Shadow Dragon

by wade coleman

  Last night, for just a moment, I was standing in another world. The sky was a uniform orange in every direction. A nearby hill poured out a dark liquid that ran down one side. A geyser went off, the spray knocking me to the ground. But that’s impossible…I’d be dead in less than a second if I stood on the surface of a cold methane planet.

  I get out of the shower and run a towel over my body.

  The place radiated a freezing cold, but somehow the shadows protected me. When I fell, my elbow hit a rock, and in the next instant, I reformed on the roof of Alexandra’s.

  Checking out my elbow in the mirror, I notice a patch of skin the size of a half dollar, pale and smooth where my arm hit the ground.

  I put on my pants. “Natasha, do you remember anything strange from last night?”

  “Yes, three and half seconds we were not here.”

  “What did you remember?”

  “An orange sky.”

  A chill goes down my spine.”

  I sit on my bed, rubbing the smooth spot on my elbow. “How is that possible? How did we survive on a planet that’s three hundred degrees below zero?”

  “Darling, I think we are entangled.”

  “You mean we’re in sync or share the same vibe with this place?”

  “Or maybe the Kukan Dragon,” Natasha replies. “Remember when we ran our finger down its back. I could feel a vibration go through our spine.”

  I want to get drunk and contemplate just how strange this is, but I don’t have time. After dressing, I plug in my immersion helmet into a tablet computer, sit in a chair and put it on.

  The cameras in the helmet scan my room and feed the signal to my bio-implant. Natasha feeds the signal directly into the part of my brain that controls sight, and my room is suddenly there.

  Natasha appears wearing a wedding dress and makeup like an ancient Egyptian. “Darling, so good to see you.”

  I get up, walk over to her and put my hand on her shoulder, warm to my touch. “Are you getting married?”

  Natasha gives me a demure smile. “No, darling, I’m just trying to find the right dress to fit my mood.” The back wall of my room turns into a mirror and Natasha looks at herself. “Something wonderful is happening, and I want to dress up.” In an instant, her dress changes into a formal black gown with a high neck. On her breast is a blue crescent moon with a five-pointed star in the center.

  “Nice dress, what do the moon and star mean?”

  “I feel like I’m waking up, understanding things. But I haven’t put all the pieces together. Isis was good at putting things back together, so I wear her symbol to ask for her help.”

  “Natasha, Isis is an ancient Egyptian goddess, a myth. She’s not a real person.”

  Natasha puts her hands on my shoulder. “So what you’re saying is that ideas aren’t real? That symbols aren’t important?” She tugs on my earlobe. “How about me? Am I real? I only exist in your mind.”

  “Well, to be fair, you are attached to my skull with tendrils into my brain, but you’re right, symbols are important and what you believe is important.”

  She smiles and nods. “Apology accepted.”

  I nod back. “Are you up for a little research?”

  A terminal appears, and she leans against it. “Research is one of my… passions.”

  “Natasha, I need you to use the computer tablet wireless to access the web and find out what you can about rogue implants.”

  She pushes a few buttons on her virtual screen. “It will take some time to download.” Natasha walks over to me and puts her hand on my shoulder. “You look tense. Would you like to listen to some music?”

  “Yes, how about classic rock…you pick.”

  Suddenly, I’m on a podium. Three men walk onto a stage, ignoring me. One with a mustache and brooding eyes sits at the drums. The other two pick up guitars. One with frizzy blond hair starts playing rhythm.

  I walk up to the speakers by the drummer, the music so loud it passes through my body like a jackhammer. The guy with long black hair takes lead guitar and begins to riff out a solo.

  They play for ten minutes…and I’m a little disorientated. Why did Natasha pick this music?

  When the song ends, Natasha asks, “What did you think?”

  “It was like being there, but the music…I don’t know, it went everywhere but never landed.”

  “You didn’t hear that? That was La Villa Strangiato, played by musicians.” She crosses her arms. “All you listen to has two cords and a driving beat.”

