And lead them he had. But when they finally discovered the Metal Islands, things hadn’t quite gone according to plan. In fact, things could not have gone much worse. She had pinned her only hope on a last-minute SOS to the Hive and Deliverance—a final act before the Cazadores broke down the command-center hatch and beat her into submission.
Her swollen eyelids all but blocked out the view of the oil rigs in the distance, but she forced them open to see the clusters of towers. The rusted metal poles and platforms rose out of the water, like scrapers built in the ocean.
Smoke billowed from the slow-moving boat’s makeshift stack, choking her every time the wind shifted. The slow ride gave her plenty of time to check out this strange city on water as she contemplated her fate. If she was going to die, she at least could die having seen the sun.
Rays streamed through a gap in the clouds that seemed to go on for miles. The Cazadores were taking full advantage of the sunshine. Solar panels hung off the decks like satellite dishes pointing toward the sky for a signal, feeding energy to the people here.
Lush plants grew out of rectangular troughs at the edge of several of the levels. The vibrant canopies and vines drooped over the edge like a green waterfall. Dozens of platforms and the top of the oil rigs were dedicated to green and brown plots of farmland. There were even… Could those be real?
She tried to push herself up for a better view over the smoke, but her ribs ached and her eyelids were continuing to swell. Grasping the bars, she pulled herself up until her head bumped the bars overhead.
On the upper decks of the oil rigs, thick brown trunks supported leafy green branches that arched toward the sunlight. This was no garden.
This was a forest full of mature trees.
Real freaking trees!
Rodger would have loved this place.
Miles growled beside her, obviously not as impressed with the view as she was. He snarled at an approaching Cazador soldier, who banged the outside of the cage with the butt of his speargun.
“Cállate, perro,” the man growled, baring sharp teeth of his own. “¡Cállate!”
Magnolia put her fingers to her swollen eye. The man gave a pitiless grin. He was one of the three who had beaten her on the Sea Wolf and ripped her shirt.
I’m going to cut that hand off soon.
She just needed a chance to escape. Either that or to hold on long enough for X to mount a rescue. Knowing him, he was already coming up with a plan. She prayed that Katrina had picked up her SOS.
If they’re still alive.
Something told her X was still out there, but she had no idea what had happened to the divers at Red Sphere.
The guilt and pain hit her hard—a messy combination that filled her with a deep despair. Being trapped like a wild animal in this cage didn’t help.
She grabbed the bars and shouted, “Let me out of here!”
The men exchanged glances and then broke into deep laughter, one of them gripping his belly he was laughing so hard.
“Go ahead and laugh it up, you ugly fools,” she hissed, backing away from the bars. Her body hurt all over from the beating back on the Sea Wolf. She had fought hard, killing one of the Cazadores. She could see the body lying on the deck near the stern, dark blood pooled around it.
Fucker isn’t laughing now.
To the right of the corpse lay her gear and helmet—the only connection she still had to the outside world. Miles nudged up against her side. He had a nasty cut on his forehead, and she was surprised he was still standing.
The fight replayed in her mind as she tried to calm the dog. The three Cazador soldiers had broken into the Sea Wolf and climbed down the ladder to the first deck, where she had killed the first man.
She might have gotten the other two, but her magazine had jammed, and by the time she grabbed her curved blade, they were running down the hallway. She would have slammed the hatch, but Miles jumped out to attack them. That was when he caught a rifle butt to the head.
When Miles went limp, she had done the stupidest thing ever and run screaming at the two attackers, with her blade out. She hacked and stabbed, but their thick armor reflected most of the blows, and within seconds they had her on the deck, where they beat her until she stopped fighting.
Pinned to the deck, she was helpless as they stripped her down to her T-shirt and pants. The bastard with the rotting grin ripped her shirt, exposing her breasts, but a third man had come inside and shook his head.
“Aún no,” he had said.
Magnolia swallowed at the memory. She sensed that they were saving her for someone. And she had an idea who.
She pulled her torn shirt across her chest and scooted away from the bars, avoiding the gaze of her would-be rapist.
The boat slowed again as they approached the cluster of oil rigs. Several of the structures had bridges connecting them. People fanned out across them for a look at the prisoners as the vessel approached.
She pulled Miles close, wrapping her arms around him. His blue eyes darted across the decks, and his nostrils flared, taking in information.
“Don’t worry, X is coming for us,” she whispered, though the words didn’t reassure her all that much. She tried to keep her fear in check, but she knew what would happen to them shortly. The Cazadores were going to rape and probably torture her and eat Miles.
She had to do something. But what could she do?
Hundreds of people stood on the platforms and the bridges between them. She was close enough now to see their grubby skin and tattered clothes, which reminded her of lower-deckers on the Hive. Many were heavily tattooed, with skin bronzed by a life outdoors—nothing like the pale complexions of people who had never seen the sun in all their lives. A few had skin that gleamed almost black, and scattered among them were others almost as pale as she was, with straw-colored hair even lighter than Captain DaVita’s. Surely, these people or their ancestors had come from many different places.
As the boat passed under the first bridge, several of the adults, and even some of the children, opened their mouths and clacked their sharpened teeth together. Their origins didn’t matter, she realized. They were cannibals, the lot of them—as foreign to her as if she were making first contact with an alien race. The clacking of teeth and squawking of children rose into a macabre cacophony.
Magnolia wondered whether inbreeding had played a part in their devolution. There had to be something going on—normal humans weren’t supposed to act this wild and barbaric.
She remembered, when she was younger, reading Locke’s concept of the state of nature. The social-contract theories delved into hypothetical conditions of what life was like before societies came into existence.
The Metal Islands clearly had some sort of social structure, but they were vastly less civilized than the Hive. On the airship, they had strict rules about not breeding with family members and not eating one another, for starters. Both those terrible acts resulted in physical and mental problems.
Most of the people she saw seemed crazy. And not the kind of crazy she could see in X after his ten years alone on the surface—more like demented.
Their hollow gazes, squawks, clacking teeth, and hollering followed the boat as it passed between the rigs. Magnolia took in a breath that smelled like manure and roasted meat.
She saw the source just overhead, where an entire deck of pigs and other livestock roamed on a dirt-covered floor. On the next deck, a roasting pig turned slowly over a low fire.