End Program - James Axler

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He was still alive, but his pulse was slow—he would be out of it for a few minutes yet.

      Ryan straightened, and as he did so the white door slid open on hidden tracks. As the door slid aside, he saw the edge of a figure who was standing there, a white padded shoulder of a jacket of some kind. Ryan leaped, shoving the door open with one hand while his other—holding the implement like a knife—slammed into the newcomer’s face. The man, dressed in a white topcoat and pants with a cloudburst of black curly hair around his head, staggered back under Ryan’s assault, slamming into the corridor wall behind him. “What th—?” the man stuttered as he went sailing into the wall.

      “My friends. My weapons. Where are they?” Ryan growled, driving his left fist into the man’s gut to punctuate his statement.

      The white-clad figure doubled over with the impact, hands reaching around to clutch his aching belly. “I—”

      The Deathlands warrior pressed his hand against the man’s throat, drew back the metal tube. “Where?”

      “Ryan, back off.” The voice was familiar, but it took a moment for him to register it. “Back off,” the voice said again, calling from the end of the corridor.

      He turned in that direction and saw J.B. hurrying toward him, shouting for him to stop fighting. His old friend looked different—his clothes were cleaner, the arms on his glasses no longer slightly bent from wear. “Stand down, he wasn’t going to hurt you,” the Armorer stated.

      “J.B.?” Ryan asked, bewildered.

      Behind J.B., more familiar figures appeared in the white-walled corridor, along with several strangers, all of whom were wearing white clothing like the bald man. Mildred and Ricky hurried to join J.B., while Jak was somewhere behind the others but moving quickly to meet with Ryan. Mildred had a white, sleeveless jerkin over her olive-drab T-shirt, and Ricky was in his usual clothes but they had been cleaned. Jak, too, looked the same but different, his usually unruly long hair washed and smoothed. Besides those familiar faces, a man and two women—all of them looking to be under thirty—were striding up the corridor, looking surprised.

      The corridor walls and ceiling were painted a clean white, while the floor had been finished in matching white tiles. Fluorescent lights ran the full length of the corridor without a break, set neatly in a recess that ran in the corners where walls met ceiling.

      “What’s going on here?” Ryan asked. “Where are we?”

      “We’re safe, we’re among friends. It’s okay,” J.B. said reassuringly, pressing a hand against his friend’s bare shoulder to calm him.

      Ryan watched J.B., looking for that telltale flinch that would tell him that the Armorer was being pressured somehow, or that it was a trick. There was nothing, just J.B., clean-shaven, glasses polished, old brown fedora looking a little smarter where the dents had been knocked out of it for once.

      “We’re safe, Ryan,” J.B.repeated. “We’re safe.”

      Warily, Ryan drew the hand that held the metal tube away from the man he had attacked, pulled his other hand back from the man’s throat. The figure sagged against the wall, breathing with an agonized, choking gasp, blood on his face, a hole in his cheek.

      “Where are we?” Ryan asked J.B..

      Chapter Six

      “They call this place Progress,” J.B. explained.

      Ryan sat with the Armorer in a vast lounge area with panoramic windows that looked out over a ville of towering dwellings and predark factories. Jak, Mildred and Ricky were with them, and they all sat around a low table furnished with drinking glasses. The factories pumped smoke into the air, clouding the skies with trails of gray. Ryan had been given clothes to wear, a dressing gown with a simple tie that he had knotted at his waist. He had been assured that his own clothes would be returned shortly. They were being held in storage after being cleaned.

      One of the locals, a young woman with flawless skin and blond hair tied back in a braid, had asked Ryan if he needed anything, and when he told her he was thirsty she hurried away and returned a half minute later with bottle of clear water. The bottle didn’t smell of pollutants or of poison, so Ryan sipped at its contents warily as he took in everything J.B. was telling him. The blonde stood on the far side of the room, ostensibly admiring the view through the windows but actually keeping an eye on Ryan in case he went on another rampage. Other people from the ville had been sent to deal with the wounded that Ryan had left in his wake.

      “Progress,” Ryan repeated, skepticism clear in his tone.

      “Stupe name, I guess,” J.B. admitted, “but you get used to it. The ville was built around an old military base—redoubt, mat-trans, the whole enchilada. When we jumped out of that redoubt greenhouse from hell...you remember that?”

      Ryan nodded, taking another sip of water.

      “When we jumped, we wound up here,” J.B. continued. “We were all pretty beat-up when we arrived—”

      “I remember the armaglass wall imploding,” Ryan confirmed.

      “Yeah, you got a face-full of that,” J.B. told him regretfully, “and we all got cut up pretty bad. Some of the glass came with us too, and really did a number on us.”

      “Where’s Krysty?” Ryan asked. “Is she okay?”

      “She’s fine,” Mildred told him, leaning closer. “Doc too.”

      “Well, mebbe a bit more ornery,” J.B. added, “if you want my opinion.”

      Mildred shot a look at J.B. “Everyone made it, Ryan,” she said. “We’re all okay. The people here in Progress went above and beyond to patch us up.”

      Ryan nodded, reaching up with one hand to feel at the alien eye that had been placed in the empty socket. “So I see,” he said, the irony of the phrase lost on him. “What is this thing, Mildred? What did they do to me?”

      “We’ve been here two weeks, Ryan,” J.B. replied before Mildred could speak. “Some of us were badly wounded by the armaglass. We’d all lost a lot of blood.”

      “The locals treated us,” Mildred stated. “They saw the damage to your face, and they plucked out all the debris you’d got showered with. When they saw your missing eye, well, they improvised.”

      “So, I can see again?” Ryan asked. He knew that he could, but he wanted to know how.

      “The locals will explain it to you more fully,” Mildred told him, “but basically they’ve fused a computerized camera to your optic nerve, allowing you to use both eyes once more.”

      “It has crosshairs,” Ryan said, glancing across the room to where the blonde stood. Jak was watching her too, he noticed; as usual, the albino was alert, suspicious of anyone he didn’t know.

      “Your new eye has a lot of things,” Mildred replied. “From what they told me, that’s a pretty serious piece of hardware they’ve put inside your skull.”

      “And they did this for nothing?” Ryan asked, knowing that everything had a price. He gazed out the window behind Mildred, focusing his vision, changing the depth. The artificial eye responded seamlessly, and when he drew a close bead on something in the distance those faint crosshairs reappeared over his left field of vision.

      “As far as we can tell,” Mildred replied. “They have a philosophy here in Progress about changing the world and making things better again. They want to fix the mess that the nukecaust left us. They want to repair the Deathlands so people can live here and prosper.”

      Ryan looked at Mildred, then turned to J.B. before addressing them both. “Where is this place?” he asked.

      “California,” J.B. answered. “Some part of it that survived the San Andreas problem.”

      Ryan looked out at the blue sky, wondering what they had walked into this time;

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