by Ramy Vance
The ATV was slowing too much, so Alex lightly pressed down on her pedal. “Yeah, seriously, this is the most stressed out I’ve ever been in a car,” she agreed. “Never would have thought yetis being so huge would annoy me so much.”
The ATV jiggled and jerked again, and Brath started shouting out commands again. Alex was only half-listening when she felt Brath’s foot kick her shoulder for not pressing the pedal hard enough. “Hey, watch it!” Alex shouted at Brath before turning back to Jim.
Jim laughed as he moved around, trying to get comfortable, which caused him to practically lean against Alex, who held her breath as her heart raced.
Jim reached up and tugged on Brath’s pantleg. “Hey, Brath! How long did you live with your parents?” he asked.
Brath warily looked down at Jim for a second. “That’s kinda a personal question. Why are you trying to get to know me all of a sudden?” he asked.
“It’s just a question. I’m not trying to build a profile on you or anything. Just getting to know the team.”
Brath sighed as he turned his attention back to the road. “I moved out when I was six,” he said. “And I was a late one. My mom and dad said that Brorn, my sister, moved out when she was three. Psh. I would have too, if I could. Mom and Dad are so annoying.”
Alex could hardly wrap her head around what Brath had just said. She couldn’t imagine leaving home as a baby. Even now, it wasn’t like she had put a lot of thought into moving out. She wasn’t planning on living with her folks forever, but there just didn’t seem to be a rush to be gone.
That was probably why Alex was so surprised at becoming a dragonrider. In some ways, she had always assumed she was going to be at home. The outside world hadn’t seemed to be an adventure she was going to have. Turned out, though, she was dead wrong.
Brath’s voice broke over the grinding of gears. “Gill, you gotta pop the clutch!” he shouted. “Pop the damn thing!”
Gill took a moment to respond. “Popping the clutch is the opposite of how you are supposed to change gears. That’s why the ATV keeps surging. You have to be restrained, Brath.”
Alex wondered if Jim knew how she felt about Gill. Brath obviously did. And so did Jollies. In all honesty, Gill probably knew as well. It was an uncomfortable feeling, as if Alex’s emotions were on display for the entire team to see.
It didn’t really matter, though, not in the long run. All Alex had to do was keep it from getting in the way of the mission. Even if internally, she felt like she was in a very bad nineties sitcom, that didn’t mean she had to act like it. Sure, she was a teenager, but she knew she could behave maturely.
That was when Alex decided she wasn’t going to worry about choosing anyone. Nothing was ever that simple. In every book she’d ever read, the hero would work themselves into a frenzy, trying to choose the love of their life.
Things were always messy in love triangles, at least in stories. Alex had never been in a real one before. She’d never had a crush on anyone, even. But she felt like she could manage the situation without it devolving into meme-level stupidity. Whatever happened, happened. It was that simple.
Alex felt like a huge weight had been lifted from her chest, and she breathed easily for the first time since she’d been at the bottom of the ATV with one of the boys she liked. This was doable. Besides, there was the whole Dark One and end-of-the-world thing to focus on.
Jollies squealed and broke into Alex’s train of thought. The pixie was zooming back and forth in the ATV’s cockpit. “There they are, there they are!” she chirped, pointing toward the canyon’s edge. “We gotta check it out.”
Barth gave Jollies a confused look. “How do you know they’re down there?” he asked. “They’d be down over the ridge.”
Jollies flashed bright red for a second before mellowing out. “It’s kinda like a sixth sense,” she explained. “I can pick up on people’s emotions, especially strong ones. When a lot of people are feeling similar things, it’s like a light bulb going on in my head.”
Jollies pointed toward the canyon and said, “There’s a lot of anxiety making its way through the canyon. They’re heading for the battlefield.”
Gill stared out his window, trying to get a glance at what might be happening down in the canyon. When he couldn’t see anything, he pulled up his HUD visor and looked through the cameras he had placed there. “They’ve still got a ways to go.”
