# Atlantis Reprise

James Axler

For Ryan Cawdor, leader of a small group of post-apocalypse survivalists, it's the inner fire of survival that guides them through this hell on earth…to whatever lies beyond the daily fight for existence. There are times when the oblivion of death seems a most welcome journey out of Deathlands.But for Ryan, death is something his warrior's soul will never take on without a fight.In the forested coastal region of the eastern seaboard, near the Pine Barrens of what was New Jersey, Ryan and his companions encounter a group of rebels. Having broken away from the strange, isolated community known as Atlantis, and led by the obscene and paranoid Odyssey, this small group desires to live in peace. But in a chill-or-be-chilled world, freedom can only be won by spilled blood. Ryan and company are willing to come to the aid of these freedom fighters, ready to wage a war against the twisted tyranny that permeates Deathlands.

## “You know what you’re saying, don’t you?”

Lemur nodded. “I am well aware.”

“If this was a definite plan to sneak in, snatch Doc and Krysty and take them back to Atlantis,” Ryan stated, “then he knew they were here, he knew what made them of interest and he knew how to get past your sec patrol and into the ville. He knew exactly where we were. There’s only one way he could have known all that.”

“Spies,” Mark said. “Wretches who claim to want freedom but are nothing more than dogs.”

“Who are they?” Ryan asked. “Mark, you trained as a Crawler and you knew nothing of spies?”

Mark returned Ryan’s stare, unblinking. Finally Ryan nodded. “I believe you. You’ve put too much in here to be a traitor. But someone is, and if they know about us, then they know about everything you do. If we’re gonna get my people back, and get rid of Odyssey, then we’re gonna have to move fast—before the information has a chance to find its way back to Atlantis.”

He pulled himself to his feet. “Are you ready?”

Lemur shook his head. “No…but we have no choice.”

## Other titles in the Deathlands saga:

Pony Soldiers

Dectra Chain

Ice and Fire

Red Equinox

Northstar Rising

Time Nomads

Latitude Zero

Seedling Dark Carnival

Chill Factor

Moon Fate

Fury’s Pilgrims

Shockscape

Deep Empire

Cold Asylum

Twilight Children

Rider, Reaper

Road Wars

Trader Redux

Genesis Echo

Shadowfall

Ground Zero

Emerald Fire

Bloodlines

Crossways

Keepers of the Sun

Circle Thrice

Eclipse at Noon

Stoneface

Bitter Fruit

Skydark

Demons of Eden

The Mars Arena

Watersleep

Nightmare Passage

Freedom Lost

Way of the Wolf

Dark Emblem

Crucible of Time

Starfall

Encounter: Collector’s Edition

Gemini Rising

Gaia’s Demise

Dark Reckoning

Shadow World

Pandora’s Redoubt

Rat King

Zero City

Savage Armada

Judas Strike

Shadow Fortress

Sunchild

Breakthrough

Salvation Road

Amazon Gate

Destiny’s Truth

Skydark Spawn

Damnation Road Show

Devil Riders

Bloodfire

Hellbenders

Separation

Death Hunt

Shaking Earth

Black Harvest

Vengeance Trail

Ritual Chill

Atlantis Reprise

### DEATH LANDS ®

James Axler


Of all the causes which conspire to blind

Man’s erring judgment and misguide the mind,

What the weak head with strongest bias rules,

Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.

—Alexander Pope,

An Essay on Criticism

## THE DEATHLANDS SAGA

This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 that was the bitter outcome of a struggle for global dominance.

There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.

But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endure—in the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to nature’s heart despite its ruination.

Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.

Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville’s own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered by her Mother Sonja.

J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan’s close ally, he, too, honed his skills traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.

Doctor Theophilus Tanner: Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc has been thrown into a future he couldn’t have imagined.

Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare.

Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger, the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.

Dean Cawdor: Ryan’s young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows, and yet he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.

In a world where all was lost, they are humanity’s last hope….

## Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

## Chapter One

The ruins lay smoldering in the valley below them. Worn down by the fight, caught by the searing heat of the fires that had spread through the ville on the wings of the swirling zephyrs, there were few survivors. Not many that were people. A few mules and horses, some dogs—those that had managed to slip their bonds and scrabble their way up the steep slopes, their fear powering their limbs as they attempted to outrun the devastation.

Ryan Cawdor, Jak Lauren, J. B. Dix, Mildred Wyeth and Krysty Wroth had prevailed, with them, Doc Tanner—or possibly not Doc Tanner. Who could tell, in his currently unconscious state, whether he would wake to once more be Dr. Theophilus Tanner, or if he would be Joseph Jordan, the reincarnated or transferred soul of a Scottish trapper from the centuries before the nukecaust?

For now, it didn’t matter. Like all of them, Doc was beyond caring about such matters. While he was still wrapped in the velvet oblivion of unconsciousness, the others began to stir. They had managed to escape from the holocaust that raged beneath them, but the effort had rendered all of them too exhausted to take another step, all sinking into their own sleep of exhaustion.

Yet this wasn’t the place to succumb to such measures. The heat rising on spiraling air from the inferno beneath was enough to warm the air around and the earth beneath them, to take the edge from the ever present howling gales that swept unfettered across the barren plains of rock and ice that surrounded them. It was enough to keep them from freezing to an early chill. But it wouldn’t sustain them for long: the cold would bite, the fires below subside. When that happened, then the sudden drop in temperature would take a swift and exacting toll.

Should they even survive this, then there was the greater problem: where did they go from here?

First things first. The most important thing was to survive as long as possible, from one moment to the next, until these moments ran together to make a long stretch of time. And to survive, they had to be on their feet and moving.

Ryan was the first to surface from the blackness. Something deep inside him nagged and impelled him to come around from the comfort of oblivion. He was tired, aching, and felt as though he could settle into the arms of Morpheus forever, never to be bothered again by the rigors of having to survive. And yet still there nagged a voice that told him to face the pain and the cold. It wasn’t just about him. When he became the leader of his small group, then he undertook the duty to try to guide them through adversity to whatever it was that they had spent so long searching for. That obligation wouldn’t allow him to take the easy way out.

Ryan dragged his aching limbs, his legs still suffused with lactic acid burn from their flight, and used his less battered and more responsive arms to propel himself upward, into a kneeling position. It took a moment for him to gain his bearings. He looked out over the empty plain, the daylight already beginning to fade, then back toward the valley, the air around the rim glowing as though casting a benign radiation into the darkening skies.

But there was no mistaking the odor that drifted across the short distance. Cutting through the ever present sulfur burn that always made the air taste sour, there was the smell of roasted flesh, sickly sweet and mixed with the ashes of the woods and brick that had once constituted the ville of Fairbanks.

A glorious folly. Doc had used those words once, when he was Doc. He had been quoting some kind of old song or poem at them, something to do with six hundred men riding into a valley. Mebbe that was why he could think of it now, why it cut through the fog that still partially clouded his mind.

Not knowing what else to do, Ryan hauled himself to his feet and half walked, half stumbled across the short distance to the rim of the valley, so that he could see what was happening below.

Nothing.

Not, at least, in terms of action or life. There were still tongues of fire that whipped across the remains of the ville, crisscrossing over the rubble that was all that remained of the streets and buildings. If anything had managed to stay alive in there, it was trapped and buying the farm in a long, slow, agonizing way.

Not that Ryan cared. Those mad Inuit bastards would only have chilled them after they’d burned the inhabitants of the ville. With only a very few left back at the settlement, he guessed that this meant the end of the Inuit tribe.

Fuck them, they would have taken out his people.

His only concern about who lived was based on the assumption that any still down there may come after them. And if his friends felt anything like he did right now, then they were in no fit condition to take on anyone.

He turned his back on the mayhem below and trudged wearily to where the rest of the companions lay on the ground, some now beginning to show signs of life.

Mildred and Jak had managed to reenter the real world and were no longer blearily staring around them, struggling to make their aching limbs respond to the messages their befuddled brains were sending. By the time that they were able to lift themselves to their feet, J.B. and Krysty were also beginning to respond to their surroundings.

It left only Doc, blissfully unaware of the perils from which he had been rescued, and the perils in which he now reposed, oblivious on the cold, hard ground.

The shock of the cold beginning to hit them as the night crept on and the fires in the valley subsided rapidly, casting up less heat, was enough to focus their minds.

Mildred checked Doc. He was unconscious, but seemingly unharmed apart from a few contusions and cuts, which was no more than the rest of them had suffered during the brief and brutal battle. There was no reason that she could define to explain why he was still unconscious while the others had all managed to recover sufficiently to function.

‘What the hell do we do now?’ J.B. asked Ryan as the two men stood surveying the wasteland around them. ‘Can’t go on to Ank Ridge. We don’t know where it is, don’t know how far and mebbe couldn’t even pick up the trail.’

‘Even if we could, they’d have some idea of what’s been going on, and how the hell could we explain away the trail of devastation the Inuit left behind them? We’re all that’s left. We’d have to shoulder all the blame and the shit that would come with it,’ Ryan added grimly. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m sure as shit not up to another firefight right now.’

J.B. cast a glance back over his shoulder to where Mildred was still tending to Doc. ‘Not if we’ve got a passenger, as well. Whoever the hell he’s going to be next,’ he said simply.

‘So, a rock and a hard place. Fireblast, whoever thought that one up must have been thinking of a place like this,’ Ryan murmured. ‘J.B., we don’t know what lies off the trails, and we don’t know how far anything is in any direction except one. We’ve only got the two choices.’

‘Go back past the slopes, all the way back to the redoubt, and then jump.’ It was a statement rather than a question.

‘That’s only one choice. What’s the second?’

Ryan shrugged. ‘Lie down, go back to sleep and buy the farm.’

FACED WITH A CHOICE that stark, even the most tired of limbs, the slowest of dulled reactions, couldn’t fail to click into gear. Mildred made Doc as warm and comfortable as was possible and then joined the others in their mission under the fading light.

There were animals roaming, lost around the rim of the valley. Some of the dogs still had sleds or partial sleds attached to them. The companions’ task was to round up as many of the animals as they could, taking care not to spook them. Easier said than done, as the events in the valley had set a wave of fear trembling through those creatures that survived. But they, too were exhausted, and so, with a little patience, the companions were able to round up the surviving livestock and tether it as best as possible.

The plan was simple: from the partial and whole sleds that survived, they would attempt to cobble together enough transport to hook up to the beasts. That would enable them to tackle the distance between their position and the redoubt perhaps faster than they would on foot, and certainly enable them to preserve their energies. The remainder of any salvaged wood they could use for fires along the journey, to warm them and their pack beasts in the darkest, coldest watches of the night.

The beasts could be used to pull the transport. They could also be slaughtered along the way to provide food for both the companions and for those beasts that survived. The slaughter would perhaps put fear into the beasts, but that would be countered by their intense cold and hunger, which would make them perhaps more malleable than usual.

By the time that they had collected the livestock, made a fire for the now imminent night, and begun to hammer together enough sleds to carry them and any animal carcasses they would slaughter for food back to the redoubt, they were exhausted. Unwilling to begin the slaughter so soon and to face a sleepless night with the unsettled livestock, the companions resorted to the remaining self-heats. Whatever else occurred, J.B. and Mildred always insured that they could keep their essential stocks close to hand. It wasn’t even something they thought about: it was a second nature.

The food was foul, but it was nutritious enough to justify forcing it down rather than throwing it to one side in disgust. Their stomachs full, they settled to rest, Ryan opting to force himself awake to keep first watch.

As his companions and the beasts slept soundly into the night, Ryan cast his eye around him. The valley was now a distant glow, the fires finally burning themselves out. Nothing more had emerged from the ruins, and nothing was likely to have survived. Just the six of them and a smattering of livestock.

The one-eyed man wondered at how his friends were able to drag themselves from precipitous situations, coming back time and again from the brink of being chilled. One day their luck would run out, but until then there was little they could do except to keep moving.

But to keep moving across this plain that they already knew to be so hostile? With the sleds and the livestock, they had increased their chances of survival. Nonetheless, it was going to be a hard ride.

THE JOURNEY WAS LONG and hard. Started the next morning, it took two days and well into a third before the area of the redoubt hove into view. They stuck to the trail proscribed by the traffic between villes, now reinforced in view by the detritus left a few days before by the Inuit as they had passed. The pace they set was steady. To go too fast and risk burning out the strength left in the livestock would have been ultimately self-defeating. Nonetheless, it was important that they cover the ground quickly. The wood for fires, the livestock for food—neither would last for very long. Moreover, it was vital for their state of mind that they traverse the trail with speed and get out of that godforsaken territory.

