Domesticating Dragons

by Dan Koboldt

  I parked the Tesla in a bank parking lot between a Mercedes and another Model S. I figured it’d be as safe there as anywhere else. Luxury car camouflage.

  The Tesla wasn’t the only thing I wanted to keep out of sight. The courier’s jumpsuit I’d ordered from the internet was olive green—a recognizable corporate color that just happened to blend in with the desert landscape across the road. I tucked a narrow rectangular package—completely empty—under my arm and plunged down a narrow trail into the scrub-brush. My GPS watch started beeping, a soft, persistent tone. I had it on passive tracking mode, with Redwood’s house already plugged in. I wouldn’t even have to look at it—the beeps increased in frequency while I stayed on track.

  On a difficulty scale, the buffer land around the Enclave scored closer to “picturesque” than “challenging.” Compared to some of the terrain I’d crossed for my geocaches, it was a walk in the park. Hell, I didn’t even need my hiking boots. What a relief that I’d not brought Octavius. He’d never let me live it down.

  Stucco walls loomed ahead, and the beeping of my watch reached a fever pitch. I’d come within a hundred yards. I hit the reset button on my watch and skirted southeast. Where was the door? I was focused so much on it that I didn’t see the dragon until the last second. Its brown-and-green scales made it hard to see against the landscape.

  “Whoa!” I froze. “Uh, hey there.”

  The dragon made no reply but crouched with a jaguar’s readiness. Its dark eyes narrowed. That, and half a dozen other telltale signs told me this wasn’t one of our domesticated models.

  It’s a prototype. Like one of the dragons Evelyn had shown me when I first interviewed at Reptilian Corporation. I forced myself to meet its gaze, then I backed off. Nice and slow. Hoping, praying that it wouldn’t follow. Its tongue flicked out once, twice. Then it rolled into a slow, steady step toward me.

  I kept backing up and reached behind me to flail around for the boulder I’d just passed. If I slipped around it and out of view, I’d have a few seconds out of the dragon’s view to make a break for it. The only good thing about the wild prototypes is that they had short legs. They could run fast in one direction but weren’t good at turns. I might be able to zigzag away fast enough to reach the road.

  My hand found the edge of the boulder. I edged around it, on the cusp of my break for safety. A flicker of movement from behind made me stop short. A second dragon crept into view, cutting off my escape and boxing me in with the first one. Almost like they planned it. Son of a bitch. I scooped up a fist-sized rock from the ground and tried to look threatening. They stared at me, tongues flicking in and out.

  A whistle shattered the quiet of our little standoff. A human whistle. The dragons both cocked their heads at it, then bounded off in unison. Startled me doing it, too. I turned back toward the house, where a man in an honest-to-god brown bathrobe stumbled toward me on shaky feet. I watched in paralyzed fascination as he shuffled closer to me.

  “The hell are you doing here?” he demanded. The bathrobe was stained and torn; it couldn’t be less than a decade old. But the grizzled white face rang familiar to me, as if seeing someone I’d known in elementary school.

  Oh my God. It’s him.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  The Founder

  For a minute, I didn’t know what to say. This was a moment I’d been waiting for most of my adult life. I’d daydreamed about how it would go, and what I might say. How I’d impress him.

  Somehow I forgot all that and blurted out an obvious question. “Are you Simon Redwood?”

  He gave me a guarded look. “Who’s asking?”

  “I’m Noah Parker.”

  “Never heard of you.”

  “I work at your company. In Evelyn Chang’s group?”

  “It’s not my company anymore.”

  It’ll always be your company, I didn’t say. “I have some bad news, actually. Turns out that Build-A-Dragon is doing some horrible things.”

  He snorted. “What else is new? That’s what happens when the money-grubbers get involved, son. People sell out.”

  “But they’re killing dragons.”

  “What?”

  “They’re—”

  He held up a hand to stop me. “Not here.”

  “It’s all right. I came alone.”

  He scanned the sky, a nervous rabbit wary of hawks. “They have eyes and ears everywhere. Satellites, you know?”

  “Okay.” I didn’t think satellites could eavesdrop on conversations, but I figured this was his show. I bit my tongue.

  He spun and marched back the way he’d come. “Safer to talk in the house.”

  I glanced back the way the dragons had gone but didn’t see them. Their natural coloring matched the Arizona landscape surprisingly well. Idly, I wondered how many of our native reptiles had gone into the DGP. Evelyn would know that by rote; she was good with numbers.

  I stumbled on a rock and nearly fell into the waiting spines of a cactus. Focus on the here and now. Redwood lurched over rocks and around bushes, his bathrobe flapping behind him like he was an escaping mental patient. Which he might very well be, for all I knew. His great stone house loomed overhead. The south wall bore no windows or markings of any sort, but Redwood marched right at it like we were going in. And then he walked right through the wall and disappeared like a goddamn ghost.

  I skidded to a halt. “What the—”

  I’m hallucinating. Maybe because of the heat. That seemed like the only rational explanation until Redwood’s head appeared out of the stone. “You coming?”

