by Jadyn Chase
In a flash, she spit a beam of white fire out into the darkened waters of Black Harbor, illuminating her way as she dove into the tide and swam out toward The Rock. I couldn’t help but scale and follow her. There was no way I’d catch up to her swimming. I was barely keeping up in flight. My wings were tired but nowhere nearly as exhausted as when I’d brought Addison back.
By the time we reached the station, it was quiet. There weren’t any alarms sounding, and there wasn’t any activity like that when we left. The animals were milling around their pen. The door near the cliff where Addison fell was left ajar like she said it would be. According to her, the animal caretakers didn’t take heed of Shaw’s security measures because they never expected anyone, especially Scalers to break inside.
With our scales tucked away, Aya kept behind me as I led the way to Addison’s lab first. The door slid open, and the lights came on. There wasn’t anyone working. It still smelled the same. The room they were working on was still under construction. Aya walked over to the place where the girl was held when I initially arrived. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she bent down feeling the ground outside of the barred entrance.
“May you find more peace in the sublime space beyond the tangible plane of your body,” she whispered through her tears. She reached into a pouch and tossed a powder down onto the floor. She drew a symbol similar a flame over a triangle as she continued to chant, “May your scales rest in solace and your death not be in vain.”
I let her mourn the loss of the woman who was held there while I walked around the lab placing pouches of explosive dust around the room. When I was done setting the fuses to ignite them, she was on her feet moving around the lab. She ran her fingers over the counters and around the test tube openings. She licked her finger.
“Aya, don’t!” I warned her. The last thing I needed was for her to be affected by the serum like I was. She shook her head no to me with her finger held up telling me to be quiet. I did as she wished, but still motioned toward the door telling her we had to leave.
Aya continued to follow me through the station until we reached the hallway where Eric’s lab was located. There were two soldiers standing guard in front of the door. I held Aya back telling her, “I’ll distract them. Here.”
I handed her the map Addison drew for us with Eric’s code written across the top. Aya nodded as I took off running toward the soldiers. They never expected me, so when I punched the first one in the face, he went down clean and easy. The other, not so much. He took the first punch pretty well as we got into a brawl right outside the door. Aya punched the code in and walked into the room.
By the time I finished with the guards, Aya had already placed a few pouches and their fuses around the room, but the door closed, and a screen turned on.
“I knew you’d be back,” Eric’s gleaming face spoke to us from another location. “Unfortunately for you, I’m already in Black Harbor, while you’re stuck out there. I’d wish you good luck, but instead, I’ll tell you good riddance.”
The screen shut off and those nozzles that were in the pit began spewing that awful gas. Tanks around the room also went off sending more of the teal fumes into the air. I immediately started coughing, gagging, but Aya was unphased.
Her scales flashed, her gills flared, and she shot her white flames at the gas, igniting the entire room. I never knew I could scale so fast. Shielding myself from the fire around the room, I broke through the wall, and the alarms sounded. That was fine by me. I flew around the building and scaled down to finish placing the rest of the pouches. I could see everyone fleeing down the cliffside toward the docks. There was a set of stairs carved into the crag. I wished that would have been pointed out to Addison and I before we decided to take a nosedive off the cliff.
Aya and I torched the place. Red and white flames burst through every open window, doorway, crack, and unsealed surface as we flew around the station. We circled and flamed the place until the sound of the pouches began to explode. Bursts of destruction sounded into the night as the Anthros fled and we reduced that station to ash and cinders.
Aya wasn’t done. She didn’t want them to be able to duplicate anything, so she charged the boat. A split shot of fire sent the Anthros into the cold water and swimming back toward the dock they just left. We left the animals, and most of the forest was still standing. They were lucky we left them with their lives, they’d have to rebuild.
We made our journey back to Black Harbor with the flames and destruction of The Rock crumbling behind us. I desperately wished Eric and Shaw were there, but I knew we had to go after them. Whatever work he’d done with Addison and the work he’d done behind her back, I was certain that he was doing it elsewhere. He wouldn’t let something like that go.
Burned out didn’t even begin to describe what I felt as I flapped endlessly to get back to Black Harbor and Addison. I had the docks in my sights. Aya had already reached the shore, slicing through the water faster than one of my motorcycles across land. I could barely catch my breath as I landed on the edge of the docks.
Something looked out of place. There was a heavy duty, armored vehicle about a hundred feet in front of me, near that abandoned warehouse. Addison. The wind carried her scent to me as I shook off my fatigue and took off running. I didn’t have enough energy to scale. The gas, plus the flight back, took more out of me than I realized.
It’s almost as if he waited. He waited for me to see her. He waited for me to see him mushing her pure black hair, and blazing green eyes into the back of that vehicle before smirking at me and ducking inside himself.
“ADDISON!” I called to her as it peeled off.
“MAVERI-” her voice was muffled as Eric’s beaming smiled replaced her face in the window.
I was going to kill him.