It was almost a pleasure for them to be able to relax and to rest weary and torn muscles as the beasts pulling the sleds took most of the strain. They still had to be steered, which sometimes took its toll on wounded biceps and shoulders. A small price to pay for such a rapid and relatively easy progress.

Along the trail, the few landmarks that existed seemed to come upon them so much faster than before—inevitably, given their mode of transport, but vaguely disorienting after the rigors of the outward-bound march.

The deserted settlements, ripped apart by the plas-ex detonations of their previous visit, stood alone and desolate, their keening loneliness speaking more of the isolation and vast tracts of empty space than the companions could have cared to be reminded of, reliant as they were on exhausted beasts on a trail to nowhere. They were a stark reminder of how close the companions had come to being chilled themselves in such a manner—not once, but several times during the expedition. Even now, they weren’t out of danger. The weather had been holding for more than forty-eight hours, the heavy yellow-tinged chem clouds pregnant with rains and snows that could engulf them, lose them in the roaring blizzard, and soak and chill them to the bone, with no shelter within view where respite could be sought.

There were, in the distance, the occasional glimpses of deer or bear as the packs and herds went about the business of trying to survive. They could be a danger if they approached, but hopefully held too much fear of the sleds and those pulling them, based on past experience, to come too near.

The ice and snow plucked from the rock and swirled in the never-ending flurry of winds still numbed and chilled when coming into contact with exposed skin. Despite the layers of skins and furs that still swathed them, the companions were chilled to the bone by the constant crosswinds, this time without the exercise of marching to warm them in any way. It was all they could do not to succumb to the ravages of hypothermia. How ironic if their attempt to increase their speed was to cause their demise. However they chose to make their flight, it seemed as though they faced nothing but life-threatening obstacles.

Two nights huddled by fires built—on the second night—from some of their sleds caused them to double up for the last day, and to put more strain on the livestock—livestock that was becoming more and more unsettled as Jak slaughtered some to feed the others and to feed the companions. Ryan had been correct in his assumption that the creatures would be too hungry and cold to be that distressed by the slaughter, intent as they were on eating their chilled companions to appease the hunger gnawing at their guts; however they were still unsettled enough for their pace to be upset on the following day’s trek.

The trail took them along the base of the volcanic slopes that housed the Inuit village. They skirted the rock-enclosed passage and didn’t take the trail as it wound up into the wooded slopes, choosing to avoid a possible firefight by keeping to the base of the slope. Ryan hoped that the few remaining Inuit wouldn’t be hunting at that point in the day. The way he had it figured, they’d have enough trouble keeping the settlement going, and it was too early for them to be sniffing around for any sign of their warriors returning.

After passing the volcanic region, and watching it recede peacefully into the distance, it was only a matter of a few hours by sled before they reached the area where the redoubt was hidden.

All the while, Doc hovered between conscious and unconscious. Mildred tended to him, but could still find no reason why he shouldn’t be fully aware of what was occurring around him. It seemed to her almost as if he were surfacing, taking note of his surroundings, then retreating into his own mind after deciding that he didn’t like what he saw.

J.B. took what sightings he could in the appalling conditions, trusting the accuracy of the minisextant and his own skill to attain an accurate reading. Ryan hoped that the Armorer’s sense of direction under these conditions was accurate. They couldn’t last for much longer without some respite from the weather.

He didn’t care where they might end up when they made the mat-trans jump. Anywhere had to be better than this…although, he realized with bitterness it was probably how he’d felt before they ended up in these icy wastes.

J.B. motioned them to change direction and a familiar outcropping came into view. The end of their quest was in sight.

It was almost as if Doc knew. He surprised Mildred by raising himself up on one elbow and looking at her with a quizzical air that was at once all too familiar to her.

A suspicion confirmed when he opened his mouth and said, in a voice that was distinctly his own, ‘My dear Doctor, what on earth are we doing out here in these appalling conditions? And why, pray tell, do you look as though you’ve been on the losing side of a fight?’

## Chapter Two

Although nothing had changed within the confines of the redoubt since they had last set foot there a few days before, the atmosphere that greeted them was totally different. Where there had previously been an air of gloom and foreboding, now there was nothing but a sense of relief. Despite the memories that had been stirred by their last incursion, there was no trace of remorse or remembrance. The strange atmosphere that had seemed to drape itself over them, penetrating to their very souls and painting their emotional world a darker shade of black, had now lifted.

Perhaps those ghosts that had been stirred had now dissipated, blown away by the experiences of the past few days. Perhaps those ghosts had never really existed and were just random memories that had fed a deeper malaise triggered by the act of a mat-trans jump. Or perhaps they were still here, but were now kept at bay by the fatigue that ate into their very bones, deadening all thought and all feeling in the effort just to keep moving until they were in a position to fall unconscious with exhaustion.

Ryan punched in the sec code once they were on the inside of the heavy entry doors. The remaining beasts had been freed from the sleds and driven away from the entrance. They lurked at a distance, unsure of what to do and where to go. Born into service, they were wild but with muted survival instincts, wanting to stick close to humans they saw as a source of food. There was only a slim chance that they would survive in the harsh environment, finding their way back to the remaining Inuit if they were lucky. It might have been kinder to have chilled them all, putting them out of their misery quickly and efficiently, yet it would have required an effort that none would have felt they had the energy to discharge.

As the door closed on the lurking beasts, on the snow and ice carried on chill winds and on the barren rock landscape, they felt a collective relief. The slightly musty recycled air, heated to a bearable temperature, kicked in, driving the cold from their bones. It was all they could do to keep from collapsing in the tunnel.

Except, perhaps, for Doc, who seemed filled with a new vitality.

‘By the Three Kennedys, I don’t know what’s been going on—nor, come to that, why I am still with you when I appear to have been in some sort of coma all this time—but I do know that whatever it is, it appears to have taken a hefty toll upon you all.’

‘Hefty toll,’ Mildred repeated with a short, barking laugh. ‘Doc, you mad old freak of nature, I don’t think you even know how funny that is.’

‘Funny would appear to be a strange word for it, given the condition in which you find yourselves,’ Doc replied, a little perplexed.

‘You know, it kind of depends on what you mean by funny, I guess,’ Mildred answered him. ‘I mean, do you see me laughing?’

‘That would seem to be the last thing that you are capable of doing right now,’ Doc threw back at her with all seriousness.

Mildred fixed him with a shrewd look. ‘I don’t think you’ve got the slightest idea what’s been going on, have you?’

Doc opened his mouth, but no words came forth. Only Mildred now stood at the end of the corridor with him. The others had wordlessly made their way down the corridor, headed for the showers and the dorms. They moved slowly and with the grim determination of those only kept awake by sheer willpower, a dogged one-foot-in-front-of-the-other approach all that kept them going. Mildred followed the direction of his gaze, read the complete confusion in his eyes.

‘No, I don’t suppose you have,’ she murmured more to herself than to the bewildered old man. Then, in a louder voice, she added, ‘Doc, I can’t tell you everything now. I’m just too damn tired and aching. Another few hours aren’t going to hurt. We just need to rest and clean up before we jump.’

‘We’re using the mat-trans again, so soon? But surely we should be looking for—’

‘Doc, just don’t,’ she interrupted, holding up a hand to silence him, then turning away to follow the others. She threw a parting shot over her shoulder. ‘Just wait, keep it all in until tomorrow, then you’ll understand.’

Doc stood watching her, a frown furrowing his brow. Whatever had happened out there—whatever it was that he couldn’t remember—it had some kind of effect on those people he called his friends. The only friends he had in this godforsaken land in which he had been forced to strive for survival. Even in the few short minutes that he had been conscious he had noticed that there was some kind of distance that had arisen between them.

Why? He could recall being here and leaving to strike out toward Ank Ridge. But then? He could recall depression, and he could recall a storm that mirrored his mood, a blizzard that obscured the landscape in the same way that his feelings had obscured his ability to observe and function what was happening around him…and after that? A blur of ideas, images and emotions that he couldn’t grasp.

The distance he felt was mirrored by the way in which they had left him at the head of the tunnel. As Mildred disappeared around a dog-leg bend, leaving him isolated by the entrance, he felt that the physical distance was nothing more than a mirror.

Reluctantly—for he had no idea what he would face when the others had rested—he followed on from them. By the time that he had reached the showers, they were stripped and washing the filth, ice and blood from their battered bodies.

Doc sat quietly as they finished and dried themselves. Only the barest necessity of communication took place, no more than a few words in each exchange. It was almost as though they were too tired to even acknowledge one another’s existence. Certainly, none seemed to acknowledge Doc’s presence.

Before too long he was left alone in the shower room, the others having gone in search of washing machines. Automatically, he stripped and washed himself, noting with an almost detached bemusement the signs of combat, the scars of recent wounds and the discoloration of contusion on his body. How he came to have these, he had no idea.

Frankly, he didn’t care. It was with no little sense of foreboding that he eventually joined the others in the dorms, where he tried to settle to sleep.

The redoubt was silent and still. Doc tried to will himself to sleep, but his mind was racing. Fragments of what might have occurred, and of the thoughts that had plagued what, to him, seemed like a distant dream, ran through his mind, tripping over each other in the race to assume order and to make some kind of sense.

Eventually the effort of trying to make sense from chaos was enough to tire him and he fell into a fitful, uneasy sleep.

DOC AWOKE the next morning to find that the others had risen before him. Despite the unease with which he had first fallen into sleep, it had proved to move from fitful to deep and dreamless, and he now felt refreshed and less apprehensive. He rose and dressed, going in search of the others. In the quiet of the redoubt, the hum of unmaintenanced machinery the only breaks in the silence, it wasn’t difficult to determine where they were.

Doc’s sense took him to the kitchens, where the others were attempting to construct some kind of appetizing and nutritious meal from what they had left in the stores before leaving the last time. Which was very little. But they were in no condition to be fussy about what they would eat. Even the remains of the stores beat charred and burned mule or dog meat when it came to a contest.

‘Doc, I didn’t want to wake you, so I left you,’ Krysty said on catching sight of him. ‘Hope that was okay. How are you feeling?’

‘Do you mean generally? Or are you being more specific—as in, do I feel quite insane today?’ Doc queried with as much of a grin as he could muster.

‘It wasn’t what I meant, but I guess it’s a fair question,’ Krysty mused. ‘I don’t know what you remember, but you kind of lost it for a while there.’

‘I’ll have to take your word for that,’ the old man answered, settling himself among them. ‘I have no recollection of any events after first leaving here and being caught in a blizzard.’

Ryan had been watching Doc carefully and had no doubts that the old man was telling the truth. There was something disingenuous about the old man. It was always easy to see when Doc was entering one of his mentally fragile phases, and equally it was easy to see when he had clarity of thought. Now was one of the latter times and Doc seemed genuinely confused about events. If nothing else, Ryan was glad to see the back of Joseph Jordan, whoever or whatever he may have been.

‘Dark night, there’s a lot that happened since then,’ J.B. said with a degree of wry understatement. ‘Where do we begin?’

Doc sat entranced while the events of the past few days were relayed to him. The trek across the wastelands, followed by their discovery by the Inuit hunting party when Doc tried to escape them. Their captivity in the Inuit settlement and near sacrifice in pagan- and Christian-inspired ritual to insure the fertility of the waning tribe. From this, the sudden emergence from fever of a new personality within Doc—that of the reincarnated Joseph Jordan. When the story reached this point, all watched Doc closely for some flicker of recognition, yet there was none. The only emotion to register on his face was that of astonishment.

From here, the old man’s astonishment mounted as they unfurled his plans to take on the ville of Fairbanks as a large-scale sacrifice to their Lord, and of the war party he had helped to prepare.

By the time that Mildred and Jak were relaying to him the doomed attack on the ville, and the manner in which they had almost been trapped within the burning streets, Doc’s face was ashen. Racing through his mind were thoughts of how his own insanity had nearly doomed his companions. Thoughts that jostled for space within his mind with others, that were darker and more introverted: how fragile was his mind, his personality, that it was able to be submerged so easily into some kind of disguise? How easy was it for him to sink into a kind of oblivion where he was able to threaten the very existence of those he valued most with no impunity?

‘Doc, Doc, are you okay?’

‘Eh?’ The old man shook himself from his reverie to see that the others were studying him closely. He realized that their story had ended and he had seemed not to acknowledge this.

‘I’m sorry,’ he began haltingly. ‘I just find it hard to comprehend. That I could have seemed to have functioned so clearly and yet to be advocating such madness. In fact, actively pursuing it.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I have no recall of any of the events you have outlined, not even in the sense of a dream from which I was detached, merely the observer. What I recall is so much…less…’ He petered off, not quite sure where to begin.