  Then, it finally sinks in…Natasha is a being more than an organic computer inside my head. Holding my hands up like I’m arrested, “You’re right, I like my music simple.”

  I use my finger to pluck out the curl of hair that is permanently stuck to the side of her mouth. The lock of hair moves it to the side, and it springs back to the corner when I let go.

  “I get what you’re saying, but rock and roll is something you scream from every cell in your body.” I make a fist emphatically. “Rock and roll is about what you feel. It needs a voice.”

  Natasha steps back, still dressed in her black gown. “Yes, I understand, another piece that I’m looking for.” She puts her hands on her hips and smiles. “You don’t just see, hear and touch life; you feel life.”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  She turns towards the back wall and it displays a spider with hundreds of legs stretched out on pins. It looks like a multi-legged spider, and it triggers a memory. Something about spiders crawling all over me, but I don’t remember anything else.

  Natasha walks over to the screen and touches it. “That’s me, darling. I was made from human DNA. My nerves use sugar like yours, but operate a million times faster.”

  A close-up of the tendrils reveals tiny branches that pick-up brain waves. Natasha shows me a 3D model of the brain. Her branches are dispersed into centers that control sight, hearing, balance, and touch. She also connects directly to the backs of my eyes and ears.

  Next, she shows me a shiny black worm crawling around on a man’s hand. “That’s our new upgrade. In the first few days, the new cells are mutable to adapt to your brain. Now, these cells are growing down our spinal cord and into the primitive parts of our brain.” She looks down at her tablet that appears in her hand. “Before the upgrade, my computational power is equivalent to a desktop computer. Right now, I’m twice that and growing rapidly.”

  I sit on the bed. “Okay, turn it off.”

  Natasha turns off the screen. She stands there in her black dress, and we look at each other.

  “Go eat, darling, we’re hungry.”

  I take off the helmet and try to shake off the weird vibe coming from a sentient life crawling around inside my brain, and again I try to recall a dream I had last night. The only thing I remember was Dr. Nick wagging his finger at me.

  In the kitchen, I make lunch and check out the news on my tablet while eating. Still no reports on the virus, even on the back channels. I text Daniel, “Let’s meet.”

  “Be there in thirty.”

  I make a pot of coffee, open the door to the garage and wait. There’s a lot of traffic on the street, people returning from Frisco, pulling trailers loaded with supplies. A few wave to me as they pass and I raise my hand in return.

  Dad drives in, and I close the garage door. He gets off his bike. I put Mark’s immersion helmet and the doctor’s computer pad on the table.

  “You need to hide these. Don’t let me or Kim know where it is.”

  He nods, hitches his mini-trailer and loads the two items in the back. “Kim told me about your conversation with Detective Coleman.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Kim made the right call, bringing him in on the virus,” Daniel replies.

  I shrug. “Just not my nature to trust a cop or anyone else for that matter.”

  Daniel gets on his motorcycle. “The Baron and his people know we’re on to them, Son.”

  “My guess is they’ll want to disperse the p
lague sooner rather than later.”

  He straddles his ride. “We have a lead on the location of the vaccine. I’ll fill you in when I get home later.”

  I punch the switch to open the garage.

  After the door opens, Daniel says, “Don’t leave the house until I contact you.”

  I nod. “See you on the other side.”

  “See you on the flip,” he says and he drives off.

  I go to the house and go online and make arrangements for flight school with an anonymous donation of a million credits to the Search and Rescue Fundraiser. The money is conditional on Hermes Conrad’s acceptance into their pilot program.

  Taking off the helmet, I go to the kitchen and pour a glass of tea. Walking out to the backyard, I begin to water the garden with the hose. It’s a relaxing, therapeutic act I enjoy, and I could use some clarity.

