The sound of great flapping wings spurred him on. He kept low and ran hard, eyes trained on the nest. The sparsely feathered heads of the nestlings popped up, pecking at the air around Miles, and he barked back at them.
A red flash of motion descended from the canopy and perched at the top of the nest. The mother had returned to help her young with their meal. X aimed his rifle, held in a breath, and fired a shot.
The head and beak vanished in a spray of gore.
Bull’s-eye.
The bird toppled off the nest, wings spread like a fallen angel, and slammed into the ground neck-first a few seconds later.
Two more vultures sailed in from different directions.
X flicked the selector to automatic and sprayed the air to send the birds fanning out in all directions, filling the night with their squawks. A spear of lightning struck one of them, and the smoking carcass cartwheeled into the leaves, where it caught fire.
Slinging his rifle strap, X grabbed the lowest limb of the tree and started climbing, his eyes on the nest fifty to sixty feet overhead. It was a long way to climb, and he had a target on his back.
“Hold on, buddy, just hold on,” he panted.
His arm was already burning from the slash the giant octopus had given him. The wound was infected now, and if he didn’t get it treated it could become septic.
But none of that mattered if Miles died. He couldn’t imagine life without his best friend.
Gritting his teeth, he climbed faster. To reach the next branch, he jumped like a monkey. And when he got to an area where he couldn’t reach another branch, he pulled out his sheath knife and stabbed the thick bark.
He saw movement in his peripheral vision: a bird swooping down. He rotated as it spread its wings to flare. Stretching forth its talons, it prepared to snag him off the tree. X held on to the knife with one hand and grabbed the blaster from his thigh holster with the other.
The flare streaked into the monster’s breast. It flapped away, squawking in pain as its plumage caught fire; then it tumbled from the air. X holstered the blaster and kept climbing.
He was about ten feet from the nest when the other birds began returning to their roosts.
The speakers in his helmet crackled. “X, do you copy?”
He was breathing too hard to answer right away.
“X, do you copy?”
“I’m… busy,” he panted.
“Are you okay?” A flurry of white noise took over the comm, then died away. “Is Miles okay?”
Despite the static interference, X could still hear the apprehension in her voice. She thought this was her fault.
“I’ve almost got him,” X replied.
The branch cracked under his boot, and he jumped to another.
Lightning flickered overhead, spreading its eerie flickering glow over the jungle floor. The headless vulture looked like a pile of feathers. He had been so revved with adrenaline, he hadn’t noticed the height until now.
Miles barked, then yelped in pain, pulling X’s focus back to the nest above.
“Hold on, boy,” he shouted. “I’m coming!”
X used the knife to aid him up the rest of the way to the nest. He pulled himself up on another thick branch, stood, and was scrabbling for a foothold when a hooked beak with orange lesions peered over the side of the nest. Orange-feathered wings rose threateningly as two piercing black eyes glared at him.
Magnolia relayed another message over the comm—something about a radio and the Hive—but X was too focused on the strip of white plastic, stained red and hanging from the bird’s beak, to respond. A full second passed before he realized what he was looking at.
It was Miles’ hazard suit.
X grabbed the end of the beak with one hand and stabbed the left wing with the other. The young vulture jerked back, and X, holding on to the knife, was hauled up into the nest. Rolling over the lip into the nest, he saw Miles hunched in the corner and snarling. The four nestlings surrounded him, pecking at his suit.
Hell no!
X let go of the knife hilt, leaving the blade lodged deep in the creature’s wing. It slammed him with the other wing, pinning him against the side of the nest, then moved closer and thrust its beak at his chest armor.
He squirmed slightly to his left and grabbed the beak with both hands. Then, screaming in rage, he pushed the wing back, freeing himself. He came up on his knees, with the bird in a headlock.
X twisted the baby monster’s head and beak until both crunched. He kept going, pushing harder and harder, his old muscles straining, until he ripped the beak completely off.
Tendrils of muscle and gullet hung off the base. He rose to his feet, panting like a wild animal, with the beak in his grip. The three remaining nestlings had turned away from Miles to look at him.
“Get away…” he panted, “from… my… dog!”
Holding the beak in both hands, he plunged the sharp end into the birds one by one, until the nest was drenched in blood. He raised the last creature into the air for the other vultures in the jungle to see.
“You’re done trying to kill us!” he shouted.
Miles nudged up against his leg, and X slowly lowered the still-twitching baby bird and rolled it out of the nest. Lightning flashed over the bay in the distance, and in the glow, he saw something that froze him for a second.
The incoming tide had dislodged the Sea Wolf from the beach. The damaged vessel was now in the surf, being pushed back into the bay.
X cursed. This time, it wasn’t Magnolia who screwed up. It was on him. If he had kept an open line to Timothy, he would have known about this.
But that still didn’t explain why the boat was drifting.
Why the hell wasn’t the AI doing something to stop it?
“Son-of-a-bitch robot is leaving without us,” X said over the comm.
SEVEN
The nightmare was just like the others. Michael was stumbling through the snowy wastelands in Hades. His lips and throat were dry from lack of water, but he couldn’t melt or drink the snow because of the radiation.
He pushed on, continuing his search for X. Ice framed his visor, narrowing his view of the frozen terrain. A line of tracks led into the city once called Chicago, a place of many scrapers. The colossal architecture continued to withstand the test of time.
Here, hell had literally frozen over.
Trapped in the nightmare, Michael slogged through his own personalized hell. The high-pitched electronic-like wails of the Sirens became a satanic chorus that followed him down empty streets and over wind-carved snowdrifts.
The tracks wound up and down the dunes, and the beacon on his HUD blinked with Xavier Rodriguez’s location, but every time he got close, the beacon would move.
“X!” Michael shouted. “X, where are you?”
In these dreams, the answer was always the same.
Over the howling wind, X would shout, “Stay away, Tin! This is not the life your father wanted for you!”
Michael would turn and turn, but the voice of X would echo off the frozen sides of buildings and fade away.
“Please, X, where are you?” Michael yelled back. “Let me help you!”
He continued his trek through the endless streets, his rifle at the ready, eyes sweeping constantly for hostiles.
The city continued producing the music of helclass="underline" clawed feet skittering over icy metal, the wailing of the Sirens, and the crash and clatter of structures finally giving way to Mother Nature.
Halfway through the dream, he would hear the worst of all the noises: a loud whap. Michael turned to see a Hell Diver lying in the middle of the street, its parachute luffing in the breeze. Jagged bones protruded from a semiliquid body held together only by armor and a hazard suit.