In the ensuing silence Ryan scanned the companions as they sat around the kitchen of the redoubt. Mildred and Krysty, who seemed to have a better grasp of the complexities of Doc’s psyche than anyone else, were on edge, waiting for the old man to try to explain what had happened to him in his own mind. It was vital information for them, as they would be able to try to assess just where he was coming from…and perhaps where he was going to.

Jak was impassive. His scarred albino features were as grim and unreadable as they always were. Very rarely did any emotion escape the mask that he used to shield himself from the outside world. But he would be taking it in and making his own assessment.

J.B. looked like Ryan felt—as though he wanted to know what was happening with Doc but doubted that he could assimilate it. The two men had been friends for so long that Ryan was sure that J.B. felt the same way as he did. They were men of action and only used their sharp minds when action was called for. This was something beyond that range of experience.

Doc began again. ‘In my mind, I felt as though I were not here. Everything that I experienced on our journey to the Inuit ville was part of some test. I was back in the time from which I originally came. I was insane, locked in a padded room and going through these experiences as a kind of mental exercise. It was as though I were a rat in a maze, running blindly at the behest of some celestial scientist who had a purpose in mind for me, and if I reached the end of the maze I would be rewarded. Not with candy or cheese, but with the truth. A revelation that would explain why I was going through this whole experience…not just since landing here, but in the entire time since you, my dear friends, first saved me from the hands of Cort Strasser.

‘It seemed to me that in order to do this, I had to go through some kind of change, some kind of rebirth. I had to be like the butterfly that emerges from the chrysalis…even if that change meant that I had little or no knowledge of the life that I had experienced before that moment.

‘I suspect that that was the moment at which this man Jordan first made an appearance. I could not tell you who or what he was, only that once he appeared, I receded not just in your eyes, but in my own mind, as well. I have no recall of anything that happened after that, and only one fleeting memory from then until I awoke on the sled as we approached this place once more.

‘If I think about it, I can remember, just for a moment, standing in a log cabin staring at you all, wrapped in furs and skins. I tried to speak, but somehow the words would not come out. It was as though I were watching you through a gauze, as though I could hear you through a fog of white noise. My chest was constrained, making every breath something for which I had to fight, every syllable something that had to be forced from my lips. The words were there, but they would not come out.’

‘But it is fleeting, momentary, and after that there is nothing. Nothing until last evening, when I awoke to find myself on a sled, aware that something had happened, but not what that may be.’

Doc stuttered to a halt and shrugged, not knowing where to go.

‘I think that being here triggered things you didn’t want to remember and made you withdraw into yourself,’ Mildred said slowly. ‘Strange thing is, although it may sound like madness, it’s more a way of clinging on to your sanity.’

‘But at what cost?’ Doc spit bitterly. ‘What does it benefit me if I save sanity at the expense of losing identity? What use is it if I close down whenever things get too much? How does this settle with the notion that I am in some way a useful member of this group. Good heavens, Doctor, if I am to retreat into my own head at the drop of a hat, what possible use could I be to you? In fact, I could be nothing except a complete liability. And this is not a world in which to carry passengers.’

‘That’s for us to decide,’ Ryan cut in.

Doc shook his head firmly. ‘I cannot be responsible for such an eventuality.’

‘Then what do you propose to do about it?’ Krysty asked in a reasonable tone. ‘You want to stay here, alone? How long will you cling to your sanity then? You had a set of circumstances that are unlikely to occur again. I can’t see why you—’

‘But that is not the point,’ Doc shouted over her. ‘It may have been a one-off occurrence, but I cannot know that for sure, any more than you can. I cannot risk it happening again.’

‘Doc, the only way any of us can avoid a risk like that is by buying the farm right here and now, and that’s just stupe,’ J.B. said. ‘It’s this fucking place—it messes with our heads. Let’s just get the hell out and see what we feel like when we land somewhere else.’

It was a view with which all could agree, even Doc, who approached the idea with some trepidation, yet could see through his own fears how the redoubt may be, once more, exerting its pernicious influence.

They effected the quickest evacuation of all their redoubt experiences. In next to no time, they had collected what little they had to take with them, replenished from the few supplies left in the stores and were in the mattrans chamber.

Ryan stood by the door while the others filed into the chamber. As he entered and closed the door, Krysty settled on the disk-inset floor next to an apprehensive-looking Doc. She could feel the oppressive atmosphere that had once again been creeping upon them begin to lift, as if carried on the trails of white mist that began to spiral around them.

## Chapter Three

Jak wretched and sent a thin stream of bile across the floor, where it settled at Ryan Cawdor’s feet.

‘Jak’s coming around,’ the one-eyed man muttered, watching the stream of liquid congeal at the toe of his heavy combat boot. He couldn’t think much beyond that, having only just managed to clamber to his feet. His head still spun wildly and it was at times like this that he was almost thankful for monocular vision, as it spared him the worst excesses of vomit-inducing blurred and double vision after a jump.

‘It’s not him I’m worried about,’ Krysty slurred, shaking her head as she tried to clear it. The movement only made things worse and she slumped forward from her kneeling position. She felt terrible. Like the others, she had been concerned that with little opportunity to recuperate after a traumatic firefight and flight, the jump would be too much of a strain. Jak always suffered after a jump, but it was the ever-fragile Doc who was the cause of most concern.

She’d worry about him later, though. Right now, her primary objective was to make sure that she was functioning.

J.B. and Mildred had stirred, and while Ryan tried to make out shapes through the opaque armaglass walls of the chamber, Krysty helped the pair of them to their feet. Jak, as ever, eschewed all help, waving away Krysty’s proffered hand to drag himself upright. He spit out a sour ball of bile and looked over at Doc.

‘He okay?’

Doc lay motionless, on his back.

‘I don’t know,’ Mildred muttered unnecessarily as she made her way over to him. The reflex reply had been necessary to cover her own concern. To all intents and purposes, Doc looked as though the trip might have been one trauma too much. He was so still, looked so peaceful, that at first she suspected that he had bought the farm while being reconstituted. It was only when she was kneeling over him that she could see he was breathing shallowly. There was still some life in the old bastard.

Something he confirmed by suddenly opening his eyes. They were wide, staring and alert, with none of the muzziness that he—or, indeed, any of the others—usually experienced after a jump.

‘Why, hello, my dear Doctor. How pleasant to see you. I must say, you don’t seem to be at all well. I, on the other hand, feel as though I have had a most refreshing rest.’ He propped himself up on one elbow and looked at the others, adding, ‘It’s most strange. Usually I feel terrible after a jump, but I feel as though I could fight an army.’

‘Doc, the way I feel, that might be a good thing,’ Ryan commented wryly. ‘But right now, let’s just get our shit together and secure the immediate area.’

He had seen nothing in the vague shapes lurking beyond the opaque armaglass of the chamber to suggest that there was any kind of life in the redoubt. However, triple red was the only way to approach evacuation. When they were sufficiently recovered to make a move, they exited the chamber one by one, assuming positions of cover.

It was a futile exercise. The room beyond the anteroom was in semidarkness, where some of the fluorescent lighting had failed and the constantly blinking lights of the comp desks were all the life that appeared to exist.

Despite the fact that the air-conditioning and recycling plant should have kept a constant temperature, there was a distinct chill in the air, suggesting that it was more than just the lighting that was failing. The air itself was breathable, but carried a dank undertone, suggesting that areas of the redoubt might have been breached by outside elements. The one reassuring thing it did have, though, was that indefinable air of complete desolation. There seemed to be no human life here.

Still keeping their blasters to hand—instinct told them the redoubt was empty, but intellect still counseled caution—they left the chamber room.

The redoubt was in some disarray, not from any looting or ransacking from outside, but from the gradual breakdown of its own systems. At some time, probably during the immediate aftermath of the nukecaust, a breach had occurred in the walls of the structure. An earth movement strong enough to rupture the reinforced, thick concrete walls had caused enough damage to let outside elements creep in. Wherever this was located—and at present they couldn’t be sure—it was beneath the local water table, as damp had suffused the very atmosphere. Great stretches of corridor were unlit where the lighting had shorted. The same could be said of sec doors that had started to close when the circuits shorted, but had been stayed by warps in the wall and were now jammed half open, half shut, a monument to the breach in supposedly safe defenses.

Rats had infiltrated the cracks, as had insect life. The winged insects buzzed around them, trying to bite. The red eyes of albino rats, almost twice the size of normal, glowered at them before the creatures scuttled for the safety of complete darkness. Here and there were small, stagnant pools where the damp had gathered enough to drip down the walls through the thin cracks that suffused the concrete. There were gatherings of moss and slime on the walls, delineating watermarks where there were occasional floods when the water table rose. Thankfully the mat-trans and anteroom had been just above this level.

As they rose higher, the signs of damage grew less, and there was less insect and rodent life hardy enough to brave the comparatively great distance from dank security. The electrical systems had still suffered, however, and some of the rooms were closed to them, sec doors failing to respond.

Eventually they reached a place where maps were displayed, revealing to them that they had landed on the Eastern Seaboard, beneath what had once been an area known as New Jersey.

‘Not usual to have a redoubt so near a heavily populated area,’ Krysty mused, indicating the above-ground map that revealed an expanse of predark urban growth.

‘It was a heavy industrial area, probably one of the places they would have wanted to land some nukes first of all,’ Mildred commented. ‘I’d guess this redoubt was built so that they could have a base near to a big population, and near to some military factories that were located hereabouts. And you’ve got to say, it looks like it must have been hit really heavy up there for the damage that’s come this far down. But then, there were a lot of nuke power plants along this coast—one not far from here, if my memory serves. You unleash a ton of nukes on top of that, and the only thing I’m surprised about is that this place is still here.’

‘We’ve been along this coast before,’ J.B. said, running his finger along the coastline. ‘Remember? We got ourselves fouled up with that evil bitch captain…’

‘Don’t remind me.’ Ryan shuddered, remembering the whaling queen who had looked like a man and had had designs on the one-eyed warrior. ‘Fireblast, still gives me nightmares.’

‘Nonetheless,’ Doc mused, ‘I see the point John Barrymore is making. Although we have not been in this particular spot before, we have been in the general area, and thus have some idea of the landscape we should encounter. We also know that the area is capable of supporting human life and it is likely that we will be able to come across some groups of survivors. Furthermore, if we find the area somewhat uncongenial, we will have an escape route of some kind planned. If all else fails, we should head for the coast.’

Krysty laughed. ‘Doc, I don’t know what’s happened to you, but Ryan had better watch out. I can’t remember the last time I saw you like this.’

‘I shall take that as the compliment it appeared to be,’ Doc said gravely, with a mock bow. ‘I am, you might say, feeling myself again.’

‘That’s good to hear,’ Ryan agreed. ‘But instead of standing around telling each other how damn good we are, I suggest we see what there’s worth plundering here and then get the hell out. It doesn’t look like there’s an immediate danger, but I don’t feel comfortable underground when I know the mainframe’s falling to pieces.’

Ryan had done little more than voice a concern that had been lurking at the backs of all their minds. When the support systems of a redoubt began to crumble they could take years to fail, or one short could start a chain reaction to close it down in minutes.

Time, then, was of the essence. The upper levels of the redoubt hadn’t been damaged too badly by the earth movements. There were cracks in some of the walls, but nothing like the fissures on the lower level. The main problems were caused by the shorting of electrical circuits that had closed some sec doors and effectively sealed them by refusing to respond to the codes. Many of these were in areas where the companions would seek to plunder: the armory, the kitchens and food stores, and stores for clothing and footwear.

J.B.’s task was to open the doors without risking further damage to the potentially delicate balance of the redoubt. Under any other circumstances the task would have been simple—plas-ex applied to the points of balance, and then retire to a safe distance. But now he had to be careful about the amounts he used, much more so that usual.

Carefully, the Armorer weighed out the plas-ex and attached a detonator, making sure that, at all times, the companions would shelter from the blast in a position that would leave them on the right side of the explosion for the main exit should the need to flee arise.

In the eerie quiet of the deserted redoubt, the tension hung heavy over J.B. as he prepared each explosion. The first two were small—more pops than blasts—but by his careful positioning the charges were enough to bend the doors, giving the companions the leverage they needed to open them manually.

The kitchen and clothing stores came easily. Despite his looks of apprehension at the roof overhead when the charges detonated, J.B.’s judgment proved sound. In the clothing stores they were able to kit themselves out in some fresh clothing, still packed in polyethylene, that replaced the tattered rags they had worn from the north.

