,” Ricky stated. “If we run out of lava channel, we’ll need to find another way to pick up the trail.”
“My gut tells me something will turn up.” Ryan narrowed his eyes and scanned the scenery—clusters of sandy humps rolling in all directions, split up ahead by the arrow-straight river of lava. “As crazy as this place is, I’ll be more surprised if something doesn’t turn up soon.”
Ricky kicked up a spray of sand with the toe of his boot. “Why do you think it’s like that? This place? Why do you think it’s so crazy?”
“If Doc was here, he’d have some kind of scientific explanation. As it is…” Ryan sighed. “Krysty says something awful happened to the earth around here, but, you know, the same could be said for much of the Deathlands.”
“Skydark cause somehow?” Jak asked. “War aftereffect?”
“Or something since then?” Ricky queried. “Some kind of science project gone wrong, mebbe?”
“Any of the above.” Ryan shrugged. “Right now, I guess it doesn’t much matter. We just need to find Doc and get the hell out of here before the phenomenon kills Krysty.”
“Survive first.” Jak nodded in agreement. “Explain later.”
“Hmm.” Ricky stared at the lava-filled