The Other Side

by Joshua McCune

  The song ends.

  T-Clef sighs and leans her head against the window. It’ll be a couple of hours at least before she tries again.

  I shut my eyes. I’m exhausted, but sleep won’t come. I can’t stop thinking about what I’m supposed to do in a few hours. What I’m going to do.

  Prove myself valuable, prove myself ruthless, and maybe it gets back to Oren, maybe I work my way into his trusted circle. Plan B is to get Evelyn alone and torture her for information. She was with Oren in Dillingham. Maybe she knows where he is now, where Allie is.

  Way too many maybes, but I don’t know what else to do. I feel like I’m running through a maze, blind and breathless and out of control, looking for a way out. Is there a way out?

  The others seem to find sleep here and there, but it looks too peaceful to be real. How can this be real?

  At 9:45 a.m., the GPS indicates we’ve reached our destination. In an alcove off the side of the tunnel, lights illuminate a narrow, open-air elevator with a waist-high railing around its perimeter.

  Grizzly B and Evelyn go up first.

  Thirty minutes later, it’s Joto and T-Clef’s turn. She wraps an arm through his backpack and around his waist, grabs a railing with the other. It wobbles. Joto looks ready to be sick. She presses the up button and kisses him on the cheek. “Wanna get frisky?”

  He gives a tense shake of his head, his gaze fixed forward.

  “He afraid of heights?” I ask once they’re out of sight.

  “Claustrophobic, too,” James says.

  “Chose the wrong occupation.”

  James smiles ruefully. “Side effect.”

  “Huh?”

  “From his reconditioning.”

  I frown. “He was in Georgetown?”

  “No. They escaped Krakus.”

  Him and T-Clef? I become intensely aware that James is looking at me in a way he hasn’t looked at me in weeks. A pang stabs my chest. I look away.

  “Krakus . . . um . . . that’s where . . .” I try to compose myself. “When we were leaving Indianapolis, he . . . Colin . . . he said that we were the Krakus transfer. Where is it?”

  “It’s a mobile intercept base. The location changes all the time.”

  “Oh.” I glance back at him. He’s still looking at me like he gives a damn. Who are you? I take a deep breath, ask the question I can’t seem to shove away. “Did you beat the CENSIR in Georgetown?”

  “Sometimes.”

  My next question’s out of my mouth before I can stop it. “What about when we were shooting the show?” When his CENSIR was off? When he was nice to me.

  He laughs. “How hard would it have been to get a kiss?”

  “A simple peck?” I say, which is what Hector the director told me to give James after I’d failed to fake anything better.

  The elevator arrives. We board. He’s shaking. I don’t know why. He swallows hard a couple of times as the platform lurches up.

  “Nothing’s simple anymore, is it?” James says, then kisses me fiercely. My knees buckle and tears well, but I pull away before they slip free.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t.” I wipe my eyes and focus upward. We don’t talk after that.

  The elevator ends on a ledge twenty feet beneath a hatch. We take a ladder the rest of the way up, exit into a forest of towering pine trees. Our topside vehicle, a black Escalade, is parked nearby. Evelyn closes the hatch. Joto and Grizzly B use a pair of shovels to cover it with dirt.

  Midday, we reach the outskirts of Saint Louis. As we funnel to a checkpoint, we put on our wigs, Rice University hats and T-shirts, then pop in our vid lenses.

  “Roll time, people,” Evelyn says. “Stick to the script.”

  “What script?” Joto says.

  T-Clef smacks his shoulder. “This is gonna be on TV in a couple days, jackass. So don’t act like a jackass.”

  “Mean like this?” He flicks his tongue in a suggestive manner at her.

  “That’s the special-edition cut,” Grizzly B says. He and Joto laugh.

  Newly instituted retinal scans identify us as a group of college students from Houston, here for the football game. After searching our SUV, the A-Bs wave us forward.

  Beyond the checkpoint, an electronic billboard on the side of the highway broadcasts a news clip of the battle in Tahoe. VICTORY! flashes at the bottom.

  Joto snarls at the next billboard, which advertises Kissing Dragons with a montage of Frank, Kevin, Mac, and L.T. on various dragon hunts. Frank, the fab four leader, drives a sword through a Green.