16
Addison
Red and white flames lit up the night sky like a celebration from yesteryear. I’d heard about those things. Lavish parties that flew fired torches across the sky to mark joy and happiness. Off in the distance, all it reminded me of was the work that I’d never do again. I wish Trevor told me there was already a process. I wish I’d never started on this path. This path where I thought I was helping people when they already had all the help they needed.
A tear rolled down my cheek; hot and full of regrets. I only wished Maverick would hurry up. I had a bad feeling that this thing wasn’t over. The one thing I knew for sure was that I was done with it. I was done with Black Harbor. I was done with The Rock. I was done being a scientist. What I created was a gateway for a madman like Eric to weaponize something meant to help Scalers, not destroy them.
My heart sank as I let out a heavy sigh. Come on Maverick…
I could see him flying toward me from a distance, but what I didn’t see was the armored utility vehicle pulling up behind me. The explosions going off were masking the sounds of everything around me.
“Everything’s going to be okay Addy.”
The voice made me cringe as I shrunk away from him, growling, “It’s Addison.”
“It could be Preston Cane, and I wouldn’t give two shits,” Eric snarled gripping my arm. He yanked me toward the car, but I refused to go peacefully.
I kneed him in the thigh, hard enough for him to let me go and for me to turn and run. The only problem was the brick wall named Shaw that stood in my way. He grabbed me by both arms to carry me toward the vehicle. I saw Maverick land at the edge of the docks, and the exhaustion pouring from his eyes nearly made me weep.
He began running toward us, but I knew he wouldn’t make it in time. Why didn’t he scale?
“ADDISON!” he shouted as they pushed my head down to get inside.
“MAVERI-” I began to shout but was muffled by the swift backhand of Eric’s open palm across my face. He pushed my head down into my lap before I could get his name out.
We drove off, but it didn’t take long before I saw the roof light up the orange glow of flame-kissed metal.
“He ca
n blow as hard as he wants, ain’t a flame in the world getting through this armor. Should have picked a stronger one,” Eric gloated, “Or maybe you should have just stuck to your kind, and none of this would be happening. You see what happens when you don’t listen to me?”
I went to say something, but when the most minimal sound came out of my mouth, he pushed my head down even harder. He only wanted to hear himself talk. That’s fine. The more he boasted, the more I thought of how I could get away from them. It would have to be once the vehicle stopped moving. Hopefully, we ended up somewhere familiar, but I didn’t count on it.
Once I heard the slow squeal of the brakes bringing us to a halt, I readied myself to break away. Unfortunately, they thought of that too as my feet weren’t even allowed to touch the ground. No matter how hard I kicked and fought, the soldiers pulled me out by my legs while Eric wrapped his arms around my torso. I struggled so much he dropped me. The amount of pain radiating through my shoulder after it crashed into the ground was blinding. I yelped and screeched as Eric commanded two soldiers to pick me up and haul me off deeper into the unknown building.
“If you just cooperate, none of this would be happening. Stop being so fucking difficult, Addy!”
Through the searing pain and gritted teeth, I corrected him, “It’s Addison, you Nitwit.”
“Lock her up until I’m ready for her,” he commanded them.
This must have been what Maverick felt like when they tossed him into that locked room in the lab.
The ground was wet. Running my fingers against it, I hoped it was water, but the murky red hue let me know otherwise. The walls were metal. There weren’t any windows. There weren’t ways in or out other than the door. There weren’t any bars allowing me to look outside. It blended into the wall. If the hinges weren’t on the inside, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to spot it at all.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been in there but the soft hissing noise, like the air was being let out of a tire, grew louder and louder. My eyes scanned the room frantically only to see that noxious teal gas spilling from vents near the ceiling. It wafted down around me. Without windows or any noticeable cracks, there was nowhere for the fumes to go. I tried holding my breath but that only forced me to inhale deeply. I didn’t know what else to do.
I choked and gagged, desperately crying for air, until finally a window in the door opened, and Eric’s face smiled through a plate of glass.
“Okay,” his voice sounded muffled, “That’s enough. Bring her out and let’s draw some blood.”
I didn’t have any fight in me as two soldiers wearing gas masks walked in and pulled me out of the room. They strapped me down to a chair with my forearms turned upward. My veins were the same color as the gas, but there were red splotches forming all over my skin. I was having some sort of reaction to it.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I managed to squawk out.
Eric laughed into the air. The men around him rolled their eyes, but they couldn’t do anything but listen to him. Shaw needed Eric for the time being, and Eric needed Shaw. They didn’t much like each other, well no one actually liked Eric. But, apparently he was necessary to the Anthro plight.
I could feel his extremely soft fingertips grazing my scalp, letting strands of my hair slip between them. I shivered and shook him away from me. He grabbed a handful of hair and yanked it back. I kept my eyes closed so I wouldn’t have to look at his face.
“You will give me the respect I deserve!” he growled.
“You have to do something to deserve it first you coward,” I hissed.
“I’ll throw you back in that room and keep running my tests. I’ll gas you then draw blood, gas you and then draw blood. I’ll keep running these tests. You will be my lucky human trial until I perfect the serum. It needs to be breathable to us without the gas masks. As you can see it’s not.”
