FOUR

“I feel like I haven’t spent any real time with you in weeks, Tin,” Layla said as they walked down the passageway connecting the Hive to Deliverance.

News of the Sea Wolf had rattled him, but he couldn’t do anything about it right now.

They need you here, X had told him before leaving. If something happens, don’t come after me. Maybe so, but Michael was having a hard time sitting idly by while X, Mags, and Miles were potentially in trouble. To do nothing felt like abandoning them.

He knew that Layla was upset, too, though she wasn’t showing it.

“Have you missed me?” she asked.

He squeezed her hand. “Of course. I always miss you.”

“Great answer.” Her smile still had the same effect on him as when they were kids. The cute dimple and gleaming white teeth still sent a little shiver through him.

“I don’t know what to do about X and Magnolia,” he said.

Her grin vanished, and her hand went slack.

“Don’t do that,” Michael said, taking her hand again. “I know you’re upset, too, and I think we should talk about this.”

“Why talk about something we can’t control? We can’t go searching for them in those storms. You know that.”

“Yeah, but…”

“You can’t beat yourself up over this. Magnolia and X made their choice when they set off for the Metal Islands. They knew the risks, and besides, you said it best back in the launch bay: X might be in trouble, but he isn’t dead.”

Michael looked at the Team Raptor patch sewn over his chest. Inside his vest pocket were the words he had given X over a decade ago.

Accept your past without regrets. Handle your present with confidence. Face your future without fear.

He carried the quote with him even though he had it memorized. He had lived his life by the motto, and handing the quote to people was his way of giving back. Each time he gave it to someone, he wrote it down again for the next person.

“Everything’s going to be okay, Tin,” Layla said.

Michael kissed her softly on the cheek. “I know. Come on, I have a surprise for you.”

Her smile returned, and she followed him down the empty passage.

Around the next corner, two technicians were installing a monitor inside the relocated engineering school. Places like this gave him hope. This was where they would train the next generation of engineers—the men and women who would help keep both ships in the sky. Many of them would also become Hell Divers.

The cog continued to turn, spitting out the innocent youth aboard the airship.

Young men and women like Jed Snow and Sandy Bloomberg, who were still just kids in Michael’s eyes. He could still remember Jed and his mom in the trading post that day Layla and Michael had given him a fortune cookie.

He memorized it a long time ago.

Accept your past without regrets. Handle your present with confidence. Face your future without fear.

Michael and Layla walked past several kids drawing on the bulkhead, and he wondered if they too would end up in the cog someday.

Fresh paint glistened in the light. There were four kids, all about eight to ten years old. One of them was Phyl, Les Mitchells’ daughter. She reminded Michael of Layla at that age: innocent, fun, aggressive.

“That drawing stinks, midget,” Paul said to his friend Jimmy Moffitt. “You should just give up already.”

Michael shook his head. “Hey, there—”

But Layla beat him to the punch. “Paul, you apologize right now. I happen to think Jimmy’s drawing is really good.”

The short boy turned away from the bulkhead, where he had painted a stick figure of some sort of animal.

“Oh, yeah? What is it, then?” Paul asked.

Layla stuttered. “It’s art; that’s what matters. And name-calling is just going to get you into trouble.”

Paul lowered his paintbrush, looked at Jimmy, and said, “Sorry. Your drawing doesn’t suck.”

“And…?” Layla said, hands on her hips.

“You’re not a midget.”

“There, that’s better,” she replied. “Now, have fun, and don’t get that paint all over the place.”

She left Michael standing there with the kids. He cracked a half grin at Jimmy and then hurried to catch up with Layla.

“That totally reminded me of something from when we were kids,” he said. “Remember the time we were standing outside the school, and Pipe was teasing me about my tin hat?”

“That happened a lot.”

“I’m talking about the time you did something about it.”

Layla blushed. “Oh, yeah, I kicked him in the balls.”

“I believe you called them ‘marbles.’”

They both laughed as they walked on through the ship.

“Pipe was a good man,” Layla said. “A bit of a dick when he was younger, but I miss his jokes.”

“Me, too. And Rodger, and Ty, and Weaver, and…” Michael let the words trail off. “But enough about the past. Let’s focus on the present and how lucky we are.”

“Deal.” She gave him a sly grin. “So where are you taking me?”

“I told you, it’s a surprise.”

They passed several technicians and engineers in yellow coveralls, readying quarters for more lower-deckers from the Hive.

