Dark Emblem: Book Summary
The group awaken to find themselves back in a very familiar redoubt. They jumped back into the redoubt located in the ruined hospital in North Carolina. Ryan once again considers heading back to Front Royal to see how his nephew is doing.
As they head towards the surface, they are attacked by two stickies. The mutants are killed quickly and easily but they are certain that quite a number of the muties will still be around even after the destruction of the Freedom Mall. Ammo is at a critical level, so they just can't afford to fight their way to Front Royal.
Everyone is exhausted, but they can't risk staying in the redoubt and decide to jump out.
When they awaken, the gateway chambers are another shade of blue. Everyone suffered terrible jump nightmares but are otherwise fine.
Unlike the vast majority of the redoubts they have been to, this one doesn't have a ante chamber. In fact, it doesn't seem to be a regular redoubt at all. It looks more like a castle than anything else.
They are shocked and surprised when a friendly voice greets them and three men appear, asking them to come out and stay. Ryan keeps his blaster trained on them and they refuse, heading back into the gateway.
The jump won't activate, and they are trapped. They have no choice but to accept the scientists hospitality. The scientist introduces himself as Dr. Silas Jamaisvous, and claims to be a freezie, and knows who Doc Tanner is.
The group are all given posh rooms to stay in. Over a great meal they learn that Silas and his people had to abandon the other redoubt because the nuclear generator failed and they were awakened from their slumber. They took over a fortress to continue their experiments.
Real Puerto rican coffee is served much to the delight of the entire group. After the meal, Only Doc stays behind to talk to Silas. Jak and Dean stay behind to guard while the others go to sleep.
Doc and Silas talk for a while about time travel and his wish for Doc's assistance in some experiments over the next few days. Mildred gets involved in the conversation and it does get a little heated. Finally Mildred goes to bed, and Doc goes for a little walk on the edge of the castle.
He meets up with JB and they share a couple of Cheroot and discuss the possibility of him trying to returning to the past. The conversation dies and JB heads off to bed.
The next morning Ryan tells Silas that he is going to go explore the island for a while. He takes Krysty and Dean with him.
They spend the morning exploring before a man named Soto begins to talk to them. He asks to talk to them in private. Ryan agrees and they go to a small café. Here they meet with another local named Jorge. Soto tells them the legend of the Chupacabras, or goat suckers.
Soto and Jorge inform Ryan and the others that they want the group to help rid Puerto Rico of these deadly creatures as they have been attacking humans now.
Ryan tells them that they will talk it over with the rest of their companions and let them know the next day. They all return to the castle at sunset, eat another wonderful meal and get some sleep.
The next day the entire group head back to talk to Soto and Jorge. They learn that there is a little resentment towards Silas as he won't share any of the power that is generated in the fortress. And the few people that have gotten close to the Doctor and entered the castle have never returned.
Mildred has a hard time accepting the story about the mutants so she asks to see a corpse. She examines the body of a little girl and notices that the body has been completely drained of blood and that there are two small puncture wounds on the neck. No sign of tearing in the flesh. She still has a hard time accepting it.
They return to the castle once again and learn that the next day Silas wants Doc to stay with him, as well as Mildred. Because they are going to be short handed, they ask Silas if they can get a couple of sec men to come along. He reluctantly agrees to let one man, named Louis go with them. They plan to leave at noon the next morning.
They also learn that Silas had transported part of the mat trans from the redoubt he was frozen in to this redoubt so he could continue to experiment with the time travel. The fortress has it's own hidden redoubt in it.
Around noon the next day the group leave the fortress in two jeeps and head towards the rain forest where the Chupacabras are supposed to live. On the way one of the jeeps blows a tire and they are forced to abandon it because it has no spare tire. A few hours before nightfall they stop and make camp to rest up. Ryan wants to take the fight to the mutants during the night, when they would least expect it.
After they wake up, Louis dies from a mutant beetle that somehow had gotten into him. There is not a thing the others could do to help the man. They find a mountain which is honeycombed with caves and caverns.
While exploring these caves, they find a vandium door, which indicates that there is a redoubt hidden. They enter the redoubt and discover that it has been stripped bare.
While looking around, Ryan is attacked by a young Chupacabra. He literally blows the small mutants head right off it's shoulder. They go deeper into the redoubt, following a stair case. On the way down a second Chupacabra comes up behind them and Ryan kills it as it jumps to attack.
They take a spiral series of stairs down to the lower level of the redoubt. Here they find the laboratory that spawned the muties. They can see at least nine of the creatures staring back at them through the window. It becomes apparent that they are using the ventilation shafts to get around the redoubt.
The group fight their way out of the redoubt, killing most, if not all the mutant Chupacabra's. Ryan figures that this is the redoubt where Silas must have originated from and knows that a lot of what he had been told was an out right lie. The go back to the jeeps and head as quickly as they can for El Morro.
Late that night Mildred awakens and goes to check in on Doc. She discovers that his bed hadn't been slept in so heads to the mat trans chamber. Here she meets both Doc and Silas. It comes out that Silas is not a freezie, but is instead a time traveller who will stop at nothing to get back to his own time before the holocaust. He planned to use Doc as a test to make sure that the trawling equipment is functioning properly
To ensure Doc's compliance, he has drugged the old man up. Doc steps into the gateway and disappears.
It turns out that Silas was responsible for the Chupacabra legend as he used a number of the creatures as test subjects before. In the late 90's a pair of the mutants were captured and the government used their DNA to create more, and at the same time created a paradox.
Doc finds himself thrown forward in time where he briefly encounters Kane, Brigid, Grant and Lakesh before being pulled back in time. He finds himself at the jump point in New Mexico with Sukie as she tired to get out of the gateway. Then he's thrown all the way back to the time just before he was trawled out and sees himself and his family before finally being brought back to the present.
Ryan and the others arrive inside the fortress and are forced to kill several of the sec men as they make their way to the Mat Trans. They confront Silas who is forced to take Mildred Hostage. He locks himself in the ante room but not before pushing Mildred out.
Doc returns and is not inside the gateway chamber. Silas boasts about his accomplishments as he hunts for the old man. He brags that Doc could have been pivotal in preventing the holocaust if only he hadn't been so arrogant and determined to get back to his family. It turns out that he had been present when Doc was brought from the past, throughout his stay and finally when he was propelled into the future.
Silas checks out the jump calculations and is stabbed in the leg by Doc. He beats the old man and gets into the gateway. Doc is able to pull down the targeting computer and damages it just as the jump is completed.
The others get into the anteroom and help Doc Tanner. Mildred figures that she should be able to get the gateway control computer rebooted with a little work.
The next day they are all back at the gateway and are ready to head back to the Deathlands. Before leaving Mildred grabs a CD rom from a drawer. It has the destination codes of all the known redoubts over the face of the earth.
Silas survived the jump, but wasn't expecting to be propelled all the way back in time to the late 1800's. He is found by Emily Tanner.
End of Dark Emblem