Captives

ELEVEN

“Take this, and be careful,” Michael said. He lifted the weapon by its curved grip and handed it to Layla.

She exchanged her AK-47, loaded with armor-piercing rounds, for the laser rifle and pressed her helmet shield against his before stepping over to the ladder.

“I’ll look after her, don’t worry,” Les said. He followed her up the metal rungs.

Michael watched from the front of the central structure, standing by a massive steel door warped and pitted from a powerful blast. The concrete walls had collapsed into a mountain of debris that now formed a jumbled apron to the main building.

Rain blew sideways through the translucent hologram standing beside him. Michael couldn’t see Deliverance or hear the whir of the turbofans, but the airship was up there, hovering two thousand feet above Red Sphere and ready to descend at a moment’s notice.

“According to these blueprints, this facility had only three entrances and three exits,” Timothy said, gesturing toward the ruined doors. “This was one of them.”

Michael recalled the blast from the USS Zion that had saved his life and, apparently, destroyed the main access into Red Sphere.

“What’s the other way besides the rooftop?” he asked.

“I’d rather not say, Commander, because it would be highly dangerous. But if you must know, it’s underwater.”

“Well, that’s out,” Michael said. He turned away from the AI and bent down to get his first look at one of the defectors.

The humanoid machine was buried under the mountain of concrete rubble and steel. The “skull” was crushed, and half the chest and torso were also flattened, but an undamaged arm stuck out of the pile, metal fingers reaching toward the sky.

Under the chunks of rock, he glimpsed a laser rifle.

“Oh, hell yes!” he murmured, slinging his rifle across his back. He got down and began pulling away rocks until it was free. Then, holding his new laser rifle, he stood and walked back a few steps to get a better look at the rooftop.

Layla and Les were nearing the top now, but that ladder was in bad shape. Several rusted rungs didn’t look as if they could support much weight without snapping like a calorie-infused herb stick.

“Be careful, Layla,” Michael said over the comms. “Three points of contact at all times.”

She looked down. “You found a laser rifle?”

“Yeah. It was buried, but it looks operational.” His breath caught when she stepped through a decaying rung and fell down a step. Les reached up with a long arm and grabbed her ankle.

“I’m good,” she said.

The two divers kept moving, and Michael let out the air in his lungs, clouding his visor. When it cleared, Layla had reached the top of the ladder. She swung her legs over a parapet wall and brought up the laser rifle.

Les followed suit, and both divers disappeared from view.

“See anything?” Michael asked over the comms.

He heard crackling, then a reply from Layla. “All clear up here. We’re headed toward the hatch.”

Michael went back to scanning the piers for contacts. The ship where Erin died was docked to the left. More debris littered the pier. Erin’s blood had long since washed away in the rain and the surf that pounded the edges of the docks.

Michael blinked at the view, remembering the young diver’s courage. She had saved him that day by laying down supporting fire, paying for his life with hers.

Standing there, waiting, Michael realized how lucky he was to be here, even without his arm. So many divers had perished over the years, trying to keep the airships in the sky, and now he just might have a chance to see something none of them had ever seen: habitable land.

He brought the laser rifle up in his left hand, as ready to fight as a one-armed diver could be. It wasn’t just the killer robots that had him on edge. Sea monsters lived in those cold, dark depths.

Holding the weapon one-handed, he felt its weight. Within a few minutes, his arm was shaking. But it was the phantom pain that finally made him sling the laser rifle and grab the stump under his shoulder pad.

“Commander, are you okay?” Timothy asked.

It was so bad, Michael could only grit his teeth in reply.

“We got the hatch open,” Layla said over the comms. “I’m taking a look to see if the entrance is blocked here, too.”

“Layla…” Michael groaned. “Wait…”

“Tin?” she replied. “Tin, is everything okay down there?”

He closed his eyes as a drop of sweat raced down his forehead.

“Long, deep breaths may help,” Timothy said.

Tell me something I don’t know.

Dr. Huff had given Michael several pain-managing techniques, and he really didn’t need the AI to repeat them now.

“Timothy, what’s going on down there?” Les asked.

“Michael is experiencing some phantom pains and has asked you two to wait before going inside.”

“Roger that,” Les said. “Standing by.”

