“Okay, let’s move out, then,” Mac said.
The soldiers took off in combat intervals along the path Felipe had swept earlier. Something felt off to X as he followed them, as if they were being watched—by man, monster, or machine, he couldn’t say. Then again, there wasn’t much difference in this place.
Ton and Victor seemed nervous, too, as they moved toward the shipping containers.
The first of the strike team took up position there while the single file moved along the cleared path. Once they were all there, Mac again signaled to advance.
This time, X followed Felipe, who pointed with his cutlass inside the open door of a container. Stacked cages contained the remains of several Sirens and other mutant beasts, decomposed to just bones.
The next shipping container had two gurneys holding human skeletons, both of them missing their limbs.
Ton and Victor stopped to look, no doubt recalling the horror they had experienced at the hands of el Pulpo’s army.
X patted them both on the back and kept moving.
Several spiny rats skittered out of another container, leaving wet tracks in the dirt. A glance inside revealed fresher kills. X flicked on his helmet light over a limbless body on a table. The corpse had on one of the black suits he had seen in the video footage captured by Cricket.
He held up a hand to Magnolia and then went inside. His helmet beam illuminated a humanoid male face on the table, eyes closed. He stepped over for a better look.
Something about this man seemed off. Higher cheekbones and smooth, almost plastic-like skin. But this was real bone and flesh, so not a robot.
Moving to the head, he sheathed his blaster so he could open the eyelids. The orbs were pure black.
That was when X noticed the ITC logo on the breast of the uniform.
He reeled away from the table.
“X, what is it?” It was Magnolia’s voice.
“I think I found out who those people in the video were.”
Magnolia walked into the container, and X pointed with his spear.
“Genetically engineered humans, pre-Siren stage,” X said. “Horn must be raiding ITC facilities to build an army and a workforce—and for meat on the hoof.”
“Sick bastard,” Magnolia said.
“What are you doing?” Rodger said quietly from the open door. “Oh, shit…”
The three of them went outside and followed the Barracudas through the maze of meat lockers. At the end of the lot, they reached a fence topped with razor wire. The refinery was just on the other side, its silos towering in the air. Forking electricity illuminated more skeletal remains on pikes. The team split up and snipped through the fence at two entry points.
Two roads ran between the wide silos. The soldiers walked slowly, eyes roving for hostiles. Felipe led the way with his mine detector. At the halfway point, Mac sent Felipe up one of the ladders to look around. He handed his minesweeper to another soldier, who started sweeping while the rest of the team waited.
X took up position at a silo across from Rodger and Magnolia, who crouched behind the rusted hulk of a pickup truck. He looked toward the buildings beyond the silos. An old-world tanker truck, its tires long gone, sat alone in the empty parking lot. Beyond the lot, several structures with broken windows and sunken roofs overlooked the beach.
The harbor where the skinwalker ships were docked in Cricket’s recon images wouldn’t be far. It was possible Felipe could see them from the top of the oil silo. If he did, they could radio General Forge, and the attack could commence.
Felipe stopped halfway up the massive silo and looked, then kept going.
“Screw this,” Rodger muttered. He got up and went to climb another ladder, ignoring X’s signal to get down.
“God damn it,” X muttered.
He hurried over and got to the silo just as Magnolia yanked Rodger down.
“You’re really starting to piss me off,” X growled.
“Me, too,” Magnolia said.
“I’m just…”
Before Rodger could reply, a flare shot into the air, bursting in a bright glow that lit up the refinery.
“Down!” Mac yelled.
Automatic gunfire sounded, and a muzzle flash came from the top hatch of the tanker truck in the parking lot, where a soldier had popped up with a large machine gun.
Green tracer rounds streaked across the two roads between the silos from another position that X couldn’t see.
Two Barracudas crouching in the open went down before they could find cover. One lost an arm at the elbow, and the other lost half his helmet in an explosion of armor, blood, and bone.
A Barracuda ran over to take cover with X but was cut down by rounds punching through his chest armor. He landed on his side and, despite the devastating injuries, managed to start crawling.
X crouch-walked out to help, but Magnolia pulled him back as bullets kicked up a spray of earth on their way to the fallen soldier.
His blood spattered X’s armor. The Barracuda jerked and then went limp.
Ton and Victor were holding their shields at the silo across from X, waiting to make their move across the stream of fire, but he waved them back.
“Stay there!” X shouted.
He was no stranger to combat, but the flare and ambush had caught him off guard. He watched the armless Cazador crawl for cover, only to be shredded by more gunfire. An explosion boomed in the distance, rumbling the silo X hid behind.
Two other Barracudas got up to lay down covering fire, but the men they were trying to protect were cut down as soon as they took off running.
In a brief lull, X heard Mac shouting over all the other noises of war. The booming voice snapped him out of the shock. He got up to look for another way out. That was when X saw a figure on the silo that Felipe had climbed.
This wasn’t Felipe—it was a man holding a knife to Felipe’s throat. He kicked Felipe’s helmet off the roof, attracting Magnolia’s attention.
X could see the young Barracuda’s tattooed face in the glow of the parachute flare. His eyes were proud, no sign of fear.
Magnolia raised her laser rifle just as the skinwalker traced the blade across Felipe’s throat and pushed his body to the ash below.
THIRTY-TWO
A third of a world away, forty thousand feet in the sky, Michael thought of X as Discovery hovered over enemy territory. He felt a queasiness in his gut from the fear that something had happened to X.
He shook it away. They had already lost Cricket, and now they were facing an impossible decision.
“This is now a volunteer-only mission,” Les said. He looked down at a white line on the deck. “We all saw what’s down there. I won’t blame you if you don’t want to dive.”
The seven other Hell Divers stood in the launch bay with Timothy, who was here to interpret for Hector.
The tension was palpable among the men and women who could very well decide the future of humanity. Michael was both honored and horrified to be one of them.
He clenched and opened his robotic fist. “We’re running out of time,” he said. “We have to make a decision.”
“Why can’t we just launch the nukes and try to take out the machines that way?” Lena asked. “The mountain can’t be that deep.”
Michael recalled when he had considered dropping the nukes in the ocean, where they couldn’t cause the human race any more harm. But now those same bombs could potentially save humanity from the very machines that had destroyed the world.
“If we fire the nukes and they don’t work, we ruin our chances of going in on foot,” Les said. “The radiation would be too deadly even for our suits. As I said, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to, but if you’re coming, join me.”