Nicholas Sansbury Smith
To Robert Bray. Thank you for lending your legendary voice to the Hell Divers series and becoming the voice behind X. The series would not be what it is without you.
“Accept your past without regret, handle your present with confidence, and face your future without fear.”
PROLOGUE
Rodger Mintel awoke to the worst pain of his life. His whole body burned as if a swarm of mutant ants was eating him inch by inch.
He tried to scream but couldn’t hear his voice, only the dull ringing. His eyes didn’t seem to be working, either.
Maybe he wasn’t awake, after all. He couldn’t move his legs or arms, or his hands. All that seemed to be working were his nerves, and every fiber of his body was screaming at top volume.
He endured the torture for what felt like hours, but it could have been only minutes, or even seconds.
A few fragmented thoughts somehow got through the gauntlet of fire consuming his body. One of them was the memory of a rusted ship moored to a pier under a dark sky. Lightning forked through the flashing red vines that branched and twisted along the shore.
The pain again took hold, the images fading into bright flashes of red. He tried again to open his eyelids, but they wouldn’t respond. He couldn’t even grit his teeth.
Another memory surfaced in his mind’s eye. He saw the ship’s deck where he lay tethered. Someone lay next to him, unmoving.
A woman…
Mags!
The realization momentarily overshadowed the agony of his broken body. He couldn’t remember anything beyond being strapped beside her to the deck, but he did remember getting ambushed by men in heavy armor back in the city.
He tried again to remember, but no matter how much he willed his brain to work, he couldn’t focus. It was like being dog tired and drunk at the same time.
A new wave of hellfire took him, and this time he couldn’t handle the torture. His mind gave up and shut off like a lightbulb.
When he woke again, he wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he did remember the pain. It had ceased, and he felt nothing but numbness.
“Am I dead?” he said aloud.
He could hear that, so maybe not.
Summoning what little strength he had, he managed to crack his eyelids open. A spot of dazzling brilliance made him squint, reminding him of the LEDs the Hell Divers had once salvaged from the surface and given his dad to use in the clock-and-wood workshop.
Hell Divers… Dad…
A flurry of memories tumbled through his brain. Thoughts of his family and working on the clocks and wood treasures brought him a fleeting moment of joy. So did the images of brightly painted passageways inside the Hive, the only home he had ever known.
He closed his eyes again, letting the memories come. They weren’t all pictures of life in the sky. The next image transported him back to the rusting ship, where he was held with Magnolia. In his mind’s eye, he saw Xavier Rodriguez carrying his dog, Miles. He climbed over the ship’s rail, set the dog down, and cut Rodger and Magnolia free.
A sense of relief washed over him, only to shatter in the violent gun battle that followed in the recollection. Cazadores surrounded the three Hell Divers, but X stood his ground, slaying the barbarians.
Rodger remembered searching for a weapon to defend Magnolia and help X fight. Then he remembered the hulking shadow. A beast of a man towered over him. The thick, bony crests of Siren skulls rested on his armored shoulders.
El Pulpo, king of the Cazadores.
In the memory, Rodger recalled something hot ripping through his back, seizing his breath, both in the memory and now. Then came a blood-chilling scream that broke his heart and made him want to scream in reply.
The image of Magnolia, frozen on the deck and holding up her hands in shock, finally jerked Rodger into the present moment. His eyelids snapped open to a bright glow.
He was alive, after all.
His eyes slowly adjusted to the light and took in the narrow, blurred view of the room. It was a medical bay, its bulkheads fitted with machines and racks of supplies.
Across the space, two hazy figures stood next to a hatch, but he couldn’t make out their features.
Was he back on the Hive? Had Magnolia and X managed to rescue him from the ship?
He struggled to move, but his body still wouldn’t respond. Every inch of his skin felt numb, like the sensation of a foot falling asleep.
“Mags?” he stuttered. “Mom? Pops?”
If he was on the Hive, then surely his parents were here.
He blinked several times until the two figures came into focus.
“No,” he whispered. “It can’t be.”
This wasn’t the Hive. Militia soldiers didn’t wear armor.
Through the numbness, a sensation emerged—a cold lump of fear in his gut. He also felt a slight swaying movement beneath him.
Realization sank in. He wasn’t back in the sky. He was on the water.
The weight holding his eyelids down lifted, and he looked down at his half-naked body. Leather straps restrained his legs and arms. Another, over his neck, held his head down, limiting his field of vision. Liquid trickled through clear tubes, into the veins in his arms.
Was this why he felt numb?
The two armored sentries at the door spoke to each other, and metal shrieked as one of them opened the hatch. The larger man left the room, but the other guard stepped forward and spoke to Rodger in Spanish, in a voice muffled by his breathing apparatus.
Rodger fought the strap across his neck and lifted his head enough to glimpse the crudely sutured red gash in his lower chest.
For a moment, he just stared at the ugly wound. A horrible thought crossed his mind: maybe they had taken a piece of him and eaten it. But then, they wouldn’t have bothered hooking him up to the tubes.
Someone was trying to save him, at least for now. The wound was fresh, which meant that only a few days had passed since his capture.
As he squirmed on the table, the burning came back.
Did it ever. He felt immersed in a universe of bright, searing pain.
His head fell back to the table, and he blinked over and over as the memories came crashing back over him. The fight on the deck of the ship between X and the Cazador soldiers. Miles barking, Magnolia screaming.
And then el Pulpo, grabbing him from behind.
He never saw what had impaled him through the back, but it had torn through his flesh and out his chest, which meant the red gash below his sternum wasn’t the only wound.
Rodger looked away and tried to remember what had happened between then and now. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t recall a thing. He didn’t know where Magnolia and X were, or the other divers, or what had happened to the Hive.
“Please,” Rodger choked. “Please let me go.”
The guard walked back to the hatch and opened it for the other soldier. This time, he had company.
Two men walked in. One was short and bald, with pale complexion, a brown robe, and a prodigious beard. He held his hands clasped behind his back. The other man had olive skin and glasses. A headlamp was pushed up over his untamed silver hair, and a white mask hung loosely around his neck.
Neither man looked like a soldier. If Rodger had to guess, the guy with the mask was some sort of physician.
Apparently, they weren’t alone.
The clank of heavy boots came from the passage. In the dim light outside the room, Rodger glimpsed a hulking figure approaching the open hatch. He didn’t need to see clearly to know that this was the Cazador king himself.