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