  The billboard switches to a promo for Kissing Dragons: The Other Side. The left half shows a trio of Greens igniting Chicago. An insurgent with a monocle over his left eye fires his machine gun over the side of his dragon at the streets below. On the right side of the board, the same insurgent stalks a padded cell with a maddened grin.

  “They caught Red Eye?” Grizzly B says. Red Eye’s the focal point of the advertisement, but my attention’s on the other two dragons. Both are riderless. Both are wearing collars. Neither seems to have trouble navigating the black maze of buildings. That dragon that chased me in Chicago—Thog—was riderless, too.

  Where are you? Talk to me, you treacherous human!

  In the Georgetown battle room, the military had us communicating with collared dragons from afar in various covert missions. Oren must have implemented a similar strategy.

  We pass billboards with PSAs about the blackout policy (BLACK IS STYLISH, BLACK IS SEXY, BLACK IS SAFE) and dragon exposure (IF YOU SEE ANYBODY TALKING TO THEMSELVES, REPORT IT IMMEDIATELY TO THE BUREAU OF DRAGON AFFAIRS).

  And then my brother’s glaring down at me, along with the five other members of Kissing Dragons: The Frontlines. A portion of the billboard runs a clip of Sam leading a charge through the woods toward a Green that’s laying waste to a squadron of All-Blacks.

  Real?

  “Fucking family,” Joto says, and I almost lash out at him, but stop when I realize he’s looking at the only girl in the group. I check the other TV soldiers, recognize the boy at the end. Double T’s brother.

  Following the map we retrieved from the SUV’s glove compartment, we exit the highway in the industrial district and wend our way to an abandoned tract of warehouses. We reach the third one on the end. The bay door retracts.

  An All-Black standing beside a Humvee waves us in. A balaclava covers his face.

  “Locked and loaded,” he says as we exit the Escalade. He nods to Evelyn, hops in the SUV, and drives away.

  In the back of the Humvee, we find five sets of All-Black uniforms, railshots, and several backpacks.

  “How much you think Oren paid him?” Joto asks as we change out of our fake student clothes into our fake soldier clothes.

  “He didn’t,” James says. “His brother was in Georgetown. Fourteen.” He shakes his head, his gaze unfocused. “He sounded just like him.”

  Joto whistles, laughs. “Fucking family.”

  We have to pass through another checkpoint to get into downtown Saint Louis. We swap out our vid lenses. We’re now new recruits, here for Dragon Defense System Training. The checkpoint guards don’t give us a second glance.

  Loudspeakers command people to remain vigilant, report anything out of the ordinary. The instructions echo everywhere, without much interference. It’s late afternoon, but except for A-B patrols, the streets are practically empty.

  We park in front of a missile launcher squeezed between two hulking skyscrapers. An electrified fence surrounds it. I watch Evelyn enter a passcode. The gate opens. A stairwell between the legs of the launcher leads down to a fortified control station.

  “Turn your plasma shots on,” Evelyn says.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t,” Grizzly B says.

  “Those are our orders.”

  “It won’t look good if we’re all getting sick on camera.”

  “You didn’t get sick when Klyv got mushified by the queen of spades over here,” Joto says.

  “Joto,”
T-Clef snaps.

  “I’m just saying. Dead is dead. What’s it matter?”

  He’s right. What does it matter? I draw my railshot and switch on the plasma effect.

  “Trouble understanding instructions, Twenty-Five?” Evelyn says. “You stay back. Look pretty. Or try.”

  That’s my role. Wait for others to do the blood work, then come in and be recognizable. I have no delusions that Oren is concerned about my welfare. He just doesn’t trust me. Which is maybe why he put Evelyn in charge of our little propaganda team.

  Playing tame won’t get me anywhere, though.

  “Shoot me,” I say, and shoulder past her.

  “She mean that in the video way or the bullet way?” I hear Joto say behind me.

  At the bottom of the stairs is another door. I enter the passcode.

  Inside, three soldiers are monitoring touch consoles. I nail two of them in the back of the head. The third makes it around halfway in his chair before somebody else drills him in the neck.

  Their bodies shrivel. The reek of overcooked meat floods my nostrils. Grizzly B runs out of the bunker. T-Clef retches but keeps it in. Joto doesn’t.