Likewise, the kitchen stores hadn’t been raided, although there was some evidence that rats and insects had been able to use the service ducts to get this far up the redoubt levels, driven onward by the scent of foodstuffs. As there was no knowing what may or may not have been contaminated, they stuck to self-heats and some foods where the packaging hadn’t been tampered with in any way or was far from evidence of rats such as gnawing and droppings. The huge walk-in freezer compartments were still stocked and sealed. There were three, and although the power had failed in two, the third still contained some deep-frozen perishables that could safely be eaten when defrosted. They stocked up on as much as possible, preferring to keep the inedible self-heats for emergencies.

The third door J.B. had to open was the one that gave him most concern: the armory. Tricky enough to have to blow the door on an armory at the best of times, lest the explosive materials within be triggered by the explosion. But when they were up against a structure riddled with flaws that may give under such stress, it became a much harder task.

J.B. set the charge and looked nervously up at the ceiling before retiring to cover.

‘If this fucks up, it’s been interesting,’ he said wryly in the moments before the small charge detonated. He closed his eyes and held his breath…nothing. Opening them again, he could see that the door had been blasted away from one side of the portal and that there appeared to be no residual damage within the room itself.

They advanced and opened up the room. It was exactly as it had been left before the nukecaust. At some point, there had to have been an evacuation, as there still lay in one corner an open crate and a clipboard and pen, as though the room had been deserted partway through an inventory of the ordnance.

Wasting little time, they equipped themselves with spare ammo, grens and plas-ex from the stores. J.B. regretfully looked at the crates of unopened and undisturbed blasters. There were rifles, SMGs and handblasters, any of which may have replaced their own favored arms, given time to test them in the ranges.

But time was one thing they couldn’t allow. The redoubt may be fine for another century, or it may start to crumble at any moment.

Equipped, they left the armory—J.B. casting it a backward glance that was part wistful longing and part a hard-headed knowledge that they could have gleaned so much if given time—and headed toward the exit door.

The lighting was erratic along the stretch leading to the exit ramp, and all had cause to wonder what they might find beyond the final sec door. Had the circuits cut out because of the water damage in the lower levels or because there were other stresses operating outside the walls on this upper level? Would the sec door open to reveal that they had been blocked in by a landfall?

The latter was something that Ryan hoped wouldn’t be the case. They needed to get out. The redoubt was too unsafe for them to stay and a jump would be too risky. Out was their only option.

‘Here goes nothing,’ he said to the others as he punched in the sec code, lifted the lever and leveled his Steyr. The chances of anyone lying in wait were next to nothing, but that wasn’t zero.

The door raised slowly to reveal a landscape that was lush but strange. Everything was green, but low-level, as though it were made for small people. The grasses were close to the ground, plants were half size, the trees stunted. But it was a clear day and it was good to breathe fresh air untainted by sulfur as it swept into the musty tunnel mouth.

Ryan stepped cautiously out into a bright, sunny morning, with the sky clear but for a few fluffy white clouds. He looked around. The surrounding area was clear and there were no sounds of bird or animal life within earshot. He beckoned the others to join him.

‘Gaia, it’s like paradise compared to where we’ve just been,’ Krysty said, breathing in deeply to savor the air.

‘Yeah, even if it is a kind of half-pint paradise,’ Mildred muttered.

‘Not fucking cold.’ Jak smiled.

‘So far, so good,’ J.B. agreed. ‘What d’you think, Doc?’

It was when he turned to elicit the old man’s opinion that J.B. was astounded to see Doc retreating backward into the redoubt, with the door closing on him, cutting him off seemingly at his own behest.

## Chapter Four

Who am I? Is the real me the man who now posits these questions, or is the real me the man Jordan who they say I became for a short while? It does, does it not, raise many questions as to the nature of identity? Is all of this through which I move an artifice, the mere whim of my own imagination, or is it real? But then, what is reality?

Of all the things I remember, of all the things that have occurred within the confines of my own mind over the past few days, there is only the one constant: the search for some kind of truth. Whatever I am, and wherever I am, there is a part of my mind that is still active and still seeks to find an answer of some kind for what has happened, and what is continuing to happen. If I am to ascertain the truth, then I must follow that course through to the end. That quest is the only one which matters. Wherever that leads.

Am I in a padded cell? Am I here? Am I Theophilus Tanner? Am I Joseph Jordan? There is only the one way in which I can find an answer. I must follow my gut feeling. When the consciousness is confused, then intellect alone cannot be trusted. In order to find the answer, then I must follow what instinct tells me.

And yet what it tells me to do is something that I cannot share with the others. They would not want to go back to Fairbanks. Why should they? They lived that nightmare in a way that I cannot comprehend. By the same token, they could never comprehend the compulsion that drives me onward.

I have said nothing. I shall continue to say nothing. If I hang back in the tunnel, I can slip away while they walk out into the new lands. If I close the door behind me, then by the time they have noticed my absence, reopened the redoubt and tried to find me, I will have traveled back.

Oh, I know only too well that the settings on the mattrans are random, but that is the point. Whatever happens to me next will be a large part of the journey. If fate—or the workings of my own imagination masquerading as fate—decrees that I end up back in the frozen north, then it shall be nothing more than another sign that I have taken the right path.

These are not times for plans. Plans demand intellect; intellect is confused by the workings of insanity; the gut is the only true arbiter.

But I shall miss them. I dimly recall thinking of them as angels at one point in my madness. Perhaps they are, in a sense. Guardians of ideal qualities created by my mind, perhaps based on those I have known at some point. Or mayhap they are real, and this world is my reality. In that case, then they are angels of the best kind: firm friends in the face of adversity.

I salute them…

‘WHAT THE HELL does he think he’s doing?’ Mildred yelled as she turned and ran toward the closing sec door, Doc now nothing more than a darkness in the shadows as he moved out of sight.

‘Millie, wait,’ J.B. yelled. He cast a glance at Ryan, wondering if his friend would want to follow Doc. The old man was still suffering from some kind of psychosis, and the last thing they needed—friend or not—was to become embroiled in more games.

But J.B. need not have wondered. Already, Ryan was catching up to Mildred and passing her on the way to the sec door.

‘Bastard won’t start to open until it’s fully shut, even if you punch the code in,’ he yelled breathlessly. ‘We’ve got to get through it and get him, let the others wait.’

Mildred didn’t bother to answer, saving her breath to try to keep pace with Ryan’s longer stride. Particularly if she was going to make it under the door. They were now about twenty feet from the entrance and the door showed less than a foot of space. It was going to be incredibly tight.

Ryan was a crucial few feet ahead of her and he flung himself into the gap, flattening himself as much as possible and bracing for the impact as his flying body connected harshly with the floor of the tunnel. He winced in pain as his shoulder jarred, a tingling numbness momentarily shooting down to his fingers. He ignored it, concentrating on rolling so that he could get the hell out of Mildred’s way as she came through.

Cursing loudly with her last desperate exhalation of breath, she took a flying leap at the ever-narrowing gap, feeling the edge of the door bite as it closed the gap uncomfortably. She threw herself with as much force and momentum as possible, the foot-long thickness of the tunnel almost catching and trapping the toes of her boots as she slid past, ironically just enough to kill her speed and insure that she didn’t hit the floor as hard as Ryan.

The one-eyed man was already on his feet and headed down the tunnel as she picked herself up.

‘That damn fool old buzzard. We should just leave the old bastard to do what the hell he wants,’ she muttered darkly as she hauled herself to her feet and set off in pursuit.

They knew exactly where they were headed, and as they were stronger and faster than Doc, they might just have time to catch him before he entered the mat-trans unit. Once the chamber door closed, it would be impossible to open it until the process had been completed.

Neither of them wasted time looking to their rear. They knew that the others would follow as soon as they could get the sec door opened once more. It was more of an imperative to reach Doc.

Their choices were justified. As they thundered down the lower corridor, heavy footfalls echoing around the dank and scarred walls of the lowest levels, they knew Doc could hear them. But it didn’t matter. Speed was more important than stealth. Something that was proved when they entered the comp room to find Doc about to grab the lever to the unit’s door. He was almost crying with frustration as his shaking hands and trembling fingers, fraught with anxiety, seemingly refused to grasp the lever.

He looked up as they approached.

‘Please. I did not want you to follow me. Allow me to do this.’

‘To do what, Doc? To send yourself off into God knows where?’ Mildred asked.

‘It’s something I must do,’ he replied as firmly as he could.

‘The hell it is,’ Ryan snapped.

Doc looked at him, momentarily distracted. ‘How the hell would you know?’ he retorted angrily. ‘You have no idea what I am trying to do, or why.’

‘Then why don’t you tell us?’ Mildred questioned in as reasonable a tone as she could muster.

Doc sighed. ‘It would take too long, and you would not want me to do it. I do not think you could understand—’

‘Too stupid, is that it?’ Mildred countered.

‘No, it is not that. What’s the point, you’ll only stop me anyway,’ he added with a resigned sigh, standing back from the door.

In the distance, they could hear the others approaching.

‘C’mon, Doc, I really don’t want to talk about it in here,’ Ryan said softly. ‘Let’s go topside, and then you can explain. Mebbe we’ll understand, after all.’

‘I somehow doubt that that very much,’ Doc murmured, ‘but I suppose I should give you the chance.’

If nothing else, Mildred could treasure the confused looks on the faces of J.B. and Krysty when she, Doc and Ryan calmly walked out of the mat-trans anteroom. There was even a flicker of confusion crossing Jak’s albino visage.

For the second time, they exited the redoubt and stood in the glorious morning. But there was little attention to be paid to the landscape or the blazing clear sky. The first thing was to try to sort out the problem with which Doc now presented them.

A few hundred yards from the entry to the redoubt was a small clump of trees, twisted and stunted with thick growth on their boles, but enough canopy to provide shelter from the heat and brightness of the sun. They took refuge beneath these and Doc started to explain what had caused him to turn back.

It was a long, rambling tale. Sometimes he had to stop and go back on the story, as though there were parts that he even had to explain for himself. Which was no surprise, as what had made so much sense when mulled over within the confines of his own head now seemed to be disjointed and absurd when spilled out loud. He could see from the faces around him that they were having trouble understanding the questions he had to ask himself and the non sequitur answers that had caused him to take his instinct-led course of action.

He finished up weakly, shrugging and telling them that he didn’t expect them to understand, but that it was something that he had to do.

‘Doc,’ Ryan said softly after a long silence, ‘you weren’t with us when that ville went up. Well, you were, but you were this other person. And then you were unconscious. You didn’t see what happened to it. There was no way anyone could have got out of there. The whole tribe, except for mebbe those who stayed behind at the ville, were wiped out. There is no one for you to go back to, even supposing that, by some miracle, the mat-trans took you back to the right redoubt and you could find your way on foot from there without freezing. We only made it as a group because we could support one another. You’d have no one to lean on if you had to.’

‘Yes, I understand completely what you’re saying,’ Doc stated, ‘but can you not see that it makes no difference? This is not about being rational. This is about following an instinct because I cannot trust that which I see and hear around me. As far as I know—in an empirical sense—you may not even exist.’

‘A what?’ Krysty asked. ‘Mother Sonja told me about some old ideas from before nukecaust, but that’s a new one on me.’

‘Doc,’ Mildred said, deciding to try her luck, ‘I’ve listened to what you’ve said, and although I can’t totally understand, I ask you to trust me on one thing. As far as I’m concerned, I know I’m here. And knowing that, I trust my senses. And what they tell me, as a trained physician, is that you’ve been through an immense trauma from fever, followed by a concussion. From my perspective, this is real, and the things in your head that make you doubt yourself are the symptomatic results of a definite medical cause. It would be wrong of me as a doctor to let you follow your instinct at the risk of your own safety. I would recommend that we take you with us, even if we have to, at this stage, do it by force.’

Doc’s face hardened as he looked around. He was met with features as determined as his own.

‘I have no doubt that you would do that. I am outnumbered, and I have little choice but to acquiesce. Be warned, if I have the chance, I will try to get back to the redoubt and jump.’

‘Mebbe so,’ Krysty said softly. ‘But consider this—mebbe part of your journey is to find another way back, and that is why we were allowed to catch up with you and stop you.’

Doc’s face cracked into a wry grin. ‘That’s very good, my dear. In truth I have no answer to that. I am not allayed, but you have, nonetheless, set me a logical quandary that I must ponder.’

‘That mean we get fuck out here?’ Jak asked, disgruntled and a little lost.

J.B. rose, stretched and yawned. ‘Soon as we find which way’s the best way, then, yeah, I guess so. Right, Ryan?’

Ryan shrugged. He felt uneasy that he hadn’t quite grasped where Doc now stood, somehow angry with himself for not understanding; but action would force any issues that remained.

‘Yeah. Sooner the better,’ he growled.

