Allegiance

TWENTY-FOUR

Team Raptor moved through the sewer tunnel for three hours, walking mostly, crawling in some spots. To avoid the storm and the monsters, Michael had decided to keep moving underground.

Leaving Alexander was one of the hardest things he had done on a dive, but it had saved the rest of his team. There was no going back, only forward.

Around midnight, the four divers found an overfill area a mile from their target. Michael ordered the team to stop and sleep in shifts.

It was nearing six in the morning now, and he was wide awake, standing sentry and scanning for hostiles. Most of the bricks lining the bell-shaped room had broken away.

The members of Team Raptor weren’t the first humans to camp here. Broken bottles littered the underground lair. Skeletons of small rodents formed a small pile. Next to them were several buckets filled with a hardened greenish substance.

There was other evidence of the former occupants. Michael picked up the legless head and trunk of a plastic doll, the hair long since gone. There was also a miniature metal fire truck, and a police car without wheels.

He thought of the families that had once tried to survive here. It was surely a bleak and fearful existence. Maybe not so different from the life of lower-deckers on the Hive. But on the airship, they didn’t have to worry about Sirens, bone beasts, and toxic air.

It made him wonder about the living conditions for the people they had come to save. Anyone who had survived this long down here had to be hard as nails.

He hoped they were peaceful, but the threats down here made him wonder whether that was possible. They would surely know how to defend themselves.

Michael walked over and nudged each of the other divers with his boot.

“Wake up,” he whispered. “We need to start moving again.”

The other divers gathered their gear in silence. Everyone was feeling the loss of Alexander, but now was not the time to grieve. They needed to be fully present once they climbed aboveground again.

He checked his wrist computer—suit integrity was 100 percent and battery over 60. Next, he brought up the digital map of the city.

Rodger’s and Magnolia’s beacons were on the move again toward the target. Seeing they had made it through the night helped buoy his confidence.

“Everyone good?” Michael asked the divers.

Three nods.

“I’ll take point,” he said. “Keep quiet and listen for hostiles.”

He brought up his rifle and ducked into the exit tunnel. Slick moss grew in clumps on the bricks. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he had a feeling it was rife with bacteria.

“Watch for anything that could tear your suit,” he said.

A spider scuttled across the ceiling and vanished into a crack. Michael pulled out his knife and slashed through the web ahead.

The sticky material was surprisingly strong. He crouched and signaled everyone to turn off their helmet lights. Absolute darkness enveloped the divers.

Michael listened for grunts or skittering claws but heard only the drip of water. A light flashed as he started to switch on his NVGs. He kept the optics off and stared into the blackness, waiting.

A moment later, the purple light flashed in the adjoining tunnel to their right. The glow was weak, but it came again and again.

He motioned for the divers to follow him into the intersection. They hugged the wall and moved with barely audible footsteps.

When Michael got to the corner, he aimed his rifle to the left side of the passage, switching on his NVGs and then his infrared. Seeing no evidence of life, he inched closer to the corner and glanced around.

The scan came back void of contacts, but he did see the source of the light. It was coming from the ceiling. He had discovered a way out.

Pulling up his wrist monitor, he saw the first good news since they landed. The source of the SOS was a quarter mile away. The tunnels had led them safely under the city, almost to the doorstep of the bunker.

Excited, Michael gave the “advance” signal and took point again.

A mound of rubble seven or eight feet high formed a natural staircase of bricks and concrete leading out of the sewer. He aimed his rifle up through the hole, at clouds rolling overhead.

The rain had stopped, but lightning still flashed. That wasn’t the source of the light, he realized as another flash of purple lit up the tunnel. They had reached the profusion of bioluminescent vegetation he had seen on the dive in.

Michael checked the debris, looking for footholds, and started up while the other divers waited. A few steps up, a brick skidded under the weight of his boot. He flinched at the clank.

The screech of a vulture answered, freezing him in place.

Two of the nightmarish birds sailed overhead and circled. On the second pass, one landed on the nearest rooftop and perched there. This was going to complicate things.