Alex shouted from the bottom of the ATV, “How long, do you think?”
“Another twenty minutes to get there. Ten to figure out what’s going on. Then another twenty for them to get back.”
“Sweet, so we’ve got like an hour?”
“Not sweet. It’s going to take us some time to get the dragons ready. An hour is pushing it. You’ve never done maintenance before, have you? It’s time-consuming.”
Alex pushed down hard on the accelerator. “Then we’re going to need as much time as we can get!”
The ATV sped along the canyon, the team finally starting to get a good flow among themselves of switching gears and maintaining speed. Everyone was silent, worrying about their time constraints.
Alex wasn’t worried, though. She was trying to figure out ways they could reduce wasted time. “Hey, Gill!” she shouted. “Can you hack into their equipment system?”
Gill pulled up his visor again and started scrolling. “Of course. What do you need to know?”
“Start prepping their dragon stables. Link everyone up so they can start going through their options. That way, we won’t be sitting around trying to figure out what equipment we want to use. We can just take care of the dragons and get the hell out.”
Gill flashed Alex a thumbs-up and got to work. It wasn’t long before he had patched everyone into the stable’s system. Now the team was quiet because they were going over their options, which was a better use of their time than worrying.
Alex kept a constant speed so the rest of the team didn’t have to stress about their roles. Brath was the only one who had to focus, but as he had said, he didn’t need to look at the equipment options. Furi hated just about everything and only used fire anyway.
Alex still wasn’t sure how far Chine’s telepathy stretched, but she figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. She reached out to Chine, thinking, Hey, if you can hear me, could you meet us outside? We kinda did something stupid and need to get going as soon as possible.
Much to Alex’s surprise, Chine’s voice came through loud and clear. Oh, you did? Why am I not surprised to hear that?
Well, they left us alone for so long. What was I supposed to do?
I take it we will be leaving soon?
Yeah. As soon as we can.
Chine laughed softly and replied, Good. None of us dragons quite likes it here. It lacks the splendor of the Nest. We’ll meet you outside.
It took about fifteen minutes for the team to finally arrive back at the facility. They took the ATV around to the back, just in case there were still other riders around. Alex knew that if even one person saw them, it was over.
Team Boundless snuck around the back of the facility while she telepathically let Chine know where they were heading. Occasionally, she peeked through the facility’s windows to see if anyone had stayed around. It looked like the entire base was abandoned.
That said a lot about the situation of the dragonriders on this base. It didn’t seem like they could risk anything. They had launched a full-on assault on the imaginary troll horde. Either Gill had made the situation look extremely dire, or these riders couldn’t take any chances.
Alex felt a little bad for having tricked the riders, but it was their own fault. Hopefully, nothing terrible happened while they were out.
The team turned the corner and were greeted by Chine and the rest of the dragons, lazily lounging in the sun. Chine slowly raised his head when he saw Alex, his eyes twinkling in that smile only dragons could do.
The rest of the dragons rose along with Chine. We were wondering what was taking y
ou so long. Ready to get to work, Dustling?
Chapter Three
The dragons and the riders split up, each pair making their way toward the stables. The plan was for the dragons to wait outside. It would be easy enough for them to enter once the coast was clear, and Alex wanted to make sure the facility was empty first.
She led the team around the back toward where Gill said the stables were. There was only one entrance from outside, and that was through the specially designed ceiling. The only thing that could get through the ceiling’s defense grid was dragons. Anything else would be instantly vaporized.
Instead of going through the ceiling, the team was going to work their way around and sneak in through another section of the facility. They were sending Jollies since she was the smallest, and she was the least likely to get caught after Gill.
Gill would have gone, but he had to keep an eye on the simulation he’d built. The riders of the facility still hadn’t come across it and he wasn’t sure how long it would hold. The simulation had been enough to get the riders out of the building, but he wasn’t sure if it would keep them out there for long enough.