“No shit,” I huffed. I coughed a bit and spit out a teal colored film from the back of my throat. It landed on his foot and that little display of rudeness and disrespect brought the slimmest smirk back to my face. The back of his hand wiped it clean off.
I shook my head with the slightest chuckle, “You hit like a pet.”
That infuriated him as he cracked his knuckles and began to stretch. Calling out to the soldiers, he told them, “I need the room fellas. Someone bring me the white one. I’m going to have me some fun in here.”
“White one? White what? What are you being unimaginative about now?” I snickered with the faintest hint of blood trickling down my lip.
“Oh you’ll see,” he leered.
I couldn’t take it. I didn’t want to know what he had planned for me. It was undoubtedly insane and full of vengeance as if my constant refusal of his advances warranted whatever treatment he was ready to dole out.
“Fuck you,” I mumbled as the soldiers emptied the room.
He laughed, “Oh don’t worry, by the time I’m done experimenting with you, you’re going to wish you had.”
“ERIC!” Shaw’s voice boomed in the empty space. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Eric actually jumped like he was afraid. Startled, he fumbled over his words, “She was trying to get, but I didn’t let her. She needs to be taught a lesson!”
Both Shaw and I glanced to each other trying to decipher what he was trying to say. I shrugged and rolled my eyes. I’d had enough of Eric. I was waiting for Maverick and the rest of the Scarlet Wings to bust in here, flames everywhere and burn this place to the ground.
“What she needs to be doing is perfecting those darts and those flash bombs. Figure out how to condense that gas into that teenie little metal ball like you promised, or I promise that we will have a problem,” Shaw told him sternly.
Eric huffed, “You don’t get it. I can condense it just fine. I’m worried about the effects of Anthros being exposed to the gas for extended periods of time. I need to see how she reacts so I can tweak the formula.”
“Instead of torturing her out some sick delusion of scientific advancement, how about you untie her and let her get to work? I’m sure she can help you out with whatever hiccups you’re having in the process. It is her formula to begin with right?”
Eric hesitated. I could see it in his eyes. He didn’t want to admit that he was piggybacking off of my work. Hell, even I had issues with knowing my work was based on that of an Emerald Siren. But I wasn’t weaponizing it either.
With hate brewing even deeper in his eyes, Eric untied me. Shaw stood at the door watching him untie me, watching him show me what needed to be done, and finally watching me do the work he should have finished.
17
Maverick
“Aya, please come with me,” I pleaded with the Siren holding the vial she’d taken from Addison, “I need you to help me explain the serum, the gas, Addison ... to the Heads of Clans.”
“No, no, no, we kill the gas. We done after that. I go back to normal. Quiet. No more trouble. No more Emerald Siren loose,” she said bluntly. Aya had a knack for letting others fill in the words she chose not to waste. She was stubborn with the body of a young woman but the unshakeable resolve of one who’s lived as long as she had.
Aya had existed in the dwelling under the docks for longer than any of us could remember. She only wanted to exist to barter between Scalers and Anthros. Nothing more. Nothing less. It had been decades since anyone had seen her dragon set free. This was too much, and now I was asking her to do even more than she already had. But I couldn’t go back to Bart with merely a story and memories of a woman who he wouldn’t even dare to eat. The very same woman who disrupted his lair so long ago. Aya had to help me.
“Please. We can use the rest of my men to find wherever they’re hiding and get us inside to destroy everything. Bart needs to know what we’re up against. We have to have a way to combat the gas. How did you withstand it at The Rock?”
“It’s my scales. My scales not harm me. Manipulation of scales no matt
er. Fine let’s go see Bartholomew Victor.”
Relief and familiarity washed over me as I entered Bart’s courtyard. I’d been bruised, battered, and experimented on. While I wanted nothing more than to collapse in my chambers, there was still work to be done. I escorted Aya into the room where Finch and Preston sat not too long ago exercising their indifference and hesitation. They’d be even bigger fools not to believe me now.
Bart was sitting at the table with Seth over his shoulder. I liked Seth, he was a great soldier but not a very good leader. He could follow instructions better than anyone else I knew, and I wouldn’t trust anyone with my life like I did him. But seeing him standing over Bart’s shoulder, appearing as my replacement, sent a chill down my body. I didn’t like it.
“Well that didn’t take long, I see,” I growled showing Aya where to sit.
Bart looked up to see who was disrupting him. The expression on his face was lackluster at best. He sent Seth out of the room before speaking, “How nice of you to finally join us? You know if you wanted some time off to chase some tail, you could have told me. I’m a good listener, especially if you would have told me that you needed a break. You didn’t have to come-”
“What the hell are you talking about?” my nostrils flared as the briny flavor of flames tickled the back of my throat.
He pulled out a remote control to the security cameras posted around the city. The projector turned on, playing the clips against the wall. It was of Addison and me in the lab, the moment I pulled her in to kiss her through the bars.