The Extinction Trials(95)

She hoped she had enough time left to reach Garden Station—if it was down there.

Owen pulled the door open and leaned out over the water, studying the waves below. He glanced back at Maya, and she gave him a firm nod.

He stepped out onto the helicopter’s rail, still holding the oxygen tank, and slipped the mouthpiece between his teeth. His next step was out over the water, and he plunged down.

Maya ventured out onto the rail, dragging her oxygen tank, and then she was following him, down toward the water and what she hoped would be salvation for the entire human race.





Chapter Seventy-Three





Cara watched as Owen and Maya disappeared into the ocean, leaving a small wake where they had entered, like a small scar on the vast sea that quickly healed.

In a way, she felt like she had countless times in the operating room after closing an incision. The operation—or at least her part—was done. Now, it was on the patient to survive or perish. Like she had then, she pinned all her hopes on their survival. She wished there was more she could do, but sometimes life required one to have faith and wait and do the only thing you could do.

For her, that was entering the coordinates of the next helicopter stop. She typed them into the helicopter’s nav system and held on as it banked to the right. On the horizon, a storm was forming, no doubt one of the deadly amalgamations of wind and rain that was chasing the mesh inside her body. It would catch her soon, but not, she thought, before she had a chance to play her role.

At the next stop, she once again opened the cockpit door and dropped the weighted tubes. She did that six more times before entering the coordinates she had memorized.

In a way, she was returning to where it had all begun—or at least, their first destination after the station.

Soon, the massive containership loomed on the horizon. It grew larger with each passing moment—and so did the storm chasing her.

She set the helicopter down on the stack of metal containers and ran across the columns to the ship’s control tower. At the rickety staircase, she ascended until she reached the bridge. There, she found a pair of binoculars and walked to the wide windows, and brought them to her eyes.

In the distance, she saw the storm. To the left, she saw a fleet of helicopters. They were different from The Union aircraft sitting atop the containers. There was no doubt in Cara’s mind whose squadron it was: The Union. They couldn’t allow The Alliance to recover Maya.

The two final tubes in Cara’s pocket would lead them here. And they would turn the vessel upside down looking for Maya—or what they thought was Maya.

Cara panned the binoculars to the left and saw exactly what she was hoping for: another fleet of helicopters. They were exactly like the ones sitting on the containership. The Alliance had sent their own force.

Soon, the two fleets would arrive at the ship and the battle would begin.

Cara exited onto the rickety staircase, descended into the bowels of the ship, and began searching out a hiding place she knew would likely become her final resting place.





Chapter Seventy-Four





Maya hugged the oxygen tank as the weights tied around her pulled her deeper into the ocean. She didn’t know how much time had passed. And worse, there was nothing she could do except hold on and wait.

Owen had been right: this truly was a leap of faith.

As the sea above grew darker and she moved closer to the floor of the ocean, her every instinct told her to reach down and release the pieces of metal tied around her waist, inhale one last deep breath from the tank, and kick with all her might toward the surface. It took every ounce of her willpower to overcome her mind’s survival instinct, to trust the plan, and bet it all on Garden Station being down there.

If it wasn’t, she was finished. So was Owen. They were rapidly passing the point of no return, where they couldn’t return to the surface. And besides, even if they did, what then? They’d be afloat, waiting for rescue—and by whom? The truth was, there was no safe place for them in the world anymore, a world constantly at war with no hope of compromise.

In a way, she felt as though she were returning to the beginning, to Station 17, where they had been trapped with limited options, where going forward was the only hope of survival. That’s what she was doing now: going forward. Or down, to be exact.

She knew the ocean was deep this far from the shore—or at least, it had been in the world before. She didn’t know exactly where they were. Was it possible that Garden Station had been above the sea before the Fall and that the rise in the water level had covered it?

It seemed that Station 17 had been in the mountains before and was an island now. If Garden Station was down there—and it was on a ridge or shelf near the surface—it would be her only hope of survival.

Most of all, she wished she could see Owen, reach out, and hold his hand as they faced their fate together. Of all the things she had found in the world after the Fall, he was the most remarkable. He had awakened something inside of her she thought long dead. That was one of the reasons she clung to life so tightly, as hard as she was holding the oxygen tank as the darkness around her became complete.





Chapter Seventy-Five





Owen didn’t know how long he had been falling. A long time. Possibly too long. He felt the pressure growing, pressing into him, crushing him.