Michael and Layla had kept their quarters there. Deliverance had saved their lives, but the Hive would always be his home.

Until they found a place on the surface.

The thought reminded him yet again of X, Magnolia, and Miles. They were down there somewhere, in danger while he took his girlfriend on a date.

As if sensing his thoughts, Layla took his hand again. “Just you and me right now, remember?” she said.

“Right.”

Leaving the construction site behind, they turned into a passage already occupied by new passengers. Several hatches were propped open, providing glimpses into the lives of people who had lived belowdecks on the Hive for most of their lives.

Chloe and Daniel sat on a bunk in the room to his left. Both kids wore fresh bandages on their hands and over their heads.

“I’ll be right back,” Michael said.

Layla waited for him as he knocked on the hatch.

“Where are your parents?” he asked the kids.

They both gave him a nervous look.

“It’s okay, I’m not going to get us in trouble or anything,” Michael said. He pulled two pieces of candy from his vest pocket.

“Here you go.”

“You’re a Hell Diver, aren’t you?” Daniel asked.

“I am.”

“What happened to that old guy?”

“Old guy?”

“Rick,” Chloe said. “That’s what Janga called him. He gave us candy jam.”

Michael felt Layla’s presence behind him.

“He’s gone,” Layla replied. “He died so we could have this new home.”

Chloe looked at the ground and then overhead, chomping nosily on the hard candy. She and David were just two of the many kids who had deformities from the radiation poisoning.

“Will you come back sometime?” Chloe asked.

Michael smiled. “You betcha.”

He waved, and they continued down the next passage. Neither spoke at first. They had grown up privileged—the child of a Hell Diver or of parents who worked in the brig. Seeing how these kids lived made his heart hurt. But at least, they had a future now, for the first time in their lives.

“Here we are.” Michael stopped outside the armory, where two militia guards stood sentry.

“Commander Everhart,” said O’Toole, a fit-looking man with a crossbow cradled across his chest armor.

“We weren’t expecting visitors,” said Monk, the other sentry.

“That makes three of us,” Layla replied, looking at Michael.

“We’re just checking something out,” Michael said.

O’Toole punched an access code, and the double doors unlatched. He nodded at Monk, who stepped back.

It still felt odd to Michael that men twice his age held him in such high regard, especially after thinking him a traitor just two months ago. But after capturing Deliverance and helping overthrow Captain Jordan, he was now one of the most respected men on the ship, second only to X, who was legend.

Empty darkness greeted Michael and Layla as they stepped inside.

“Lights,” Michael said. The voice-activated overheads clicked on, spreading a cool blue glow over metal bulkheads that flickered like water.

“You brought me on a date to the armory? How romantic!” Layla quipped. “You really know how to get a girl out of her jumpsuit.”

“We’re not here to look at weapons of mass destruction. This way.”

They walked past six glass-covered bomb tubes. This was the equivalent of the launch bay on the Hive, but with nuclear bombs—loaded, primed, and ready to drop.

“Katrina should just dump this arsenal in the ocean,” Layla said. “Bury it in the dark, cold depths.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

Layla followed Michael to the pair of sealed hatches across the room. He pulled a key card out of his vest as they approached.

A warning sign with the symbol for explosives hung from the bulkhead to the right. Layla halted outside the hatch. On the other side were assault rifles, missile launchers, grenades, and just about every other type of weapon humans had used to kill each other in the past.

“This is decidedly not romantic,” she huffed.

Michael grinned. “You don’t trust me enough.” Using his key card, he swiped the button for the hatch on the left. It opened onto a staircase that spiraled down into the guts of the airship.

Layla stepped to the side for a better look, then frowned. “You are full of surprises, Tin.”

He laughed and led the way down to a command room just big enough for two leather chairs and a console mounted with various instruments and screens.

“What is this place?” she asked.

“Combat direction center, or CDC, also called the launch operations center.”

“Excuse me?” Layla said, folding her arms across her chest.

“Relax. We’re not launching any missiles or dropping any bombs.”

Michael sat in front of the controls and flipped on the central main monitor. He used his key card to access the mainframe, then pushed a button to open a metal hatch covering a rectangular glass screen that looked like a mirror. In the reflection, Layla remained standing behind him with arms crossed, looking at once stern and a little confused.

The hatch opened to darkness. In the bowl of swirling black, a flash of lightning looked like branching blood vessels. The light faded away, leaving them with only the weak lighting from the main screen.

