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  My lungs filled with dry air, shuddering as I fought for my life, then, with the sound of Dana’s laughter, the cold took me, and I slept.

  2

  “Fuckoffameee. . .” I heard myself groan, but it came out as a rusty whisper. It took me twenty-six minutes and fourteen seconds to figure out just what the hell was going on. I know this because a digital counter flared to life in my right eye, running time off as Dana and Marsten tried to pry me out of their tin can. “Didja break the lock?” Again, my voice was raw, and out of instinct, I sucked at a tube that was curled near my mouth. After a moment, tepid gel ran across my lips, tasting of chemicals but still wet enough to cleanse my throat of the gritty sensation.

  I heard a hiss, then another and tried to turn my head, when a low background hum in the tube stopped, leaving me in a stifling silence.

  “You’re going to have to try harder, doc. The lid’s not moving from the—”

  An explosion of scalding white light flooded my eyes as I felt the world tilt under me, and I was falling. I didn’t fall far, but I did hit hard just as it occurred to me that I was completely naked and sore as hell. I hit the ground with enough force to make me cough, but that was all I could do. My muscles felt like they were jelly infused with the afterglow of a good, solid ass-kicking.

  Something flickered across my eyes, dimming them as my vision grew dark, then dull, then stable, all in the span of a minute. I heard a keening wind and the cry of a distant bird, lonely and raw.

  Wind? A bird? Shielding my eyes out of instinct, I dropped my hand to the ground when it was obvious I didn’t need to hide to cover them. “Did you move me to the parking lot? Does this mean I’m not getting paid?” I needed the cash. And clothes. And some damn answers as to why they would move me out of the medical office at all. The tube had been huge. Unless they took a wall down, I had no idea how it could be done.

  I lay there panting, feeling heavy and more than a little confused. Actually, I was bewildered as fuck and starting to sweat heavily under the sun. It felt like high noon in the desert, so I started to roll over. I was going to stand up before I did anything else, or I’d roast in the sun like a drunken tourist. I reached for my knee, knowing it would be a source of pain if I tried to move.

  The scar was gone.

  “What the—” My mind began reeling all over again. My knee was smooth, the skin unbroken. No jagged scar and stitched flesh. No low throb. It was like new. “This isn’t right,” I told myself, feeling panic crawl up my spine in a dread chill.

  “Wat-kali-lidio?” a gravelly voice asked me. Two faces appeared overhead, bound in grimy cloth and wearing respirators that had seen better days.

  “What the fuck? Dana? Marsten?” My memory flooded back, and I knew if it was them, they weren’t my friends.

  “Marsa...ten?” Different speaker, same voice. The head cocked in confusion, looking down at me and framed by the blast furnace sun.

  I let my head fall back, taking them in from head to toe. Dirty, clad in some kind of thin leathers. Belts and buckles and weapons all over, bristling with points, with two waterskins each. One wore a bow, slung high on the shoulder; the other held a spear tipped with a nasty barb cut from metal. The edge glittered in the light, and I had no doubt they could use their weapons. Every ounce of air slid from me in defeat. I knew desert fighters when I saw them, having done three tours among people who fought with whatever weapons were available.

  The real question had nothing to do with these people and everything to do with the tube. The fighter on the left held a pry bar, its edges scarred from trying to open the tube for the past half hour. I struggled to my elbows, watching them pull back with professional wariness. My heart hammered away at my ribs, and it took everything not to howl with fear and rage. Nothing was real except the sun burning me like a nightmare. I dragged in a breath, my lungs filling with desert air and freaked out all over again.

  My eyes were a bleary mess, but I could see the men before me as I tried reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there. I was in the shit, no doubt, but they weren’t moving, just watching me through goggles scoured by the wind.

  They weren’t scared. They were careful.

  I consider myself to be a reasonable person. I never believed in ghosts or crystals or any of that bullshit, so I relied on my senses. On the evidence. It was part of being in combat. Myths make you dumb. Facts keep you alive. Leave the legends to the hill people, and focus on the objective as it’s presented.

