Letting his rifle strap dangle over his chest, he grabbed his toggles to steer away from the second wave of Sirens. He caught a draft of wind and rode it toward the other divers. It took only a few seconds to catch up with Katrina and Weaver, but Magnolia had disappeared in the low clouds.
The pop of gunfire pulled his gaze two hundred feet eastward, where he saw the weak glow of her battery unit rising. Flashes from her rifle lit up the clouds. The comm channel flickered in and out, but in the breaks from static, he could hear her screams.
“Pull up, Magnolia!” X yelled. “You’re heading…”
Thunder clattered above, cutting off the transmission. Glaring up at the swirling purple beast, he realized that their possible doom might also be their salvation. The lightning strikes could fry the divers, but they would also fry Sirens.
“Head into the storm!” X said. “Hurry!”
Weaver was already using his toggles to pull himself up faster. He was gaining altitude, and so was Katrina. They rose toward the low, bulging clouds.
“Magnolia! Pull up!” X repeated. In a blink, he saw that it was already too late. The second wave was only a thousand feet away. Even if she pulled away, they would hit her within thirty seconds or less.
The Sirens’ screeches morphed into a steady high-pitched blare. X tried to block out the noise. As he raised his rifle, a network of lightning speared overhead, and in its glow he saw the snarling eyeless faces homing in on Magnolia. Their membranous wings seemed to glow in the brilliant light.
The blue residue quickly faded away, and X raised his rifle with one hand and kept his other on a toggle. The kick from his rifle lurched him backward with such force he lost his grip on the toggle. He spun out of control, his harnesses twisting.
X fought back into a stable position, one eye still on Magnolia. The second formation had maneuvered into an intercept course. He centered his rifle on them, but she was directly in his line of fire.
“Magnolia, pull up, God damn it!” X yelled.
Her reply was a frantic scream. Two of the Sirens drove forward from the front of the wave. They exploded away from the others, their wings beating the air so fast, everything else seemed to move in slow motion.
X tried to find a target, but the world had ground to a screeching halt. The tug of his harnesses seemed weaker. The whistle of the wind and the shrieks of the Sirens seemed faint, distant. In the brief moment of peace, specters of everyone he had ever lost rose into his thoughts. Rhonda was there, the perpetual scowl on her once-pretty face softening into something that was almost a smile. There was Rodney, Will, Sam, Cruise and Tony, standing shoulder to shoulder. Murph waved sheepishly, his eyes hidden behind orange goggles. Aaron grinned and nodded, and X realized for the first time how much Tin looked like his father.
X had outlived all of them. Somewhere up above, Tin would grow up to be a strong, honorable man like his father, but X knew in his heart that he wouldn’t see it. With the crate on its way back up to the ship, he and the other divers had ensured that the boy and everyone else on the Hive would survive. They had completed their mission. Humanity would go on, at least for now, but if X didn’t help, Magnolia would never see the inside of the ship again. She was young, with her life still ahead of her. X, on the other hand, had already lived his, and even though most of it had been lousy, he had survived far longer than most.
I should have died a long time ago, X thought.
Magnolia shrieked again. “Help! I can’t… I can’t get away!”
“Hold on!” X shouted. Letting his rifle hang across his chest, he grabbed both toggles and steered toward the Sirens. He wasn’t going to let Magnolia join the ranks of dead divers, not when he still had some fight left in him.
She angled away from the Sirens’ claws while X shot toward them. The two that had broken off from the pack were a hundred feet away now, their gangly arms already reaching up for Magnolia.
“No!” Katrina shouted over the comm. “Don’t, X!”
X imagined she was looking down at them, watching as he soared through the sky toward Magnolia and the monsters. But he didn’t have time to console Katrina or explain what he was doing. The clock was ticking, and he had time for only one message.
“Make sure Captain Ash takes care of Tin,” he said. He bumped off the channel and caught Magnolia’s terrified gaze for a split second as he rocketed past her.
With his left hand on a toggle, X raised the rifle in his right. He aimed carefully, knowing he had exactly one chance to save his friends. The other formations were five hundred feet away, but maybe if he could kill the front two, it would buy the other divers enough time to escape into the storm.
The Sirens’ vacant faces jerked in his direction. He closed one eye, then fired just as they changed course. The bullet hit the first Siren right between where its eyes ought to be. It dropped like a rock, and he squeezed off another shot that hit the second one in the chest. The bullet jolted the creature, but it fought to stay in the air and angled toward X.
He fired two more shots into its mass, veering it from its trajectory. The Siren torpedoed past X, narrowly missing him. An ear-splitting screech followed, waning as the monster tumbled into the dark void. When X looked back up, the heart of the formation was almost on him. They reached out with ropy muscles, maws chomping and wings riding the wind.
They were so close now, he could see their scarred flesh coming apart as the bullets hit. Blood ballooned into the sky. For a moment, he thought he might actually have enough bullets to kill them all—that maybe he would make it back to the Hive after all. He had killed six of thirteen before his magazine clicked dry.
X let the rifle drape from its sling. Then he let go of the left toggle and grabbed his pistol and his knife.
Letting out a guttural scream that rivaled even the Sirens’ shrieks, he extended his arms, brandishing both blade and gun at a bulky Siren at the front of the second formation. Its wrinkled flesh was covered with scars. Well, X would give it some new ones. He managed to fire a shot into its neck before they smashed into each other. He plunged the blade into the monster’s torso as they collided. The pistol flew from his hand, and air exploded from his lungs. He was spinning now, his knife still stuck in the Siren’s lean muscles.
It flapped its wings, screeching and tearing at him. Claws scratched over his chest armor, and he felt the hot burn as one of the talons ripped through his layered suit and caught the flesh in the gap beneath his armor and his belt.
X wrenched the blade from its neck. Blood spurted out, half covering the outside of his visor. He plunged the knife back into the monster again and again. Piercing shrieks, filled with rage, answered each thrust.
The field of view beyond his visor blurred with scabrous, wrinkled skin. He could see leathery wings and little else. A moment later, a pair of wings wrapped around his body, and darkness enveloped him.
“No!” X shouted as the dense weight pulled him downward. Fear gripped him as he squirmed in the membranous shroud, struggling to move his helmet. Through a hole in the cocoon of tattered wings, he glimpsed three flickers of blue from battery units above. In the blink of the eye, they vanished into the storm clouds. While the other divers rose to salvation, X fell back into hell.
Weaver had flinched at the sound of a single gunshot below. He watched in shock as X crashed into the Sirens. They swarmed him, flapping their wings like prehistoric flying reptiles. In a heartbeat, the diver plunged into the darkness and disappeared with the roiling mass of monsters.