by Dan Koboldt
“Noah!” Mom smacked my arm.
A little smile played at the corner of Connor’s lips. “You couldn’t handle it.”
“I mean, clearly I’d have to upgrade some of the janky equipment. But I think I could make it work.”
He coughed. “Janky? You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Listen.” I put a hand on his arm, still mock-serious. “I’m going to play under your username, in your honor. People will be astonished at the skills.”
“You wouldn’t last thirty seconds.”
Mom sighed. “You boys. I’m going to see if I can find the doctor on duty.”
She walked out slowly, sort of hunched over. She seemed so old all of a sudden, so frail. Connor’s never-ending medical crises must be taking more of a toll on her than I realized. He caught me looking at her and must have seen the look on my face. He could always read it like a book.
I couldn’t quite meet his eyes, but I said, “Hey, man. Sorry about last time I came over.”
He waved me off. “It’s cool.”
“I’m just not ready to give up on what I set out to do.” I bit my lip. “No matter what I have to stomach.”
“Did something happen?”
I laughed, but without humor. “You don’t want to know.”
“Come on. I’m going to be stuck here for hours. It’s basically your job to entertain me.”
“Well, I designed this prototype that Greaves hated, so he sent it to the farm. That’s what we call the desert facility, where they send the returns and failed prototypes.”
“Okay, I’m with you.”
“Where is it?”
“Out near Gila.”
“Whoa, that’s remote.”
“Not by accident,” I said. “So Summer and I get out there, and suddenly—”
“Summer?” he interrupted.
“Oh, yeah. She’s new. I met her while out geocaching.”
“That’s the nerdy thing you do with compasses and stuff.”
I blinked. “It’s not nerdy. It’s like desert survival with GPS.”
“My mistake,” he said, with a hint of sarcasm.
“Anyway, so we get out there, and—” I paused and looked around, to make sure no one else was within earshot. Mom could be sneaky when she wanted to, but she hadn’t come back yet. She’d probably found a private place to drink one of those bottles in her purse.
“And what?” Connor demanded, impatient as ever.
“The place was massive. They must have hundreds of dragons living in captivity out there. It was . . . a lot bigger than I thought.”
“That’s what she said.”
I laughed. “Yeah. But it gets worse.”
He shook his head. “I mean, I knew you probably sucked at designing dragons, but—”
“Whatever, dude. But it gets worse. There were piles of bones out there, too. Dragon bones.”
The smile fell from his face. “Shit.”
“I know. It’s bad news.”
“What are you going to do?”
I shrugged. “Not sure I can do anything. I wasn’t even supposed to be there.”
“So they’re just leaving the dragons out there to die?” He shook his head. “That’s messed up.”
I had a dark suspicion they were putting the dragons down, not simply leaving them in the desert, but I didn’t say as much. “It is, but I can’t really afford to rock the boat. If I come under more scrutiny, they might figure out my secondary agenda.”
He sighed. “Still with that?”
“Yeah, still with that. I’m making progress, too.” I clenched my fist. “I was so close.”
“Dude, you’ve got bigger problems now. What that company is doing to dragons . . .” He trailed off and shook his head. “Somebody’s got to stop them.”
I wanted to tell him that I didn’t give a shit about dragons. The words were on the tip of my tongue. But I saw the color coming back to his cheeks and didn’t have the heart to do it to him. I mean, Connor loved dragons. “But I have no power there.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” he said.
“Hey!”
“Seriously, man. All you gotta do is find someone who does. Someone who cares more about dragons than profits.”
Something about the way he phrased it made a name pop into my head. A crazy-ass idea of a name, of a crazy-ass inventor.
Simon Redwood.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
TECH SUPPORT
Build-A-Dragon Support Chat Transcript
Operator: Li-Huei Chang
Date: March 28th
System: We appreciate your patience. A support operator will be with you in five minutes.
System: We appreciate your patience. A support operator will be with you in three minutes.
System: We appreciate your patience. A support operator will be with you in one minute.
System: We appreciate your patience. A support operator will be with you in five minutes.
Guest 14: You gotta be kidding me.
System: We appreciate your patience. A support operator will be with you in two minutes.
System: We appreciate your patience. A support operator will be with you in one minute.
Charles Smith (trainee): Hello and thank you for contacting the Build-A-Dragon company. May I have your name, please?
Guest 14: It’s Johnny.
Charles Smith (trainee): Johnny . . .
Guest 14: McMann.
Charles Smith (trainee): Good afternoon, Mr. McMann. How can I help you today?