  As the soil begins to soak under the tomatoes, I think back: Since I met Kim my life has gotten a lot stranger. It was only a week ago when I stole eight million credits from the Chief Administrator of Mercy Hospital. I found out that Mr. Fukui, the mayor, and the Jason Baron are behind the virus. Later that night, I managed to get the Baron’s men hired to find Mark, the CEO of Blue Algae Inc. and Natasha’s previous owner, to kill the Vory bounty hunters that were hired to kill Kim.

  Nothing says ‘Fuck-you Baron’ better than getting his men killed, and the thought lifts my mood.

  I finish watering the tomatoes and work on the cucumbers. I never knew it cost so much to be rich. In the last week, I spent two-and-a-half million credits on land for my family and the subdivision. Then there was the million for my face and skin augmentation, and another million for my new eyes, which are on order. Then the million on the twin-engine Cessna Eagle plus the other million for flight school. Fuck, I got less than one-and-a-half million credits, but I used the money wisely. Still, I’m gonna have to think about lining up a new job…if I live that long.

  Around six in the evening, Mom and Dad come home while I’m still watering. Bev waves at me to come in and I turn off the hose, heading for the kitchen. On top of the table is a box of two-hundred single dose anti-virals in blister packs.

  “That’s all I could get for our neighborhood,” Mom says. “The company that makes them recalled the last shipment said they’re contaminated. There won’t be any more anti-virals for a month.”

  “Not near enough. We need the vaccine.” I say.

  “We have a lead on that,” Daniel says. “The vaccine requires refrigeration. A few hours at room temperature, it goes bad. Based on the power requirements for cooling, we found a probable site.”

  Kim walks in. “I got your text, Daniel, what’s up?”

  “Good, everyone’s here,” Dad has been warming up to Kim. He likes the idea of me having a partner who carries a gun.

  The four of us sit down at the kitchen table. Mom pours everyone iced tea.

  “Dad was telling us he found the vaccine.”

  All eyes turn to Daniel. “Like I said, the vaccine needs refrigeration. We found a place that’s drawing a lot of power for no reason. There were cameras on the gate, and we thought of you two.”

  “I don’t have anything planned tonight, how about you, Kim?”

  Kim stands up. “I’ll go home and change.”

  “There’s one more thing.”

  Kim turns around.

  Mom studies my face. “Oh, no…wait a minute, honey.” She puts away the iced tea and gets down the vodka.

  “There is a problem with my implant.”

  Mom pours a drink. “What sort of problem?”

  “The cells in the upgrade are beginning to grow into my brain and down my spine.”

  Mom finishes her drink. “How do you feel?”

  “Some tingling in my skin, but otherwise okay.”

  “How are you and Natasha getting along?” I haven’t seen Mom this worried in a long time, so I smile and act cheerful.

  “Great, we’re going to flight school, and I own a twin-engine Cessna Eagle that gets delivered next week.”

  Everyone laughs, then Mom cries. As a nurse, she understands just how bad this situation is.

  Kim punches my shoulder. “You can’t die, not until you finish this. Then I get your bike.”

  I smile. “No way you’re getting my bike. The way you drive…always on the throttle or brake…it’s amazing you haven’t burnt out the motor.”

  “Kids,” Dad says. “Let focus on the task at hand.”

  Kim walks out the door. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

  I go back to the garage with Daniel, and we start making some calls.

  * * *

  Kim shows up at midnight with the three men that are the rest of our crew. They are all ex-army, young and a grim look from recent combat in the jungles of Columbia. Kim and the soldiers clean their weapons while I shuffle a deck of cards and play solitaire.

  Around two in the morning, Dad walks into the garage and gives the speech I’ve heard a few dozen times already:

  “Remember, men, no names, don’t take off your masks. And if you bleed, douse the area with bleach. What we’re doing can’t be traced back to us.”

  The soldiers listen respectfully, even though they already know the mission.

  “We meet up at the self-storage complex just outside the city limits,” Daniel says.

  The men get in three identical cars parked in front of our house; the vehicles stripped down to make room for cargo. Kim and I get on our bikes, and we drive off in convoy, Kim in the lead, me in the rear.

  I look over my shoulder. “See you on the other side.”