Michael typed at a keyboard, entering his credentials a second time.

A robotic voice came over the speakers. “System online.”

Layla put a hand on Michael’s back. “Okay, you’re starting to freak me out a little. What are we doing here?”

“You’re about to find out.” He tapped the keyboard, scrolling through historical records. Twisting around in his seat, he said, “Timothy found an old-world video in the archives and thought you might be interested.”

“We’re here to watch a video of the past?” she asked. “I thought we were focusing on the present.”

Michael sighed. “I know I said that, but you’ve been spending a lot of time at the library, working to restore the archives, and I think you might find something here.”

Layla finally sat beside him, intrigued and annoyed, judging by her body language. “You think there might be something new here? Something that isn’t in the archives upstairs?”

“Timothy sure seems to think so,” Michael said. “He asked me what you’re looking for, and I said oh, nothing much—just the history of the world and humanity. So he told me to come down here. He said we’d find information we had never seen in the archives, and it would help restore the history we lost.”

Layla’s hands squeezed his shoulders. “So have you watched it yet?”

“Nope, wanted to wait for you.” Michael started to hit play, but Layla touched his arm.

“That’s really sweet, but don’t you think we should tell Katrina, or maybe Les?”

“Why?”

“If this information is new, then maybe Katrina should see it first.”

Michael pulled his hand back from the monitor. “Far as I know, this is just a history video, like those we watched back in school. But if there’s information on a hidden paradise that humans colonized, I’m happy to share it right away.”

“Okay, deal.” Layla looked at the screen. “Let’s get to it, then.”

Michael grinned and hit the play button. The screen jittered, and the video started in an old-world metropolis. The streets between scrapers were packed with thousands of people. The sun, high in the sky, spread warm gold over cheering crowds—hands in the air, whistles blowing, confetti raining from buildings.

A deep baritone voice spoke.

“In the year two thousand thirty-five, people took to the streets in every major city across the world, rejoicing in an agreement that brought all governments and all races closer together with a single currency and a shared economy. Business worldwide was booming with the creation of artificial intelligence and the solution to problems that had plagued humankind for centuries. A shared commitment between governments tackled the one thing that threatened peace: the energy crisis.”

The video zoomed in on people from all countries and walks of life—every ethnicity, religion, and nationality. This was humanity. This was how the world once looked.

But there was something he didn’t recognize among these people. Machines strode around with their human handlers. Some were humanoid in appearance, but others were contraptions like the robot vacuum he had taken apart as a kid, in the days following his father’s death, when X was looking after him.

“Are those what I think they are?” Layla whispered.

“AIs—like Timothy, only machines instead of a hologram.”

The video feed moved from city to city, all of them showing robots and humans in the streets, joined in celebration.

“Industrial Tech Corporation, the most powerful company in the world, led the charge to combat the energy crisis and rising temperatures across the globe,” said the narrator.

An image tagged “Chicago, Illinois,” came on-screen, featuring the ITC symbol and headquarters building.

“Hades,” Michael said. He would never forget the place that claimed the lives of everyone on the Hive’s sister airship, Ares. But the city looked far different from the wasteland X and the other divers had seen ten years ago.

“ITC had built facilities in hundreds of locations all across the world,” the narrator continued. Images flashed of headquarters in Dubai, Shanghai, Sydney, Mexico City. “Food production was more efficient than ever, and hunger, even in developing countries, had been all but eradicated.”

Next came the images of robots driving massive machines, harvesting vast tracts of cropland that stretched to the horizon.

Images of a laboratory came on-screen. Men and women wearing white suits with helmets and breathing apparatuses worked in sterile environments.

“Medical advances continued throughout the world, including cures for cancer and rare genetic diseases. The average life expectancy jumped to one hundred and five. Thanks primarily to the work of ITC scientists, tissues, limbs, and organs—even brains—were now being grown inside labs.”

The video went inside a hospital room, where a baby born without limbs cried on a table. The parents stood by with tear-streaked faces. Next came an image of the same parents, smiling over a bed where their child happily flailed its perfect little arms and legs.

“Amazing,” Michael said, thinking of Chloe and Daniel.

“Some of this stuff I’ve seen before, but not like this,” Layla said. “I didn’t realize science had advanced so far before the world ended, or that ITC was behind so much of it.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Michael said. “What we still don’t know is what ended it all.”

Lightning flashed outside, and he pushed the button to seal the hatch and block out the distracting sporadic light.

