The divers moved slowly through the room. Erin and Jennifer went left, where two doors led deeper into the building. Les motioned for Ty to follow to the right, where two more doors stood at the other end of the room.
“Good luck,” Erin said. She grabbed the handle of the first door on the left and motioned for Jennifer to cover her. “We’ll meet back here in one hour.”
Les paused to watch the two divers creep into a stairwell. They angled their weapons up first, then down around another landing, before finally disappearing into the darkness. The door clicked shut behind them, the noise echoing in the open space. Silence quickly replaced it. Les could hear his own breath, loud and quick in his ears. A chill ran up his spine, and he swallowed as he set off for the open doorway at the end of the atrium.
“Hey, buddy,” Ty said as they walked. He wasn’t using the comm channel, and Les could barely hear him. The thin technician pointed at the blaster on Les’ hip. “Can I borrow that? Just in case we run into trouble.”
After a glance to the holstered weapon, Les shook his head. “Sorry, man, but we were all told not to give you a gun.”
“You’re going to wish you had if we run into those things down here.”
“Sirens?”
Ty’s helmet dipped.
“If that happens, I’ll gladly give you my gun. But for now, the answer is no. I don’t know you or your story. Now, come on.”
They continued through the dusty atrium. Les tried to guess what the mosaic used to look like. Blue tiles formed a swirl overhead, a bit like an ocean wave, but that was all he could make out.
He stepped on a broken tile, crunching it underfoot, and winced at the noise.
“Pay attention,” Ty whispered.
Les kept his eyes to the floor, where he saw a red metal can. Several more were spilled around a toppled metal box about as tall as a man. He nudged one of the cans with his foot to reveal the words “Diet Coke” written on the side.
“What in the heck do you suppose that is?” he asked, not expecting Ty to answer.
“Seen those before. One of the divers brought a can like that back to the Hive years ago. Some kind of drink.”
“You try it?”
“Tasted like battery acid,” Ty said.
Les chuckled. “Guess I’ll leave it be, then.”
“We’re moving down a stairwell,” Erin said over the comms. “Keep this line open.”
“Phoenix Two, copy,” Les said.
Olah came online a moment later. “Almost in posi—” The hiss of wind, followed by static, cut him off before he could finish.
Les looked back and found Ty crouching near a pillar. “Looks like tracks,” he said, pointing down.
Moving as fast as he quietly could, Les tried to stay calm. His fear quickly gave way to confusion. Ty was right, but the tracks didn’t appear to have been left by some mutant monster.
“Looks human to me,” Les said. “But how is that possible? I thought they hadn’t found a survivor for over a century.”
“Giraffe, or whatever they call you, you should really think hard about handing me that weapon. If someone or something is here, I’m gonna … we’re going to need it.”
Les unbuckled one of the buttons on the holster. He narrowed his eyes before pulling the weapon all the way out, trying to get a look at Ty’s features behind his visor. His face was haggard, like that of a man who had seen too much in his life. Les’ gut told him Ty was a good man, but he had to be sure.
“What happened between you and Captain Jordan?” Les said, holding the grip of the blaster.
Ty looked over at the open door of an elevator. The boot prints led inside, and a frayed rope hung down into the shaft. He shook his head and used the tip of his boot to kick at the ground, clearly frustrated with something.
“Jordan is a liar,” Ty said, anger rising in his voice. He turned back to Les and took a step until he was standing right underneath Les’ chin. The beam from Ty’s helmet hit the mosaic overhead, and Les saw what it had been: a waterfall surrounded by trees. “He’s hiding a secret.”
“What kind of secret?” Les asked.
Ty snorted and tilted his helmet to direct the beam at the boot prints leading to the elevator. “About a man we left behind years ago—the same man I believe left those tracks.”
Les followed the beam, not quite understanding what Ty had just said. He racked his brain to remember all the divers who had been lost over the years. There were so many. And how could any of them survive on the surface?
Before he could ask any questions, a crackle sounded over the comms. Olah’s frantic voice hissed over the channel.
“Phoenix One, Phoenix One, this is Phoenix Four. I’ve got the satellite set up, but we’ve got company. I can see them, but I don’t think they know I’m here.”
“Stay where you are and hunker down, Phoenix Four,” Erin said. “Radio silence from here out, everyone, unless you’re face-to-face with a hostile.”
In the background came a noise vaguely like the emergency sirens on the Hive. Les found his hand moving back to the holster. He quickly pulled out the blaster and handed it to Ty.
“Don’t make me regret this, man,” he said.
“X,” Ty said, pointing to the tracks. “It was Xavier Rodriguez that Jordan left behind on the surface, and I believe those are his prints.”
SEVENTEEN
One year and nine months earlier
X gunned the motorcycle down the highway. He didn’t bother using the night-vision optics; his eyes were accustomed to hunting in the dim blue glow of the incessant lightning.
Adrenaline rushed through his veins, and the tightness in his throat loosened. For the first time in months, he could breathe through his mouth. He sucked in air through the filter in his helmet, not daring to look over his shoulder at the high-rise he now called home. Doing so would have broken his heart, knowing that Miles was there, waiting, pacing, and probably whimpering.
