They had finally reached the coast, and the place he made into a home for himself and Miles. The high-rise building overlooked the shore, where glowing red vines flashed.
Not long after settling in, he had learned it was cancer eating his throat. Miles had whined all day, sensing something dramatically wrong with X.
The memories faded away into darkness, and he returned to the limbo between reality and dreaming. X recalled how he had felt lying in that small apartment, sealed off from a toxic world, coughing up blood while Miles watched helplessly. It was similar to how he felt now, stuck in a bed overlooking the ocean, with Miles at his feet.
Back then he had pondered killing Miles to prevent him from suffering and starving while X rotted away from cancer.
The dream pulled X back in, and he recalled that he had taken the other option.
To fight.
The throttle rattled in his weak hands, sending vibrations through his cancer-riddled body as he motorcycled to an ITC facility, to find the medicine that might save his life.
Along the way, he coughed flecks of blood onto the inside of his face shield. The blurred view almost made him dump the bike when a pack of Sirens attacked. But the blades attached to the hubs had saved his life, cutting several beasts in half.
The scene moved to the inside of the building, after he had scavenged the life-saving cancer medicine. He crouched in a dark passage, listening to something he had never heard on the surface: human voices.
He had tried to make it past them, but the Siren-hunting Cazadores had captured him and put him in a cage. Now he was face-to-face with el Pulpo. It was the first time they had met, the day he gouged out the king’s eye with a needle.
More events streamed across his consciousness, as if he were watching an old-world video with himself as the star. But the next scene of this kaleidoscopic video was one he didn’t remember.
X stood on a debris-littered beach. A fishing boat lay in the sand. The boat looked familiar.
Boot prints led away from the boat and into an embankment covered in red vines and tall bluish weeds. Skeletal palm trees towered above him, their fronds shifting in the toxic wind.
He followed the tracks to a field of more weeds. The blue tendrils writhed like sea anemones underwater, ready to latch on to a bug or beast. Or perhaps a human.
The tracks led into the field. Searching for a way around, X found more prints. Drips of blood darkened the soil along the path.
The dream seemed crystal clear, as if he were actually back in Miami, on the hunt for this mysterious person. The trail continued toward the row of high-rise apartment buildings once owned by wealthy residents of this city.
He stopped again to look at one he recognized. A black tarp covered a balcony door on one of the upper floors—the place he and Miles had called home several years ago.
It all came crashing over him. The boat, the tracks—they had to belong to Ada Winslow, the former executive officer of the Hive and Discovery, who had killed an entire crew of Cazador sailors. He had exiled her out here, with a map to his former home.
The tracks continued through the city’s ash-covered streets. He ran, needing to find her. Several spent cartridge casings and more blood dotted the ground on the next street.
A Siren carcass lay on a curb, bugs consuming the flesh. Maggots spilled out of the open mouth. The rot meant it had been here for some days, but where was Ada?
He kept moving until the dream suddenly ended, darkness like a wave washing away the city. Light broke through his vision. In the glow, several blurred faces hovered over him. One seemed furrier than the others.
Miles…
He had woken from his dream to the same familiar voices from earlier.
“X, can you hear us?”
The gruff female voice belonged to Sloan.
“King Xavier,” she said. “Can you hear me?”
“Yeah,” he growled.
Sloan, Dr. Huff, and Samson were huddled around his bed. Miles was at his feet, tongue out, panting. He moved over and nudged X’s bandaged right leg.
Huff tried to push him back, but the dog bared his teeth.
“How long have I been out?” X asked.
“Since just after the council meeting,” Samson said.
“And how long ago was that?”
“I don’t got a watch, but it’s been about a day,” Sloan said. “We have Ton, Victor, and an entire militia patrol standing guard outside your room just in case anyone gets any ideas about finishing you off.”
“Finishing me off…” X mumbled.
He tried to sit up, but his body wouldn’t respond. He felt paralyzed, as if he had been pricked by one of the blue weeds in his dream.
X didn’t even feel the doc pull off the chest bandage to check his arrow wound, but he saw the reaction.
Huff winced. “It’s infected, badly,” he said.
“Not surprised, considering X doesn’t listen to orders,” Sloan said. “Honestly, you’re lucky those arrows weren’t dipped in poison.”
X tried to move again, but his limbs wouldn’t respond. He tried to wiggle his toes and got one to move.
“Did you say I’ve been out a full day?” he muttered.
“Pretty much,” Sloan said.
X turned his head slightly to look at the hall. “Then where’s Michael, Les, and everyone else? They should be back by now.”
Samson coughed into his handkerchief and moved away from the bed. Huff looked up.
“You really should let me take a look at you, too,” said the doctor.
Samson waved a hand. “I’m fine—just a cold.”
X finally managed to sit up slightly. Nothing like fear to energize a dying body, he mused.
“I asked a question,” he said. “Where is the crew of Discovery?”
Clenching his jaw, he braced for more bad news.
“There was an incident on the airship,” Sloan said. “A pair of Sirens somehow got inside after they left Rio de Janeiro.”
“You got to be fucking kiddin’ me,” X grumbled.
“I wish I were,” Sloan said. “Fortunately, there was only one casualty and minor injuries.”
“It was Discovery that took the most damage,” Samson said. He went into the technical details until X cut him off.
“English, man,” he said.
“A reactor valve was damaged, and they lost power to all six thrusters,” Samson said. “They also lost turbofan three.”
“So what’s keeping them in the air?” X asked.
“The rest of the turbofans.”
“How long until they get back?”
“Could be a while unless they get the thrusters back on,” Samson said. “Sounds like they’re going to put down to fix them, so they don’t risk crashing to the surface.”
X swallowed hard at the news, his throat burning just as it had when the cancer was eating away his esophagus. Spots darted in his vision.
Out his open window, a tiny black dot inched along the horizon.
“Is that a Cazador warship?” X asked.
Sloan looked, then nodded. “Colonel Moreto,” she said. “She left for Belize this morning, but appears to have turned back around.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
X closed his eyes, trying to fend off another wave of dizziness and anxiety.
Huff finally finished changing the dressing and moved on to the next one.
“Here, drink,” Sloan said. She helped X sip some water while the doctor worked.
When he finished, Huff said, “Go back to sleep, King Xavier.”
X nodded. This time, he wasn’t going to argue, even if it meant returning to the nightmares. He closed his eyes, then snapped his battered eyelids back open.