USING HIS MINISEXTANT, J.B. got their bearings. A northwesterly path would take them toward the coast from their current position, and so they set out in formation. Ryan was at front, J.B. covering the rear of the line, with Jak in the middle, keeping close to Doc, and flanked by Mildred and Krysty. Doc seemed content enough to fall in with their plans, yet there was something that jarred. It wasn’t like him to give in that easily. Nonetheless, there seemed little option for him at this time.

It was a strange territory in which they moved. The wide, stunted trees with their bizarre growths and sparse canopy were intermingled with sudden needles of tall, thin firlike trees that shot into the sky as though about to scratch the very surface of the heavens. There was no rhyme or reason to the placing of these particular trees. It was as though the mutated woodlands had produced mutations within the mutants. Clustered around the dwarf trees were spiky grasses of a brilliant color that were as tough as rope. The carpet of rough grass was interspersed with flora of an equally brilliant hue and of a wide variety of colors. Reds, blues and yellows splashed among the green of the woodland floor, their flowers showing as distended and distorted shapes among the grasses, leaves of differing sizes on the same bloom causing them to droop at bizarre angles, hideously enlarge stamen ready to spread pollen across the surface of the ground and into the air with puffball explosions.

It was inevitable that the blooms would have to spread their own pollen, for the one immediately noticeable thing about the terrain was that it had no wildlife: no animals, no birds, nor any insects. The only sounds that broke the silence, other than those made by the companions themselves, were the muted rustlings of the grasses and the leaves as the light breezes of the day caught them.

It was incredibly peaceful and after a short while the companions found themselves relaxing, their every instinct telling them that they were safe from any kind of attack. Yet, for all the ease that they could now feel, one question nagged. Why was there such a lack of fauna when both rats and insects had invaded the redoubt?

It was a question soon answered. After a couple of hours they broke stride briefly to rest. A small stream bubbled twenty yards from where they stood, and Jak made his way down to test the water. Hunkering, he let the cool stream run over his hand. As he did, something sent an involuntary spasm down his spine. Cupping his palm, he lifted a little of the water to his nose. There was a faint tang to it that set alarm bells ringing in his intuition. He flicked at his palm with his tongue, rapidly spitting out the few drops that caught on the flesh.

The water had a metallic taste and every sense told him that it would chill him to drink from the stream. He straightened and turned to see J.B. taking a bright orange fruit from one of the trees, holding it under his nose to sniff it. The Armorer turned, sensing that he was being watched. His eyes met Jak’s and he nodded shortly. Prying the fruit open with both thumbs, he sniffed at it. A sweetness did little to overlay the sour stench that followed on the heels of the initial scent.

The others had observed this exchange, and each proceeded to test fruits, berries and leaves in a similar way. The results were completely inclusive: everything that grew or ran over the earth was toxic to the taste. The very ground itself had to have been heavily contaminated, either by the nukes or by something that had been let into the soil during the nukecaust. Given that this area had once lain close to heavily industrial and military suburbs, it should not have come as a shock. The mutie flora had adjusted to the soil from which it sprang, and any fauna had either perished or moved on.

It was, however, with a jolt that they realized that this gave them a problem. Not eating or drinking in the contaminated area would be simple enough; they had drinking water and self-heats, as well as some of the fresher food they had taken from the redoubt. But this wouldn’t last forever, and from the complete silence surrounding them, the contaminated land obviously spread over a great distance. Would they be able to clear the area before they ran out of supplies?

‘If we assume the place we started from is now about six miles back, and that the coastline hasn’t changed too much from when that old map was made, I figure it’s three days’ march at most before we hit the ocean,’ J.B. said as he double-checked their current position. ‘This can’t last all the way to the coast, ’cause we saw no sign of it before. And even if it does, then we just make a raft and risk it on the waves down the line of the coast itself,’ he added with a shrug.

‘Yeah, that sounds about the best of it,’ Ryan agreed. ‘Go triple cautious with the water, and we’ll ration the food, try to keep those self-heats to a minimum. We should be okay,’ he finished.

And it was true. They had enough for the distance J.B. estimated. But what if they had to change course? What if they were diverted before they hit the coast? Suddenly a simple route march had taken on a darker edge. They were used to facing practical matters head-on, and a nagging doubt at the corners of the mind was potentially more damaging to the group.

For two days they struck out toward the coast, eking out water and food. They made good progress as the only obstacles in their path were those created by the twisted and stunted boles of the trees, some a good yard across, and the patches of iron-hard grass that had to be avoided as they were too damaging even to the heavy boots worn by the walkers.

With no wildlife of any kind to impede them, it seemed certain that they would reach the coast easily before their supplies ran out. The cloud of possibility that they felt hanging over them began to dispel and they traveled at a greater pace, with more optimism around them.

The optimism increased, the pace decreasing, as they hit land that was less contaminated. The grasses and the trees became less warped and stunted, the going softer underfoot, and there were signs of life. Borne on the distant breezes were the sounds of birds in flight. The buzz of insect life became apparent, the flying creatures attempting to take bites from them. And in the undergrowth they could hear the rustle of movement. The smell of the woodlands changed from the sterility and sickly sweetness of the contaminated areas, the air now infused with the musk of living creatures, the woodlands in which they lived now stinking of life. It was at times an unpleasant odor, but one that bespoke life rather than the stasis of the contaminated area.

But the influx of life meant that they had to slow their pace. They had no real idea what shape that life may take. The sounds they had heard so far suggested that there was nothing particularly large or dangerous lurking in the shadows to leap out and chill them. Yet the smaller beasts could be just as dangerous; a bite could lead to an infection, or one well-placed claw could sever an artery. If there were packs, they could attack in numbers and prove difficult to repel.

So the only option was to slow the pace of their march. Jak scouted ahead. A natural-born hunter, his senses and instincts developed by years of practice, he was the perfect member of the group to recce ahead for any life and any danger it may represent. It was, after all, a function he had fulfilled many times before.

Despite the fact that they now had a possible danger with which to contend, they felt more at ease. This, at least, was a palpable threat, and one to which they were used; the unnameable fears that had lurked in each of their minds now began to subside.

The nature of the trees and grasses changed: softer and shorter underfoot, with boles and trunks that had a shape, height and width that was more like the kinds of growths they had seen in other areas.

‘I figure the water and the fruits must be edible here,’ Ryan mused. ‘It keeps these damn insects going,’ he added, batting away thirsty midges that dive-bombed his neck.

‘We want to be careful about that,’ Mildred cautioned. ‘It’s possible that whatever lives here has some kind of tolerance to whatever’s in the soil. It can’t be as bad as back there, as at least it does support life. But it might be too much for us.’

‘In effect, my dear Doctor, we are in the same position—do not drink the water and stick to the interminable self-heats,’ Doc mumbled. ‘It is nothing more than the same thing all over. No change. Perhaps it would have been better if you’d let me go as I had wished—or perhaps had come with me.’

‘Doc, don’t start on that again.’ Krysty sighed. ‘It wouldn’t have been any better if you’d got back to the north, and it could have been a whole lot worse. Who knows where you would have ended up.’

‘Somewhere without a poisonous forest, perhaps,’ Doc replied sharply.

‘Dark night, will you stop going on about it, Doc,’ J.B. muttered wearily. ‘For the last two days, all you’ve done is moan. It’s like you want to wear us down and make us admit we were wrong. But what the hell good would that do?’

‘None,’ Doc snapped bitterly. ‘It would do none as it’s too late to turn back. But don’t think that I won’t take another option if I can find it. With or without you.’

They hadn’t heard him be this openly antagonistic before. It was as though the quietness of their progress over the past few days had done little for the old man except give him the time to brood on the wrong he thought they had wrought him. He had made no point to leave them and turn back, as though at least some part of him knew the futility of this; but at the same time there was little doubt that the thought of getting back to the people he considered his destiny was something that was looming larger still in his thoughts.

Which was something that could become a major problem if left unchecked. But for the moment, Ryan was thankful that it was all they had to be concerned about.

They continued for the best part of a day, their progress impeded by the need for caution. Most of the mammalian life in the woodlands was small: squirrels, rabbits, other rodents, some of which showed signs of the long-lasting toxic effects of the nearby ground by their mutations. None of the creatures were that big, and were misshapen, though not enough to stop them from surviving adequately in the woods. They were helped in this by the fact that nothing large seemed able to survive and prosper in the immediate environment. The birds, likewise, were all small. The flitted from tree to tree, always staying just enough out of sight to prevent themselves from becoming a target either to the companions or to the lower level life-forms.

The trees and plants were hung with a variety of fruits that differed from those in the contaminated area in as much as they were smaller, less hideously malformed and had duller colorings. They also showed signs of being eaten by the fauna of the woods.

Nonetheless, taking heed of what Mildred had said earlier, they refrained from partaking of the fruits, or hunting any of the small animals and birds, setting a fire to keep the rodents at bay as night fell, and relying on their dwindling supplies of food and water.

‘By my reckoning, even though we’ve slowed down, we should be able to hit the coast by tomorrow night, the morning after at most,’ J.B. told them after they had eaten. ‘We just need to keep on this heading. Just as well we’re past those shit strange mutie trees.’

It was an optimistic, contented group who settled for the night, Ryan taking first watch. Not that there was much to take note of. The birds had settled for the night and the only sounds were of some nocturnal rodents hunting in the undergrowth. Although nominally alert, Ryan allowed himself to relax slightly. There was nothing out there to disturb their rest or to impede their progress.

The following day, he felt, they would make good time.

WITHIN A FEW HOURS of breaking camp and setting off for the coast, he knew that his assumption of the night before had been incorrect. It wasn’t something that could be put into words, but there were signs that a major change was ahead of them. Although the landscape around them remained the same—certainly showing no signs of deterioration into the contaminated state they had first encountered—the sounds and signs of life began to fade away. There were fewer birds and insects, less scuttling in the long grasses or flashes of fur as the smaller mammals turned away from the intruders in their land.

‘Something’s changed,’ Ryan said softly. ‘But what?’

Jak was doing a recon and he returned. Ryan repeated his question. The albino shrugged. ‘Nothing. Trees same, ground same. But no animals, no birds. Something scaring them away, but not anything seen.’

‘Fireblast, this is what I hate more than anything. Give me an enemy that you can see any fuckin’ day. Triple red from now on,’ he said, shrugging the Steyr from his shoulder and chambering a round.

‘You want me to recce ahead?’ Jak asked.

Ryan shook his head, his single ice-blue eye glittering as he surveyed the land around. ‘No. This might not be something we can see that easily. If it can scare the wildlife away, then it might not be as simple as a single enemy we can see.’

‘By the Three Kennedys, you’re not suggesting that we may be up against some kind of supernatural agency?’ Doc asked, his voice suspended uncertainly between fear and a desire to mock.

‘Nothing as simple. Whatever’s cleared this area has a wide sweep and has mebbe been doing it for a while. Notice the smell, anything else?’ he asked.

‘No spoor,’ Jak said. ‘No half-eaten fruit or plant. Been deserted a long time.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I figure. So we keep together, we keep going, hope we don’t meet it—whatever it is—and we stay triple alert on this, okay?’

Blasters poised, they tightened formation and fell into line. It was hard, not knowing exactly what it was that they needed to protect themselves against: all they knew was that the danger was nearer than before, if less palpable. Their pace decreased, as well, so that it seemed they were making no progress at all.

So far, they had been blessed with excellent weather during their trek. The skies above the canopy had remained clear, the temperature almost humid. This now grated, as the sweat of concentration and fear began to gather upon them, running in slow rivulets down their skin, collecting in pools in the small of the back, under the arms, behind the knees. They were itchy and uncomfortable, the irritation adding to their mounting tetchiness.

It was therefore, perhaps, fortunate that they didn’t have to wait long before the silence was broken. After only an hour’s slow crawl, they became aware of something approaching them, head-on.

Jak caught first hearing and Krysty’s mutie sense echoed his own acute senses, her hair coiling protectively and the dread rising in her. The enemy—whoever or whatever it may be—was approaching so quickly that it became audible to the others before either Jak or Krysty had a chance to verbalize their forebodings.

‘What the hell is that?’ Mildred whispered.

‘I’d say there’s at least a half dozen of whoever it is, and they haven’t had much need to use stealth up to now,’ J.B. commented wryly as the noise reached them.

‘Take cover,’ Ryan commanded. ‘See how many of these sons of gaudys there are.’

The woodland provided ample cover. There were no paths as such that could be taken, rather a maze of gaps between the trees that could be utilized. None was suitable for more than two abreast, so it was a reasonable assumption that the oncoming force would have to split themselves in some manner to pass by where the companions were located. Jak shinnied rapidly up a tree to try to get a better look at the oncoming party while the others took advantage of the excellent cover the greenery presented.