The vulture seemed to look in his direction but then turned. He kept moving cautiously. At the top of the mound, he poked his head up into the street.

They had emerged in what was once a heavily populated area. Large apartment buildings and commercial buildings, many of them still in relatively good shape, lined the street.

He looked around for his first up-close view of the purple-and-red flora. The vines, as thick as the bodies of the snakes at the fuel outpost, had barbs and spikes covering their flesh.

On one side of the road, reddish-hued trees grew out of what had been a park. Vines and foliage had almost completely hidden the slides and swings.

He looked back to the rooftop. The vulture was still looking in the opposite direction, and he motioned back into the tunnel for the divers to join him on the road.

While they climbed, he took up position behind the rusted hull of a car. He pushed the scope of his laser rifle to his visor and centered the crosshairs between the mutant bird’s eye and ear.

Sofia emerged first, then Edgar, but when Arlo pulled himself up, he knocked a hunk of asphalt loose. It plummeted back into the tunnel, and the loud crack turned the vulture’s head.

Michael pulled the trigger, blowing off the beak and the top of the head with a single bolt. He held in a breath, hoping the bird wouldn’t fall to the street. It slumped backward, a single feather wafting away on the breeze.

The team bolted for cover inside a hotel atrium, entering through glass push doors that were cracked but strangely intact. They spread out, rifles up, and cleared the room.

“All right, we’re close,” Michael whispered. “We just need a better view of the area.”

Edgar directed them around a pile of glass, formed when part of the dome ten floors above had broken away. A shard the size of a table had fallen like a guillotine, splitting the reception desk in half.

Michael went up a staircase to a second floor that looked out over the atrium. Despite the gaping roof, the hotel’s interior remained somewhat preserved. He could even see the design of the tile floor.

A chandelier hung over the wide landing in front of two double doors, which were locked. They came to a door with a faded exit sign.

Michael grabbed the knob. It turned, unlocked.

Edgar led the way up to the fifth floor before they stopped to rest and listen.

Hearing nothing, Michael took point to the top floor. Wind gusted against his armor as soon as he opened the door. The second half of the hallway was broken away and open to the elements.

Across the street was another building, but it was only five or six stories tall. Most of the exterior on the upper floors was destroyed, exposing the interiors of apartments and offices. Not seeing any movement there, he tested the floor with his boot.

“Careful,” Edgar said.

Michael moved cautiously out into the hallway for a better view. Jagged planks and broken beams jutted into space, and a flap of ceiling hung loosely overhead. He stopped a foot away from the planks and looked out at swollen clouds.

Rain drizzled from the sky, coating his visor. The vantage point gave him a look at the western city blocks and the flora consuming them.

The strange vines had completely overgrown another park and snaked through the ruins of surrounding buildings, crawling up the sides and in and out of windows. One city block appeared to have collapsed under the weight of the dense vegetation. Then he saw that the roots and trunks were actually coming from a sinkhole. He switched off his NVGs. The opening pulsed an angry red before fading into darkness.

The glowing flora made his infrared optics pointless, so he scanned the area with his rifle scope. He found a nest of vultures in a blown-out room of a building to the north, but no bone beasts or Sirens prowled the streets. Perhaps they had returned to their lairs to sleep. If so, then Team Raptor had its second stroke of luck.

He brought up his wrist computer. Looking out over the ruins again, he determined that the SOS was coming from under a building somewhere two blocks away, dangerously close to the edge of the sinkhole.

With his finger, he traced out a map on his wrist computer, then transferred it to their HUDs. He backed away from the edge.

“I’ve identified the target,” he said. “Check your minimaps and follow me.”

The divers went back down the stairwell, stopping at the closed door on the second floor.

“Stay quiet and stay low,” Michael said. He looked at Arlo, who hadn’t said much over the past few hours.

“You okay?” Michael asked.

“Not really, Commander. I thought I was ready for all this, but I’m scared shitless we’re going to run into one of those things that killed Alexander.”

