Nicholas Smith - Deliverance

“He’s surprised us before, sir,” Hunt said.

Jordan looked around the monitor at Hunt. “Excuse me?”

“Sorry, sir,” Hunt said. “I’m sure you’re right.”

There was no trace of sarcasm in Hunt’s tone, and Jordan turned his attention back to the monitor.

“The facility is on the outskirts of the city,” Jordan said. “It looks like it’s in a yellow zone.” He checked the current location of the Hive. “We’re about two hundred and thirty miles west of Asheville. I had planned on checking out several green zones with the new divers, but this is one hell of an opportunity.”

“Sir, you’d send novice divers into a red zone?” Ryan asked, sliding his glasses up his nose.

“It’s a yellow zone,” Jordan said with a shrug, “and if they die, I can always recruit from the lower decks. I’ve also got Ty Parker in the brig. Jenkins seems to think we should let him dive. His daughter would be a better option, but I made him a deal, and I’m going to honor my word.”

“Parker is a risk,” Hunt said.

“Tell me something I don’t already know, Lieutenant.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“I’ve made my decision,” Jordan said. He looked up from the map. “Change our course for these new coordinates.”

Hunt nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“And if anyone asks why, tell them we found something in the database about this location. You will not mention the transmission. Clear?”

A second nod from Hunt, and a “yes, sir” from Ryan.

“That’s all. Dismissed.” Jordan plopped back down in his leather chair and studied the radiation map on his monitor as the men left.

This wasn’t his first time searching facilities X had visited. Each one had turned up supplies. The irony wasn’t lost on him. The diver he had left behind continued to keep the airship in the sky by providing locations of areas with food, fuel, and weapons. Jordan would continue to use the man until his luck finally ran out.

Almost two days after discovering the remains of Timothy’s family, they reached the edge of the massive storm. The AI was now preparing to set Deliverance down on the very surface it had been designed to destroy. Magnolia and the other divers stood in the cargo hold at the stern, watching through the starboard portholes.

“I like the new look,” Rodger said, gesturing with his eyes toward Magnolia’s hair.

She gave her freshly cut locks a casual toss and winked at him. Last night, she had gotten sick of the way her hair was always falling in her eyes, and asked Layla to help her hack it off. She hadn’t been able to touch up the cobalt streaks in her hair, but she rather liked the way they had grown out and faded. The tips were a soft blue—the color the sky was supposed to be.

Two miles to the east, the colossal electrical storm rolled across the horizon in every direction. Magnolia always thought of the storms as living beasts. The flashes were constant, lighting up the monstrous belly. The churning clouds parted briefly to reveal the yellow heart of the storm. There was no way they could fly through the storm, and diving was out of the question.

“The surface will be safer than the sky,” Michael said as if reading Magnolia’s mind. He turned from the view to look at the divers in turn. He got two nods in reply, then a low belch from Rodger.

“Sorry,” Rodger said, wiping his mouth. “I… really don’t feel so good.”

Magnolia clapped him on the shoulder. “Suck it up. If X can survive a decade down there, you can push through a stomachache.”

Rodger burped again.

“You good to go or not, Rodger?” Michael asked.

“Good to go, Commander.”

Michael said to the AI, “All right, Timothy, start the descent. Everyone else, let’s gear up.”

Timothy’s hologram vanished after acknowledging the order. Since encountering his own corpse, the AI had kept to himself, only answering direct questions or helping when beckoned, and today was no different. He was turning out to be very human, expressing emotions beyond what Magnolia could possibly have expected from a computer program.

The corpses lay in state on the loading platform at the other end of the cargo bay. Blankets covered them, and a shovel was on the floor beside them for when they landed. It was the old way of burying people, during a time long before the Hive. Timothy had asked them to follow the old tradition.

Magnolia forced her gaze away and circled around the only furnishing in the entire cargo bay: a metal table bolted to a bulkhead, where they had set out their diving gear and supplies. The dull black armor that had saved her life countless times was waiting for her to put it on. She fastened the clasps on both sides, tightening them an extra notch for the weight she had lost.

“I had to do the same thing,” Rodger said with a grin. He patted the black armor covering his belly. “I’ve probably lost ten pounds in the past week.”

“You were too skinny to begin with,” she said. “And you could use a shave.”

He scratched his straggly beard. “I thought ladies liked a man with a little scruff on his chin and chest.”

Magnolia took a swig of water from her bottle before holstering the canister on her duty belt. For the first time in days, she felt refreshed, but she was still nervous about the long trek across the radioactive landscape, especially through a swamp—even if it was to find X.

The divers continued donning their armor, working together to clip the tricky pieces. They completed the routine by inserting the battery units into the socket in their chest armor. The blue glow from the heart of each suit warmed to life, spreading across the room. Michael’s glowed red, due to modifications he’d made before his final dive from the Hive , giving his battery a longer life than the others’.

Rodger fished in his pack and handed out four black patches. “I made these from material I found in the engineering wing. It’s a synthetic polymer—very rare.”

Layla held hers up. “Where’s it go?”

“Over your battery unit,” Rodger said with a roll of the eyes. He slapped his on his chest. “I even added some magnets so they lock on to our armor.”

“Okay, so why do we need these?” Michael asked.

Rodger looked at the commander the way he might look at a slow child. “They’ll lessen the energy footprint that our suits give off.”

“So these things make us invisible,” Michael said.

Magnolia examined the patch, impressed. Rodger was without a doubt one of the smartest men on the Hive.

“Nice work Rodger Dodger,” Layla said, slapping him on the shoulder.

Rodger smiled and pushed his broken glasses farther up on his nose. “I was also able to fully charge all the units,” he announced proudly. Magnolia threw him a glance, and he added, “Thanks to Mags.”

“Good job,” Michael said. He tied his hair back and then pulled up the ship’s database on the touch-screen monitor attached to the table.

“I picked the closest LZ to the signal, putting us within twenty-five miles,” he said. “There was a road here at one point. My hope is we can take it to Miami and avoid most of the swampland, but we won’t know until we set down.”

A hologram shot out of a center console, displaying a translucent image of the landscape twenty thousand feet below.

Rodger scratched the back of his head nervously. “Any idea what kind of radiation levels we should expect down there?”

Everyone looked at Timothy, who had reappeared by the bodies resting on the liftgate. The AI bent down and reached out as if to touch them. Magnolia had some concerns about his behavior. Her heart broke for the program, or man, or whatever he was now. No one should have to see their family like that. But they still needed Timothy to do his job.