“Despite medical and scientific breakthroughs,” the narrator continued, “the energy crisis threatened to reverse the advances in food production. Overpopulation, pollution, and depletion of fossil fuels led to the threat of war.”

The video showed an aerial view of a desert, but as the camera zoomed in, Michael saw that it was really a farm field, its crops shriveled and the dirt cracked. Dry gullies ran through the terrain, and barns were packed with ranks of idle robots.

“Rising temperatures and drought quickly destroyed the achievements that scientists had made in the past decade. In the year two thousand forty-one, humanity was once again spiraling toward war over dwindling resources.”

This time, the video came from inside the Senate Chamber in the United States. Michael recognized the seal and the podium from his history classes.

“Today, both parties have come together to tackle the issues of climate change and the drought afflicting the southern states,” said a florid-faced senator with a flag pin on his lapel. The audience stood, clapping.

The narrator continued in the background. “Once again, governments and scientists around the world banded together, led by ITC. Within two years, they found an economical way to harvest water from the ocean by desalination.”

The video returned to the cracked fields, and in a fast-moving time lapse, the feed showed the checkered acres transforming into lush green Edens, with robot farmers harvesting bountiful crops.

“In two thousand forty-three, humanity was closer than ever before to solving all the problems that had led to war over the millennia. There was no need to fight over resources or territories. For the first time in a thousand years, peace reigned in the Middle East.”

“Sometimes, I don’t believe this world was ever real,” Layla said.

“What doesn’t seem real is that humans could have destroyed such a paradise.”

Layla brought her knees up to her chest and watched as the video continued. But Michael’s eyes left the screen and turned to his lifelong best friend. He moved over to her side, kissing her cheek, then her neck. Layla giggled and smiled the smile he had fallen for so many years ago.

Their lips connected, and a moment later they were pulling each other’s clothes off. His shirt caught around his head, and when he finally freed it, she was standing before him, naked. She pushed him back into the chair.

And for the next half hour, they ignored the video and made love in the cramped command center, their bodies sliding against each other, mouths pressed together in an act that would continue until the last humans perished.

And for that brief ecstatic interlude, Michael forgot everything that was wrong with life in the sky and the horrors on the surface.

* * * * *

Nature had reclaimed the derelict city. Vines stretched across the sagging, broken streets and consumed the structures. Most of the buildings were debris piles, having collapsed long ago under the sheer weight of the vegetation.

On a rocky bluff east of the city stood a single building, its ten stories still firmly supported by sturdy concrete pillars. Tenants had once lounged on its balconies, drinking cocktails and watching the surf lap against the beach.

Lonely toppled statues of mermaids and satyrs littered the courtyards around swimming pools, their hands and panpipes pointing at the dark, putrescent water.

Magnolia pulled one of two double-edged sickle blades sheathed on her lower back and sliced through a red plant growing on her path. Goo sluiced out onto the dirt.

“Careful with those,” X said. He was just ahead, with Miles behind him, sniffing the air.

She wasn’t sure what X had planned, but she wasn’t about to ask him now. He was already peeved at her. His words on the beach repeated in her mind.

I’m not going to risk Deliverance or the Hive just to save our sorry asses. We’re on our own out here, and the sooner you start accepting that, the safer humanity is going to be.

The otherworldly calls of the birds X had called “vultures” brought her back to reality. She decided to embrace their solo adventure and give X the benefit of the doubt.

“I really think we should keep an open channel to Timothy,” she said as they walked.

“So he can annoy us? I don’t think so.”

“But he’s just trying to help.”

He stopped and walked back toward her. “I don’t trust robots, okay?”

Thunder boomed over the mountain, and Magnolia glimpsed several vultures flying out of the jungle canopy. Most of them had vanished sometime during the night, when she was sheltered in the boat with X.

Apparently not that concerned about the giant birds, he jumped over the twisted guardrail along the road. He helped Miles over and moved to the edge of a jungle. A bandolier of grenades hung across his chest armor and over his back, and extra magazines were stuffed into his duty belt and the cargo pockets of his suit.

He looked like a man going to war, which didn’t ease Magnolia’s mind. She sheathed the blade and unslung her rifle as she trotted to catch up.

“We’ll have to cut through the jungle to get to that building,” he said, pointing at the hotel in the distance.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” She instantly regretted the words.

“You want to lead?” he asked. “Maybe you and Pepper know where we can find parts to the radio—or, better yet, a new boat.”