“It’s okay to be scared,” Edgar said. “But you gotta keep your wits, man, or you’re going to get yourself and all of us killed.”

“Alexander sacrificed himself for us,” Michael said. “Remember that.”

Sofia patted Arlo on the back. “You’re braver than you believe.”

“Yeah, I know,” Arlo replied.

Michael waited a moment, and when Arlo nodded again, he gave the order for the team to move out. Edgar went first and opened the door. Sofia followed, sweeping her rifle muzzle over the lobby below. Leaving the way they came in, they moved west down the street.

Keeping close to the edge of the building gave them some cover from the rain but not the lightning. A bolt struck a radio tower in the distance.

Michael decided to keep moving. They had to get to the target before the monsters came back out. This was their chance.

After sweeping the road, he turned onto the next block. A mesh of vines from trunks that had broken through the street clung to the buildings.

Michael led the team around the limbs and found a way under the arbor. A twenty-foot wall of crushed vehicles and rubble blocked off the route on the other side. Razor wire topped the barrier, stretching from one side of the street to the other.

He bolted for cover when he saw a machine-gun nest in the blown-out side of a building behind the wall. The team took up position behind a brick stoop. Michael peeked over to check the machine-gun nest. The mounted weapon was still there, but zooming in, he saw the rust. If he had to guess, this place had been abandoned for some time.

He scanned the wall again and noticed something he had missed earlier. A doorway had been broken into the mountain of cars. It looked about the size of a bone beast.

Michael stared at the wall. It was the only thing separating him from the bunker, and in a few minutes, he would see the home of actual live humans who were neither Cazadores nor sky people.

The thought triggered a tingle of adrenaline.

“What do you think?” Edgar whispered. “Should we contact Captain Mitchells now and have Timothy reply to the SOS in Portuguese to let them know we’re here?”

Sofia squeezed up next to them. “We should wait for Magnolia and her team first, right?”

“We still don’t know if defectors are down here,” Michael said. “At the prison, they surprised us. I won’t let that happen again. For now, we keep radio silence, and I want to take a look before Magnolia’s team gets here.”

Michael considered asking Edgar to join him on the recon. He was the most experienced diver besides Michael, and the best marksman. And that was why Michael needed him with the weakest link.

“Edgar, you stay here with Arlo. Sofia, with me.”

“Got it, Commander,” Edgar said.

Arlo didn’t protest.

Michael hunched down and ran for the wall, with Sofia on his heels. They stopped at the doorway. Scratches and shards of metal confirmed his suspicions. A bone beast had ripped its way through.

He slipped into the opening. The tunnel through the cars and rubble was almost twenty feet long. A network of purple vines webbed across the cracked asphalt on the other side.

Michael raised a fist when he got close to the opening. The infrared scan picked up the flora but nothing else.

He switched back to his NVGs. A single building showed in the green hue. Four stories tall, with metal sheets and bars covering every window. Steel plates covered the front doors.

An overhang above the wide stoop of stairs read, Polícia Federal.

Barred gates ten feet tall sealed off a parking lot on the left side of the building, but the gates on the right side had fallen to the ground.

Moving just outside, he checked the buildings towering over the road on both sides. He found another abandoned machine-gun nest in the broken-out third floor of an apartment building but no sign of recent human activity.

Concrete blocks and other vine-covered obstacles created a maze from the wall to the barricaded front entrance of the police station. Several open windows in the side buildings would be perfect for snipers.

But where was everyone now?

“Commander, what do you see?” Sofia whispered.

“Nothing,” he said. “Follow me and move fast, but mind your suit.”

They bolted for a shattered door in a storefront. Along the way, Michael saw inside the parking lot behind the broken-down gate. Brown flags hung from three poles. He nearly tripped over a vine that caught his boot but managed to catch himself and continue into the shop.

He didn’t stop moving until he was inside what was once a grocery store. Behind the counter with the cash registers lay upended shelves. Sofia followed him over to one of the counters for cover.

