James Axler – Freedom Lost

“So don’t,” Ryan replied. “He makes a dandy one-stop scapegoat.”

“Dammit, Ryan, I love you!” Krysty cried. “I will always love you! My love warred with Akhnaton’s mental power even as he tried to make me his own.”

Ryan’s head throbbed, along with his injured shoulder, the blood pulsing through his veins. He wished Krysty could have waited for this discussion. He wished they were all inside the gateway now, their ticket out of Aten punched. He wished he could make her understand he wasn’t upset with her, nor had what she’d endured made him love her any less.

Krysty reached out and stroked both sides of the beard stubble on his face. “You aren’t physically hurt too badly, but your spirit is wounded,” she said softly. “Your pride bleeds because you think you were unable to protect me.”

“I don’t ‘think,’ I know I was unable to protect you.”

“But, don’t you see?” Krysty asked desperately. “You did protect me. It was your love for me and my love for you that broke his power, broke Nefron’s power. It was your strength and courage that gave me the resolve to battle him. Every time he reached for me, touched me, spoke to me I was fighting back. We defeated him together.”

Ryan closed his eye, releasing his breath slowly, letting her words wash over him. Comforting, soothing words. He pulled her to him, holding her tightly. He nuzzled her hair, pulling her scent back into his lungs and being.

“Living is struggling,” Krysty whispered to him. “The unavoidable thing. But love makes it worthwhile.”

“Yes,” he replied very quietly. “You taught me that.”

Ryan relaxed his arms around her and she stepped back to face him, her eyes shining with tears, like wet emeralds. Her mouth was smiling as she reached out and took his hand.

“What’s the holdup?” J.B. said suddenly, his voice coming at them from around the bend in the passage. Apparently the Armorer and the others had continued ahead, but had grown tired of waiting for the pair.

“Just restating the obvious, J.B.,” Ryan called out, squeezing Krysty’s hand. “We’re right behind you.”

Chapter Two

A military redoubt was a boring place. There was little in the way of decoration or personality, only a cold professionalism. These hidden installations varied in size, from the massive maze of passages and rooms located behind the stone-faced facade of Mount Rushmore, known as the Anthill, to this tiny little hive of less than a dozen or so labs, dormitories and control rooms.

No matter the size or the complexity, there was a predictable uniformity that cried to the rafters of calm, plodding, rubber-stamped government bureaucracy.

Checking each of the rooms was quick and effortless, and no time was wasted in search of food or supplies since they had examined all the redoubt had to offer during their earlier stay.

“Gunmetal gray.” Mildred Wyeth sighed. “There’s no place like home.”

“Familiar is good,” J. B. Dix replied. “I like familiar.”

“You would, John,” she retorted.

“What? You want change?” the Armorer asked in disbelief. “Hell, Millie, every time we walk into one of these redoubts, we end up jumping to another part of Deathlands. Only good thing about this mode of transportation is that it’s quicker than riding in a wag, and a hell of a lot safer than walking or trying to ride a motor bike.”

“All I’m saying is, would it have killed whoever came up with the design of these lairs to consult a decorator?” Mildred asked. “Some different colors of paint? A pair of frilly curtains? Hell, I’d even take throw pillows and doilies just to break up the monotony.”

Mildred’s comments were directed at the sameness of the redoubt’s walls. For all of its many uses in security, vanadium wasn’t a reflective or attractive metal. The genetic installation’s underground level was constructed of smooth alloy wall plates, which absorbed the faint light given off by the fluorescent light strips overhead.

J.B. looked exasperated. “I’m going to check on Ryan and Krysty. After all we’ve been through, Ryan’s probably forgotten the combination to close the sec door.” He was referring to the treatment the friends had received from Pharaoh Akhnaton in the city of Aten, and the arduous journey across the Barrens to this redoubt. At the back of their minds was the possibility that the gateway wouldn’t workas it hadn’t days earlier when they had attempted to jump out of there.