Leaving the dog all alone was one of the hardest things X had ever done. It sparked a memory, just a fragment of an image that entered his mind. The moments before a dive in the launch bay of the airship. A boy with a foil hat waved at him from the crowd. He had just given X a note, but X could no longer remember the words—only that the memory made him sad.
The otherworldly calls of Sirens sucked him from his memories. His focus returned to the sky, where the monsters were flying in circles. Something had drawn them out of their nest. It was unusual to see this many in the open air, and he wasn’t going to waste this prime opportunity to sneak into ITC Communal 9 and search for the cancer drugs that could save his life.
Thunder disguised the sound of his motorcycle as he entered the city. He hoped the beasts wouldn’t see him coming. If they did, his rifle was scabbarded to the bike, and his blaster was holstered at his side, both within easy reach.
He twisted the throttle, giving the bike more juice as he shot over the raised bridge that would take him into the heart of Miami. Two massive ships were still docked in the harbor to his right. Most of the white paint had been stripped by hurricanes and wind-borne sand over the years, leaving them a grimy rust color. Black slashes like wounds from a whip marked the sides of the hulls where lightning had struck. The largest ship had broken in half, exposing its guts.
X steered the bike around a missing hunk of bridge, careful not to snag the blades protruding from his wheel hubs. The beach continued to glow as the plants fought off the Sirens. He glimpsed a Siren on the horizon, flying low over the black ocean, a squirming vine in its talons.
Easing off the throttle, he reached for the grip of his rifle with his left hand and continued watching the Siren. It flapped to the west and vanished behind a scraper, its wail fading away like a waning Klaxon after an emergency.
He navigated around several charred vehicles blocking the road ah
ead. The tires jolted hard over the broken concrete, threatening to twist the handlebars out of his grip. The bridge had taken a real beating over the years.
X weaved the bike carefully through a gap between two cars. A skeleton sat in the front seat of the one on his left, skull propped against the steering wheel. In the back, a smaller set of bones lay strapped into a plastic seat.
A child. Just a goddamn kid who never got a chance to live life.
It made him want to scream. Why had humans done this? Why had they destroyed everything? And why the hell was he still alive to see it?
He squeezed through the gap, the bladed hub scraping a long gash in the rusted metal. Finally clear of obstacles, he gunned the bike down the final stretch of road, accelerating hard enough to bring the front tire off the ground for a second. It reconnected with a jolt, and X sped toward the buildings along the shore.
He approached the fishing ship that had gotten wedged between two buildings. Chipped red paint still coated the stern, but the rest of the hull was the same burnt-flesh color as the rest of the city.
He drove at twenty miles per hour, eyes flitting from the road and buildings to the sky. He had studied the Sirens closely during his time in hell. The males seemed to be the ones with wings, while the females typically stayed on the ground or by the nests. They weren’t the only threats out here, though. Giant snakes and fish prowled the waters, and monster lizards came out of their lairs from time to time to hunt smaller, birdlike beasts. There were also the poisonous plants and trees that had sprouted roots inside the city. Here and there, cockroaches the size of a man’s hand scuttled between cracks and piles of debris.
Miami was the most active ecosystem X had ever seen in his years on the surface. Even the ship dry-docked against the two buildings had sprouted a colorful garden of foliage from the hole in its hull. No doubt the plant would be poisonous or have acidic sap, making it as deadly as everything else down here.
X couldn’t help but feel the weight of being the only man in the mutated wasteland. In the past, this feeling of loneliness had consumed him—broken him, even—but not today. Perhaps it was the adrenaline, or perhaps it was his finally accepting that the people in the sky were never coming back, that he would never see another human.
It’s just me, he thought. I’m the only one who will ever see this, and I’ll never get to tell anyone.
He roared through the streets, feeling free for the first time in years. His heart raced as the speedometer steadily ticked up. The oversize tires navigated the cracked terrain nicely, and the suspension made the potholes barely noticeable. It felt like flying.
The wail of a Siren rose over the thunder, snapping him back into survival mode. He considered reaching for a weapon but kept his hands on the bars when he saw the beast flap around the side of a building. So far, the noise of his bike hadn’t attracted the beasts. They seemed focused on something else. But what had drawn them all out of their dens? X hadn’t seen anything that might interest them besides the flashing trees on the beach. That was the only explanation.
He checked the minimap in his HUD. ITC Communal 9 was two blocks away. Looking to the road, he saw that it was flooded about a quarter mile away. He steered left onto the next street and drove under two buildings that leaned against one another other like men too drunk to stand on their own. A huge section of one had crashed to the street, blocking the route.
X cursed and wheeled around, back onto the main road, and went left at the next intersection. He couldn’t see beyond the arched bridge, but the facility was somewhere on the other side.
Twisting the throttle, he zoomed up the ramp. The first injection was already starting to wane. His eyelids felt heavier, and his heartbeat had returned to normal. Pain ripped through his tightening throat. He sucked in air through his nose and focused on the top of the bridge. As soon as he was over it, he would stop and give himself another shot of adrenaline.