Guest 14: Got a problem with my dragon. It’s defective.
Charles Smith (trainee): I would be happy to help you with that. Do you have your order number?
Guest 14: Yeah. 474638.
Charles Smith (trainee): Just a moment.
Charles Smith (trainee): I see that you ordered one of our attack dragons, with an intelligence upgrade. In, oh my, hot pink?
Guest 14: Right.
Guest 14: Bought it for my wife.
Charles Smith (trainee): I see.
Guest 14: She never wants nothing. I figured, how ’bout a pink dragon?
Charles Smith (trainee): Well done, sir. I’m sure your wife was pleased.
Guest 14: We just got separated.
Charles Smith (trainee): Ah.
Guest 14: Told me I was “selfish.” Then she lit out while I was at work.
Charles Smith (trainee): I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. McMann.
Guest 14: Took the good TV, too. Who’s selfish now?
Charles Smith (trainee): Did you say there was a problem with the dragon, sir?
Guest 14: Yeah. It ate the cat.
Charles Smith (trainee): What kind of cat?
Guest 14: I don’t know. My wife’s cat.
Charles Smith (trainee): How did it get into the dragon’s cage?
Guest 14: Cage?
Charles Smith (trainee): All Build-A-Dragon orders for attack dragons ship with a reinforced metal cage.
Guest 14: Oh, that. We ain’t using it.
Charles Smith (trainee): May I ask why, sir?
Guest 14: Had to keep letting the dragon out and putting it back. Lot of work.
Charles Smith (trainee): If you read the dragon ownership manual, you’ll see that we recommend keeping the dragon in its cage. Particularly for this model.
Guest 14: Well, she’s real pissed about the cat.
Charles Smith (trainee): Did you discipline the dragon, afterward?
Guest 14: Damn right I did. Haven’t fed it since.
Charles Smith (trainee): That’s not quite the guideline we’ve laid out in the manual. May I ask how long ago this occurred?
Guest 14: ’Bout three days.
Charles Smith (trainee): To clarify, sir. You haven’t fed your dragon in three days?
Guest 14: Right.
Charles Smith (trainee): Sir, our dragons must be fed on a regular basis. It says so in the manual.
Guest 14
: Never got around to reading that. It was, like, a lot of pages.
Charles Smith (trainee): Forty-two pages to be precise, sir. But that was important information.
Guest 14: Who cares? She don’t want the dragon anyway. I’ll send it back, and you guys can put it down or whatever.
Charles Smith (trainee): I understand, sir. Can I ask what the dragon is doing now?
Guest 14: He’s sleeping on the . . . oh. Guess he’s right here. God, they’re quiet when they want to be!
Charles Smith (trainee): I’m sure the cat would agree, sir.
Charles Smith (trainee): Did you say the dragon is right beside you?
Guest 14: Yeah.
Charles Smith (trainee): Mr. McMann, are we on a secure channel?
Guest 14: What do you mean?
Charles Smith (trainee): Can the dragon see your computer screen?
Guest 14: Guess it can. So what?
Charles Smith (trainee): It’s just that you ordered one with the intelligence upgrade, sir.
Guest 14: Well, I still want to return it.
Charles Smith (trainee): That’s not what I meant, sir. I’m concerned that the dragon might have followed our conversation.
Guest 14: What’s your point?
Charles Smith (trainee): My point, Mr. McMann, is that you have a fully grown attack dragon beside you. And it may have learned that you’re planning its demise.
Guest 14: Think I’m afraid of this little guy? Doubt he weighs a buck twenty-five.
Charles Smith (trainee): Our attack dragons are bred for killing. A single one can take down a mature lion.
Guest 14: Bull**** [off-color content suppressed]
Charles Smith (trainee): I’m quite serious, sir.
Guest 14: For real? Didn’t know that.
Charles Smith (trainee): Do you have the Build-A-Dragon sedation kit with you?
Guest 14: Yep. Got it right here.
Charles Smith (trainee): Open it up, if you would.
Guest 14: Okay. What is this, a pill?
Charles Smith (trainee): It’s a suppository.
Guest 14: What!?
Charles Smith (trainee): A suppository. You have to put it—
Guest 14: I know what a goddamn suppository is.
Charles Smith (trainee): Glad to hear it, sir.
Guest 14: But why would you do that?
Charles Smith (trainee): We’ve found it discourages returns.
Guest 14: No shit.
Charles Smith (trainee): Good one, sir.
Guest 14: That wasn’t what . . . never mind. I’ll give it a shot.
