Nicholas Smith - Deliverance

“Moving into position,” Michael said over the comms.

“Copy that,” Magnolia replied.

“Radio silence from here out.”

The comms went dead. The vehicles thinned out, and the two divers left the open street and took to the sidewalk, moving along the shattered storefronts. The stadium towered over the paved lot at the end of the street. She scanned the area around the building, looking for contacts.

The last transmission from Timothy had put all the soldiers inside the stadium and approaching Deliverance , but she still approached cautiously, keeping an eye out for lookouts or snipers.

A shiver ran up her back, and the hair on her neck stood up the way it did just before a lightning strike. But no bolt came from the sky. She brought up her rifle and aimed it at the stadium. Something was off.

The silence felt heavy, charged with expectation. Not a Siren could be heard.

Nor could she hear Rodger behind her.

She spun around to look for him but saw only the dusty concrete sidewalk where he was supposed to be standing. Her eyes naturally flitted to the sky as she prayed not to see a Siren carrying him away. Nothing. Had he spotted a piece of wood in the rubble and run off to salvage it?

A crunching behind her made her freeze, and she caught a glint of movement reflected in a shard of glass. She whirled with her rifle raised, finger on the trigger, only to be rocked by a crashing blow to the side of her helmet.

The world went red, and Magnolia collapsed on her back. She blinked at the shades of light, trying to get a look at whoever had just attacked her.

Voices sounded, muffled and strained as if heard through a breathing apparatus. She tried to move, but her body wasn’t cooperating.

A man bent down into her line of sight. A metal helmet covered his face, and he looked at her through two almond-shaped mirrored eye visors that reflected her helmet with a dent in the side.

The man tilted his head to the side, like a wild animal assessing its prey. His massive shoulders were topped with jagged white pads. It took her a moment to realize that they were actually the eyeless skulls of Sirens.

Magnolia tried to scoot back, away from her captor, but gauntleted hands grabbed her shoulders from behind. She craned her neck to see two more armored men, though these lacked the skull epaulets. The men began to drag her across the concrete.

“No,” she mumbled, a string of drool coming out of her mouth. Her head pounded, but her visor didn’t appear to be compromised, at least. She gritted her teeth against the pain.

A voice crackled over the comm channel. “Mags, Rodge, where are you? We’re in position.”

The man dragging her had heard the transmission. He leaned down with a knife, placing it in the space between her helmet and chest armor. The muffled voice spoke again from behind his mask, but she didn’t understand the words. They were unlike any she had ever heard before. Still, she didn’t need to understand the words to guess their meaning. If she replied to Michael, the man would cut her throat.

“Magnolia, Rodger, do you copy?” Michael asked.

The man picked her up under her armpits and slung her over his shoulder. The world went topsy-turvy, and then she was staring at the ash-covered sidewalk.

Head pounding, she fought to remain conscious as he carried her down the street. A few minutes later, she was tossed inside the back of a vehicle. She hit the floor and rolled over to see Rodger on his side, visor cracked and eyes shut.

Magnolia tried to squirm toward him despite the pain in her head, but one of the beastly men smacked her helmet with his rifle butt. The pain returned, more intense than before.

She stared for several seconds at Rodger’s chest. Satisfied that he was still breathing, she looked around. They weren’t the only cargo in the back of the vehicle. There were dozens of capsules, stacked and held down by ropes. The same type of capsules she had seen in the cryogenic lab back at the Hilltop Bastion.

Each one was filled with a naked human body.

Team Phoenix and the militia soldiers had the airship surrounded. Thunder boomed in the distance as Les and the other divers raced down past the rows of blasted, melted seats. They kept their rifles trained on the massive ship, but Les kept looking around in awe at the terrain.

The landscape here looked far different from his first dive. Huge mushrooms, patches of weeds, and other poisonous things grew in the lumpy dirt. A giant insect darted across bare ground.

The radioactive wasteland—and the thought of killing Michael Everhart, a man who had served as a role model to Trey—made Les want to puke. But it was the image of Jennifer sinking into the muck that he couldn’t shake. She had still been alive; he was sure of it. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to will away the memory of her final moments.

When Les opened his eyes, he was looking at Deliverance.

The ship was magnificent. At two-thirds the Hive ’s size and without the vulnerable and unwieldy gas bladders, it was a sleek design with thrusters and turbofans built for speed and maneuverability. Judging by the smoky creases in the hull, the ship had taken one hell of a beating on the flight into Miami. But the lights on the undercarriage told Les it was still operational. With Samson’s help, they would be able to get her into the air.

Hair-raising wails came from the sky, where Sirens wheeled over the arena. They kept their distance, but they were hunting.

Across the stadium, Sergeant Jenkins flashed hand signals down the rows. Del Toro, Lore, and Samson followed close behind. Most of the group had never seen the surface before, and they all moved with extra caution, darting glances all around like nervous children entering a dark room.

The soldiers continued down the east side of the seating area while Erin led Olah and Les down the western rows. Relying on their night-vision optics, they kept all lights and headlamps off. So far, the only sign they had seen of Commander Everhart and his comrades were boot prints leading from the bottom of the ship across the field. There were four sets, meaning four members of Team Raptor were still alive.

Les hoped they had missed the rogue divers. He was still praying for a peaceful resolution. Olah and the militiamen, however, looked hell-bent on carrying out the captain’s orders.

“Samson, you know where the door is to this ship?” Jenkins asked over the comm channel.

“Should be a ramp underneath.”

Jenkins motioned for the engineer to stay put at the bottom row of the stadium’s shattered seats. Then he flashed signals across the field to Erin. She looked over at Olah and Les, giving them a nod.

Reluctantly, he leveled his blaster at the ship. He had no idea whether it would even fire after being submerged in the water. After some thought, he holstered the weapon and pulled out his pistol. He thumbed back the hammer with a click and continued down the steps after Erin and Olah.

At the bottom row, Erin raised a fist, and everyone stopped. She and Olah ducked down behind the low wall, and Les followed suit as best he could, folding his rangy frame into a ball just as a Siren swooped over the stadium. The eyeless face scanned the field. Soaring away, it let out a screech that was equally terrifying and heartbreaking.

That thing isn’t so different from us , he mused. Just trying to survive and care for its young. Its ancestors were as human as we are, after all.

“Hold your fire,” Sergeant Jenkins said over the comm channel. His raspy breathing told Les he was nervous—and for good reason.