From his vantage point, Jak could see that there were nine people in the party approaching. All were men aged from their early teens to their late twenties. There were no veterans among them—in fact, the age tended more toward the younger end of the scale—and this, allied to their seeming inability to use stealth, was a good sign. All the same, they still outnumbered the companions. The strangest thing about them was that they made no attempt to camouflage themselves. In fact, their garb was some of the strangest that Jak had seen from men who were his opponents. They were all dressed in white robes that were cut short, toga-style, rimmed in thick red trim. Their legs were encased in leather thongs that were crisscrossed and tied up to the knees. They carried daggers in sheaths and a variety of handblasters. Jak thought he could pick out a Walther PPK, a Vortak precision pistol and a Browning Hi-Power like the one Dean had used before he’d gone missing. All good blasters, but ones that needed a degree of skill. Looks could be deceptive, but Jak doubted that these strangely attired men had the skill to be effective—not if their shooting echoed their stalking skills.

Jak scrambled down the tree and outlined the position to the companions beneath. Although secreted, they were close enough to hear him as he rapidly gave them the requisite information before taking cover himself.

All they had to do was to wait for the hunting party to come upon them. Why they were in the woods was a mystery. If they knew that the companions were there—and how was another matter—then they were making a poor task of concealing themselves. They were easy to track as they closed on the area where the companions were taking cover.

The nine men had spread themselves out among the twisting gaps through the trees, making it hard to take them all in one attack; and yet they were too close to risk blasterfire once the companions engaged with them. Too far apart to take out, too close to take out. It was more luck than judgment, that much was clear, but it was enough to make the companions’ task harder.

Ryan signaled with a sharp whistle and the six friends shot from their hiding places as the strangely garbed hunting party passed them. It was a measure of how inexperienced the strangers were that they seemed to be completely unaware that they had the companions in their midst until they had already been attacked.

It was a swift and brutal battle. Unwilling to risk blasterfire that may hit their own people with stray shells, Ryan, Jak and J.B. had opted to use their blades. Mildred and Krysty used their bare hands. However, even in this they had the drop on their opponents, who had kept their daggers sheathed. The two men that the women chose to attack both fumbled for their blades rather than defend themselves, and both found themselves on the end of crushing blows. Krysty delivered a kick to the groin that was made more painful by the sharp silver point on her blue cowboy boots, whereas Mildred took out her man with a roundhouse punch that connected perfectly on the top of the jaw, just beneath the ear. The man’s eyes rolled into his head as his skull snapped back.

Doc was the only one who held back. So many thoughts raced through his head, some of which he was obscurely ashamed of. Should he join the fray or see who won? What would benefit him in his long-term aim? But surely he should help his friends—ah, but had they been of any help to him, not allowing him to return to his destiny? All of this spun around his head, freezing him until the moment when he was actually attacked. A burly man with a blond beard to match his mop of curls snarled and thrust at Doc with his dagger. The old man smoothly withdrew the razored blade of Toledo steel from its cane sheath and parried the blow, countering with a thrust that swept across the man’s chest, ripping his toga and drawing a line of blood from beneath.

At six on eight, the odds were already beginning to even up a little. They took another turn for the good when one man howled in agony, his arm sliced vertically by a blow from Ryan’s panga. The flesh hung from his upper arm, blood splattering on the foliage around him. He was fortunate that it missed his artery, but nonetheless he recoiled and took no further part in the fray.

‘It’s not them…it’s not them,’ the cry was echoed around the hunting party, much to the confusion of the companions. They didn’t stop fighting, but now found that instead of standing toe-to-toe they were driving their attackers back, as though the hunting party was deliberately retreating.

The strangely attired men pulled back enough to turn and flee. Jak was about to give chase when Ryan stayed him. Still the cry of ‘not them…not them…’ echoed from the retreating men.

As the sounds faded into the distance, the companions exchanged bemused glances. Who had the hunters thought they might be, and did that mean they weren’t alone in the woodlands?

There was one way to find out. The man on whom Mildred had landed the perfect punch was still unconscious, sprawled on the ground.

Ryan strode over and pulled the man to his feet. The movement made him stir and his return to consciousness was aided by the open-palmed slaps Ryan delivered across his face. His eyes opened, bleary and unfocused.

‘Wake up,’ Ryan grated. ‘You’ve got a lot to tell us, and you’d better do it quick.’

## Chapter Five

His eyes opened, although they were not as yet focused, and they showed the naked fear that he felt in the midst of the group.

‘Are you going to talk?’ Ryan snarled. He had little time for those who attacked him without reason, and even less for those who showed the cowardice of this man. He looked as though he was about to defend himself.

‘Don’t even think about that,’ the one-eyed man growled.

‘I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction,’ the young man returned. Now that he was beginning to take in his surroundings, and that reason was returning to his muddled senses, he was growing in courage. He took in the half dozen people surrounding him. They weren’t the ones his people had sought, although they had fought hard and were understandably angry. If he told them what they wanted to know, then perhaps he would be able to negotiate with them. After all, as he looked around he could see that there were no chilled bodies scattered around. They hadn’t wantonly slaughtered the rest of the party.

His surreptitious glance didn’t escape Ryan. ‘I’ll cut you a deal,’ the one-eyed warrior stated. ‘You tell me what I want to know, and you can go free.’

‘You must think me a fool to agree to such a blatant untruth.’ The young man spit.

Ryan allowed a grin to crease his weathered features. ‘Fair point, but it works like this. We want to get through to the coast without being attacked. You come with us, to make sure that doesn’t happen, and you’re free to go. Your people obviously weren’t attacking us—it was a mistake. Fireblasted stupe one, as it could have got us chilled, but this shit happens.’

The young man studied Ryan’s face intently. In turn, the leader studied him. It was an open, soft face. The man was obviously just out of his teens, his long, dark hair and short beard showing the softness of youthful growth. His skin was clear and his eyes a blue almost as piercing as Ryan’s single orb. There were traces of puppy fat still on him, suggesting he came from a ville that had plentiful supplies—which was worth knowing—and his bearing was strong. Despite the position in which he was held, and the fear that had temporarily assailed him on first coming around, he now held himself defiantly. It was probably a pose, but one he used to try to bluff his way past his fear.

Ryan couldn’t help but like him. He had balls. Enough to not answer immediately, as though he truly had options to consider.

‘Very well, I will answer your questions on the understanding that I will aid you with safe passage to the coast and insure that you aren’t attacked by my people—however, I should add that it is still likely that you will be a target, particularly on the route that you wish to take, for my people aren’t the only ones who are in this vicinity—’

‘I kind of guessed that from the way you thought we were someone else,’ Ryan cut in. ‘So why don’t you start by telling us who you are?’

The young man looked around before speaking, then said, ‘I have no objection to this, as such, but I feel I must point out that without a sentry of some kind, we may be putting ourselves at risk from those we were seeking.’

‘If they were like your people, we’ll hear them coming, all right,’ J.B. commented wryly.

‘Ah, but that’s the problem,’ the young man said, turning his earnest gaze on the Armorer. ‘We’re novices in the art of combat, and make no compunction in admitting such. It is one of the problems we seek to address in our quest for survival. But those we oppose—and who oppose us—are experts and masters in the dark arts of war.’

‘Jeez, if you’re gonna be this long-winded then you’re gonna give Doc a run for his money,’ Mildred said, sighing, ‘in which case we really do need to set up a guard.’

Ryan laughed shortly. Mildred had a point. They withdrew to as secure a position as they could find, and Jak took watch while the young man hunkered down in the midst of the group.

‘So what is it that you wish to know?’ he asked simply.

‘Who you are and where you’re from would be a start, along with who you thought we were and why you tried to attack us,’ Ryan answered.

The young man smiled and shook his head. ‘A veritable avalanche of questions. Allow me to take them in the order in which they were posed. First, my name is Affinity, and I come from the ville of Memphis, which is eight miles from here, to the north and the west. We’re a small ville, and all we want to do is to live in peace, which perhaps may surprise you in light of the way you encountered our sec patrol. But we have to be vigilant, for we’re endangered simply because of our peaceful aims.’

‘Why would that be?’ Krysty prompted.

Affinity twinkled as he looked at the woman. ‘I was about to explain, if but given the chance. We’re a breakaway ville, formed by those who have escaped from the larger ville of Atlantis. There, all are enslaved in the service of the greater cause. But there were those of us who didn’t want to live beneath the whip and the chain. Though we have been brought up to believe in the cause of those who would come to claim us, we can’t see the point of building and waiting to be taken to a better life that promises nothing but more oppression. So gradually we fled the sec maze that surrounds the ville and made our own homes…those of us who could make it through with our lives.

‘And yet, you know, that somehow makes it all the sweeter that we have freedom, even if it be at the price of eternal vigilance.’

‘This Atlantis—how far is it from your ville, Memphis?’J.B. questioned, trying to keep the young man focused before he lost the thread of his discourse. It was obvious that he was inclined to ramble, and time was of the essence.

‘Atlantis is twenty miles to the south of Memphis, about fifteen from here, as the birds fly,’ he answered with admirable brevity.

‘And it’s sec from that ville that you were looking for?’ Krysty asked.

The young man nodded. ‘They can often be found here, and they’re our enemies.’

Doc leaned forward and tapped the young man on the knee. ‘You must forgive a befuddled old man, and indulge him,’ he began, ‘but your discourse does not, in some regards, make much sense to me. You claim that these sec men are much better fighters than you, yet you were actively looking for them when you encountered us. Surely you can see that to an outsider this seems a strange attitude. To what purpose would you actively seek out conflict with those who could so easily best you in battle?’

It was obvious from the expression on Affinity’s face that he was glad that Doc had spoken. Their similar modes of speech made him a much more receptive target for the young man’s discourse.

‘I would agree with you that, on the face of things, it seems folly for us to actively seek out and tackle with those who could so easily best us, but were life that simple. Although we’ve escaped the bondage of Atlantis, its ties are long and binding. There are those who would have it that none can escape the long arm of Atlantean law, and so they send out parties of Nightcrawlers, who seek to take back those who have transgressed by seeking refuge in our ville. We’re new, and we have made our homes in the wreckage of an old, predark ville. We don’t, as yet, have the security that Atlantis can boast, and so it is easy to breach our defenses.’

‘What happens to those who are taken?’ Doc asked simply.

‘Public execution, as an example to those who may seek to follow,’ Affinity said, a tightness creeping into his voice. ‘I have seen it with my own eyes, before I risked escape.’

‘And these Nightcrawlers, as you called them?’ Ryan prompted.

Affinity looked at Ryan as though, for a second, he didn’t comprehend what the one-eyed man had said to him, as though he were lost in some private hell, recalling what he had seen. Then he seemed to snap back to reality, answering concisely.

‘They’re what their name may suggest. They come mostly in the night, though not exclusively. They’re painted in the colors of the forest, and they move with stealth and silence. This is also the way in which they strike. They are upon us before we have a chance to defend ourselves. They use knives and swords, mostly, but also they have blasters that some have the noise contained, so that they are almost silent.’

‘Must be mostly handblasters or assault rifles. Few SMGs have silencer capability,’ J.B. murmured. He noticed that Affinity was looking at him strangely. ‘Just trying to figure out what we’re up against,’ he added.

The young man nodded briefly, then continued. ‘We have little hope of catching them when we attack, and we have little in the way of fighting skills. Thus we seek to comb the forest before nightfall, perhaps hoping to keep them at bay by making it hard for them to approach Memphis unseen.’

‘Seems a risky way to try to insure your safety,’ Ryan pointed out.

Affinity shrugged. ‘True enough, but there is little else we can do, and the attacks have less frequency since we first took these measures. It would seem that we have some success, if not, perhaps, enough. On which note I shall cease, for I think that I may have answered all your questions. Except for why we attacked you, but I think that is obvious—we mistakenly assumed you were Nightcrawlers, and attempted to withdraw when we discovered our mistake…at least, those of us who were able,’ he added ruefully, fingering his jaw and looking askance at Mildred.

‘Hey, what can I say? It had to be done,’ she said, holding up her hands.

Affinity nodded. ‘True enough, but you can’t blame me for wishing that it had been one of my fellows and not myself who suffered at your hands.’

J.B. turned to Ryan. ‘I don’t get some of this. Unless my calculations are out, I don’t remember any big ville being in that direction last time we were in this area.’

‘True enough,’ Ryan agreed, turning to Affinity. ‘You’re familiar with the whaling fleets along the coast, and the ville of Claggartville from where they come, right?’