  My stomach twists, my heart, too, but then I think of Georgetown and how these bastards could have been in a control bunker there, monitoring my or Allie’s reconditioning. How they could have been the ones responsible for executing Lorena and the other talkers when rescue came.

  I grab the explosives pack from James, who regards the corpses with cold indifference, and set it the middle of the room.

  “Pretty enough?” I ask Evelyn on my way out.

  We keep the plasma off for our other four targets. Then we head a few blocks over to the riverfront, take some touristy videos, and drop off our remaining backpacks.

  We’re on our way out of Saint Louis when the loudspeaker message breaks from its automated loop for an “important announcement from the Black House.” The billboards shift to live video of the president’s press secretary.

  We lower our windows.

  “Good afternoon. The Bureau of Dragon Affairs has captured the Los Angeles terrorists, and we are hours away from catching the New Orleans bombers. If you think to help them, if you think to ignore them, you will be considered one of them.

  “As always, we ask for your prayers for the victims, and we demand your vigilance to help us prevent further atrocities. United we are strong. God bless America.”

  “God bless her,” Evelyn says. “Get me the tablet.”

  “Blew up New Orleans?” Joto says, opening the glove compartment. He hands her the tablet. “Damn. Never got to go to Mardi Gras.”

  “We’re supposed to wait,” Grizzly B says as Evelyn powers up the tablet.

  “Oren would appreciate this. Better theatrics,” she says, and taps the screen.

  Four fireballs rise from downtown Saint Louis. We pull off to the side of the road and get out. Evelyn sets off the final explosives. They detonate in rapid succession near the bank of the Mississippi. It takes a couple of seconds before the Gateway Arch breaks from the earth and crashes into the river.

  36

  For episode two of Kissing Humans, we return to Tatankaville for a flight to roast a supply convoy.

  Two of Bakul’s riders are already suiting up when we arrive at the arena. Hawk’s got a Mohawk, and Hook’s got a hook where his left hand used to be. They’re running scout duty for the mission. They don’t look happy about it, but in the time I’ve been here, I’ve never seen them look happy about anything.

  I don my body armor, helmet, goggles—

  “Keep your goggles and mask off until you need them, Twenty-Five,” Evelyn huffs. “They need to know who they’re seeing.”

  Who are they seeing? “I liked her more when she was Talker One,” I whisper.

  “Yeah,” James mumbles. I glance over. He’s staring into his locker. I lean back, see that he’s looking at the mirror affixed to the back wall. Like mine, it has You written in black marker across its top. A family portrait that must be several years old is taped to the bottom of the mirror.

  “You all right?”

  “Always.” He closes his locker, puts on his helmet, decorated to the brim with dragon-jet stickers.

  “Let’s fly!” Evelyn says.

  T-Clef kisses Joto on the cheek. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Stupid is in the brain of the stupid.”

  She laughs. “You’re so stupid.”

  “Yeah, but I’m your stupid,” he says, kisses her, then dashes off.

  “Kick some ass out there,” T-Clef says, way too excited, and gives me a hug. “And please watch him. Evie’s a great rider, but she can be a bit crazy, and since he’s supposed to be videoing you, he won’t be as focused as he should be, and—”

  I squeeze her tighter. “We’ll make sure he’s okay.”

  “If Evie happens to”—Grizzly B makes a slashing gesture across his throat—“in the process . . . well, accidents do happen.”

  “The thought hadn’t crossed my mind.”

  “What would your CENSIR say?”

  We laugh.

  On the other side of the wall, we split into our flight teams. The dragons are glowing an eager shade of deadly today. Praxus still greets James and me with a grudging growl, though he does allow us to mount him with far less petulance than normal.

  “How you feeling, Callahan?” James asks from the gunner’s seat.

  “Fine, Everett. You?”

  “Fine.” The built-in pivot mechanism that links the gun to his seat allows him to swivel around a hundred-eighty degrees. He turns all the way to his right, looks sideways at me. “Don’t do anything crazy, okay?”

  I’m not sure what he means by that, what he ever means anymore, so I ignore him.

  “Let’s roar and roll,” Evelyn says via the CENSIR radio.

