by Dan Koboldt
“Yep, I think he found it,” I said.
We crested a ridge, and Octavius led us right to a metal trail marker sign, the kind that told you how far it was back to the parking lot.
“Oh. It’s just a mile marker,” Summer said.
Our watches beeped, though, which meant we were in the right location. And Octavius kept dipping his head down at the sign. I searched the ground around it but saw nothing. “I don’t see anything.”
Octavius gave a sharp trill.
I crouched to inspect the sign itself but saw nothing on the front. I craned my neck to look at the back of it and saw the little metal tube. It looked like stainless steel, and shinier than the sign’s cheap metal.
“No way,” I breathed. Hidden in plain sight. Geocache designers loved to get cute like that. I gave it a little tug, and the tube came free from the back of the sign. Two circular magnets had held it in place.
“Bingo,” I held it up for Summer to see.
“Are you serious?”
I found the tube’s cap and flipped it open. A slender, flat piece of metal slid out, with coordinates stamped plainly on the front.
“Damn, so he found it after all.” She gave Octavius a considering look. “Smart little dragon, isn’t he?”
I scratched him behind his ears. “That he is,” The smartest one in the world.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Instincts
We hiked almost a mile to reach the next marker. The day was heating up by then, and the waves off the desert rocks promised a scorcher.
“So, you’re working for the enemy,” Summer said.
“Since when is Build-A-Dragon the enemy?”
“They’re messing with nature.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re still into that organic, tree-hugging stuff.”
She glanced back long enough to narrow her eyes at me. “If by ‘organic’ you mean plants not genetically modified or doused with pesticides, then yes.”
“I don’t think our dragons are harmful to nature. They can’t even survive in the wild.”
“Then why do you make them?” she asked.
I shrugged. “People want them,” I said. I should do more to defend my employer, but my heart wasn’t in it.
“People wanting to buy something doesn’t make it right,” she said.
Her watch beeped before I could reply.
“Is that the waypoint?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
My watch beeped a second later. That wasn’t good, because I stood slightly in front of her. The terrain was already interfering with the GPS.
I grunted. “I’m worried we’re already off. But it should be close.”
We began an informal grid search, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Usually it was something man-made: a coffee can, a birdhouse, a little statuette, something like that. I’m not the giving up type, but after fifteen minutes I was losing hope fast. Summer’s shoulders had slumped a little. She started checking her watch again.
Then Octavius let out a trill of victory. He flitted back to circle my head, then flew over to a place in the canyon wall.
“We’ve got something!” I called. Summer and Riker hurried over.
The waypoint was a metal spike, the kind they used in old railroad tracks. Totally driven into the rock wall, with a face about an inch across. It took a tiny dragon to spot something like this. I leaned close to it, saw the faint outline of typescript, and knew we had it.
“This is it,” I called over my shoulder. “Ready for the coordinates?”
“Hit me,” Summer said.
The numbers were etched in tiny, block-like print. Summer punched them into her watch while I read them off. We did a double-check, just to be sure.
“Three quarters of a mile,” Summer said.
“We’d better get moving,” I said. I rubbed Octavius behind his ears. “Good eye, little buddy!”
He took off and zoomed around us as we hiked up. Maybe I praised him too much, but honestly, we probably wouldn’t have found it without him. And now he was really lording it over Riker. Gliding back and forth, humming a little song to himself that sounded uncannily like “We are the Champions” by Queen. I’d have said something, but after Summer’s comments about Build-A-Dragon, I wanted him to rub it in.
I’m sure that’s why Riker was so eager to sniff out the next marker. I let Octavius fly ahead, but the pig wasn’t about to let the dragon be the hero again. He bounded ahead, too, ignoring Summer’s calls for him to slow down. We picked up our pace, but the animals were both faster across the rocky terrain. The cliffs rose on each side of us, too, not quite a box canyon but close. Riker disappeared through a switchback ahead. Then we heard him give a sharp bark. A surprised, fearful sound.