  Based on that stellar personal motto, I concluded that I was no longer in a clinic ten miles from my house, and Dana and Marsten had fucked up. I didn’t have a long beard or talons for toenails, but everything else told me I’d been asleep for a lot longer than a few hours. Either Marsten owed me a mountain of back pay or he was dead.

  Judging by the people watching me like an unexploded bomb, I was going with dead.

  I decided to start with the basics because losing my shit wasn’t going to help at all and the adrenaline was fading into the background. “Where am I?”

  The people watched me but made no move to answer. After a long silence, the man on the left crouched despite being the taller of the two.

  He started to speak in a tumble of silvery words, the syllables running together like a birdcall. I was about to hold up my hand and ask for silence, when words appeared in my right eye, exactly where the timer had been while they were busy breaking into the tube.

  Lingual Shift Correction. Adjusting Now.

  “Hey, I—” I coughed as something began to move in my throat. Ghostly fingers tightened in my neck, lifting and tugging in short motions that eventually ran together in one fluid process. Finally, after a series of gasping breaths, everything stopped. The words vanished, and I was left to stare at my liberators with eyes that burned with sweat.

  “Where am I?” I asked again, and the result of my question was electric.

  “You speak our language. Pretty good,” growled the man on the right. He was shorter, but still athletically built under the array of survival gear. “Who are you?”

  “I do? No shit. I do!” I made a series of connections in my mind that led me back to the first shot Marsten gave me. Cold, my ass. I recalled the conversation between him and Dana as the term bots came to mind. Whatever the shot had been, medicine wasn’t in it. My vocal chords hummed with low-level pain, though it was fading with each passing second. I was adapting, and fast, which meant a lot of things to someone who was born with a healthy sense of self-preservation.

  “You do,” came the metallic grunt. They both spoke through filters, making me wonder just what I was breathing. I felt fine, if stiff and confused. Inhaling deeply, I took an experimental lungful of air and pronounced it safe. The smell was off, but it was clean air, free of the city smells I was used to. The voice came again, carrying a hint of irritation. “Who are you?”

  I crossed my legs to get comfortable, letting my arms fall to the sand but stopped midway. Something was wrong with my body.

  “Not wrong. Right,” I muttered, looking down at the expanse of my skin. For the tenth time in as many seconds, my heart skipped a beat as I took in my chest, arms, and legs. I had fucking abs. A year of booze and takeout food and I woke up with actual rippling abs. I hadn’t seen them since high school, let alone after I went into the Marines.

  The nanobots. Marsten’s voice drifted through my consciousness. He said I would be reborn. He wasn’t fucking lying. I continued to marvel at myself, lifting one hand and then the next, searching for a flaw. There were none. I glowed with health, that is, if the sun didn’t turn me into a lobster first.

  The tube groaned and tilted sideways, lurching into the sand a few feet away. There were remains nearby, concrete walls of modern construction, but scarred from wind and weather. A trench surrounded the ruins. Someone had been busy exposing the structure to the air.

  “Jack Bowman. Call me Jack. Now it’s my turn. Again, where am I?” I directed my question with as much force as
I could while sitting stark naked in hot sand, but I thought it came out fairly well.

  “In the Empty, but you’d know that if you looked around,” said the taller man. Okay, so wherever I was, people could still be sarcastic assholes. At least I had something familiar to cling to.

  “The Empty? And you are?” I pointed to them, inviting an introduction. I might be naked, but I wasn’t rude.

  The tall one jerked a thumb at his partner. “Bel. I’m Mira.”

  “Bel and Mira. Guess letters cost money when you got your names. What are you doing out here, other than hammering me out of my nap?”

  “Digging. Obviously.” This time, the short guy Bel made the funny. They were a regular comedy team.

  “For what? For me?” Heat rose in my cheeks, and it wasn’t just the sun.