  The hatch in the ceiling opens, and we launch. Minutes later, we’re out of the mountain. Clouds line the sky like feathered speed bumps. The midday sun shines a dark shade of orange through my goggles. In the distance overhead, I spot the green glow of Bakul.

  Praxus snarls, and his heat picks up. Erlik’s flying right at us in a vertical ascent. Evelyn’s at the helm, head pressed to Erlik’s neck, blond hair streaming out from her helmet, machine gun strapped to her back. She’s a goddamn modern-day Valkyrie.

  Praxus whirls toward them, belching smoke from his nostrils. Erlik doesn’t slow.

  “Hold him still, Twenty-Five,” Evelyn says. “And take off those goggles. How many times do I have to tell you?”

  Praxus brightens. I can almost feel the fire filling his throat. Sweat trickles into my eyes.

  “He’s not the enemy.”

  They are all enemies, human.

  “Get him under control, Twenty-Five.”

  Erlik’s almost on us. His lips pull back, his eyes narrow. He tucks his legs beneath him and accelerates.

  “He’s not the enemy today.”

  You are wrong. Praxus opens his mouth, but no fire comes out. He roars. Turn it on!

  Erlik swoops around us in a tight spiral. Praxus lashes out with a tail strike that jolts me hard in the saddle, but Erlik’s swerved out of range, snarling or laughing at us, or maybe both.

  “Get him under control, Twenty-Five. And take off those goggles!”

  “Any suggestions back there?” I ask.

  “I’ve been talking to him. He’s not talking back,” James says. “Praxus is not a pack dragon.”

  I snort. “Are any of them?”

  Erlik wheels around for another pass.

  “Get Praxus on the level, Twenty-Five. We need a good clean shot of you and James flying smooth. Like you actually know what you’re doing.”

  “If she’s so damn gifted with Greens, why doesn’t she tell him?” I mutter.

  “Because Praxus wouldn’t connect with her,” James says. His words give me a camera-worthy smile and an idea.

  Praxus, Erlik is a slave. Look at him take orders
from those humans. He must fly close so that they can film our magnificence. He is not a worthy enemy. He is not worthy of our attention.

  Praxus doesn’t answer, but his glow dims and his body cools to something south of sauna. He levels out and soars into an assured glide. Erlik makes two passes around us, comes in close a few times, Joto staring at us through it all. Praxus ignores them.

  I pat him on the neck. Good job. He tosses his head back and smashes it into my nose. Blood pours out. As his laughter echoes through my head, I think of Baby. How she did the same thing. How she was so mad at me. How she felt so alone.

  I shove her from my thoughts, wipe the blood from my nose with my cape.

  “Are you okay?” James asks.

  “Fine.”

  We continue on in silence at a steady glide interrupted by an occasional wing flap. It’s horribly peaceful.

  A minute later, maybe ten, Hook comes on over the CENSIR radio. “We got twenty birds coming in at three o’clock. Flying low. Intercept on our position in under a minute. Orders?”

  “Engage. Fire’s active,” Evelyn says. “Twenty-Five, stay back this time.”

  Erlik bolts forward.

  I put on my goggles and activate binocular mode. Even at ten times magnification, the dragon jets aren’t much more than black blips against the blue sky. For a few seconds, I hear nothing but the rush of wind. Then I hear nothing but the wrath of dragons.

  Wings pumping, Praxus accelerates to full speed. His fuming bellows are echoed twice over by Erlik and Bakul. Death comes.

  “Twenty-Five, stay back,” Evelyn says.

  I consider her order for about half a second. To gain Oren’s trust, I must erase the doubts in his mind he surely has about me.

  I must be Green. I must always be Green.

  Praxus, the slave’s rider wants us to remain here.

  They want the glory of flame for themselves.

  “Back off, Twenty-Five.”

  “Radio on. Feel free to tell Praxus that yourself, Number One. Radio off.”

  “James, please get your dragon under control since Twenty-Five is unable.” Evelyn sounds positively frosty.

  “He’s not listening to me,” James says as Praxus overtakes Erlik.

  “I’m gonna berserk you, you stupid whore,” Evelyn mutters. I’m not sure she meant for me to hear that, but either way, she doesn’t open my link to Praxus.