“Shit!” Summer said. She ran into the switchback. I hustled in right behind her, not knowing what to expect.
She stopped so fast that I almost crashed into her. Her body had gone stock-still. Riker’s snort became a low whine. He was about six feet in front of her, in a little cut-out in the canyon wall. I didn’t know what the problem was until I heard it. The dry, quivering buzz that terrified anyone who spent time in the desert.
Rattlesnake.
“Easy, easy now,” I whispered. I put my hands on Summer’s shoulders and pulled her back. Slowly. We didn’t stop until there were ten feet between us and the rattler. Unfortunately, Riker cowered on the far side of it, penned up against the canyon wall. He had nowhere to go. The rattler lay coiled up between him and the trail.
Summer made a soft little sound, almost like a sob. “We have to help him!”
I scanned the ground, desperate to find a stick or something. No dice. I could try smashing it with a rock. That was risky, though. It would lash out at something. Probably the pig. The last thing I wanted to do was make it look like my fault. If that thing bit him . . . well, I doubted we could get him to a vet in time.
“Damn!” I hated feeling helpless. Especially in front of her.
Riker feinted left and then right, looking for a way out. The rattler’s head moved with him. It uncoiled slowly, closing in for the attack. Its black tongue flicked in and out. I wondered if I should turn Summer away, so she wouldn’t see it happen. But I couldn’t move. It was like watching a car wreck in slow motion.
The rattler rose up and reared back.
“No!” Summer cried.
I sucked in a sharp breath and braced myself. Then I felt a brush of air on my cheek. A scaly missile shot past me in a blur.
Octavius.
He slammed into the rattler like a meteor. The momentum carried both dragon and snake to the ground against the hot red stone. It happened so fast, I couldn’t move. Octavius came up with the snake’s neck in his jaws. He set his feet and wrenched it in a figure eight. Crack. The snake went limp, and the rattling faded. Summer and I stood there in stunned silence. Octavius rammed the rattler’s head against the rock wall a couple of times for good measure, then spat it out. I scrabbled forward, grabbed its tail, and slung it away.
Riker bounded to Summer. She crouched to hug him. I wanted to do the same thing. It’s not like I loved the mangy animal, but she clearly did. It was a tender thing to watch. It softened me on her.
I held out my arm, and Octavius flew to it. “Where did that come from?” I asked.
He trilled softly at me, as if not certain himself. God, but I was proud of the little guy.
Summer came over, still cradling a trembling Riker. For the first time, she looked Octavius right in the eyes. “Thank you.”
Octavius basked in her gaze, practically preening.
“Is he all right?” I asked, meaning Riker. He’d tucked his snout under her arm.
“Traumatized, but he’ll survive.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Yeah.”
We didn’t even discuss the idea of continuing. We agreed to meet the following Saturday to try and finish. I let her mark the spot in her watch,
but sort of forgot to save it in my own. Unless she was a horrible person—a prospect that seemed less and less likely—she’d realize I couldn’t continue without her. It meant we’d get together again, maybe on purpose this time.
Octavius had his instincts. I had mine.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Icarus
I waited and waited for some fallout with the attack dragon incident, but the hammer never came down. Which I found very strange. It’s almost like the executives wanted to pretend the incident had never happened. The PR department must have gone into overdrive, to put out that fire before it started.
Between that and the imminent test run of my flier model, I couldn’t focus on anything else. Custom orders in my queue started piling up. Korrapati and Wong, to their credit, helped pick up the slack. When I got four or five designs deep, they’d sneak up and grab one, and get the order done without so much as a word.
Every time I opened up DragonDraft3D, I ended up looking at my Condor prototype. I pored over it, looking for flaws other than the ones I’d put in. There were none. The dragon was perfect, and if I wowed them as much as I expected, it would win an exception from the stupidly arbitrary points system. More importantly, it should give me what I needed to prove that Connor’s mutation was pathogenic. The physical manifestation wouldn’t appear for some time, but under a microscope, the muscle fibers would look abnormal. As for what would happen if and when we sold fliers that slowly degenerated, well . . . that was a problem for future Noah.