Lightning bloomed inside the line of bulging clouds to the west as Michael opened his eyelids. The pain finally faded with the blue residue of light.

“Sorry,” he said. “Layla, I want you to send in the drone before you go down. Okay?”

“Two steps ahead of you,” she said. “I’ll run the feed through our wrist monitors.”

Michael held his wrist monitor up as it connected to the feed. A fuzzy display came online as a remote-controlled drone whirred into the opening and down another rusted ladder.

The small aerial robot’s light captured the concrete passageway and steps. It didn’t go far before hitting a blockage of debris.

“Damn,” Layla said. “You see this, Tin?”

“Yeah.”

Michael cursed under his breath and pivoted to Timothy. “Where’s the other entrance?”

“I’ll show you,” he said.

Layla and Les climbed down from the ladder and rejoined Michael and the AI. He waved a translucent arm, and the divers filed in behind him, weapons up, and moved around the main structure.

Wind and rain slammed into them as they made their way out onto one of the piers stretching away from the central platform.

“Where are we going?” Layla asked.

Timothy walked past the rusted hull of a fishing boat. “To the other entrance—or exit, rather,” he said, pointing with his hand.

Layla looked over her shoulder at Michael, who shrugged back at her. Les had his rifle shouldered again. The barrel wasn’t pointed at the pier or even the boats, but at the water.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” he said over the comm.

Timothy stopped at the end of the pier, his hologram standing at the edge. Water slurped against the side, splashing through his legs.

“Beneath each of the piers is a hatch,” Timothy said. “They were meant to be exits in case of an emergency. They were designed to be escape only, and not an entrance.”

“But you just said a few minutes ago it was an entrance,” Michael said.

“This one is.” Timothy looked down into the water. “The hatch was used in one of the videos I downloaded from Dr. Julio Diaz’s team. Check your wrist computer and I will play it for you.”

The feed came online. In it, a man crawled through a tunnel.

Flashlight beams flickered through the space, hitting the feet and legs of the man ahead. A trail of blood streaked across the floor from his tattered boot. He turned, wearing a mask of horror. Despite the blood smeared on his cheeks, Michael recognized Dr. Julio Diaz, who had once run the labs at Red Sphere.

“Hurry,” Julio said. “We’re almost there.”

“They’re inside,” said a female voice.

The same person who apparently was taking the shaky video turned and looked behind her. An orange glow flickered at the end of the passage, and an electronic wail echoed.

The woman turned back to Julio, who had stopped ahead. He punched at a keypad on the wall, then bent over a large spoked wheel. Grabbing the sides, he tried to spin the hatch open.

“Dana, it’s stuck,” Julio said. “I can’t get it.”

She squeezed beside him to help, and the camera angle went awry, providing a jerky view of the floors, ceiling, and then the tunnel, where the orange light brightened. In the glow, a defector moved on all fours like a dog, its hyperalloy exoskeleton clanking.

“Hurry!” Dana said.

A cracking noise sounded, and she pivoted back to Julio, who finally managed to unseal the hatch.

“You go first,” he said, backing away.

She went to move when a bolt flashed by her, hitting the ceiling. Hunks of shrapnel rained to the floor. Another bolt cracked, and blood spattered the wall.

Julio let out a scream. The camera dropped to the ground, the angle giving Michael a perfect view of Dana, or what remained of her. The female face, identifiable only by the long hair, had a sizzling hole where the nose and eyes had been.

“Dana,” Julio stuttered. “Dana, no…” He crossed his chest and whispered something about God, then dived through the open hatch. Water splashed up into the blood-stained passage.

The clanking of metal limbs followed, and a moment later the machine reached Dana, grabbing her by the leg and pulling her away from the camera that continued shooting the ancient feed.

It lapsed into white noise on their displays, and the divers all looked up, their visors turning to one another.

“That was the last transmission Dr. Diaz ever made,” Timothy said. “I have no idea what happened to him, but apparently he was able to open the hatch right below us.”

Michael stepped over to the edge of the water.

“Be careful, Commander,” said the AI. “There’s no telling what kind of beasts lurk down there.”

“Can you do a scan from Deliverance?” Layla asked.

“I can, but the ship will need to descend into range.”

Michael looked up at the sky and then gave the AI a nod. The turbofans whined overhead, and the thrusters fired, purple flames streaking through the dark clouds.

