Nicholas Smith - Allegiance

“Heads up,” Mac said. “Almost there.”

The trading-post rig appeared small on the horizon, but even at this reduced speed they would be there in minutes. X used the time to rehearse everything in his mind.

He prayed that Michael, Magnolia, Rodger, and Sofia made it back to the airship safely, but the horrific losses filled him with a deep dread. Looking out at the horizon, he also wondered where Ada was.

X would never admit this to Rhino, but when he went to visit her, he had actually gone there to kill her. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it, so instead, he had helped her escape.

“Come back in five years,” he had said, “and I will welcome you back to the islands.”

It was half the time he had spent alone on the surface, and if she survived as he had, then he would forgive her for her sins.

The map he had given Ada was to the place in Florida where he had lived several years. If she could get there, she would have access to the resources that had kept him alive until the sky people landed and rescued him.

But he doubted she would make it that far. In a way, X had effectively killed her by sending her out there.

“Here we go,” Mac said. Felipe hopped up on the bow and eased the craft into a mooring between two tethered boats.

Notes from a guitar and several wind instruments drifted away from the trading post. The tone was calming, beautiful even.

This was it. Time to fight again. And as always, he would rise to the occasion, ready to fight for humanity even if it meant losing more of his own.

The vines had burrowed deep inside the earth, forming tunnels wide enough for a person to navigate. Michael and Sofia had scrambled into one of them but now had to crawl as it narrowed.

After an hour, they finally came to a chamber that let them get off their bellies. Michael managed to get into a crouch, and Sofia came up on her armored kneepads.

“We’re lost,” she said.

“I know that.”

Sofia twisted and stretched her torso. “Now that we can turn around, maybe we should get back topside,” she said. “Edgar and Arlo are gone. You have to accept that, Commander.”

“I have, but I haven’t given up on finding the people who took them.”

“Why? What’s the point? Are you going to kill them? Kill the people we came to save?”

Michael wasn’t sure what he was going to do. He just knew he wanted to find the survivors, even if they turned out to be Edgar and Arlo’s killers.

He looked at his wrist computer, checking to make sure Rodger and Magnolia were still alive. Both their beacons came online. They appeared close. In fact, they seemed to be somewhere right above him and Sofia.

“How is that possible?” Michael whispered. He considered using the comm channel, but he didn’t know who might be out there listening.

Sofia wiped grime and sap off her visor and said, “Commander, my battery’s at forty percent and I’m almost out of water. I could use something to eat, too.”

Michael checked the data on his subscreen. The radiation and air toxicity were surprisingly much lower underground than above and kept getting better the deeper they descended.

He pulled a sealed energy bar from his vest pocket. “You should be okay to open your visor for a minute or two,” he said. “Go ahead. I’m going to eat something, too.”

Over their chewing, they began to hear the faint sound of voices echoing in the passage.

“Do you hear that?” Sofia said.

Michael nodded and shut off his helmet light. She did the same. Darkness swallowed the divers, but it wasn’t the pitch black that scared him—it was the voices.

“Can you make out what they’re saying?” Michael asked.

“Sounds like Spanish, but I can’t make it out.”

“I thought the people we came here to save spoke Portuguese.”

“Maybe not all of them,” she said. “And Portuguese sounds a lot like Spanish, only softer.”

“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?