  The stone around his head shimmered. I reached out and my hand went right through the wall. Like it wasn’t even there. Holy crap, a holographic door. It matched the house’s exterior color and texture perfectly. I put a foot through and forced my body to follow. Darkness enveloped me on the other side of the threshold. I took off my sunglasses and paused to let my eyes adjust.

  Redwood grimaced. “Whoops, I should have warned you about the hologram.”

  I couldn’t resist sticking my hand through the opaque screen. It disappeared up to the wrist, and the bright sun on the other side warmed my fingers. “That is so cool.”

  Metal screeched as Redwood yanked open a battered white screen door that clashed rather nauseatingly with the house’s aesthetic. He held it open. I followed him in and let it creak shut behind me.

  “You might need some WD-40 on that,” I said.

  “Ha! You know what the WD stands for?”

  I grinned. “Water displacement.”

  “I’ll be damned, you are an engineer.”

  So much preparation, all for this moment. Part of me still couldn’t believe I was in Simon Redwood’s house. The storm door led to a long hallway lined with doors, all of them closed. Not just closed but bolted shut with biometric locks. Who knew what treasures lay on the other side? The hallway opened into an alcove with stairs leading up. I had to step around a leather-and-metal contraption that looked like a backpack with a pair of charred mufflers at the bottom. A pair of antique pilot’s glasses dangled tantalizingly over the corner of it, their lenses coated with desert dust.

  Oh my God. “Is that—is that a jetpack?”

  Redwood marched up the stairs without answering. I fought the urge to snap a photo with my phone and ascended behind him. The staircase opened into a huge, bright atrium. Sunlight streamed in through the far wall, which was entirely made of glass. Cactus-topped dunes rolled away at a slight incline—we must be facing away from the highway—and I wagered the sunsets must have been pretty spectacular. I could see the route I’d hiked in from the highway, and the boulder where I’d encountered the dragons. No wonder he saw me coming.

  But the real question was whether he’d simply witnessed what happened, or somehow ordered those dragons to intercept me. Wild dragons didn’t take anyone’s orders, or so I thought. Granted, something had seemed different about those prototypes. In the early days we’d always kept dragons isolated becaus
e of their innate aggression. This was the first time I’d seen a pair together. Not just in proximity but working as a coordinated team. Like pack hunters.

  “What exactly do you do for the company?” Redwood settled into a sandalwood chair that faced the window-wall and gestured vaguely toward the matched one beside it.

  I honestly didn’t think the thing would hold my weight, but it didn’t even creak as I settled into it. There were no joints or seams or visible bits of hardware.

  “I’m a genetic engineer. I design the customs and the new prototypes.”

  He grunted. “Hack jobs.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You’re just a code-tweaker.” He stared off at the dunes, as if I wasn’t even there. “Developing the first prototype, now that was a challenge.”

  I bristled at his casual dismissal of what Evelyn and her entire group did. “Well, we did crack domestication.”

  “That was you, huh? Never saw the point of it myself.”

  “Not everyone wants a pet that’ll kill them as soon as look at them,” I said.

  “Dragons aren’t meant to be pets.”

  “That’s funny, coming from a guy who owns a couple.”

  His brow furrowed, as if my jab confused him. “Oh, the ones outside. I don’t own them. They just showed up here, one day.”

  “They’re ferals? That’s impossible.”

  “Why, because they’re man-made?” He snorted. “Thought you knew genetics.”

  I bristled even more at that, because I did know genetics. I knew it well enough to carry out my own little experiments in the dragons I designed. My few little acts of rebellion were nothing compared to Build-A-Dragon’s overall production. If enough dragons were left to die, some might manage to survive. “Unless there were compensating mutations. Or some rare, hidden resiliency.”

  “Given how many species went into the Dragon Reference, it’s inevitable,” Redwood said. “Nature likes to find a way.”

  “How many are there? Just those two?”

  “No, I’ve seen others. They’re drawn to the desert. And to me.” He said this as a simple fact, not trying to brag or anything.

  The meaning behind it struck me like a sock full of pennies. Either some fey biological undercurrent drew wild dragons to their inventor, or the dragons somehow knew. Somehow were aware of Redwood, and where to find him, and felt that they should go there. The two that had ambushed me weren’t screwing around, either. They sensed a threat and had just about eliminated it. Damn.

  It was a vote of confidence, the dragons protecting him. It meant they trusted Redwood, and that made me realize that I should, too.

  “Mr. Redwood, I came because I need your help. The company’s got this desert facility.”

  “The Farm.”

  “You know about it?”

  “It was my idea.”

  It took me aback to think that Redwood himself would have conceived the place. “It was?”

  “Of course. Made sense to have few state-of-the-art pens to observe our creations away from prying eyes.”

  Well, he’s got the state-of-the-art part right. “Well, the company’s grown a lot since you were running things. And so has their dumping ground for problematic dragons.”

  His face darkened, but his eyes narrowed as if I’d confirmed something rather than broken the news. “How certain are you?”

  I told him everything: my Condor design, the field trial. The huge scale of Build-A-Dragon’s desert facility, and the pile of bones nearby. He let me talk for the most part, interrupting only now and then with a gruff question. Nothing I said shocked him, but by the end of it he’d fallen silent.

