THIRTY-NINE

WET.

It seemed the whole world was wet.

The bark of the trees felt slick to the touch. The earth underfoot sank with each step. And the air, once breathed, coated the lungs with a viscous layer of sludge. The jungle felt like this all the time, but Rook had only just taken notice. As fatigue and despair set in, the wetness closed in around him. Rage filled his body like never before. His team . . . his friends . . . were missing or dead. All of them. He might see some of them soon, he thought, in the halls of Valhalla, or wherever warriors went to when they died. They’d all be there. Whether his passing would result from violence or simply succumbing to the elements, he wasn’t sure.

He struggled to escape from his wet and clingy clothing. The tight, waterlogged fabric slowed him down, made him clumsy and noisy. He slid out of his heavy flak jacket. There wouldn’t be any bullets flying from the group he hunted now. His shirt went next, peeling off him like the skin off a rotisserie chicken. Shirtless now, his taut, white skin breathed and his body relaxed. He removed the outbreak monitor from his wrist. The gentle glow of its digital screen, no longer covered by his sleeve, would give away his position. He noted the orange level and pocketed the device.

After a quick peek over the semicircle of exposed tree roots he had been hiding behind, he lay down on a muddy patch of earth and wallowed in the mud like a great white pig. From his blond hair to his boots, the dark, wet earth covered him. Satisfied with his handiwork, Rook stood and leaned against the tree. While not a perfect camouflage, the dark gray coloration more closely matched the jungle floor than his jet-black uniform. With so many people . . . so many things . . . against him, stealth would be key. He smiled for a moment, remembering the scene in Predator when Arnold Schwarzenegger covered his body in mud to escape the heat-sensing sight of the alien hunter. “Up there . . . in them trees,” he quoted one of his favorite lines with a whisper, “I see you.” The movie had been one of many teenage favorites that inspired his trip to the army recruiter. Arnold had it lucky. Just one alien to fight. Rook had a whole tribe of bona fide Neanderthals.

Rook tossed his removed clothing into the mud and stomped it down with his bare feet, creating a wet slurping sound as the ooze held on to his foot. With the clothing—and its scent—hidden, he was ready to go.

Then a sound stopped him cold. The barely perceptible scrape of tree bark. Something approached from behind.

With a roar, Rook spun around and caught the attacker midleap. The dark form roared back, feminine and savage.

Lucy, he thought.

Rook brought a roundhouse around and caught the beast in the side of the head, which brought about a satisfying grunt. But before he could follow up, a knee crushed into his crotch. A fist to his sternum followed it and sent him onto his back in the mud. Lucy wasted no time, pouncing from above and pounding his gut with a savage punch.

Rook grunted and shouted, “That’s it, time for a beatdown!” He brought both fists up, intending to crush the shadowed head looming above him. But a single word stopped him.

“Rook?”

The face lowered, too coated in mud to recognize. Rook found a pair of eyes, as blue as his, looking back. “Queen?”

A flash of white cut through the dark wraith’s face. A smile. “Rook!” With mud-coated lips, Queen leaned down and planted a deep kiss on Rook’s mouth.

When she pulled away, Rook grinned from ear to ear. “Good to see you, too.”

Queen stood. Like Rook, she had shed her clothing from the waist up, including her outbreak monitor. The rest of her was coated in a layer of mud. She looked more like a swimsuit model in body paint than a lethal killer, but Rook knew better. So he tried not to look at her body. He told himself to picture her as one of his sisters. Ignore her curves. Ignore the kiss she’d just planted. She was Queen.

But she was—

Queen noticed his distraction and then reminded him who she was. “If you get a hard-on, I swear I’ll cut it off, Rook. Now get off your ass. I was just happy to see you alive.”

Rook took Queen’s offered hand and stood, rubbing his stomach, another reminder that the beauty standing next to him caged a beast inside. With Queen by his side, Rook’s thoughts turned back to the mission. “Where’s King? Did you find Pawn?”

They crouched together in the nook of the tree. “We got her back, but then . . . something attacked us. Captured all three of us without a fight. We didn’t stand a chance.”

Rook nodded, eyes filling with fury. “Dr. Weston and his spawn.”

“Weston?”

“Picture Doctor Dolittle, but with a hankering for animal love, and you’re on the right track. He’s got a whole village of freaks. They’re faster than Knight. Stronger than Bishop.”

“I saw them,” Queen said, “when I escaped. How do you know what they are?”

Rook took a deep breath. He wasn’t ready to tell the story, so he turned it into an ugly little pill for Queen to swallow. “He explained everything to Bishop right before his hairy little bastard child took off Bishop’s head. Somi’s dead, too.”

Her eyes flared with intensity, neither widening or squinting. “Knight?”

“Injured, but alive. Hiding for now. He’ll make it.” Rook shook his head, remembering the things he’d seen. “There’s more. The mothers of Weston’s people . . . fully Neanderthal. Before we found him, they’d captured Knight. Hung him in a meat locker. Saving him for an afternoon snack. They’re more monster than any kind of man, Neanderthal or otherwise. The first generation of Weston’s group was born to them. I don’t know how many of them there are now, but they mature quickly, like animals, so I’m guessing there are a lot.”

Queen nodded after taking it all in. “You have a plan?”

“I was going to cover myself in mud, recon the area, find Weston and Cha-Ka, and then kick some ass . . . but with King and Pawn captured . . .”

“We need to rescue them and complete the mission.”

He ground his teeth, remembering Bishop’s death.

“And if we run into Weston on the way,” she said, “well then, we’ll just see what happens.”

He could live with that. “Have a direction?”

She pointed. “North. Probably at the base of that mountain.”

A tall green mountain with a clear rocky peak could be seen through the small holes in the canopy. A layer of fog drifted around the uppermost peak.

“In the tunnels, the ones you and King took. Did you see the symbols on the walls?” Rook asked.

Queen remembered them well. “Every time the tunnels branched.”

Rook nodded. “Like road signs. Well, there was more . . . a lot more. A whole city of the dead. Buildings built from bones. Neanderthal bones. The place glowed with green algae. It was creepy as hell and huge. If it had been made by man, it would easily qualify as a world wonder. But Weston shrugged it off as no big deal. Said it was the tip of the iceberg. I’ll bet my left nut that we won’t find them on that mountain.”

Rook met Queen’s eyes, glowing blue, surrounded by mud. “They’ll be in it.”