  “For anything from the Hightec. It’s worth more than water, given the right buyer, and we have our ways of finding it. Like you, and whatever it is you were in.” After glancing at the tube, they both shook their heads in mourning. “It won’t sell now, except for metal. The light died when you fell out. Boards might still be good.” Mira stood, pulling his pack around to open it and rummage.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, hoping he was going to hand me the waterskin. I licked my lips and stared at the bulging skin. The sun was taking its toll with each minute.

  “You’ll get sun sick. This helps,” he grated. He handed me a loose shirt and pants, then looked at my feet for a long moment. “There are boots on the wagon, but they’re rough. You’ll need something better if you’re to get out of the Empty alive.”

  I slid the shirt on with some effort, bones creaking from disuse, but would have to stand to put the pants on. “Help me up?”

  “Fine,” they said in unison. Pulling me to my feet, it was a swaying minute before my body stabilized enough to let me attempt the pants. After three failed attempts, I lurched into the pair of scavengers while they pulled the pants on, one leg at a time. The material was synthetic, stiff, and lined with something that felt like silk. The pattern was desert camo, but a kind I’d never seen before. The shirt matched but was lighter by several shades, a neutral tan that faded into my skin like something at the edge of your vision.

  “Can I have some of that?” I pointed at the waterskin closest to me, on the taller man’s hip. With a sigh of disgust, he unhooked it and passed it over.

  “Small sips. It’s not water,” Mira explained.

  “It’s not?” I held the open skin a few inches from my mouth, waiting for more information. It seemed like the smart move, given the entire situation. “How do I know I can trust two men in the desert who dig up rust for a living?”

  “Drink it and see,” came the reply, again in unison. They must be brothers or just spent too much time in the desert with each other.

  I drank. It was cool and tasted like a plant I couldn’t recognize, neither sweet nor bitter. It was amazing. “What is that?”

  “Heart of the cactus. Tough to get to, but a lot better than water. We climb to find entry points up in the highest parts. They’re taller than that.” Bel pointed at the two-story building that had once been a clinic.

  I whistled in appreciation. I felt a hell of a lot better, and the flavor was growing on me. “That’s a serious task. Takes balls of steel to try it.”

  With snorts of laugher, they knelt down and began prying their masks off, unwrapping the cloth and breaking the masks away from their faces.

  “No balls. But it does take guts,” Mira said. She was taller than her sister—or cousin—they looked nearly identical except for hair color—their long hair beginning to blow in the desert breeze. Both had dark blonde hair—although Mira’s had a golden undertone, reminding me of honey—olive skin, and freckles. They were beautiful. Not the kind of processed beauty I’d known before my big nap, but a natural, visceral beauty brought about by good genes, sun, and work.

  “Surprise,” came Mira’s musical voice, as Bel smiled, revealing even white teeth. I thought scavengers would be anything but gorgeous women. I was wrong. Both women were stunning, their green eyes radiant in the sun.

  After composing myself, I regarded them in turn. The situation had changed, and fast. I was no longer marooned in a desert without pants. I was marooned in a desert with pants and two beautiful women who knew their way around a hostile landscape. A fountain of questions came to mind, but I settled down on the sand and waved them to join me.

  “Very funny, but you still haven’t answered my question,” I told them as they sat down.

  Mira held up a finger. “But we did. You’re in the Empty, and you’re damned lucky we found that—whatever that Hightec thing is that you were wrapped in. It was under three feet of sand, by the way. We never would have found it if a storm hadn’t blown through last night. It broke off the wall and blew enough sand away to show us the lid.”

  “The blue light means money. Thought it was a treasure,” Bel said.

  “It is. You found me,” I told them, waving grandly. It never hurt to be confident around women who’ve already seen you naked, and I still needed boots. And food. And answers.

  Mira laughed, while Bel groaned. It was better than open hostility, so I pressed my luck. “What’s next?” I asked.

