“Turn on your NVGs and follow me. I want to check it out.”
Michael crawled out of the chamber into the narrowing tunnel, moving on his knees and hands. It wasn’t long before he saw the pulsing red light of vines winking in the passage. The glow seemed to be coming from a hole in the rocky wall. Several branches from a vine had broken through, curling inside the tunnel.
He pried back the mat of vines to look into a large cavern. No, a huge cavern.
Roots and stems stretched away from the floor and extended into dozens of tunnels in the walls above. All the roots seemed to connect to a bulb the size of a small house on the cavern floor. Helmet-sized barbs covered the mass like huge, spiky warts.
“It’s the heart,” he whispered.
“Heart?” Sofia said.
He got out of the way so she could take a look.
Sofia looked down and then jerked back into the shadows as more voices echoed.
Michael moved over and pulled back the vines again.
Sure enough, to the right of the heart were two naked men, walking with arrows nocked on their bowstrings. He strained for a better look at what appeared to be a steel door in the cavern wall.
“Holy shit,” Michael whispered. “I think this is the back way to the bunker.”
Sofia didn’t say anything, which told him she wasn’t keen on the idea of going down there to check it out.
“This is what we came here for,” he said. “Why our friends died. We have to check it out.”
He thought of Layla and Bray and everyone else back on the airship and the islands. They weren’t the only ones who had spent their lives in the darkness before finding the light. He didn’t know whether the people down there were good or bad, but he had to find out more. For all he knew, the defectors had killed them and his divers. If that was what happened, then his people were likely responsible for the transmission that led the machines here.
“We have to finish what Team Raptor came here for,” Michael said.
A whimpering sound came over the voices in the chamber. Michael checked again but couldn’t see the source.
“Come on,” he whispered.
Sofia hesitated, then followed him down the sloping tunnel. They were descending at a thirty-five-degree angle now, and they had to be careful not to slide along the steep, rocky floor.
As they descended, the whimpering began to sound more like sobbing.
He counted at least three, maybe four, voices over the noise. Another opening in the tunnel wall provided a view inside the chamber.
He turned so he faced up, toward Sofia, who had stopped on her knees. The window into the chamber revealed even more naked men with bows, and they weren’t alone.
Two more men, both in black clothing, hung from ropes around their ankles. Blood dripped from their hair onto the floor.
Michael pulled back into the shadows and let Sofia scoot down for a view.
“Edgar and Arlo,” she whispered.
It made sense now. Their beacons had switched off when these wrinkly men removed their armor.
Michael took another look. Even from a distance, it was obvious the divers were in bad shape. Beaten and possibly cut or stabbed, judging from the sheer amount of blood on their jumpsuits and flesh. Neither appeared to be conscious. The sobs were coming from someone else.
He moved again to check the door to the bunker and saw another group of people huddled together against the wall right below him and Sofia.
The plastic filtration masks they wore hid their faces, but he could tell that most of them were emaciated. He also spotted kids in the group. The entire lot wore gray outfits: jumpsuits, pants, and shirts with a logo of some sort.
The people from the bunker.
But who the hell were the six naked freaks who had taken his divers captive?
Michael thought back to the skin flags he had seen aboveground. He had seen something similar at the fuel outpost, but they also looked like what the defectors left behind in Jamaica.
If the machines weren’t here, then it could only be…
“Skinwalkers,” he whispered.
These naked men had to be part of Horn’s group.
Michael crouched and brought up his laser rifle, zooming in on the biggest of the guards. The guy was a brute, easily Rhino’s size. He held a long needlelike blade and walked around Arlo and Edgar, studying them the way a scientist might look at a caged animal.
Zeroing in on his face, Michael saw what looked like stitches in the wrinkled brown flesh, all the way around the chin and skull. It wasn’t just his face. His entire body was covered in the stitched-on skin—even his damn boots.
Before Michael could react, the man jammed the needle blade into Arlo’s side, but Arlo hardly made a sound.
“No!” Michael blurted in a voice just shy of a shout. His voice echoed, turning several heads among the skinwalkers.
He sank back into the shadows, heart thumping against his ribs.
Sofia, still on her knees, brought up her rifle and trained it on the opening in the wall. They waited several moments, but the arrows and excited shouts never came.
He moved slightly for a look farther down the sloping tunnel. It had to come out somewhere, and he had a feeling it wasn’t far.
“We have to do something,” Sofia said.
Michael was glad they were on the same page. He raised his rifle and said, “Let’s kill these demonic fucks.”
She nodded. “Just tell me when to fire, Comm—”
More voices cut her off. These were louder and seemed to come from new people entering the cavern. He sneaked a glance. The six men had turned into twenty, maybe more. Some were wounded, limping along or clutching wounds in their torsos. Others had armor showing through charred, wrinkled skin.
A man with a horn on his helmet strode into the cavern, carrying two axes. Walking past the heart, he raised one of his blades at Arlo and Edgar. The brute with the stiletto reached up and sliced through the ropes around their ankles, dropping them to the ground.
Michael counted another dozen soldiers flooding into the cavern behind the leader with the axes.
“Siren shit,” he whispered.
The man with the horn spoke rapidly in a muffled voice. Burned skin hung loosely off his helmet. He wiped a shred away from his eyes.
“What’s he saying?” Michael asked.
“He says to kill the rest of these people and skin them, then head back to their boat. It’s time…” Sofia’s words trailed off.
“Time for what?”
“To go to the Metal Islands and take the throne from el Pulpo,” Sofia said. “He must not know that X is king.”
“We have to stop him,” Michael said.
“But so many…”
“I know, but we have guns and they don’t,” Michael said. “You stay and shoot from here. I’ll head down and fire from the floor, okay?”
She hesitated, then nodded.
“Thanks for sticking with me,” Michael said. “Good luck.”
“Good luck.”
He squirmed around and moved back down the tunnel. As he suspected, there was another opening in the wall, this one much bigger than the others.
A skinwalker stood on the other side, facing the group of people from the bunker. Michael pulled the knife from his sheath and jammed it through the back of the man’s neck, up into the brain.
He slumped over, and Michael raised his laser rifle, choosing his first target, the big bastard who had stabbed Arlo. He now had an axe in hand and was preparing to bring it down on Arlo’s neck.
Lining up the sights, Michael whispered, “Hello and goodbye, asshole.”
The brilliant line of blue light flashed through the man’s helmet and into the rock wall. He dropped with a thud onto the ground between Arlo and Edgar.
Michael roved to the next target, who was nocking an arrow on his bowstring. The laser ripped through his neck. The next bolt sizzled into another helmet.