The young man looked at him blankly and shook his head. ‘I’ve never heard of this place, and we know nothing of what occurs along the coast. I should, perhaps, explain that Atlantis has kept itself secreted since the nukecaust, and deals as little as possible with outsiders. Most of the food and cloth is generated from within the ville, and other supplies are taken from the ancient ville of Trenton. This looms large in our legends from before the nukecaust, when those who knew what was coming prepared for the long winter of the soul. It’s all we know, and is why we traveled along those old roads when we sought to build a home away from Atlantis.’

‘So you’re living in the ruins of Trenton, New Jersey, and Atlantis was built apart from that?’ Mildred asked. When Affinity nodded, Ryan could see that Mildred was confused and he shot her a questioning glance. ‘Hell, I don’t know,’ she said by way of reply. ‘I don’t remember Trenton being that close to the coast.’

‘Could be the shape of the coastline has changed,’ J.B. answered, ‘or mebbe they think it’s Trenton and it’s not. Hell, we used to see signs that we thought gave us the name of an old ville then turned out to be a signpost all the time when we were traveling with Trader, right?’ he directed to Ryan.

The one-eyed man nodded. ‘Could be a whole lot of reasons,’ he said to Mildred. ‘Kind of irrelevant now. The fact that they’re close together and warring with us in the middle is all we need to really know.’

‘I would agree with you. I know not of the places of which you speak, but I do know that the night will soon be upon us, and to be out here in the unprotected forest would be a bad thing,’ Affinity said softly.

Ryan looked up at the sky. The sun was beginning to sink and it wouldn’t be long before twilight became dusk became night.

‘Can we make it to your ville before the sun goes down? And if we did, would they welcome us?’ he asked.

‘As to the latter, I can assure you that the earlier conflict would be forgotten if you brought me home in one piece. It would be, as it were, an act of faith on your part, and accepted as such by my people. But as to the former, I’m not so sure. This is a dense forest and it is easy to lose direction.’

‘So what are you saying?’ Mildred asked. ‘That we should make a camp here and wait for these Nightcrawlers to sniff us out?’

‘It’s not, I agree, an ideal solution. It is, however, a preferable one to roaming the forest at night. At least we can mount some kind of guard if we stay in the one spot,’ Affinity answered.

‘Seeing as we don’t know exactly who we’re dealing with, then that might be the best thing,’ Ryan agreed.

He signaled to Jak, who appeared as if from nowhere. The albino had been up a tree, keeping a watch on the surrounding area, and had been able to pick out every word that had been spoken. Relieved that there was little need to fill in the details, Ryan selected a watch and, as usual, took the first for himself.

The companions made a small fire in as much of a clearing as they could muster in among the twisting growths. There was little space in which they could comfortably bed down together, yet it was important that they weren’t split up. Their proximity to one another was vital for security.

As Ryan began to recce the darkening surrounding woods, Doc sidled up to Affinity.

‘You interest me very much,’ he began in an undertone. ‘I find the names of your villes, and your name, of much interest. Also your garb. I suspect that there is some purpose to the coloring of your robe, which on the face of it would seem absurd to wear while on a hunt. The red and white combined are elements that ring distant bells in the recesses of my memory, and things begin to come back to me. I suspect that it ties on very well with the use of the names Atlantis and Memphis. I wonder, could it be possible that this construction on which you were once enslaved has something to do with the idea of being prepared for those who have been waiting to rise again?’

Affinity eyed the old man shrewdly. ‘Are you seeking to play tricks upon me? I am sure that I mentioned the idea of the people from which I come waiting to be claimed—’

‘Ah, yes, but you did not mention the idea of rising again…having once been of this land, and then sinking below before awaiting the moment when they can once more come to the surface and claim what is rightfully theirs.’

Affinity narrowed his gaze, as though seeking to peer inside Doc’s mind. When he spoke, it was slowly, with every word measured carefully.

‘You seem to know a lot about our old legends. I wonder how this could be, as we have always been taught that none outside of our closed community had ever heard them. Your mode of speech, and your seeming knowledge, what do you know of the lost continents and—’

Doc quieted him with a gesture. ‘Not here and not now. Perhaps when we reach your ville on the morrow. There is much I would ask of you, and perhaps much I will be able to assist you with if you can but assist me in turn. But first we must have some privacy. There are things to which my companions are not privy.’

‘I believe I understand you,’ Affinity said carefully. ‘I shall speak to you more of this when we are in Memphis.’

Doc smiled and left the young man alone. It left Affinity uneasy. He was in the middle of the forest with people he didn’t know, one of whom appeared to be plotting against the others. And although he had seen at firsthand their fighting skills, he was still uneasy at spending the night outside of the safety of his ville. He knew the quality of the Nightcrawlers. There was a part of him that suspected he would never get the opportunity to find out just what it was exactly that the old man knew of the history of his people.

As Ryan kept watch, Affinity tried to settle to sleep. But try as he might, he couldn’t. Instead he focused on the sounds of the one-eyed man who was their leader checking out the immediate area. Even though the forest was deathly quiet because of the lack of wildlife—the secret of which he was sure the old man had guessed—he could hear Ryan’s movements only as the slightest echo of a whisper. He was good, there was no denying that.

But it was still enough. The Nightcrawlers made no sound.

And it was more than likely that they were out there right now, advancing toward where he lay with the unsuspecting others.

## Chapter Six

First watch passed without incident, and the exhausted Ryan was only too glad to hand over second watch to Mildred and J.B. It was unusual to take a watch in pairs, but both had agreed that neither would rest that easy in the forest that night. Both were aware that they didn’t share Krysty’s and Jake’s heightened senses. This being the case, both figured that doubling the watch would make detecting any intruders easier in a strange environment. The density of the woodlands and the maze-like nature of the paths that could be forged was a major concern.

Yet this seemed a concern that was a thousand miles away as they both prowled the silent forest. The night above was clear, the stars lighting up a sky that was further illuminated by a wan half-moon. Yet much of this light couldn’t filter through the canopy of foliage cast by the forest, so that underneath, where the companions kept camp, it was a world of gray shrouded further by deepening shadows.

The lack of anything living—other than themselves—meant that the shadows were still and it should be easy to detect any movement within. The only sounds were the distant rustle of the foliage in night breezes.

Despite this, both J.B. and Mildred were on edge. They had little doubt that Affinity had been serious and accurate in his description of the Nightcrawlers they had to guard against. Every slight rustle, every trick of the shadows that seemed to move or to deepen that little more, became something that made their nerve endings jangle.

For much of the watch they avoided each other, dividing the area around the camp into two 180-degree arcs that they would take individually. Each knew the other’s footfall, the sound of each other’s breathing and movement so well that they were able to filter out those sounds that they knew to emanate from the other.

It didn’t make the watch any easier, and after nearly two hours, both felt that they were at breaking point. As their patrol arcs came close to each other, Mildred moved across into J.B.’s territory.

‘What is it?’ he demanded sharply as she approached. His voice was too low to carry farther than a few yards, but the fact that she was close enough to catch his words gave him cause for concern.

Something she was swift to allay.

‘Chill, John. There isn’t a problem. I’m just getting a little too strung out on my own. Kind of think that I’m going to be believing my own breathing is a freakin’ Nightcrawler if I’m not careful.’

The Armorer gave a wry chuckle. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean. I haven’t felt this paranoid since I was left alone with a bunch of stickies on human fry night.’

Mildred gave him a bemused look. ‘John, what the hell are you talking about?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I figure this is really getting to me, so that I don’t really know what I’m saying. Have you thought that we might just be talking to reasure ourselves of the fact that we’ve actually got some company and aren’t just here in the forest completely alone?’

‘You mean that the total lack of anything else resembling a human being is getting to you, too, right?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘It’s too quiet. If they are out there, then we should be able to hear them. But if they’re not, then…’

‘The sooner morning comes the better, I figure,’ Mildred muttered. ‘This is playing hell on both our nerves.’

J.B. shook his head. ‘You can say that again.’

THEY COULD HEAR someone in the forest. Someone who was other than those they sought. The runaways who had established the rogue ville of Memphis were too scared to be out in the forest at this time of night. And yet there were so rarely strangers who traversed these lands. Atlantis had deliberately been established so that it could hide from the prying eyes of intruders, far into the forest and near to the coast, where there were no major routes that would bring convoys and invite unwelcomed attention.

Whoever these people were, they had taken a lot of trouble to come this far. It was a shame that they couldn’t take the extra trouble to be quiet and to protect themselves.

A vulpine grin crossed the face of the first warrior. This would be easy. They were making their position clear by their lack of concealment, and they would never hear a sec force as experienced in the sounds of the forest as the Crawlers. He turned and looked back, his night-adjusted eyes picking out the seven others in his pack. No one else would be able to spot them in this darkness, but he knew where they would be, was so used to the shadows that he could pick out the most infinitesimal change on depth and width of blackness, and had a sense of smell so highly attuned to the forest floor that he could even smell them.

Like his fellows, he was covered from head to foot in mud and paint, his tight-fitting tunic dyed to blend with his decorated skin. His hair was oiled and smoothed back to his scalp, and in his eyes he wore lenses that had been made by craftsmen. They were of a darkened glass, so that his eyes wouldn’t reflect light. Each time he wore them they wore away at his eyeball a little more, so that he would have immense pain and blurred vision by the time that he was five years older. But it was worth it, to serve the greater cause in this way; and he would be rewarded, as all surviving Crawlers were rewarded. While others slaved at construction, the Crawlers were awarded a pension for the services they had offered to their people. The more recaptures and kills they had to their name, the greater the pension.

So far, his pension was good. That was why he was group leader, in charge of the operation. He had left it until the stiller watches of the night as he was aware of the juvenile efforts of the Memphis sec to keep his people at bay by mounting their ridiculous patrols. They offered no real threat, but a few Crawlers had been injured during skirmishes and the irritation they caused was something that the Crawlers could do without. They had stopped day attacks, but, as they were too scared to be in the forest at night, all they had achieved was to make their enemy concentrate on the time when they were at their most dangerous. In a sense, they had served the Crawlers well. Fools.

This contingent of Nightcrawlers had five men and three women. All were dressed identically, with camou robes, laced leather thongs dyed black and soled with rubber, body paint and dark lenses. All had their hair slicked back. Those whose natural hair color was lighter had dyed it dark, and those with long hair had it plaited. They were armed with blades. Blasters were too loud, and stealth was their watchword. Of course, carrying a blaster didn’t mean that you had to use it. But in an extreme situation, the temptation may prove to be too strong, and subterfuge was paramount. So they carried Tekna and Wilkinson Sword hunting knives, as well as machetes and pangas. Each blade was sharpened and polished, with the resultant shine being dulled by the same kind of camou paint that they used on their bodies. The sheaths were oiled and tied to their bodies to prevent accidental collision and clanging of blades.

They moved independently of one another, hugging tree boles and moving at a crouch between the cover. They knew the forest well, and knew that—as there was no animal life to disturb it—the contours of the forest changed little with the seasons. In fall they had dry leaves underfoot, and this made it the hardest time of year to ply their trade; but now, with a canopy overhead adding to the dark, and little on the surface of the woods to make a sound beneath their footfalls, it was easy for them to move quickly.

They weren’t totally silent. That was impossible for anything that took breath. But they were as quiet as it was possible to be. They were sure-footed on the ground, placing their feet where they would make the least noise on ground they knew almost as intimately as their own bodies. They avoided overhanging branches that would rustle if disturbed, and had no need to communicate with sound. Each Nightcrawler trained hard with the others so that they built up an almost preternatural degree of understanding with their fellows.

Eight pairs of ears identified the direction of J.B. and Mildred’s conversation. Eight pairs of eyes focused in the almost pitch-black darkness on the area they had to cover. Even in this poor light, and with the strangers’ earlier fire having been extinguished, they were able to discern different levels of dark as they saw the two move together, talk and then move apart.

The leader stopped grinning. Even his teeth would stand out in such absolute blackness. Nothing would break the shadow of his face, even though he was still smiling wolfishly on the inside as he began to move toward the companions, knowing without even looking back that his fellow Crawlers were on his tail.

These people wouldn’t know what had hit them.

KRYSTY WAS HAVING a nightmare. Trapped in the tentacles of an octopus that was dragging her beneath the waves. She lashed out and it jetted a stream of dark ink into the water as it sought to protect itself from her blows. The darkness engulfed her in a swirl, the cold water becoming so dark that she no longer knew which way was up and which was down. But she knew that she was sinking into the dark.

