“Alexander sacrificed himself for us,” Michael said. “Remember that.”
Sofia patted Arlo on the back. “You’re braver than you believe.”
“Yeah, I know,” Arlo replied.
Michael waited a moment, and when Arlo nodded again, he gave the order for the team to move out. Edgar went first and opened the door. Sofia followed, sweeping her rifle muzzle over the lobby below. Leaving the way they came in, they moved west down the street.
Keeping close to the edge of the building gave them some cover from the rain but not the lightning. A bolt struck a radio tower in the distance.
Michael decided to keep moving. They had to get to the target before the monsters came back out. This was their chance.
After sweeping the road, he turned onto the next block. A mesh of vines from trunks that had broken through the street clung to the buildings.
Michael led the team around the limbs and found a way under the arbor. A twenty-foot wall of crushed vehicles and rubble blocked off the route on the other side. Razor wire topped the barrier, stretching from one side of the street to the other.
He bolted for cover when he saw a machine-gun nest in the blown-out side of a building behind the wall. The team took up position behind a brick stoop. Michael peeked over to check the machine-gun nest. The mounted weapon was still there, but zooming in, he saw the rust. If he had to guess, this place had been abandoned for some time.
He scanned the wall again and noticed something he had missed earlier. A doorway had been broken into the mountain of cars. It looked about the size of a bone beast.
Michael stared at the wall. It was the only thing separating him from the bunker, and in a few minutes, he would see the home of actual live humans who were neither Cazadores nor sky people.
The thought triggered a tingle of adrenaline.
“What do you think?” Edgar whispered. “Should we contact Captain Mitchells now and have Timothy reply to the SOS in Portuguese to let them know we’re here?”
Sofia squeezed up next to them. “We should wait for Magnolia and her team first, right?”
“We still don’t know if defectors are down here,” Michael said. “At the prison, they surprised us. I won’t let that happen again. For now, we keep radio silence, and I want to take a look before Magnolia’s team gets here.”
Michael considered asking Edgar to join him on the recon. He was the most experienced diver besides Michael, and the best marksman. And that was why Michael needed him with the weakest link.
“Edgar, you stay here with Arlo. Sofia, with me.”
“Got it, Commander,” Edgar said.
Arlo didn’t protest.
Michael hunched down and ran for the wall, with Sofia on his heels. They stopped at the doorway. Scratches and shards of metal confirmed his suspicions. A bone beast had ripped its way through.
He slipped into the opening. The tunnel through the cars and rubble was almost twenty feet long. A network of purple vines webbed across the cracked asphalt on the other side.
Michael raised a fist when he got close to the opening. The infrared scan picked up the flora but nothing else.
He switched back to his NVGs. A single building showed in the green hue. Four stories tall, with metal sheets and bars covering every window. Steel plates covered the front doors.
An overhang above the wide stoop of stairs read, Polícia Federal.
Barred gates ten feet tall sealed off a parking lot on the left side of the building, but the gates on the right side had fallen to the ground.
Moving just outside, he checked the buildings towering over the road on both sides. He found another abandoned machine-gun nest in the broken-out third floor of an apartment building but no sign of recent human activity.
Concrete blocks and other vine-covered obstacles created a maze from the wall to the barricaded front entrance of the police station. Several open windows in the side buildings would be perfect for snipers.
But where was everyone now?
“Commander, what do you see?” Sofia whispered.
“Nothing,” he said. “Follow me and move fast, but mind your suit.”
They bolted for a shattered door in a storefront. Along the way, Michael saw inside the parking lot behind the broken-down gate. Brown flags hung from three poles. He nearly tripped over a vine that caught his boot but managed to catch himself and continue into the shop.
He didn’t stop moving until he was inside what was once a grocery store. Behind the counter with the cash registers lay upended shelves. Sofia followed him over to one of the counters for cover.
They waited, listening for hostiles, before he finally peeked over the edge. Using his rifle scope, he zoomed in on the flagpoles. The brown flags weren’t flags. They were the hides of humans, with lips, noses, and other body parts stitched into them.
“No,” he choked.
Team Raptor was too late. Again.
“What?” Sofia asked.
Michael checked the dark stains in the parking lot that looked fresh.
The defectors had beaten them here again.
His transmissions had gotten another bunker of humans killed, and now he feared he had doomed his team to the same fate as Trey.
“We have to get out of here,” he said, ducking down. “When I run, you run, okay?”
“Why? What do you see?”
“Just do as I say,” Michael growled.
Drawing in a breath and exhaling, he steeled himself. A moment later, he got up and ran back for the wall of cars. He hurdled a barbed vine and sprinted the rest of the way to the tunnel through the wall.
In the passage, purple flashes guided him and illuminated the street beyond, where Arlo and Edgar stood watch.
A muffled voice called out, and Michael moved faster, ducking under a ragged strip of body metal. Just as he emerged, he saw motion on the other side of the thick vines twisting across the road.
Several naked humans ran around the next corner. This time, he was sure of it.
He turned to look for Edgar and Arlo, but they were no longer holding their post.
The contacts definitely weren’t defectors, but how could humans survive out here without suits or clothing?
“Where are Arlo and Edgar?” Sofia said quietly.
“I don’t know,” Michael said. “Come on.”
He took off running and checked his HUD for Edgar’s and Arlo’s beacons. They were on the move, too. Michael hoped they were pursuing the humans, even though it meant they had disobeyed a direct order.
He rounded the next corner and halted at the sight of the sinkhole. Vines reached out into the nearby structures, twisting through the interiors and breaking through the tops.
Sofia and Michael walked toward the edge. One of the vines suddenly moved like a snake, slithering before their boots. But it was the beep on his HUD that made Michael stop.
He glanced at the minimap just as Edgar’s and Arlo’s beacons winked off.
Les knelt beside Cricket and shined his flashlight into the machine’s guts. It had gotten safely back to Discovery, but at a cost. Not only had it shed the armor plating protecting its hardware; it had also lost multiple cameras.
Michael was not going to like it.
He had to get the robot back up and running as soon as possible. Not having Cricket in the field meant losing their tenuous connection to the divers and the Cazador team, and Les was getting more anxious with each passing minute. Over seven hours had passed since they received data from either team.
While awaiting news, Les had spent much of that time working with Alfred and his team to get the robot field-ready. They had replaced most of the wiring and two of the cameras and were preparing to add new armor using pieces of an old diver suit.