“Here she comes,” Les said.

The airship’s belly and turbofans broke through the bottom of the bowl of clouds.

“Scanning now,” Timothy said.

Using his night-vision goggles, Michael searched the water for fins or any movement along the dock but saw nothing.

“I am not detecting any organic life-forms, or anything to suggest the defectors have come back online,” Timothy reported.

“You’re sure?” Layla asked.

“One hundred percent.”

“Never heard that one before,” Michael muttered, stepping back to the edge.

Les reached out again but then lowered his hand.

“I’ll go first,” Michael said. He looked back down at the dark water, but before he could jump in, Layla moved in front of him with a rope.

“You crazy, Tin?” She clipped the rope to a carabiner on her waist and started taking off her gear. “You can’t just jump in, or you’ll sink like a rock.”

He backed away. She was right, of course. He was going to get himself killed if he didn’t get his mind right. The cardinal rule of Hell Diving was to be cautious and patient.

When Layla had peeled away most of her armor, she pulled her hair back into a ponytail.

“Three-sixty awareness,” Michael said, grabbing the uncoiled rope. “Tug if you run into any problems, and we’ll be right there to help.”

She smiled, then dived into the water.

Rhino gestured to the guy with a flamethrower, then to the one with the Minigun. They stood with their backs leaning against the bow of the skiff.

“This is Fuego, and Whale,” Rhino said.

Fuego dipped his helmet, and Whale thumped his armored chest with the brass knuckles he wore. The boat crested a wave and slid down into the trough, and both monstrous warriors bobbed up and down.

X didn’t respond. He pulled his oar through the water, staying in rhythm with the other three oarsmen.

“You already met Luke, Ricardo, and Wendig,” Rhino said. He stood in the center of the boat and moved from man to man, yelling something in Spanish.

“¡Mas rápido, Barracudas!”

Now he knew what the toothy fish symbol on their armor represented.

“The only team I’ll ever be is Team Raptor,” X muttered under his breath.

The men pulled harder on the oars, upping the tempo. There was a motor on the back, but X guessed they were either conserving gasoline or trying not to make noise.

X was on the fourth oar and was barely keeping up with the others. Water leaked around the patchwork of repairs on the wooden hull and was already sloshing around his ankles.

“Faster, Immortal,” Rhino said.

X pulled harder while keeping his boot on the biggest leak.

A wave slammed the side of the boat, splashing more inside. Rhino yelled again to row faster.

He wasn’t the only one. An army of Cazadores stormed the beaches of the old-world coastal city, yelling at the top of their lungs, each eager to claim the first kill and add a Siren skull to his armor.

But oddly, they kept their rifles and handguns slung or holstered and advanced toward the city with spears and swords out.

They were either crazy or trying to conserve ammunition, X decided. Probably both. What sane person would come out here to hunt for the mutant humans? Especially in this area. A check of his HUD showed the radiation still in the red.

X had spent his ten years on the surface trying to avoid the monsters, but when he did find them, it usually meant there was an Industrial Tech Corporation facility nearby. And, of course, that was where the real loot was. All his life, the end-of-the-world facilities had kept him, and everyone else in the sky, alive with their supplies.

He wondered whether raiding an ITC facility was another part of this mission. Or were they really here just to kill and capture Sirens?

No matter, he would soon find out.

The Barracudas were the last to the beach. Fuego and Whale clambered over the bow and stood guard while the others jumped onto the sand.

Wendig, Luke, and Ricardo grabbed rope handles on the side of the boat, and X helped them drag the vessel up.

He followed the team up the beach, his boots sinking in the wet sand. Rhino, with his shield still over his back, took point, carrying a long spear with a sawtooth head on either end.

He stopped while the other Barracudas gathered behind him. Then he pulled from his duty belt a black bar that looked like soap, and rubbed it over the spearheads. After placing the bar back in the pouch, he pulled out a lighter and lit the blades, creating metal torches that he twirled once, then twice.

He then pulled his shield from his back, and with the shield in one hand and the flaming spear in the other, he set off. Wendig, Luke, and Ricardo moved out with their single-headed spears, but X kept his shortened spear slung over his shoulder and unsheathed his sword.