[Brief period of inactivity]
Guest 14: No dice.
Charles Smith (trainee): I’m sorry, sir?
Guest 14: Couldn’t do it. All I did was piss him off.
Charles Smith (trainee): Try holding him by the safety harness.
Guest 14: Huh?
Charles Smith (trainee): The safety harness, sir. It should give you a better grip on the dragon.
Guest 14: You mean the leather and chain thing?
Charles Smith (trainee): Exactly, sir.
Guest 14: Yeah . . . I don’t have that.
Charles Smith (trainee): I’m sorry?
Guest 14: My soon-to-be-ex-wife dropped off the dragon this morning. She didn’t give me the harness.
Charles Smith (trainee): Sir, are you saying that you have no way to restrain your dragon?
Guest 14: Nope.
Charles Smith (trainee): Uh . . .
Guest 14: He’s kinda staring at me.
Charles Smith (trainee): I must advise you to vacate the area as quickly as possible.
Guest 14: He’s jlkkl,.,kllk/////////
Charles Smith (trainee): Mr. McMann?
Charles Smith (trainee): Sir?
[Brief period of inactivity]
Charles Smith (trainee): It sounds like we’ve resolved your issue. I’ll be closing the chat window now, sir.
Charles Smith (trainee): I’ve put in a request to have another copy of the manual sent to you. Thank you for choosing The Build-A-Dragon Company.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Celebrity Stalker
Back when the Dragon Genome Project wrapped up, a dozen startups were established, all of them vying to create a living creature from the recently assembled dragon genome. But Simon Redwood had a key advantage: access to a curated version of the dragon reference that was much higher quality than the public release. Yet even with that, the eggs he created from it were sterile. It seemed like no one would be able to bring the creature of myth to life.
Right up until Redwood built his Codex. That wire-and-plastic fire hazard ensconced at the heart of the God Machine made dragon eggs viable. I still hadn’t figured out how. Evelyn was fuzzy about the details.
My guess is that it had something to do with the epigenetic code—various chemical modifications of DNA that didn’t change its sequence, but controlled which genes were activated, and when. The epigenetic code was like Mother Nature’s special sauce: a series of subtle changes required for life. It would take a half-crazy genius to figure out how to replicate it.
After Robert Greaves had ousted him from the management team, Redwood basically took a leave of absence and retreated to his home out in the desert. That’s where I’d have to find him.
The problem, of course, was that no one seemed to know where he lived, and asking too many questions about him might draw attention.
Luckily, Simon Redwood’s status as a kind of celebrity meant I didn’t have to do all the legwork myself. I disabled the “safe search” options on my phone and plunged into the dark, obsessive corners of the internet.
Deep in a forum on celebrity stalking, I found my first clue: some nut calling herself “FutureMrsRedwood” had tracked down the man’s residence in Arrowhead Ranch. The post was a couple of years old, but that was about as warm a lead as I could get. A late-night, caffeine-fueled data-mining operation followed. To his credit, Redwood surfaced from the waters of insanity long enough to guard his privacy rather well. I couldn’t find a single property registered in his name in Arrowhead Ranch, nor anything with obvious ties to Reptilian Corporation.
I dug deeper.
Arrowhead Ranch’s elite, gated neighborhoods had evolved and expanded into a few distinct communities over the past two decades. The most desirable and exclusive of these was the Enclave. Roughly speaking, the cheapest house there cost about ten times what I’d paid for my condo. Yowza. Now, to the satellite imagery. God bless all those spy satellites with their high-resolution cameras. Twenty or thirty houses sprawled inside the Enclave’s luxurious borders. I pored over them, looking for something that fit my mental image of the old kook.
Most of them had the immaculately trimmed hedges and perfect landscaping that spoke to hired gardeners. Redwood wouldn’t have manicured lawns or sculpted stone lions. All of these did. Then I spotted a stone mansion set apart from the others, surrounded by rugged terrain in the southernmost edge of the Enclave. I’d almost missed it because there wasn’t even a driveway leading up to the house, just an old gravel road hardly wide enough for my Tesla. Between that, the haphazard landscaping, and the general feel of abandonment to the place, I figured I’d found the home of our company’s founder.
Who probably didn’t want to be found.
Next up, infiltration. Gated communities were fine and good until you had to reach someone on the other side. Quietly. The ironic thing, though, was that the gates only restricted vehicle access on the main road. They counted on the rugged desert terrain to deter anyone from trying to enter on foot. Fortunately, negotiating such terrain had recently become part of my skill set.