On the day of the demonstration, we met in the coliseum-style outdoor gallery. Evelyn had sent a company-wide invite and wanted to this to be a flagship event for her department. No pressure. Most designers were present, of course, but a lot of the executives showed up, too. Sales and Customer Service sent a few people. We even had a couple of dragon-tamers from Herpetology on hand. They stood over to the side, away from everyone else. Their appearance set them apart, too: dungarees and wide-brimmed hats didn’t mix with the tailored suits in the stands.
All of those were welcome surprises. The armed guards were another matter entirely. They cradled automatic rifles and stood off to one side, speaking quietly with Ben Fulton. I tried not to think too much about their purpose here.
It might seem insane to go outside in Arizona in the middle of the afternoon, at least to outsiders. But the heat was good for the hatchlings. Besides, if you lived in the Southwest, you developed a certain tolerance to it. At least, that’s what Arizonians told ourselves.
The hatchery staffers wheeled the eggs out on sturdy carts. They seemed larger than I remembered. God, I hoped none of the bigwigs would notice. If they knew how far I’d pushed past the restrictions, they might scrap this demonstration before it even got started. The hatchers team-lifted their eggs into a massive stick-and-straw nest. The materials were hardly necessary, but the people at Build-A-Dragon liked a good show.
Even as I watched them, one of the eggs quivered. The dragon inside was wakening, growing restless. I felt the surge of nervous anticipation I always got before a prototype hatching. “I hope this goes well,” I whispered.
“Don’t worry, Noah,” Korrapati said.
“Yes, you design good dragons,” Wong added.
“Thanks, guys,” I said. It was good of them to come out and support me. O’Connell and the Frogman hadn’t bothered. Then again, if things went well, my prototype would be replacing their Pterodactyl, so maybe it was for the best. I had a lot riding on this demonstration, though. If it went well, I’d probably get free rein with design resources, and undoubtedly the invitation to develop another prototype. The promise of freedom beckoned.
Evelyn sat with the execs, looking so like them in her tailored suit that I almost didn’t notice her. She straightened the hemline of her skirt every few seconds. My eyes slid past her to the man in the middle, the only one not in a suit. Robert Greaves lounged in the direct sun, totally at ease. Dressed all in black, too. Making an open statement that the heat didn’t bother him.
Everyone in the gallery was watching him, though they tried not to show it. I did, too, out of a sort of morbid fascination. Evelyn acted as the go-between for between him and the designers. Not that we couldn’t approach him on our own, but I still hadn’t worked up the nerve. Today might be the first time we interacted directly. I hoped it would go well. There was, unfortunately, no sign of Simon Redwood. I felt a twinge of disappointment at that, even though it wasn’t surprising. Rumor around the coffee machine was that no one had seen the guy in over a year.
The first egg rocked back and forth, tearing my thoughts away from Redwood. A hairline split cracked it almost from top to bottom. Smaller fractures spiderwebbed across. Then the egg shattered into a hundred sky-blue fragments, and I laid eyes on my newest creation.
It extended dark-green wings, first. Then its whole body uncoiled. The head came up, and the dragon met my gaze with narrowed eyes. Of everyone there, it looked at me. Two more of the eggs began trembling.
Two hatchery staffers approached with the meat tray. I’d wanted to do this part myself—to make sure that everyone knew whose dragon design it was—but Evelyn overruled me. She said that any deviation from hatching protocol carried a risk. We wanted everything to be optimized for success.
The dragon watched the meat-bringers with an unreadable expression. It waited until they’d retreated before standing up. No shakiness to the legs. There shouldn’t have been, with the muscle tone I’d given it, but I was relieved just the same.
The dragon folded its wings along its body and climbed out of the nest. It moved with effortless grace, like a snake weaving through the grass. I drew in a sharp breath and hazarded a glance at Greaves. He’d put his phone away. He was watching. Meanwhile, the dragon tore through two pounds of raw meat like a starved hyena. Ten, maybe twelve seconds until the tray was empty.