“Pretty sure we’re not going to find a new boat up here,” she whispered.

X continued into the jungle. At the base of the mountain, gangly trees with thick green bark formed a fence along the shore, like soldiers standing guard. It wasn’t so much the spike-covered branches or the hourglass trunks that bothered her. These weren’t the flesh-eating trees she had fought in Florida.

This bark didn’t glow, and the vines didn’t try to swallow them whole. This was just an old-fashioned jungle. What bothered her was knowing how much Rodger would have enjoyed seeing this place. She could picture him stumbling down the path, gaping in awe at trees that somehow adapted to an environment without sunlight.

She set off after X. Beetles the size of her boots scuttled across the path, and two-headed lizards perched on rocks along the path. A mammal that looked like an oversize rat crunched through the undergrowth, blinking its saucer eyes at Magnolia before disappearing back into the jungle.

Everything on this island had adapted, either to see in the darkness or to get by with no vision at all. Radiation levels here were mild, but that didn’t mean they had always been. Each creature had evolved to survive here.

Even the fish and birds seemed to have undergone transformations. Some hadn’t changed much, but the changes always made them better predators. The shark and the octopus had grown to gigantic proportions, as had the monstrous vultures.

As they moved along the trail toward the eastern edge of the city, several structures rose over the dark canopy. Houses built onto the bluffs had their foundations and rooftops largely intact. She tried to picture a time when people had lived in places such as this—places once called “paradise.” But try as she might, she couldn’t imagine what the Old World was really like before the nuclear fires and the monsters.

“You okay back there, Mags?” X whispered over the comm channel.

“Yeah. How’s the arm?”

“Just another scratch.”

He ducked a low branch, and Miles turned to her as if to say, hurry up. Even the dog seemed impatient with her today.

A clicking sound on the trail made Magnolia whirl. The source was a purple beetle on the center of the path. It opened mandibles, exposing a row of teeth that looked sharper than necessary for a beetle, clicked again, and then scuttled away into foliage.

Raindrops pattered on the canopy above. The sound was calming, and even the sporadic thunder and lightning had a soothing effect. Still, the dangers of this mutant paradise weighed heavily on her. The journey to the Metal Islands hadn’t exactly started off well, and being stranded on unknown shores didn’t help.

On a section of trail unprotected by the tropical canopy, the dirt had turned to mud. She followed the tracks of X’s big boots.

The trail rose to a bluff, giving her another view of the ocean. X had stopped at the top, crouched low with Miles by his side.

Magnolia took a sip of water from the straw in her helmet and looked out over the dark ocean. To the west, where the Sea Wolf lay beached, the tide was starting to recede.

“Come on,” X said, waving her onward. Miles followed without complaint, but Magnolia finally raised her hand.

“Hold on,” she said. “I don’t like the idea of going farther without a plan.”

X halted and, instead of replying, angled his rifle toward the mountains, at a slope covered with thick undergrowth.

At first, she thought he was pointing at the vultures flying above the canopy. She ducked when she saw them, but X remained standing. Miles, too, stayed on his feet. Only then did she realize that he wasn’t pointing at the birds at all.

Sheathing her sickle, she raised her carbine, zooming the scope in on a mushroom-shaped structure in the middle of the vast jungle.

“What in the…?”

“Satellite dish,” X said. “I saw it on the way in. That’s where we’re headed.”

Magnolia lowered her rifle. “I thought we were headed to the hotel. Why didn’t you tell me this?”

“Because I figured you’d complain when you saw vultures up there. But I didn’t want to just leave you at the boat, either.”

“Listen, X,” she said, frustration rising in her voice. “I know you may have a hard time believing it, but I’ve grown a lot since Hades. I’m not a little girl anymore.”

“You never were a little girl.”

Magnolia tilted her head, waiting for the rest.

“I’ve always known you had it in you to be a good Hell Diver. You’re a damn fine one, but you need to trust me and stopping rushing to do everything. That’s always been your problem.” He paused. “Your attitude doesn’t help, either.”

So I’m the one with an attitude?

“Yeah, I know what you’re thinking,” X said. “But save it for later and keep moving. We’ve got a long hike ahead.”

He turned and continued up the trail, rifle cradled across his chest.

A vulture wailed in the distance. This time, Magnolia didn’t lag behind. She hurried to catch up with X, keeping quiet and trying to trust that he wasn’t leading them into a nest of monsters.

Загрузка...