“I’ll be right back,” Michael said.
Layla waited for him as he knocked on the hatch.
“Where are your parents?” he asked the kids.
They both gave him a nervous look.
“It’s okay, I’m not going to get us in trouble or anything,” Michael said. He pulled two pieces of candy from his vest pocket.
“Here you go.”
“You’re a Hell Diver, aren’t you?” Daniel asked.
“I am.”
“What happened to that old guy?”
“Old guy?”
“Rick,” Chloe said. “That’s what Janga called him. He gave us candy jam.”
Michael felt Layla’s presence behind him.
“He’s gone,” Layla replied. “He died so we could have this new home.”
Chloe looked at the ground and then overhead, chomping nosily on the hard candy. She and David were just two of the many kids who had deformities from the radiation poisoning.
“Will you come back sometime?” Chloe asked.
Michael smiled. “You betcha.”
He waved, and they continued down the next passage. Neither spoke at first. They had grown up privileged—the child of a Hell Diver or of parents who worked in the brig. Seeing how these kids lived made his heart hurt. But at least, they had a future now, for the first time in their lives.
“Here we are.” Michael stopped outside the armory, where two militia guards stood sentry.
“Commander Everhart,” said O’Toole, a fit-looking man with a crossbow cradled across his chest armor.
“We weren’t expecting visitors,” said Monk, the other sentry.
“That makes three of us,” Layla replied, looking at Michael.
“We’re just checking something out,” Michael said.
O’Toole punched an access code, and the double doors unlatched. He nodded at Monk, who stepped back.
It still felt odd to Michael that men twice his age held him in such high regard, especially after thinking him a traitor just two months ago. But after capturing Deliverance and helping overthrow Captain Jordan, he was now one of the most respected men on the ship, second only to X, who was legend.
Empty darkness greeted Michael and Layla as they stepped inside.
“Lights,” Michael said. The voice-activated overheads clicked on, spreading a cool blue glow over metal bulkheads that flickered like water.
“You brought me on a date to the armory? How romantic!” Layla quipped. “You really know how to get a girl out of her jumpsuit.”
“We’re not here to look at weapons of mass destruction. This way.”
They walked past six glass-covered bomb tubes. This was the equivalent of the launch bay on the Hive, but with nuclear bombs—loaded, primed, and ready to drop.
“Katrina should just dump this arsenal in the ocean,” Layla said. “Bury it in the dark, cold depths.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
Layla followed Michael to the pair of sealed hatches across the room. He pulled a key card out of his vest as they approached.
A warning sign with the symbol for explosives hung from the bulkhead to the right. Layla halted outside the hatch. On the other side were assault rifles, missile launchers, grenades, and just about every other type of weapon humans had used to kill each other in the past.
“This is decidedly not romantic,” she huffed.
Michael grinned. “You don’t trust me enough.” Using his key card, he swiped the button for the hatch on the left. It opened onto a staircase that spiraled down into the guts of the airship.
Layla stepped to the side for a better look, then frowned. “You are full of surprises, Tin.”
He laughed and led the way down to a command room just big enough for two leather chairs and a console mounted with various instruments and screens.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“Combat direction center, or CDC, also called the launch operations center.”
“Excuse me?” Layla said, folding her arms across her chest.
“Relax. We’re not launching any missiles or dropping any bombs.”
Michael sat in front of the controls and flipped on the central main monitor. He used his key card to access the mainframe, then pushed a button to open a metal hatch covering a rectangular glass screen that looked like a mirror. In the reflection, Layla remained standing behind him with arms crossed, looking at once stern and a little confused.
The hatch opened to darkness. In the bowl of swirling black, a flash of lightning looked like branching blood vessels. The light faded away, leaving them with only the weak lighting from the main screen.
Michael typed at a keyboard, entering his credentials a second time.
A robotic voice came over the speakers. “System online.”
Layla put a hand on Michael’s back. “Okay, you’re starting to freak me out a little. What are we doing here?”
“You’re about to find out.” He tapped the keyboard, scrolling through historical records. Twisting around in his seat, he said, “Timothy found an old-world video in the archives and thought you might be interested.”
“We’re here to watch a video of the past?” she asked. “I thought we were focusing on the present.”
Michael sighed. “I know I said that, but you’ve been spending a lot of time at the library, working to restore the archives, and I think you might find something here.”
Layla finally sat beside him, intrigued and annoyed, judging by her body language. “You think there might be something new here? Something that isn’t in the archives upstairs?”
“Timothy sure seems to think so,” Michael said. “He asked me what you’re looking for, and I said oh, nothing much—just the history of the world and humanity. So he told me to come down here. He said we’d find information we had never seen in the archives, and it would help restore the history we lost.”
Layla’s hands squeezed his shoulders. “So have you watched it yet?”
“Nope, wanted to wait for you.” Michael started to hit play, but Layla touched his arm.
“That’s really sweet, but don’t you think we should tell Katrina, or maybe Les?”
“Why?”
“If this information is new, then maybe Katrina should see it first.”
Michael pulled his hand back from the monitor. “Far as I know, this is just a history video, like those we watched back in school. But if there’s information on a hidden paradise that humans colonized, I’m happy to share it right away.”
“Okay, deal.” Layla looked at the screen. “Let’s get to it, then.”
Michael grinned and hit the play button. The screen jittered, and the video started in an old-world metropolis. The streets between scrapers were packed with thousands of people. The sun, high in the sky, spread warm gold over cheering crowds—hands in the air, whistles blowing, confetti raining from buildings.
A deep baritone voice spoke.
“In the year two thousand thirty-five, people took to the streets in every major city across the world, rejoicing in an agreement that brought all governments and all races closer together with a single currency and a shared economy. Business worldwide was booming with the creation of artificial intelligence and the solution to problems that had plagued humankind for centuries. A shared commitment between governments tackled the one thing that threatened peace: the energy crisis.”
The video zoomed in on people from all countries and walks of life—every ethnicity, religion, and nationality. This was humanity. This was how the world once looked.
But there was something he didn’t recognize among these people. Machines strode around with their human handlers. Some were humanoid in appearance, but others were contraptions like the robot vacuum he had taken apart as a kid, in the days following his father’s death, when X was looking after him.