  “See you on the flip,” Daniel answers.

  We find the storage complex, a cluster of a few dozen metal buildings rotting in the salt air, the fence recently repaired. Security cameras point to the gate.

  We park by the fence next to a decaying brick building. Men in black spider-silk armor open the doors to their cars carrying bolt cutters.

  They make short work of the fence, then take up position with their rifles. Checking our headsets, Kim and I drive through the opening and a puddle from recent rain.

  Making our way to the center of the complex, we pass a metal building beyond repair to our right, a relic from before the Bio War. We stop and lean our bikes against it.

  Around the corner is our destination, a new prefab ten-by-twenty building made of hemp and recycled plastic. A large transformer hums next to it, a garage door on the front.

  I tune my goggles to infrared and zoom in on one of the cameras. They’re all at ambient temperature, indicating they’re not turned on. Wall mounted air conditioners glow red as they pump heat out of the building. We walk to the entrance. Kim holds a penlight, which casts a shadow on the garage door. Slipping through like a sheet of paper, I reform on the other side and take a look around. The security inside hasn’t been fully installed. The motion sensors have been mounted, but the power hasn’t been hooked up. I open the door and let Kim in.

  “We’re in luck; there’s no security yet. We have a free run of the place.”

  “They’re in a hurry, making mistakes. Your stunts are rattling them.”

  Inside, the shed is cool, and the walls are lined with window-mounted air conditioners, shelves on both sides filled with plastic coolers. I get one down from the shelf. Inside are vials of clear fluid immersed in a thick blue gel.

  I key my mike: “Gentleman, there’s been a change in plans. Come in the back and see me.”

  When the first three-wheeled car shows up, I open the garage door. A car enters and parks between the shelves. We fit four coolers of the vaccine in the front seat, six in the back.

  A masked soldier gets in the car.

  “Mr. White,” I am using fake names just in case there are hidden recorders. “Let them know when you arrive that more is on the way.”

  The next car pulls up, and we load more. Our strategy was to load one car with the vaccine and use the outer two as decoys. But we got l
ucky. I wish I’d brought a pick-up. We load the last car, and the driver gets out, leaving a duffel bag on the asphalt floor.

  “In ten minutes, this thermobaric bomb is going to vaporize this building,” he says. “You want to be far away when that happens.” He gets in the car and peels out, leaving a streak from his tires on the asphalt floor that will be soon obliterated by the coming blast.

  Kim and I strap a container of vaccine to our bikes. With the garage door open, the air conditioners whine, keeping out the heat. Above, clouds break up the moonlight. Driving over to the transformer, I pull a pin on a thermite grenade.

  “How much vaccine is still in there?” Kim asks.

  “Natasha says we’ve have enough vaccine for a hundred thousand people. We left twice that behind.”

  I set the grenade on the transformer, and we drive off. I look over my shoulder and see smoke coming from the transformer casing, a blue ball of electricity arcs to the building and flame boils out the top of the transformer.

  Smiling, I think, Nothing says ‘Fuck-you, Baron’ like thermite.

  We make our way through the cut in the fence that we made to get in. With Kim in the lead, we drive fast in the ruts of a dirt road towards the city. Behind us the sky lights up from the explosion for a few seconds, the flash bright enough that our bikes cast long shadows on the road, followed by a shock wave and then the roar of the explosion. We stop and watch a mini mushroom cloud rise.

  In twenty minutes we approach the outskirts of Frisco where Daniel and I rent storage lockers under our aliases.

  Kim and I ride up to the front gate. A man runs a wand over our bikes to check for micro RFI tags, mini-tracking devices that are as small as a grain of sand. He waves us through; we park in a storage unit and unstrap the cooler of vaccine from the back of our bikes.

  After putting the vaccine in a pickup, we head to the office. Dad is on his cell phone, scrambling to find cold storage space for the windfall of the vaccine.

  He gets off the phone. “We have our first break. We have enough serum to protect our people and a lot more.”