She woke with a jolt and could feel her hair tight around her head and throat. It was more than the nightmare that was making her feel this way. There was a stirring in her bowels, a knot that only came when true danger beckoned. She sat up and looked around her. She could hear J.B. and Mildred talking in a low whisper and, as her eyes adjusted to the faint light, she could see them. They appeared to have everything under control, and yet…

Something had hit her right in her doomie sense; she didn’t know what, but it was there.

And she wasn’t alone. As she watched Mildred and J.B., she became aware that Jak had also stirred. She made to speak, but he stayed her with a gesture. His red eyes burned in the darkness, the faint light making his white, scarred face translucent and ageless as his brow furrowed in concentration.

‘Stupe talking—cover all else,’ he whispered shortly.

‘Where are they?’ Krysty asked, knowing already that the Nightcrawlers were out there, and guessing that Jak had caught wind of them.

‘Circling Mildred and J.B.—can smell shit on their skin, make them dark. Almost can’t hear them—nothing that quiet….’

Krysty was on her feet, although keeping low. ‘Get Mildred and J.B. I’ll wake the others,’ she whispered. ‘Triple fast. If you can hear them, you can bet your ass that they’ve already heard us moving.’

THE LEAD CRAWLER SAW two people rise from the group that lay beyond the two already standing. That made at least four. No matter. However many they had, they would be no match for his people.

Silently, and as one, they moved into attacking positions, each instinctively knowing where the others had gone. They quickened their pace and pulled their blades.

‘I CAN SEE THEM!’ J.B. yelled. ‘In a line, right at three o’clock to six, coming quick.’ He slipped the mini-Uzi into position and set it to rapid, firing off a burst into the dark. He had no idea if he had hit anyone, but the purpose of the blast was to try to delay the Nightcrawlers, perhaps wake up the others. He needn’t have worried. Ryan had already been awakened by Krysty, the sleep fog clearing rapidly from his brain as he took in the situation. He sprang to his feet, eschewing the Steyr and pulling the panga from its sheath. He understood J.B.’s motives, and also knew that in these conditions the use of blasters would be suicidal.

Doc and Affinity were also roused, while Jak was directing J.B. and Mildred to pull back into the central camp area.

‘Dark night, we’re sitting targets if we do that,’ J.B. said, ignoring the irony of his curse.

‘I think not,’ Affinity said in a low tone. ‘They never use blasters, only knives. And they always work in close. It’s their trademark, if you will.’

They fell into silence, straining every fiber to catch the slightest sound made by their attackers. There was nothing. The Nightcrawlers had also fallen silent, as still as though they weren’t there, waiting for their prey to crack first.

It was a war of nerves. The companions scanned the darkness, all but Jak able to detect nothing.

‘Still where they were,’ he whispered. ‘Can smell them…but we move, then they, too.’

‘Could try to fire on them again,’ J.B. murmured. ‘A quick burst of spray’n’pray might catch them before they can move.’

‘Yeah, and in the noise and confusion they get to move out of position. At least this way we know where they are. Let them make the first move,’ Ryan replied.

They stood still—as still as their opponents. The silence beyond the camp became oppressive and time slowed so that every breath seemed to take a day to draw.

Then it happened. The faintest of noises, and Jak yelled, ‘They come!’

Before the companions had a chance to ready themselves, the Nightcrawlers were upon them. Their camou made them seem like indistinct shadows that moved across the lesser darkness, having no shape or form beyond an amorphous black mass that broke into pieces and reconstituted into different shapes when on the verge of the camp.

Jak had slipped knives to Krysty and Mildred, as they knew that their blasters would be ineffective. The razor-honed, leaf-bladed knives the albino youth used so well would still be deadly in the hands of the less-skilled women. J.B. had his Tekna, and Affinity and Doc had both unsheathed their blades.

The combat was silent. Even when the companions landed blows upon their enemies, they made no sound, as though they either controlled with a will of iron the reflex to shout, or they’d had their tongues ripped out by the root. It could have been either, but it had the same effect regardless. It was as though the companions were fighting phantoms that had no feelings and were invincible.

But definitely human. They stank of the body paint, and they were slippery with sweat and also with blood where the blades caught them. Slippery not just from their own blood. With the dark lenses over their eyes, they were almost impossible to pin down visually, and it was difficult to tell where their blows were coming from. Ryan winced as a blade sliced at his upper arm. Jak caught the point of one under the eye. He ignored it and struck home with a blow before his opponent had a chance to adjust balance, knowing that he had hit home when he heard an involuntary expellation of air. He was just thankful that the cut was under his eye. Above, and the running blood would have made vision difficult.

Krysty and Mildred were faring well. Although they couldn’t see their opponents clearly, both women were wearing dark clothing that made their body movements harder to discern in the black of the night, and so were able to dodge the blades with ease. They also landed a few body blows that took a toll on their opponents.

Doc thrust and parried with his sword, grinning maniacally, as though enjoying the combat. Particularly when he felt one thrust penetrate into flesh deeply enough to stick. His opponent slumped noiselessly to the ground.

They had no idea how long they fought, or how well they were doing. It seemed as though their opponents were endless…and yet the Nightcrawlers were used to fighting opponents of a lesser mettle and were shocked at the skills of those they now tangled with—so much so that they began to withdraw. Because they were losing? Because they had suffered casualties? It was impossible to tell. The only thing for sure was that they melted into the darkness as smoothly as they had first materialized.

It was some time before the companions and Affinity could relax in any way. They expected the Nightcrawlers to come at them as soon as they showed any sign of weakness. But as time crept on, it became apparent that their opponents had withdrawn from the fray. Comparing notes, they were sure that at least one of the Nightcrawlers had been badly wounded—the warrior skewered by Doc—and that two or three others had also taken heavy blows. For themselves, there were only a few cuts and bruises that Mildred could easily tend to when the sun came up.

Which was also when they expected to recover the wounded or chilled. And yet, when the light did break, there was no sign of any of their opponents. Doc was certain his opponent was chilled. If so, they had taken the corpse with them.

Apart from a few dark patches of blood on the floor of the camp, and some splashes on the nearest clumps of foliage, there was no sign of disturbance. Nothing to indicate that they had been attacked.

As though it had never happened.

## Chapter Seven

The sec party stood back in cover when they heard the noises from the woods. There were four of them, and they were all dressed in the same white robes as Affinity. Using the dense woodlands as shelter, they stepped into shadow and waited as the sounds grew nearer.

‘Mark, do you think that they are Nightcrawlers?’ asked the youngest. Barely out of his teens, the clean-shaven Philo had only escaped from Atlantis a few months before and was keen to prove himself. Despite this, he could feel tremors on his right leg as the strangers approached.

‘Idiot, have you ever heard a Crawler make so much noise, even when they thought there was nobody around to hear them? They know we have sec patrols now, and they would be ever more vigilant,’ Mark snapped in a low whisper. He was nearing thirty and had been in Memphis for more than five years. He had several family members in his bid to escape, and was filled with a burning desire for revenge against the regime of Atlantis. That had driven him to rise rapidly to head of sec for Memphis. Not that there was a lot of competition. He sometimes felt—particularly at times like this—that he was almost fighting alone.

Philo stayed silent, although he felt slighted. What other explanation could there be other than that the approaching strangers were Crawlers? Those who had returned on the previous day had spoken of those they encountered as being strong fighters, but not garbed as was the norm for Crawlers. Perhaps this was a change in tactics by the men of Atlantis to counter the measures shown by Memphis. After all, who else could it be in these woodlands?

The sec party stayed silent, letting the strangers come to them. There was a low undertone of voices and the sounds of their progress were clearly audible. These Crawlers—if indeed they were—made no attempt to conceal themselves.

Mark showed himself to the others long enough to mutely direct his men into position for an ambush. He had determined the direction of the approaching party and wanted to make sure they were surrounded. Crawlers were tricky, slippery fighters. His men were probably outnumbered from the sound of it, and there was every chance that they would be outfought. But he was a great believer in the element of surprise.

He had little idea that in this instance it would be himself on the receiving end of such a shock.

As the four sec men adopted their new positions, and readied themselves for attack, Philo tried to calm himself by concentrating on picking out the words spoken by the approaching party. His guts were churning with fear and he supposed that to try to decipher their conversation would act as a distraction from his fear.

They were far enough away for the talk to be little more than a low buzz, but within a few seconds he had adjusted to the volume and could pick out a few words.

‘…the methods of destruction, and the tactics involved, are sometimes schematic of an intelligence that is little more than misguided.’

‘Doc, you talk such crap sometimes. The only thing you can ever think about is survival. That’s the triple red priority.’

The first voice was rich and full. Male. Whereas the answering voice, although throaty and deep, was most definitely female.

The first man continued. ‘My dear Dr. Wyeth, one must always consider beyond the knee-jerk reaction. It is the ability to think rationally and translate this into tactics that actually wins wars. Staying alive is one thing—’

‘Can’t win wars if buy farm,’ a third voice, low and almost monotone, interjected.

‘Exactly my point. I’m not saying that tactics are wrong—hell, if Ryan didn’t give us some, then we’d long since have been chilled—but the numero uno priority is to keep moving and keep breathing.’

‘I appreciate your willingness to enter into debate so freely,’ a fourth voice added, ‘but if you are to be moving on, I fail to see how it can be of any practical consideration.’

‘A little learning never hurt anyone,’ the woman’s voice countered.

But the fourth voice, the mellifluous tone and the use of language… It couldn’t be—he had been taken by the Crawlers the day before and was considered lost. It was Affinity, of that Philo had little doubt. The two men were friends, and the young man had been fired up by the apparent demise of his compatriot.

So these were the people the sec patrol had fought yesterday. And they hadn’t chilled or taken Affinity. In fact, he seemed on friendly terms with them, and they were headed back toward Memphis.

This was most strange. Philo had no idea what it might mean, but he was sure that they should refrain from attack. He knew that Mark wouldn’t have bothered trying to hear what was being said. The sec chief would be too busy psyching himself for combat. It was probable that only Philo was aware of what had been said between the approaching strangers.

He knew that he had to inform Mark straightaway and stop an attack that could be disastrous—unnecessarily so—for the sec party. The young man broke cover to seek out his chief.

Mark stepped from his own cover, grabbing the young man by the arm and pulling him into the shadow.

‘What in the name of Minos do you think you’re doing, you idiot?’ he asked quietly. His tone, however, was anything but soft.

Rapidly, Philo gabbled everything he had heard, knowing that time was of the essence. When he had finished, Mark nodded briefly.

‘You did right,’ he affirmed. ‘I’ll halt the attack and we’ll reveal ourselves.’

Philo allowed a smile of relief. It died on his lips on the silence following Mark’s words. For silence was all there was. The advancing party had fallen quiet, as though aware of the ambush in wait for them.

RYAN HELD UP his hand to halt the party, but he needn’t have bothered. The exchange of views dried to silence as an awareness that they were no longer alone swept through them—all except Affinity, whose puzzled expression was met with a gesture from Doc and an inclination of the head to the paths ahead.

Although seemingly relaxed, the companions had been acutely aware of their surroundings. They had tuned in to the silence around them, and although apparently paying no heed to the environment, had easily caught wind of the change. Ahead of them the foliage had moved in a manner that bespoke of more than the wind, and the rustling was underscored by something that could only be muffled and quieted human speech.

Ryan looked questioningly at Jak. The albino youth held up three, then four fingers with a slight shrug, indicating he couldn’t be more exact about numbers. He then indicated the spread of the sounds.

Ryan nodded and gestured to J.B. and Jak to fan out and come around the source of the noise in a pincer movement. He further indicated that the remaining five move forward in a staggered line through the trees, with weapons to hand. For stealth, and because of the close yet shielded proximity, he further indicated that blades would be of more use than blasters.

Jak tossed a couple of leaf-bladed knives to Krysty and Mildred before he and J.B. headed off in separate directions, disappearing silently into the undergrowth.

The others began to move forward, now watching every step, keeping sound to a minimum. Affinity wondered at their ability, realizing that they were a match for any team of Nightcrawlers…and hoping that the opposition wasn’t his own people’s sec, if only for their sakes.

MARK GESTURED to Philo to move back into position, wincing at the relative noise the young man made as he went into cover. Mark knew that all his men were willing, but the fact was that they simply weren’t of a comparable quality to their opposition. For all of the talk of Memphis mounting a raid on Atlantis to topple the ruling regime, he knew in his heart that talk was all it would remain, at least for a few years to come.

He slipped farther into shadows, then moved toward the source of the noise before it had ceased. In the time before he had run from the old ville, he had pretended; he had played the games and acted as though he’d wanted to become a Crawler, to become one of the elite. In truth, he was filled with loathing for them and the way in which they treated the people for whom they were supposed to be the sec force. But he knew that if he could learn a few of their tricks, then it would aid his escape.