They waited, listening for hostiles, before he finally peeked over the edge. Using his rifle scope, he zoomed in on the flagpoles. The brown flags weren’t flags. They were the hides of humans, with lips, noses, and other body parts stitched into them.

“No,” he choked.

Team Raptor was too late. Again.

“What?” Sofia asked.

Michael checked the dark stains in the parking lot that looked fresh.

The defectors had beaten them here again.

His transmissions had gotten another bunker of humans killed, and now he feared he had doomed his team to the same fate as Trey.

“We have to get out of here,” he said, ducking down. “When I run, you run, okay?”

“Why? What do you see?”

“Just do as I say,” Michael growled.

Drawing in a breath and exhaling, he steeled himself. A moment later, he got up and ran back for the wall of cars. He hurdled a barbed vine and sprinted the rest of the way to the tunnel through the wall.

In the passage, purple flashes guided him and illuminated the street beyond, where Arlo and Edgar stood watch.

A muffled voice called out, and Michael moved faster, ducking under a ragged strip of body metal. Just as he emerged, he saw motion on the other side of the thick vines twisting across the road.

Several naked humans ran around the next corner. This time, he was sure of it.

He turned to look for Edgar and Arlo, but they were no longer holding their post.

The contacts definitely weren’t defectors, but how could humans survive out here without suits or clothing?

“Where are Arlo and Edgar?” Sofia said quietly.

“I don’t know,” Michael said. “Come on.”

He took off running and checked his HUD for Edgar’s and Arlo’s beacons. They were on the move, too. Michael hoped they were pursuing the humans, even though it meant they had disobeyed a direct order.

He rounded the next corner and halted at the sight of the sinkhole. Vines reached out into the nearby structures, twisting through the interiors and breaking through the tops.

Sofia and Michael walked toward the edge. One of the vines suddenly moved like a snake, slithering before their boots. But it was the beep on his HUD that made Michael stop.

He glanced at the minimap just as Edgar’s and Arlo’s beacons winked off.

Les knelt beside Cricket and shined his flashlight into the machine’s guts. It had gotten safely back to Discovery, but at a cost. Not only had it shed the armor plating protecting its hardware; it had also lost multiple cameras.

Michael was not going to like it.

He had to get the robot back up and running as soon as possible. Not having Cricket in the field meant losing their tenuous connection to the divers and the Cazador team, and Les was getting more anxious with each passing minute. Over seven hours had passed since they received data from either team.

While awaiting news, Les had spent much of that time working with Alfred and his team to get the robot field-ready. They had replaced most of the wiring and two of the cameras and were preparing to add new armor using pieces of an old diver suit.

“You’re practically a Hell Diver,” Les said.

The robot chirped.

Alfred pulled the hood down over his eyes and bent down to begin welding the armor plating. While he worked, Les spoke into his headset.

“Timothy, how are things looking up there?” he asked.

“The storm is still interfering with our instruments, Captain,” Timothy replied. “I haven’t been able to get an update from any of the divers.”

The AI appeared in the launch bay, his glow spreading around Cricket as sparks showered the deck.

“How is our little friend?” Timothy asked.

“Almost ready for action,” Les said. “I’m sending him back out as soon as Alfred’s team finishes up here.”

Timothy clasped his hands behind his back and bent down to examine the robot. He said, “I wish I could transfer my consciousness into Cricket. It would be nice to move around again without my current constraints.”

Les wasn’t sure what to say. He had wondered what the AI thought of the drone, but figured Timothy was indifferent, just as a person might be to a pig or other livestock. After all, Cricket was a tool and had never been a person.

“I’ll be back on the bridge soon,” Les said. “Why don’t you go see how Layla and Eevi are doing?”

Timothy nodded and vanished.

The technicians finished installing the frontal armor plates and moved to the back.

“After these plates are done, we just need to load the launcher with ammo,” Alfred said.

Les opened a comm channel to the militia soldiers and ordered them to bring the grenades. He had gone a step beyond Michael’s instructions and installed a grenade launcher on one of the robot’s arms.

