“Help!” he shouted.
Weaver planted his boots, squared his shoulders, and got the monster’s face in his crosshairs. In the scope, he could see the thick spittle roped across the broken teeth.
The bullet punched a neat hole in the creature’s smooth forehead. A blind cyclops gushing blood from its ruined socket. It went limp and collapsed onto Rodger.
Weaver was climbing again before the empty cartridge case hit the ground. He labored up the steep incline, the sound of his own breathing nearly drowning out Andrew’s scream.
The gunshots from the north suddenly stopped.
“Hold on, Pipe! We’re coming!”
At the top of the mound, Magnolia stabbed one of the beasts through the earhole. Yanking the blade free, she screamed to distract the final Siren, which whirled away from Rodger. Claws the size of her knife slashed through the air, but Magnolia jumped back.
Weaver rested the carbine against the sweet spot on his armor and fired a three-round burst into the Siren’s ribs. Magnolia backed away, and it crashed to the ground, pouring blood onto her boots. It swiped at her one last time as she rushed over to Rodger, who was wiping gore from his visor.
“Get him up,” Weaver said, searching frantically for Andrew. Now he saw why the gunfire had stopped. A small pack of the beasts had surrounded Andrew. The largest Siren Weaver had ever seen clamped its claws onto the diver’s trapezius muscle and started dragging him, thrashing and screaming, down the road.
Weaver fired a shot that killed one of the beasts flanking Andrew. His next shot took out another, but he would never be able to kill them all.
He centered his crosshairs on Andrew’s chest. Killing him now would be the merciful thing. It was what Weaver would want from his squad if he were in the same position. He lined up the shot, moved his finger to the trigger, and paused his breath on the exhalation…
And couldn’t do it.
Weaver lowered his rifle as the beasts pulled Andrew around the hill and out of sight.
Rodger was on his feet now, his arm wrapped around Magnolia’s shoulder. She kept asking him if he was okay as she helped him walk down from the carnage on the hilltop. He was nodding slowly, but Weaver couldn’t tell whether he was injured or just shocked to see Magnolia.
“Move your asses!” Weaver shouted. “We have to get to Pipe before they kill him.”
As he started down the other side of the slope, following the trail of blood, he realized that the Sirens weren’t taking Andrew to a lair in the city. They were taking him to the Hilltop Bastion.
It took them five minutes to get safely down off the rubble heap and reach the dirt hill. Weaver rounded it with his rifle out in front, ready to fire. But Andrew was already gone, with no sign of the monsters that had taken him.
Weaver lowered his rifle and glanced up. The Hilltop Bastion was like a three-layer cake, with earth on the outside and concrete and metal on the inside. Metal shutters covered the structure above—a lookout, he supposed.
At the bottom, a pair of massive steel doors pocked with rust sealed off the main entrance. Farther to the right, another door, about the size of a hatch on the Hive, stood open. The blood trail led through it.
Weaver turned back to Rodger and Magnolia.
“Looks like the mission has changed from a search and rescue for potential survivors to a search and rescue for Andrew,” he said.
“How do you know there aren’t survivors here?” Magnolia asked.
Weaver pointed at the open door. “I doubt humans have learned to cohabitate with Sirens over the years.”
Rodger’s eyes were wide behind his visor.
“Can you fight, Rodge?” Weaver asked.
“I think so,” he whispered.
Weaver wasn’t used to Rodger being quiet, and he checked to see that he wasn’t in shock. Part of his duty as a commander was to make sure every diver was focused and not a liability to the rest of the team. Rodger’s armor and layered suit were covered in gore. The only clean part was his visor. He looked as though he had taken a bath in blood, but otherwise, he seemed fine. Just a little dazed.
Magnolia handed Weaver his blaster. “You can have this back. I found Pipe’s rifle.” She ejected the magazine to confirm that it was almost full. Slapping it back into its well, she said, “Let’s go find him.”
“I’ll take point,” Weaver said.
He walked up to the open door. Above it, a sign hung from one rivet. It was faded from countless years of exposure and pockmarked with bullet holes, but he could still make out the message: WELCOME TO ITC COMMUNAL 13. OFFERING SALVATION FOR THOSE WHO SEEK IT, AND SWIFT JUDGMENT FOR THOSE WHO DESERVE IT.
TWELVE
Michael held Captain Ash’s note back up to the light, then flicked it in frustration. Was there some hidden message that he was missing? He and Layla had read page ninety-four of The New World Order a dozen times, but he still couldn’t understand why they had been sent to find an ancient book about an extinct corporation.
Layla set the hardcover book back on the table and brushed off the yellowed page. She read over the text for several minutes in silence, which gave Michael time to think about everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours. The quiet time wasn’t exactly a good thing. His thoughts jumped from the storm and the rudders to Captain Ash, to Magnolia’s fall, to the mission on the surface. Something was terribly wrong. He could feel it. Back in the launch bay, he had mused that the calm never lasted, but a chain of disasters like this hadn’t happened since the day X died over a decade ago.
“What about this?” Layla asked. She pointed to a paragraph, and he leaned over to read.
A growing number of scientists around the world continue to claim that the field of genetic engineering is key to the survival of our species. Others, however, argue that it will be our downfall. At the forefront are Industrial Tech Corporation and Raven Enterprises. Over the past five years, both companies have made breakthroughs in the field. Andy Robinson, the CEO of ITC, calls genetic engineering the most important part of his company’s mission to safeguard humanity against the threats to our species, while critics call it a threat to humanity itself. Dr. Rod Emanuel claims that ITC’s work, revealed in leaked documents earlier this year, “steps over a line mankind was never meant to cross.”
Michael glanced up. “I didn’t know that ITC was involved with genetic engineering. Did you?”
“Not at all,” Layla said, fiddling nervously with the end of her braid. “What business did they have messing with that stuff, anyway?”
Michael read on but found nothing to answer their questions. Why would Captain Ash have wanted him to read this book? Maybe she really was crazy in the end.
The thought made Michael bow his head. He missed the captain terribly, but it seemed she wasn’t herself when she died. He didn’t want to remember her like that. He wanted to remember her as the strong, intelligent woman who had helped him become a man. But now he had to wonder. Had she hidden all this from him to protect him emotionally, or for another reason?
“Are you done?” Layla asked. Michael nodded, and she carefully picked up the book and walked over to Jason’s desk.
“Sir, I’d like you to look up the checkout history on this title.”
“Certainly, Miss Brower.”
Michael joined her and whispered, “What are you doing?”
“Just wait,” Layla said quietly.