She stood and shielded Miles behind her back. Her swollen eyelids provided only a narrow view of the men who did not look like the others. Their shaved heads glistened in the sun. Like the Cazadores, some were as light-skinned as Magnolia, others darker.
Were these men some sort of servants?
There were also two middle-aged Cazadores in green suit jackets and pants to match. Unlike the filthy soldiers, these two had well-trimmed beards and wrinkle-free clothes that reminded her of Timothy Pepper. One of the guys pushed eyeglasses up on his nose and studied her, then looked down at a piece of paper clipped to a metal board. He used a pen to write something as he spoke to the other man.
The boat bumped the dock, and two dockhands in shorts threw out a mooring rope. Magnolia remained in the cage, Miles standing behind her and growling. Her tattered shirt blew in the wind as the soldiers opened the cage.
“It’s okay, boy,” she whispered, although she knew that it was anything but. This was it, the moment she had been dreading. Fear weighted her heart, and no matter how hard she tried to be strong, she was almost paralyzed by what she was about to face. Never in her life had she felt so alone and exposed. She covered her chest with her arm.
The pilot of the boat, a man with long hair, walked over and directed the other two soldiers to grab her. They both grinned as they ducked down to enter the cage.
Miles barked and growled, coming out in front of Magnolia. One of the men pointed a long weapon with a spear-like muzzle at the dog.
“No!” she shouted, trying to move in front of the weapon.
Blue flashed from the barrel, and Miles hit the cage floor, jerking and vibrating. His blue eyes, masked by fear, looked up to meet hers.
“No,” Magnolia sobbed, getting down on her knees beside Miles. She picked his limp body up, the fur and flesh warm to the touch. A tear fell from her eye onto his bloody forehead.
“You shit-head bastards!” she hissed, looking up at the two grinning men outside the cage. “You’re going to pay for this. X is going to make you all pay!”
Her snarled words wiped the smiles off their faces. They stood their ground, and one of them gestured for her to come out.
She got to her feet, still holding Miles in her arms. She felt his heartbeat and felt him take a breath. He was still alive, but there was only so much punishment even his genetically modified body could endure.
Magnolia took a deep breath and walked out of the cage. One of the men grabbed her by the arm, and the other pushed her toward the temporary dock between the pier and the boat.
She carried Miles across it and toward the Cazadores standing outside. The circular pier led to a double door ten feet high, with a faded wood trim and bronze accents that looked like octopuses. Two men in shiny metal suits stood guard with spears pointed skyward. Their almond-shaped eye covers stared ahead, neither of them looking in her direction.
They looked exactly like the soldiers from the boats back in Florida—the men who had killed Rodger and captured her.
Along the pier, several small one-man boats like the WaveRunner were tied to the dock. One bore the faded blue letters sea-doo on its side. An open door led to what appeared to be a garage for more vessels. Several bobbed up and down in the protected storage area under the huge structure.
“¡Muévanse!” the man holding her arm yelled.
The second soldier, the one who had shot Miles with the electric weapon, poked her in the back with the tip. The hot barrel stung her skin, and she stifled a whimper. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
Magnolia kept moving across the dock until she reached the pier. The group of Cazadores all parted, and the five men in brown robes began to walk toward a tall cage suspended by a cable. There was something very different about them—they all appeared to be of different races, and none were carrying any weapons. Aside from their clothing, the only thing they had in common was the octopus pendant that each wore around his neck.
One by one, they stepped into the elevator left of the door where the two armored soldiers stood guard.
“¡Muévanse!” her captor yelled again when she hesitated.
They herded her toward the elevator. Once the robed men were inside, the two guards tapped their spear handles against the deck and began walking toward her.
Magnolia stopped right outside the open cage door, Miles still limp in her arms. The man holding her arm and the man with the electric weapon pushed her toward the opening.
She took a step inside.
The soldiers followed her and locked the gate behind them. One of them pushed a crank lever, and the cable clanked overhead, lifting them off the deck.
She hated to turn her back to these men, and shifted slightly to observe them. Both men towered over her by a foot. They formed an X with their spears. Her eyes gravitated to their secondary weapons, blades sheathed on leather belts around their armor. A thought crossed her mind, but she was still holding Miles and would have to drop him to make a play for one of the blades.
No, this wasn’t her opportunity.
Looking down, she saw the Cazadores on the piers, still staring up at her as if she were an alien creature from the stars. More people were watching behind windows with open shutters as the cage rose past them.
Almost all the people she saw behind the glass were women, and unlike those back at the oil rigs, they didn’t appear filthy. Many were attractive. Some even wore what looked like makeup. Jewelry made of shells and turquoise decorated their half-naked bodies. All of them seemed to look at her with dread and pity, as though they knew exactly what she was about to experience.
But it wasn’t the sad eyes that took her breath—it was the paintings on the metal walls of their homes—or prisons.
As the cage rose higher, she admired the murals and drawings on this castle on the sea. Like the bulkheads on the Hive, the walls had been covered with beautiful images from the Old World.
Animals.
People.
Vehicles.
And…
An airship like the one crowning the towers above her.
Cazadores and the robed men were painted on the metal around the airship, all of them on their knees as if worshipping it. Words had been scribbled above the drawing: los dioses del cielo.
The sky people? she wondered. Or did it mean something else?
The cage continued upward, and she glanced up through the open ceiling to the airship above them, with its forest and gardens growing toward the sky. She remembered the transmissions from Captain Marcus Bolter and the ITC Ashland in the downloads from the facility on the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Was that the Ashland above?
Had he come here two hundred and sixty years ago?
The cage jolted to a stop at the thirtieth floor and the men in robes opened the second door. They had reached the platform she had seen earlier, the deck jutting high over the blue-green sea. A forest of trees grew out of the soil, their branches laden with oranges, and other fruits.
Magnolia followed the bald, robed men out of the cage, and the two guards with spears stepped out. They walked slowly after her, their spear tips pointing at the sky.
A central pool stood amid the trees—and not just any pool. This one had colorful fish swimming lazily beneath the surface.
The robed men walked down a dirt path lined with bushes and flowers. This was the first nonmutant garden she had seen anywhere but aboard the Hive or Deliverance. None of the plants seemed to be carnivorous, toxic, or noxious in any way, and the petals had more hues than she had ever seen. She had never seeing anything so beautiful. And now, having seen it, she must die a slave to a murdering cannibal.