“Can you run?” he asked.
A distant snort came in reply. Then three more, from different locations.
This beast had friends.
“Move!” X shouted.
He pulled one of Magnolia’s arms over his shoulder and moved with her toward the building.
X raised his rifle with his free hand. They slipped and fell in the mud, landing snared together. The first thing he did was grab his rifle, plucking it from the muck. Then he grabbed Magnolia and pulled her to her feet.
“Work with me here, kid,” he grumbled.
“My head. I…”
X hadn’t noticed the crack in her helmet until now. The beast had definitely done some damage. The tusks had scarred the metal, and a puncture wound dripped blood over the Team Raptor symbol.
“Hold on,” X said. “We’re almost to the door.”
Miles barked behind them, but X kept his gaze on the building. When they finally got to the door, he propped Magnolia up against the foundation and rattled the handle. It was locked.
Using his muddy boot, he kicked it once, then twice, breaking it off the hinges. The metal door banged open into a dusty room.
He helped Magnolia inside, then motioned for Miles to follow. But when he looked for the dog, all he saw was the muddy field and knee-high weeds.
A bark sounded from the sky, and his eyes darted toward the storm clouds, where a vulture was flapping away with Miles in its talons.
“No-o-o-o-o!” X shouted at the top of his lungs.
Katrina was already nearing the halfway point of her cardio workout. She finished lap fifty around the launch bay of the Hive. Some routines she wanted to keep, despite the painful memories on the ship. Her workouts were one of them. She had trained here as a Hell Diver for most of her adult life.
Sweat coursed down her skin, and her muscles burned. By the fifty-first lap mark, she was starting to fight to keep the pace.
But not just her body was struggling. Her mind and heart were fighting the battle of regret, and the poison was starting to infiltrate her soul. Everything that had happened over the past few months came rushing over her during her run.
Normally, exercise helped reduce stress and let her concentrate on what mattered. Not this evening. She couldn’t stop thinking about the child she lost to malnutrition. The thoughts prompted a rush of energy that pushed her harder through lap fifty-five. She ran the fifty-six at a record pace, the pain in her muscles yielding to the flood of warmth pumping through her veins.
She tried to block the images of her child from her mind, but no amount of mental discipline could repair her heart. The anguish was torture, but she deserved every bit of it.
The porthole windows flashed by, and the launch tubes blurred as sweat dripped into her eyes. She tried to tell herself she didn’t want to lose her baby—but the truth was, she had decided she couldn’t live in a world where Leon Jordan was in control. The man had been mad, trying to kill her friends and executing anyone who threatened him.
She had wanted to die herself, but instead, she lost her child. And she was still alive.
It wasn’t right. Part of her wished she had died, but she still had a duty to humanity.
Grunting, Katrina ran even harder, her muscles pushed to the edge, her endurance stretching to its limits. Her lungs took in the oxygen greedily, but no matter how much air she sucked in, she couldn’t get enough.
Stars broke across her vision.
Sweat trickled down her pale skin.
At lap seventy, she squinted into the dimly lit space, trying to focus on the banners hanging from the bulkheads above the lockers. The symbols of the Hell Divers were displayed proudly there: Team Raptor, Team Angel, Team Phoenix, Team Wolf.
The banners were a useful distraction from the pain of her other thoughts. For a moment, she felt as though she could keep going.
Just ten more laps, she told herself. Only ten more and you’ve hit ten miles. As she ran, she continued to look at the banners, picturing the ghosts of Hell Divers throughout the room.
In her mind’s eye, she saw Rick Weaver sitting at a card table, looking over his hand with a sly grin. Aaron Everhart closed a locker and held up a hand at her as she passed. X was there, too, winking at her the way he had all those years ago, when a spark of love had united the two of them. Ty Parker, the technician who had once manned the launch tubes, was polishing one of the lids, chomping on an herb stick.
The images were all just figments of her imagination, but seeing the launch tubes reminded her again how many people had died over the years. It wasn’t just the ghosts of the men and women who had perished diving that made her heart pound; it was also what these tubes had been used for long before the Hell Divers ever came into this world.
The ghost of Captain Maria Ash, hair all but gone from the radiation treatment, stood in the center of the launch bay with her hands cupped behind her back, stoical and strong despite the cancer eating her throat.
She looked at Katrina and said, “The future of these airships is in your hands now. You must not concentrate on the past if you are to lead humanity to a new home in the future.”
Ash disappeared, replaced by her successor. That Jordan was on his knees the moment before she had killed him helped ease some of that pain.
Killing him was one thing she didn’t remotely regret.
Adrenaline rushed through her veins, and Katrina ran her fastest lap yet, her shoes slapping the metal hard and echoing through the vaulted room.
On the seventy-ninth lap, she stumbled, tripped, and crashed to the floor with such force, she flipped onto her side and landed on her back. The ghosts were gone now, and she was alone.
Katrina remained there several minutes, taking in deep breaths, her body tingling, legs finally relaxing.
Tears welled in her eyes, and one streaked down her face. She clamped her eyelids shut, trying to block the mental torture as the poison of regret sank deeper into her pounding heart.
“Captain, are you okay?” said a deep voice across the room.
“Yes, one moment,” Katrina replied. She quickly pushed herself up and got to her feet to face a figure across the room. He was standing in the entrance to the launch bay, but the light was too dim to make out his features.
She pulled down on the bottom of her tank top and turned to wipe the last tears from her eyes. Then she turned back to the figure who still hadn’t identified himself, and saw the shadow of what looked like a sword.
Her heart froze, a terrifying image surfacing in her mind. For a fleeting moment, it was as if Jordan had come back from the dead to get his revenge. “Captain,” the person entreated. He walked into the light, and she saw Lieutenant Lester Mitchells, his red hair ruffled as usual. “I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am…” He paused and tilted his head slightly. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, sucked in a breath, and started across the room. “I’m fine—just thought I saw a ghost, is all.”
SIX
Magnolia slapped the floor with her palm in frustration, tears steaming down her face. Outlandish wails rose into a cacophony outside—a mixture of howling beasts and screeching birds. The macabre music assaulted her ears as the minutes passed by. She strained to hear anything that would tell her X was still alive. Gunfire, a bark from Miles, a message over the comms—anything to let her know he was still alive.
She had blown it. Bad.
Had she paid more attention while crossing the field, maybe she would have seen the beast sneaking up on her. Maybe she could have brought her rifle up in time to shoot it between the eyes. Or she might have stabbed it with her blade. Instead, she had rushed across the clearing as fast as she could to get to the compound.