Jollies was making a huge show of getting ready to go into the facility. Her flair for melodrama hadn’t lessened, however potentially stressful the situation was. She was demanding that Alex remind her everything was going to be okay.
Alex opened her palm and let Jollies take a seat in it. “Trust me, Jollies, you’re the best person for the job,” Alex said, wondering how much Jollies needed to hear this.
Jollies sighed, grabbed her hair, and pulled. “But what if I’m not quiet enough? I’m not a sneaky person. Pixies don’t sneak. Maybe a fairy would, but not a pixie. What if I get caught? What if I can’t find the…what am I looking for again? What if I can’t remember what I’m looking for?”
Jollies flashed bright white, then the brightness faded and she looked pale as a sheet of paper. Alex shook her head, smiling. It was evident that the pixie did need the comforting. “Jollies, you’ll do okay,” Alex whispered. “You’re going to head toward HQ and find the mission map.”
“How am I going to know what it is?”
That was when Gill spoke up. “The map is going to be in the middle of the HQ war room. It’ll be a large, green holographic map. They’re usually in the middle of the room. Nearly impossible to miss.”
Brath grumbled, “That’s if she can remember what she’s looking for.”
Jollies zipped in front of Brath’s face and pulled her dagger. “You bet your ass I’m going to remember!” she growled menacingly.
The rest of the team tried to keep from laughing at how ridiculous Jollies was being.
The pixie flew back to Alex. “All right! I’m ready. Let’s do this!”
Jollies slipped under the door leading to the janitor’s closet, which opened into the back of the facility to make for simpler waste management. Gill had found it the easiest point in the whole facility to sneak into. The closet was surprisingly large.
Once Jollies was in, she stuck her head under the door that led to the main facility. She was still a long way from the war room, and her best route was going to be through the air ducts. For anyone other than Jollies, it would have been a tight fit. For her, they were downright spacious.
Through the ducts, Jollies made her way toward the war room. The plan was that she would get a copy of the map while the rest of the team tried to find a way to get into the stables.
While Jollies was flying, she was also taking live readings of the areas of the facility she was passing through to make sure there were no other riders. So far, she hadn’t come across any.
There was still a good amount of distance between the janitor’s closet and the war room, though.
Gill led Team Boundless around the side of the facility, heading for the next section that had a supposed weakness, the gym’s bathroom.
Brath was joking about how he hoped that there were enough riders left for them to catch them in the shower. Alex had to cut him off. “Do you know how unbelievably creepy that sounds?” she asked. “Pervy little gnome trying to check out girls in the shower?”
Brath’s eyebrows raised with confusion. “Girls?” he asked. “I’m not trying to see girls in the shower. I wanna see how tough the dudes are. You never get a real fight out of a gnome unless you’ve burst in on him in the shower. That’s the only way you get to see the fire.”
Alex turned to Gill and asked, “Is he serious?”
Gill nodded absentmindedly as he checked his HUD visor to make sure they were coming to the right spot. “Oh, yes, quite serious,” Gill replied. “It’s kind of a game they play, a cultural rite of passage. Of course, these ‘fights’ are meant to take place under waterfalls, but in the modern setting of Middang3ard, gnomes have expanded this to bathrooms and showers.”
Alex was confused. “A cultural thing, huh?” she muttered.
Gill nodded. “All our cultures are strange to others. A drow delicacy is live slugs. And humans love to bleed trees for their desserts.”
“Bleed trees?”
“Yes. I believe your kind call it maple syrup.”
“But maple syrup is delicious.”
Gill gave Alex a blank look. “It’s barbaric. The trees have no way to defend themselves.”
Alex shrugged as she looked into Gill’s eyes. The drow clearly thought the method for making maple syrup was barbaric, and not wanting the conversation to digress into a defense all of humanity for what they slathered on pancakes, she nodded in Brath’s direction. “I didn’t know that gnomes were so violent. Guess, I always thought that was more of a dwarfish thing.”