They moved up the beach, away from the lighthouse still blinking in the distance and attracting the Sirens like bugs to light. In the past, X would have taken out his battery unit to avoid them, but not today. He was with a small army now, and he needed the battery to power his suit and night-vision goggles.

In the green hue, he scanned the remains of yet another postapocalyptic city. This place had probably been a tourist destination at one point, attracting people to its sunny beaches and tiki bars.

Now it was just another wasteland. The largest tower, once standing at least thirty stories, had broken in half, its top falling and crushing two other buildings. Scree surrounded the impact zone.

Some of the buildings, with their exteriors and foundations intact, looked much as they may have looked 260 years ago. But there wasn’t much left of the old-world vehicles that stood rusting with their tires rotted out, windows gone, and interiors nothing but dust and metal bones.

Several Cazador teams were already thronging the first of the roads, heading into the city of brown and gray structures. Vines blocked their route, stretching across the cracked and crumbling asphalt roads. The first of the men hacked through the foliage to clear a path for the bulk of the army.

The Barracudas continued up the beach. A sunken boat ramp led away from the sand to a sagging concrete retaining wall.

Most of the Cazador warriors had taken the ramp, but Rhino selected a different route. He jogged toward a stone stairway, with several broken steps and a twisted handrail, that led up a hill.

Thick tropical trees towered overhead, their red fronds swaying in the breeze. Red pulp from what looked like bite marks oozed down the bark.

It seemed the Sirens had eaten every moving thing. X didn’t see so much as a cockroach. As he set off into the dense vegetation, the first gunshot sounded. Rhino held up a fist, and the Barracudas stopped in the radioactive dirt to look to the east.

The vantage gave them a view of the city, and the army moving through the streets and around broken-down buildings. Another gunshot cracked, and a Siren rose above the sunken roof of a rectangular building, a Cazador warrior hanging from its talons. The man struggled in its grip, firing a handgun at the creature.

It finally dropped him from two hundred feet, and he plummeted back to the surface, his armor and bones crunching audibly on the pavement of a vine-infested road.

The noise brought back to X the painful memory of losing his best friend and Michael’s father, Aaron. And just as before, the female Sirens nesting in the buildings darted out and descended on the dead man, tearing him into manageable pieces before skittering away with meals for their young.

The soldiers on point made it to the street a moment later and charged with their spears, spilling Siren blood on the asphalt. One of the Cazadores skewered a female and hoisted the body into the air—the first trophy.

“And so it begins,” X said.

Rhino twirled his flaming spear and set off down the other the side of the hill. “The rest of the Barracudas don’t think you will live out the day, Immortal,” he called out, “but I give you at least two.”

His bellowing laugh crackled from his breathing apparatus.

“Try ten years, asshole,” X muttered.

The other soldiers moved past him, Wendig reaching out and shoving X so hard he hit the dirt.

“Puto,” Wendig said, looking over his shoulder.

X pushed himself up and grabbed his sword from the dirt. When he rose to his feet, he saw the flashing lighthouse where the Sirens circled, their huge wings beating the air audibly as they flapped around the structure.

“¡Vámonos!” Rhino shouted. Ricardo, Fuego, and Whale vanished over the north side of the hill, and Wendig and Luke double-timed it to catch up.

In the streets to the east, the army of Cazadores battled the Siren hordes. It took only a few minutes for the monsters to grow in number from a few dozen to hundreds, filling the streets with flesh the color of corpses.

The beasts had been busy here over the past two and a half centuries, breeding and growing in numbers. Even children joined the horde, anxious for fresh meat.

X jogged after the other men, suddenly realizing the Barracudas weren’t going on the same mission as the rest of the army. The warriors in the city, fueled by the promise of trophies, prestige, and perhaps a wife, were a decoy to keep the beasts away from Rhino’s small unit.

Their mission was something else entirely.

An electronic wail rang out from the west, and X brought up his sword as three of the eyeless monsters scrambled over the edge and bolted out across the hilltop toward Wendig and Luke.

A shout came in Spanish, but X was too busy throwing his sword to see where it came from. The blade sailed past Wendig and struck the front Siren, knocking it off its feet.

X pulled the short spear from his shoulder and ran to meet the other two Sirens, which barreled into Luke. Wendig went down a moment later, unable to move in time to avoid the fleet-footed predators.

