And he would fight.
X spat a gob of phlegm on the floor of his prison cell and winced at the pain that shot up his sternum and across his ribs. When it passed, he moved over to the bars of his cell.
For three days now, he had called this place home. During that time, he had been in almost complete isolation, with no idea whether Miles, Magnolia, or Rodger were still alive.
“Let me…” His voice cracked, the words trailing off.
He rubbed his throat, scratchy now from hours of screaming. Screaming to let him out so he could kill el Pulpo and every Cazador soldier in the Metal Islands.
But the barbarians didn’t seem to give much of a damn.
The only person to answer his shouts was a slave boy who brought him water and scraps of food twice a day. If his mental clock was working properly, then the kid would be returning very soon to change out the Cazador version of a shit can on the Hive—which happened to be a bucket that looked indistinguishable from the one they brought him water in.
He just hoped they washed it out first. The last thing he needed was dysentery, especially without access to any of the lifesaving medicines he had carried on the Sea Wolf.
X waited by the bars, eyes on the hatch at the end of the passageway, where the boy would enter. This brig had dozens of other cells but no other prisoners. For some reason, they were holding him in solitary confinement.
No, not some reason. It was a deliberate mind-fuck. They wanted to make him desperate, so that by the time he saw the light of day again, he would honor his agreement to serve el Pulpo, like a weak-willed coward.
But what el Pulpo still didn’t understand about X was that he had already endured solitary confinement for most of a decade in his trek across the surface wastes. Those years were the hard part. This? This was like taking a nap.
“I can handle isolation,” he growled in his scratchy voice. “I invented isolation!”
Anyone who understood English would think him crazy, but that was the point. That was his game. Make them think he was crazy, so they’d let him out of here.
He turned to the small window in the cell—just a sliver no wider than a sword blade. All he could see was part of the oil rig, and a container ship that had docked there. A crane was unloading barrels from its deck while two men in dark suits and straw hats seemed to be tallying them. He still didn’t know where the Cazadores were getting usable gasoline, but they had found a stash somewhere. After watching for a few more minutes, he sat back down on the floor of his cell and went on checking his wounds. When he had finished cleaning them the best he could, he lay back with his head cupped in his hands.
It was hard to relax knowing that Miles and his friends were out there, but he needed his mental and physical strength.
So X did what X did best: he shut out the rest of the world and focused on surviving.
Sometime later, the metal door squealed open.
He got up and moved back to the bars, squinting into the light that streamed down the passage. It took his eyes a few seconds to adjust to the brightness, and when they did, a man, not a boy, stood outside the bars.
Not a man, either, X realized, but a slave, a coward.
Imulah, the scribe who served el Pulpo.
“Hello, Xavier,” he said in affable tones.
Two Cazador soldiers walked inside to stand guard in the open hatchway, holding spears in their armored hands. Helmetless, their eyes were full of rage and bloodlust, and they were fixed on X.
He didn’t blame them for wanting revenge. After all, he had killed a pile of these cannibals single-handedly. For a warrior society, its “warriors” didn’t hold up all that well against a seasoned Hell Diver.
When X didn’t reply, Imulah moved closer to the bars and said, “How are you feeling?”
This time, he replied by spitting another wad of snot at the servant’s feet.
Imulah took a step back and then sighed. “You and your lady friend are not as polite as Rodger. It’s very disappointing.”
“We aren’t used to being slaves like you,” X said.
Bending down, the bald, bearded man scrutinized X as if this were some wild creature behind the bars, and X glared back like that same wild beast.
“Normally, I speak with restraint when my handlers are listening,” Imulah said. “But the two guards you see do not speak your tongue, and I’m going to be very honest with you, Xavier Rodriguez.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.”
Imulah glared at X. “You have no choice but to fight in el Pulpo’s army. If you don’t, he will torture Magnolia and Rodger and eat them in front of you, along with your dog.” He paused and then finished his thought. “He said your dog will make a good aperitivo—‘appetizer,’ I believe, is the word you might understand—before the main course.”
X grabbed the bars, baring his teeth much as Miles would.
Imulah, surprisingly, held his ground.
“I was once like you,” he said quietly. His voice took on a melancholy tone. “I was once a warrior. My people fought the Cazadores when they found our small outpost on the island of Ascension. There weren’t many of us, but those of us who could fight, fought.”
X narrowed his eyes.
“El Pulpo and you are from the same place?”
“Indeed, we are,” Imulah said. “We are descendants of the sky people that landed on the island and took shelter for over two hundred years in an ITC facility. Long before he became the king of the Cazadores, el Pulpo was just a boy named Maximus, the son of a man who died in the battle for our outpost. I, too, fought and lost that day. I was forced to endure the sight of most of my friends and family slaughtered, and I will never forget seeing Maximus…”
Imulah shook his head. “Even as a young boy of nine, he killed three Cazador warriors and bit the nose off the man who finally captured him. He was born to fight.”
X had a hard time believing the story. Was this just a ploy to change his mind?
“Like me, Maximus became a slave when our people were conquered. He ended up thrown into the Cazador war machine, where he fought his way to power, climbing from spearman to king—over a mountain of dead warriors.”
The story made sense, although X wasn’t sure why el Pulpo didn’t speak fluent English, unless he had forgotten what he knew as a child and grew up speaking Spanish.
“He led us to the greatest find of all,” Imulah said. “To a place that held millions of gallons of gasoline, all preserved by an ITC additive that kept gasoline as fresh as the day it left the refinery.”
“So you don’t get your oil from the rigs?” X asked.
Imulah chuckled. “Of course not.”
X looked again at the two men standing guard and giving him angry glares. The shorter of the two bared his teeth at X, and X gave him the middle finger, not knowing whether the guy even understood the gesture.
Imulah must have. “This is why el Pulpo respects you,” he said. “He sees strength in you that he has seen in only a few men. He understands why Magnolia and your people call you ‘the Immortal.’”
The scribe stood, wincing as his joints creaked.
“Perhaps, someday, you, too, will become king of the Cazadores,” he said, clasping his hands behind his robe. Then he turned and left, stopping a few feet shy of the open hatch to let the servant boy inside.
The boy carried a bucket of water in one filthy paw, and an orange, a bread crust, and a few scraps of dried fish in the other.
“Better drink and eat up,” Imulah said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small jar, then handed it to the boy to give to X.
“Use this on your wounds,” Imulah said. “It will help them heal faster. You’re going to need all the strength you can get. Your first fight at the sky arena is tomorrow night.”