“Most people think that—until you meet a gnome. Then you realize they’re just balls of anger. Makes for interesting friendships, to say the least.”
Alex looked at Brath, who was marching along the side of the wall. “Yeah, I imagine it probably does,” she mused.
Gill tapped the side of his visor, opening Jollies’ channel. “Hey, how’s it coming so far? Are you closing in on the war room?”
Jollies’ voice crackled over the headsets of the entire team. “Getting closer. And I haven’t come across anyone so far. I think that we might be in the clear. How about you guys?”
“Looks like we’re in the clear right now. Nothing—”
Gill stopped talking abruptly. Up ahead, Brath had stopped and was holding up his right hand in a fist, signaling that there was an enemy up ahead. Gill had been right in deciding to take the long route. It would have been foolish to assume the entire facility had been vacated.
Brath joined up with the rest of the team as they moved back. Gill whispered to Jollies, “Be careful, there are definitely people still in the building.”
“Got it,” Jollies replied. “I’m going dark.”
The comm cut out, and the larger portion of Team Boundless moved farther back to plan how they were going to deal with the situation. “We gotta take them out,” Brath said. “That’s the only way that we’re getting past them.”
Gill shook his head as he pulled up his visor. “I don’t think that is the wisest choice. There could be more than we’re expecting. Also, we might face more extreme consequences.”
Alex impatiently squirmed. “How much time do we have on that, anyway?” she asked. “That simulation isn’t going to last forever.”
“You’re right. Let me check. Hmm, it looks like we’ve got a little over half an hour. They still haven’t reached the coordinates the simulation is broadcasting.”
“What’s the best plan of action? We could get in serious trouble for attacking someone, but I don’t know how we’re going to talk our way into getting in there.”
Brath puffed his chest out and slammed his fist to it. “I got this. You guys don’t need to worry about anything. They don’t call me Bronze-tongue Brath for nothing.”
Alex raised her eyebrow and asked, “Isn’t it usually silver or gold tongue?”
“Well, yeah. I’m not the gr
eatest, but I’m a hell of a lot more charismatic than you chumps. Hold on and watch me work my magic.”
Before anyone could stop him, Brath walked in the direction of the soldier. Alex hit her face with her palm as she shook her head, and the rest of the team watched. “He really thinks he’s the charming one of the group,” she muttered.
Brath walked up to the guard and cleared his throat. The guard jumped when the gnome suddenly appeared. “Uh…” the guard said. “Can I help you with something?”
“Yeah, you can,” Brath answered. “There’s a coolant leak in the basement, and I’ve been trying to get on the horn with someone. I can’t seem to find anybody, but if that leak keeps on going, this whole place is going to lose power.”
The guard looked around as if he were going to magically find a senior officer. Brath grunted as the officer tried to figure out what to do. “Yeah, that’s what I’ve been saying,” Brath whined. “I can’t find anybody. It’s like they all went out to lunch or something.”
The guard nodded in agreement. “There’s an attack, reinforcements for that troll party that got taken care of a little bit back. All hands on deck. There’s probably only six or seven of us here right now. Not even a skeleton crew.”
“Well, guess that means you six are going to have to take care of that leak. Otherwise, by the time everyone gets back, this place might have already blown sky-high.”
“It’s that bad?”
“That bad.”
Brath pulled up his HUD and scrolled through his inventory until he found a book. He selected it, and the book materialized in his hand. He handed it to the guard. “This here’ll show you anything you need to know about coolant leaks. You take care of this, you’ll be a hero. Definite promotion.”
The guard took the book and looked it over. “Hey, if you know so much about leaks, why don’t you take care of it?” he asked.
Brath shook his head as he tapped his noggin. “Would if I could, but this isn’t the only leak I’ve found. I have to keep checking. All I’m saying is I need a hand because I’m not going to be able to patch everything up. I’m just a diagnostics guy.”