The militia soldiers arrived a few minutes later, carrying a secure crate.

“Almost done,” said Alfred. His team finished the last of the armor and then connected patch cords to run diagnostics. Cricket chirped, moving its limbs up and down.

“Good to go,” Alfred said.

“Nice work,” said Les. “Load up the grenades and prepare it for launch. I’ll be on the bridge.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

Les made a pit stop at his locker and grabbed his suit, armor, and helmet. He wanted to be prepared for anything, especially since he had no idea what was happening on the surface.

He made his way back through the airship, stopping to relieve himself and then to grab a coffee. The aroma of the fresh brew was intoxicating. Coffee beans, wine, tobacco, and other rare old-world staples had changed his people’s life and opened an entire new world to them.

He drank down the cup, feeling the caffeine sharpen his senses as he walked. The mug was empty by the time he got to the bridge.

A militia guard stood sentry at the hatches. He saluted Les and moved out of the way.

Eevi was the only officer at her station. She swiveled her chair and smiled. “Good morning, Captain. Did you get Cricket up and running?”

“I did,” he said. “Where’s Layla?”

“Resting, sir.”

“Good. She needs it.”

“Why do you have your jumpsuit and armor?” Eevi asked, eyeing the gear in his arms. “Is something wrong?”

“No, just being prepared,” Les said. He put the gear down and moved over to his chair. “What’s our status, Timothy?”

The AI appeared at the helm, looking out the portholes at the storm that blotted out the horizon.

“We’re currently hovering at twenty-one thousand feet, three miles from the coastline,” Timothy said. “Skies are clear in our current location, but the storm over the target is intensifying, and expanding in all directions.”

“Keep an eye on it,” said Les. “And program a course for Cricket that takes it under the storm.”

“Already done, sir. Uploading to the drone… now.”

Les buzzed the launch bay. “Is Cricket ready to deploy?”

“Yes, sir,” Alfred replied.

“Good. Launch on my mark.”

Les turned on the robot’s weapons system by typing in his pass code. He brought up the drone’s cameras on the main monitor. Next, he accessed the data feed in a subscreen that would show them a minimap and location of the divers once Cricket got in range.

“Mark,” Les said.

The bridge doors whisked open, and Layla entered.

“Just in time,” Les said. “I just launched Cricket.”

“Have you heard anything from Tin or Mags yet?” she asked.

“Not yet, but we’re hoping Cricket can give us an idea of where they are within the next few minutes.”

Layla brushed her braid over her shoulder and sat at her station. She smiled at Eevi, but Les could feel the tension in both of them as they waited for news of their men.

Les had tried not to think of Trey, but old memories surfaced unbidden as he waited. For some reason, he had a bad feeling about things on the ground, as if something terrible had happened during the night. He buried the thought and tapped his monitor to pull up the data on-screen.

Cricket lowered through the sky and then switched to thrusters, moving fast in the turbulent air beneath the storm clouds.

“Almost in position for a first scan,” Timothy announced.

Les was starting to doubt that any defectors were out there. Avenging his son might have to wait. Right now, the most important thing was finding the survivors of the bunker and bringing his divers home safely.

The first stream of data from Cricket’s scan rolled across the screen. Magnolia’s and Rodger’s beacons were moving at a good clip. They both were still alive and nearing the target.

Next came the data for Team Raptor.

But that couldn’t be right. Les saw only two beacons.

A moan of dread resounded through the bridge.

“No… no… This can’t be right,” Layla said. She looked over at Les, then to Timothy.

Eevi’s eyes were glazed with tears. “This can’t be real,” she said. “Can’t be real.”

“Tell me that’s wrong,” Les said to Timothy, hoping the ensign was right.

The AI hesitated a moment before replying, perhaps to double-check or perhaps because he, too, was staggered by the data.

“I’m sorry, Captain, but the scan appears to be correct,” he said. “Edgar’s, Arlo’s, and Alexander’s beacons are offline.”

Eevi stared ahead in shock.

“I’m afraid those divers have been killed,” Timothy said.