Nicholas Smith - Warriors

“Machines are…” said the voice.

The message finally cleared.

“This is X,” he said. “Who am I talking to, and what the hell is happening?”

White noise filled the room, but it passed and a familiar voice surged over the channel.

“This is Ada Winslow, sir,” came the reply. “The machines attacked and sank Elysium …”

The radio cut out again.

“How can that be Ada?” Magnolia asked. “Is this some sort of a trick?”

“Ada, do you copy?” X said.

“Copy, sir.”

“It’s really you?”

“Yes, sir. I returned to help you.”

X paused, his graying brows coming together in confusion.

“We’re on our way, aboard Raven’s Claw ,” he said. “How long can you hold off the machines?”

There was no reply. The radio had cut out again.

Magnolia felt her chest warm.

“Ada,” X said. “Ada, do you copy?”

He pounded the radio with his hand.

“This piece of shit,” he growled.

Lightning flashed outside the portholes. The warship was sailing toward another electrical storm—probably the cause of all the static.

They stood there for several minutes trying to get Ada back. Rolling thunder followed another barrage of lightning.

After the rattling stopped, the radio came to life.

“King Xavier, do you copy?” Ada said.

“Copy!” X almost shouted.

“Sir, I don’t know what you heard last, but we held the capitol tower and the Hive long enough for the divers you sent to Mount Kilimanjaro to complete their mission. The virus worked, sir. The defectors were shut down—worldwide.”

Rodger looked over at Magnolia, his swollen eyes widening behind his glasses.

This couldn’t be real, could it?

“We won the war,” Ada said. “The Hell Divers defeated the machines!”

For a moment, no one said a word except for Imulah, who interpreted for Forge.

Then X stomped the ground and reared his head back, letting out a howl of glee. He got down and hugged Miles, who also began to howl.

Magnolia remained frozen in place, unable to fathom what she had just heard. Over two hundred fifty years after the apocalypse, the Hell Divers had defeated the ancient enemy that started the war.

She was aware of Rodger pulling on her arm, and Imulah laughing with Forge in a rare display of emotion. But she couldn’t quite grasp that this was real.

It wasn’t until X kissed her on the cheek that she snapped out of it.

“They did it, kid,” he said. “They really fucking did it. Giraffe and Tin saved our home.”

“They saved the world ,” Magnolia mumbled in disbelief.

Michael stood at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro, blasted by windblown sand. Over three weeks had passed since Les uploaded the virus that shut down the machines, and Timothy had sealed the deal by ramming Discovery into the tower. The defectors could never come back online.

Michael had never felt such a conflicted wash of emotions. But why now, after saving humanity from extinction? On the way back from a supply run into the destroyed base, he stopped at the graveyard. He knelt at the rows of mounds covering the remains of his friends and the prisoners killed during the battle. Hector, Ted, and Lena were all buried here. Nothing remained of Samson or Les, but Michael had dug a grave for them anyway.

Behind him stood Kade, Captain Rolo, and the surviving crew of Discovery .

Eevi, Pedro, and Alfred and his team, along with Sofia, Edgar, and Arlo had joined Michael on the supply mission. Captain Rolo had also brought a small team of men carrying crates from the machine base—mostly medicine, but some weapons, too.

Arlo limped over and knelt beside Michael. Edgar had a limp as well, but he had lucked out when the drones hammered his sniping position. Sofia was also lucky to be alive.

Lena hadn’t been so lucky. Losing her had hit Edgar hard, and while he hadn’t spoken much about it, Michael knew he felt guilty for not saving her. Arlo showed the same guilt over losing Ted, one of his best friends.

The dry wind swept over the ground, whipping up dust off the mounds in front of the four divers.

Four left.

A tear rolled down his face. They had lost much, but they had completed their mission, and the fallen divers’ sacrifice would never be forgotten.

They had won a monumental victory, yet they might never know how X had fared in Aruba, or whether the Vanguard Islands had survived. He and the other survivors were stranded here with no way home.

A tear fell from the other eye.

His home and his family were almost half a world away. Somehow, he would get back there even if he had to walk and swim the whole way. Nothing would stop him from seeing his wife and their son.

He got to his feet as another dust storm swept across the plains outside the walls. Kade led the crew behind the factories, to a road strewn with destroyed defectors. All had gaping holes in their skulls, where Kade and his people had shot them after the virus shut them down—a precaution.

That day had been a celebration of freedom and the end of an enemy that had all but wiped humanity out.

The fight against extinction wasn’t over yet, though, and Michael had a feeling it was going to be a long road ahead. Especially for these people.

At first, he didn’t understand why the machines had even kept them alive, but it was obvious now that they all had worked in the factories.

They were slaves—labor to help build more machines.

And some of them had been subjected to worse horrors, turned into machines with human brains and awareness. Michael had blown the factories sky high after the battle, ending the suffering of the tortured beings inside the macabre laboratories.

Gusting grit buffeted the group as they walked toward the massive blast doors built into the mountain. Timothy and Les had supposed this was the entrance to their command center and mainframe, but it was actually an entrance to a base built here before World War Three.

The doors screeched apart to reveal a long concrete passage. Several old-world vehicles sat on rusted hubs.

The group walked over a mile before reaching the secondary entrance. Kade used a key to open the steel door, and Michael helped him push it open.

The passage narrowed considerably, allowing just enough room for Michael to walk with Kade. He respected the old Hell Diver greatly for keeping his people alive all these years.

Behind the final door, he saw what they had been promised in the radio intercepts from the machines. A massive vault with high ceilings sprawled out before them. The bunker had its own water supply, farm, and everything else they had on the airships, but without the risk of crashing to the wastes. It was big enough to house two thousand people—about four times the current population.

Only 510 survivors remained. Many were in such poor health, Michael wasn’t sure they would make it. They needed medicine—the purpose of this scavenging mission.

Kade directed the men carrying the crates to a packed medical ward.

Michael slung his laser rifle and took off his helmet as he walked into the open chamber. All ten metal tables were occupied with people eating dinner. Everyone wore dark-blue uniforms from the bunker, with the flag of some old-world government.

Most of them turned, eyes flitting toward the divers.

For the first few weeks of living here, the former prisoners had shied away from Michael and his team, but now they were more curious, especially the children.

Alton, the boy Michael had first seen when breaking through the window of the warehouse, had become his shadow. He was behind Michael now, walking with his tattered stuffed elephant.