Now all the executives were riveted. A couple of them even cast a nervous look towards the security guards. These were all ex-military types, and they held their M-16s with the practiced air of readiness. We shouldn’t need them with a flying model, but the company took no chances.
A dragon won’t fly unless it wants to. Build-A-Dragon had learned that the hard way. The old adage about kicking a bird out of the nest just didn’t apply. To get a dragon off the ground, you had to put something that it wanted up in the air. Mourning doves usually did the trick. Their pear-shaped bodies and explosive, panicked flights were like a siren’s call to apex predators.
Normally, the hatchery staff handled this part, but Evelyn had gotten permission for me to do it instead. I stood at the edge of the field holding her tablet and trying to look confident. This was my chance to prove myself, not just to the rest of the team but to the company leadership.
The other dragons were starting to crack out of their eggs, but the first one had dried its wings and eaten. He was ready. I sent a release signal to one of the cages. A red strobe light flashed atop one of the steel boxes at the edge of the field. The dragon’s head swiveled toward it. Then two doves shot up and out, shedding white feathers.
“Go get ’em,” I whispered.
But the dragon just watched the doves fly past.
Oh, God. I’d been so focused on designing a dragon that could fly, I hadn’t considered whether or not it would even want to. I thought I could leave that to instinct, but biology was never certain. If they didn’t fly, this whole demo would crash and burn. And here I was, standing in front of everyone like a dumbass. I cursed my own stupidity.
Then the dragon’s scaled legs bent and it leaped into the sky.
Its gossamer wings flapped faster than I’d have thought possible. Faster than even the simulator had predicted. It was twenty feet off the ground and still climbing. Forty feet. Far higher than the doves, which had leveled off and made a beeline for the desert horizon. The dragon glided over them, folded its wings, and dove like a falcon. He snapped his jaws around the first bird and grabbed the second with a clawed foot.
“Sweet,” I breathed. The crowd in the stands murmured approval.
Three or four dragons had broken out of the shell. Hatchery staffers moved around to feed them. But I had the executives’ attention, so I sent another release signal.
Two more doves made a mad dash for the sky. The dragon banked smoothly and went for them, caught them lower this time. Didn’t bother eating them, either, but dropped them down for his siblings in the nest.
I’d set up something special for the third cage. A real challenge. One of the most despised birds known to woodlands, a bundle of noise and distraction that irritated hunters and outdoorsmen to no end. A bird with which I still had some unfinished business.
The red-headed woodpecker.
I hit the release. The woodpecker yelped as it flew out; the raucous cry echoed across the yard like a challenge. The dragon reacted instantly, twisting over and back like a swimmer at the wall.
The woodpecker flew better than the doves, though. More cleverly, too. It flitted to the edge of its cage. Then to the side of a stone column. Rather than making a blind break for freedom, it zigzagged across the yard, making that call again. The sound set my teeth on edge.
The dragon twisted and turned in pursuit, not quite able to catch up without crashing into the columns.
Come on, catch him! I’d given the dragon every advantage, but the woodpecker continued to elude it. Continued making its cry, too, which rapidly began to feel like the taunts of a bully.
At last, the dragon gave up and broke off its pursuit. Worse, it shot over the edge of the coliseum roof and out of view.
“Son of a bitch!” I said under my breath. Well, mostly under my breath.
“Where did it go?” Korrapati asked.
“Over the rim,” Wong told her.
The woodpecker had been a huge gamble, and I’d blown it. We’d not only lost the dragon but managed to make the entire design team look like morons.
The woodpecker poked its head out from behind a stone, then took off in the opposite direction. It landed on the edge of the coliseum roof. Paused there, just to cackle at us. The urge to kill that thing burned inside of me. If I’d had so much as a slingshot, I’d have used it. The armed guards fingered the handles of their automatic rifles. Part of me wished they’d open fire.