  “So Connor wants me to tell someone else what’s going on. Someone with actual clout,” I finished.

  He barked a laugh. “And you think that’s me?”

  “You started the company, didn’t you?”

  “I did,” Redwood agreed, but he sighed. “It wasn’t supposed to become a corporate monstrosity.”

  “What did you want it to be?” I asked.

  “A workshop of sorts,” Redwood said. “A place where we could dream up more solutions to the world’s problems.”

  God, I would kill to work with him at a place like that. “So what happened?”

  “Same thing that usually does. People figured money was more important than anything else. And based on what you’re telling me, it’s only getting worse.”

  “I’d try to stop it myself, but I’ve got zero power in that place.”

  “That’s no accident. Greaves designs companies to keep down the little people. Reinforces the chain of command, with him at the top.”

  I ran my hand through my hair, because he was right. “I didn’t know who else to tell. I figured, it’s your company.”

  “Used to be my company.”

  “Still, you’ve got to have some sway there.”

  Redwood harrumphed. “Not as much as you think.”

  “People will listen to you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re Simon Redwood. You probably have a lot more fans than you realize. Greaves can’t ignore you.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” He gave me a crooked grin. “Besides, I owe him a lump or two.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Moves

  I left Redwood’s compound feeling better than I had in a while. It was like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. You couldn’t ask for a better ally than Simon Redwood. He knew this company and Robert Greaves better than anyone. And he could go right to the board. And if not, he could call a press conference. Reporters would fall all over themselves in the rush to get a moment with Simon Redwood.

  My own glow after basking in the crazy old coot’s presence finally gave me the confidence to ask Summer out. She and I had done the geocaching thing a few times, but most of those outings ended up with some kind of natural disaster. So I went out on a limb, and asked her to come over for dinner. Granted, it took me half an hour of writing and rewriting the text until I was happy with it. I held my breath and hit Send.

  Waiting for your phone to ring is like self-inflicted torture. You want to go on with your day and forget about it, but you can’t. Then you have that odd moment of panic: maybe your message didn’t go through. Maybe your phone switched off or the volume was down, and you’re missing that all-important return call right now.

  I wanted to call Connor and tell him about meeting Simon Redwood. He’d gotten out of the hospital, but the doctors warned that the sort of medical collapse he’d experienced might rear its ugly head again. He was still convalescing at home under Mom’s somewhat-too-attentive care. She wouldn’t want me to get him all riled up about anything, so that would have to wait.

  Waiting. It was the absolute worst. I tried reminding myself that Summer had a regular job and probably wouldn’t answer me before she clocked out. That didn’t help, especially when that little voice kept telling me she might not write back at all.

  I was on my way home, driving with the windows down and Steve Perry playing on the radio, when Summer texted back. The Tesla’s computer took the liberty of reading it off to me.

  Sounds like fun! Can I bring Riker?

  I told her fine—Octavius would be disappointed, otherwise—and gave her directions to my condo. Which I nearly killed myself preparing for her arrival. The whole time, I kept sweating with nervous anticipation. But when I opened the door for Summer, it was totally worth it.

  “Hey guys,” I said.

  “Hi.” She wore a little summer dress in peach and white. Desert colors, but softer somehow. A waft of vanilla and roses swept across my face. She looked even better than I remembered. It was funny how everything between us had changed. This was a date, and we both knew it.

  Riker was there too, on a leash, already snuffling the threshold of the door as if he smelled truffles.

  I grinned, and hoped it looked welcoming rather than awestruck. “Come on in.”

  She stepp
ed across the threshold so I could close the door and crouched beside Riker to unclip his leash. “Is it all right if I . . . ?”

  “Go for it,” I said. “He probably wants to find Octavius anyway.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Hiding.”

  “Aww, he’s shy all of a sudden?”

  “Oh, not at all. This is his favorite game.”

  “All right.” She took the pig’s snout in her hands. “Riker, find the dragon!”

  Riker yipped and ran into the kitchen, his nose already working the floor. My eyes met Summer’s. They were this perfect shade of green, and she’d put on some dark eyeliner that really brought them out.

  Oh, the date was so on.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” she said. She hugged me, and excitement warred with the disappointment that she hadn’t kissed me instead. Or that I hadn’t been brave enough to kiss her. Maybe that kiss hadn’t meant anything. Maybe it was just her way of being nice, to someone who just found out his employer had been lying to him about almost everything.

  I wasn’t giving up yet, though. “Want something to drink?”

  “What do you have?”

  “Everything,” I said, because it was true. I had at least one of every juice, soda, beer, and wine that she could possibly want. The mini fridge was full to bursting. “But I was thinking margaritas.”

  She drew in a sharp breath. “Oooh . . .” she said, in the way that meant I shouldn’t, but I’m going to.

  “Heh. That’s a yes.” I headed back to the kitchen, where Riker snuffled around the pantry door. “Not there,” I told him.

  He moved over to the base of the refrigerator.

  “Now you’re getting warm,” I said.

  He reared up on his hind legs but couldn’t see over the top of it. He even tried to hop up higher, which for a pig was pretty funny. I busted out laughing, and Summer did, too.