Adrenaline rushed through X at the sight of another group of Sirens pulling their way over the rocks to his left. Long limbs covered in leathery, wrinkled skin hit the ground at a dead run. Ropy muscles glistened with water.

They had come from the ocean, flanking the Barracudas.

So much for a decoy, X thought.

Maybe the Cazadores weren’t the hunters after all.

He thrust his spear through the gut of one of the beasts straddling Wendig and pulled it out with a strand of intestine hooked on the serrated edge. The beast gripped the wound as Wendig pushed the screeching creature into the dirt. He then pulled out his handgun, twisting to fire at the beast clawing Luke’s armor a few feet away.

Dust rose around the warriors in the chaos, but through it, X glimpsed a dropped full-length spear and picked it up. He pivoted to face a pack of six female beasts, and for a moment he considered abandoning these men to fend for themselves. They were his enemy as much as the monsters were.

But where would he go? If he fled and was captured, he would be killed for desertion, and the thought of being stranded out here again filled him with enough dread to keep him in the fight.

An ethereal wail made him look up at a massive male beast flanking from the sky. More Sirens flapped away from the city to storm the hill, heading for Rhino and the other men, who had already moved down onto the other side.

At the hilltop, X went to work with the spear, stabbing, slicing, and swinging the sharp blade at the cadaverous-looking flesh. Blood streamed from the gashes as he inflicted mortal wounds.

A human scream followed the alien cries of pain, and X saw Luke squirming under the weight of another Siren. The beast impaled his eye with a talon and twisted it as the Cazador wailed in agony.

The beast retracted the claw from the bleeding socket. Wendig turned and fired three shots that punched neat holes into its eyeless skull.

It slumped onto Luke’s limp body.

X moved to Wendig’s side as the man reloaded. Holding up his spear, he prepared to jab at the team of Sirens surrounding them. Saliva dripped from open maws, the beasts tilting their heads as they seemed to study their prey.

They moved in all at once to overrun the two men.

A wave of fire suddenly blasted through the air, slamming into three of the beasts. Flames coated their flesh, and they dropped to the ground, flopping and howling.

X thrust the longer spear into the eyeless face of a fourth beast, which had avoided the fire. The blade caught it in the side of the head, puncturing skull and brain.

The whine of an automatic weapon came over the electronic cries, blowing limbs off the other two beasts.

X yanked his blade free and backed away as Rhino, Fuego, Ricardo, and Whale traversed the hill. They easily dispatched the remaining Sirens that had flanked them, and then turned their attention to the fliers.

Rhino jabbed his flame-tipped spear into a swooping beast, and it caught fire. He pulled the spear out and sliced off a wing with the next stroke.

The creature crashed in flames.

Whale let the Minigun hang from its strap and pulled the axe from the loops on his backpack. He brought it down on another beast, splitting its head like a round of wood.

He laughed as he moved on to the next beast, lobbing off an arm and then a leg before opening the chest cavity with the third swing. Reaching down, he pulled out a handful of viscera and held it dripping in the air.

The other men cheered, but X just looked on in amazement. Some carcasses still burned, the flesh sizzling as it melted off the bones.

Rhino pierced the heart of a Siren crawling away and then knelt beside Luke. He put a finger between the gap in his helmet and neck armor, feeling for a pulse. Then he stood and gestured for the other men to gather around.

They bowed their heads as Rhino spoke several words in Spanish. Then they pounded their chests and stripped Luke of his weapons. Whale tossed the fistful of Siren guts at X’s feet.

“Cómelo,” he said. “Te pondrá pelo en los testículos.”

The other men laughed.

“What did he say?” X asked Rhino.

“He said, ‘Eat this. It will put hair on your balls.’”

“You’re a seriously sick fuck,” X replied. He used the breather to check his HUD while the other soldiers gathered their weapons. His suit hadn’t been compromised, but his old injuries were aching again, and he felt fresh blood inside his boot.

“So you want to let me in on the real mission now?” X asked Rhino, who was already walking away from their fallen comrade and the gore-spattered ground.

“You will see soon enough,” Rhino said. “Now, keep moving, and maybe you will earn a spot on the Barracudas.”

Wendig walked past X, but this time, instead of pushing X to the ground, he clapped him on the shoulder, then hurried after the others.