  “For you? I don’t know. We haven’t found nearly enough to go to trade. Got enough supplies for another week, and now we have you,” Mira said.

  “We have to keep digging, fast as we can. The sun will set, and we can’t work at night. Too dangerous,” Bel said, looking out into the distance. She reached for one of her blades out of habit, a motion I recognized at once. When the sun went down in Iraq, the night became something different. My rifle became my rosary; always in hand and a great comfort.

  “What’s out there, Bel?” I asked her, one soldier to another.

  She took a long time to answer, but when she did, her eyes were flat with worry. “Everything.”

  3

  Night fell with a purple sigh.

  One moment, the last smudge of light fell into a bruised sky, and then it was dark. The wind died, the temperature dropped, and the air grew still. We set camp inside the tallest wall that looked stable, mere feet from the office door I’d walked in to begin my adventure of sleep study some time ago. As to exactly how long ago that was, I intended to find out, but not until after eating. My stomach was painfully empty, and Mira started a small, hot fire of dried sticks, placing long pieces of meat over it to sizzle.

  “What is that?” I asked. I’d eaten far worse in the military, so my question was idle curiosity.

  She uttered a word I didn’t catch, then put her hands together like the fins of a fish.

  “We’re eating a mermaid? I didn’t exactly see any water around here,” I told her. I didn’t have a problem with eating mermaids, as long as they removed the scales. I have standards.

  “I know what you mean, but no. This is fish. A bad one. It can attack on land as well, which is why they kill scavengers and caravans,” Bel told me, turning the strips of meat.

  “A fish on land? How big?” I took a piece from Mira, biting into it without waiting. It was scorching hot. It was also the best thing I’ve ever eaten. I finished it in three bites and looked at the rest. When Bel nodded toward the fire, I took another, settling back on my haunches to eat.

  “Bigger than you. A jaw full of teeth, and bony armor. They’re fast and quiet. Black as night and can wrap themselves in mud for years at a time. Only when you hear them rasping, that’s when—”

  “Lungfish, we called them, but they were the size of my fist. Very small.” I wiped my hands, swigging cactus water and thinking. Things had changed, of that much I was certain. There were so many questions to ask, I decided to start with what would help me. “You say you’re out here finding Hightec; old things, right?”

  “Very old,” Mira answered.

  “So they’re not made anymore, but people still understand some things about them?” I asked.

 
“Few people understand the old things at all, and no one works with metal, or chips, or even wiring. Not even glass unless it’s salvage. The world is broken, but a few of us pick through the leavings of a people who lived before the virus. Before the shattering of everything. What’s left is what you see. Almost nothing,” Mira said. She was stunning in the firelight, her face a maze of angles and emotion.

  “Mira, what virus?” I asked. The word made a chill crawl up my spine, and I feared the answer.

  Turning to me, her eyes were wide and clear in the dim light. Bel settled in to sharpen her knives, facing away from us in quiet dismissal. I knew she liked speaking less than Mira, so I let her be. I would find my answers with her sister.

  “There are many kinds of life, Jack, and none of them good. Some say it was a virus that changed the animals and people, reshaped the world, but I don’t know,” she said. “Before that, there was a great war of some kind, but I can’t say for sure. No one can.”

  I peered up at the stars, and to my relief, recognized the same constellations. “How long?”

  “The virus?”

  “Yes, and no. How long was I asleep?” I hoped that my eye would flash an answer, but there was nothing. Only the dark sky and blaze of stars.

  “Long enough that you were under twenty feet of sand,” Mira said.

  I was quiet for a moment. “Where did it strike first?”

  “Mar-surrah, I think, but legends are lies. Who knows? Could have been at a place called the Arch—that’s where most of the stories start,” Mira said. “But again, these are all just rumors and fables. In one version, there is a dragon and fallen gods. Another speaks of the sky cracking in two with a hot light, tearing a hole so deep that it opened a path to Hell. It depends which people you ask, but they all lead to where we are today, here in the Empty.”