His eyes teared up as he increased the bike’s speed. The wide tires thumped over a crack in the road right before he crested the top.
“SHIT!”
The cry of shock came when he saw a flash of motion barreling up from the other side. He swerved to miss a Siren bolting up the road. The sharp veer almost cost him control of the bike, but he managed to straighten out, the rear tire chirping before regaining traction.
He threw on the brakes and, in a swift movement, pulled his blaster. Twisting in the seat, he fired a shot that took off a piece of the monster’s head in a spray of bone and gore. He holstered the gun and then turned back to the downward slope—where two dozen of the female beasts were making their way up the road on all fours.
All at once, their infernal cries blasted X with a barrage of high-pitched electronic noise. Instead of retreating and pulling his rifle, he turned the throttle to give the bike more juice.
The rear tire fishtailed with a screech, and the bike lurched down the road to meet the monsters head-on. The foot-long blades welded to the wheel hubs were supposed to be for cutting through vegetation, but he was going to test them on flesh and bone.
The monsters moved like a herd of wild animals, mouths chomping and angry cries splitting the air. One of the beasts had a ten-foot lead. It increased that lead, galloping straight for his bike. The front tire plowed into the monster, crushing its skull and flinging it aside.
X let out a whoop as the other creatures came together in a V formation. The wide front tire bucked the beasts that came at him headlong, and the blades cut through the others trying to attack from an angle—severing heads, hacking off feet and forearms, shredding flesh. An arm caught in the spokes, thumping halfway around before the blade sheared it in two.
It was all over in seconds. X eased off the gas and looked over his shoulder at the trail of devastation he had left behind. One of the female beasts crawled across the ground using its elbows, dragging a lower half that hung on by the spinal column and a narrow strand of sinew.
Leaving the carnage behind, he sped off toward the next bridge. The ITC facility was on the far side. Now all he had to do was find a way in.
The wails of the dying creatures filled the intervals between thunderclaps. Cresting the next bridge, he shot a glance over his shoulder to make sure none of them were following. His eyes flitted from the corpses to the skyline, where hundreds of tiny black dots flapped to the east.
Oh, shit.
His heart went back to thumping like an automatic weapon, but after a few seconds of watching the beasts, he relaxed a degree. The Sirens weren’t flying to help their mates. They were heading toward a light on the horizon.
X stopped the bike on the top of the bridge and pulled out his binos. On the shoreline, the lighthouse turret was glowing a bright red, and the light was flashing over and over.
He centered the binos there for several seconds, blinking to make sure it wasn’t an optical illusion caused by the lightning.
It wasn’t. Something or someone had activated the beacon, and the Sirens were flocking like moths toward the light.
* * * * *
Present day
Captain Leon Jordan slapped the cover of the book shut with such force, dust puffed up from the yellowed pages. He was tired of reading about lighthouses, boats, and all manner of bullshit that didn’t make any difference to him, twenty thousand feet up in the sky. This was exactly why he had ordered the militia to raid the library. Books like the one he had just read were nothing more than legends, written to keep people believing in something that no longer existed.
He flicked on his touch screen and pulled up the audio clip his team had intercepted. Static crackled from the speakers for several minutes before a faint voice broke through.
“Timothy, this is Commander Everhart, reporting our coordinates.” There was another flurry of static, then a broken message. “We need you … fly Deliverance …”
Jordan tapped in
his credentials and pulled up the Hive’s confidential records. He searched for “Deliverance” in the database, but there were no results. He thought a moment, then typed “airship” and “ITC Communal Thirteen” into the search bar, and found a record of a smaller airship that was created sometime after the Hive and stowed at the Hilltop Bastion before the bombs went off.
“You son of a bitch,” Jordan said, scooting up to the screen. An image of an airship filled the monitor. He clicked on the audio to play a short narration clip.
“In 2051, ITC designed a faster and lighter prototype airship with thrusters and turbofans. Engineers removed the helium gas bladders to save on space and outfitted the ship with a state-of-the-art artificial-intelligence system.”
Jordan had read about these ships before but had believed they were all destroyed in the war that wiped out civilization. Apparently, one had survived inside the Hilltop Bastion and the other divers were calling it Deliverance.
He folded his hands, thinking of the implications. An idea formed in his mind. He stood as it began to materialize, grabbed his freshly sharpened sword, and left his office. There were so many questions that he wanted answered. First, who was this Timothy? And second, where was Deliverance now? He wasn’t going to find the answers by sitting in his office.
Jordan walked out onto the platform above the bridge and motioned for Ensign Ryan to join him at the top.
“Follow me,” Jordan said. He nodded at Hunt. “You have the bridge, Lieutenant.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” Hunt replied.
Ryan pushed his glasses up and followed Jordan through the hatch into the connecting corridor. Several militia guards were standing sentry, crossbows cradled over their riot gear.
“Sir, it’s not safe out here,” Lore said, holding out an arm to stop him. Jordan hadn’t recognized the soldier with his helmet on.
“I thought everyone was inside their assigned shelters,” Ryan said.
Lore shook his head. “There were a few that didn’t follow orders.”
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