by Sarah Noffke
“Things?” she asked. “Like your clothes and books and other worldly possessions?”
As well as my stamp collection and keyboard, he replied.
She nodded. “That makes sense.”
I think he began speculatively. That Quiet also moved the dragon eggs out of the Nest for a couple of other reasons. Following the logic we learned from Trin Currante, dragon eggs that are underground or in caves, have a higher chance of hatching.
“Because they are being properly incubated,” Sophia guessed.
Lunis nodded. Correct. One theory is that to stall hatching, they should be out in the open. We don’t feel as welcomed to the world if we’re in the cold open air.
Sophia remembered how Lunis, when still in the shell, had asked for Rory to make him a warm oasis in his yard. He was very happy, half in rich soil and surrounded by lava.
“So Quiet is trying to stall the dragon eggs from hatching?” Sophia asked.
Maybe just a bit until you figure out more about things, Lunis agreed. You’ve just learned half a crop is born good and the others evil. There will be much more to learn if we are going to manage things. Currently, we have four eggs that have hatched, and they are all evil. What we do with them, I don’t know, especially if they want to leave and magnetize to a rider.
The thought was overwhelming to Sophia. “Yeah, then on top of recovering the dragon eggs from Trin Currante, fixing the world’s problems, discovering how to solve our own problems here at the Gullington, we’d have evil dragons and riders to deal with.”
Exactly, Lunis affirmed. I think not having a bunch of dragons hatching right away would be best for everyone. We need to gear up for what’s to come, but not before we figure out how to deal with what’s already happened.
Sophia nodded. “Yeah, and now we know what Trin Currante knows and how she knows it, the Gullington can remain safe again, so there’s no risk of the dragon eggs being on the Expanse.”
I don’t think she’s coming back to the Gullington anyway, Lunis said, beginning to meander through the dragon eggs, Sophia strolling next to him.
“Yeah, I think Trin Currante has what she wanted,” she remarked, making their way to the men and Ainsley in the distance. The housekeeper had decided to serve breakfast on the grounds, laying out a picnic of pastries, fruits, meats, and an assortment of other foods on a blanket.
Now we just have to figure out why she wants the dragon eggs, Lunis added.
“And get them back,” Sophia declared.
We will, Lunis promised with confidence. I’m going to leave you to it. Don’t tell anyone about my new hiding place, or the other dragons will probably try and move in with me. Bell is livid that one of the evil babies keeps biting her tail when she sleeps.
Sophia winked at her dragon. “Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.”
A glint of affection sparkled in his eyes before he looked at the sky and took off for the Pond in the distance.
“Get over here and get something to eat before Evan finishes it all off,” Ainsley encouraged, waving Sophia over.
The Easter brunch spread was incredible. Ainsley had really outdone herself, making everything look pristine. Her cooking skills had come a long way in the absence of Quiet’s help.
The elf pointed proudly to one of the dishes. “In honor of our newly hatched eggs, I’ve made deviled eggs.”
“Haha,” Hiker said, not appearing amused.
“And then, we have Every Bunny’s Favorite Cake.” Ainsley indicated a three-layer chocolate cake.
“Oh, for the love of the angels,” Evan groaned. “Those jokes are as bad as Sophia’s puns.”
“Hey now,” Sophia scolded.
“I happen to like Sophia’s jokes,” Wilder disagreed, batting his eyes at her from the other side of Hiker.
The leader of the Dragon Elite held out an arm and blocked the other rider. “Remember to keep your distance from her or you’re going back in the Castle. I won’t have this Cupid spell getting any worse and making you further lose your wits.”
“Yes, sir,” Wilder agreed and blew a kiss to Sophia.
She couldn’t help but smile in return, her cheeks blushing.
“Where are the pancakes?” Mama Jamba asked, looking around at the spread.
“Well, I didn’t make any, but I did make you some hot cross buns,” she answered, indicating rolls lying on a platter.
“Right…” Mama Jamba started, not at all looking pleased.
“Well,” Hiker began as Ainsley passed champagne flutes around, “you all eat up because after this celebration, we have many important things demanding our attention.”
“Oh, there’s always something to be done,” Mama Jamba said, taking a sip of her champagne and smiling. “There’s always a world to save and mystery to solve. But none of those are worth it if you don’t take the time to enjoy the spring air and love the ones around you. Remember what I taught you, son.”
Hiker looked strange with his bulky hand holding a dainty champagne flute. “That you know everything and will tell me nothing?”
Mama Jamba giggled into her flute. “No, that we celebrate every win.” She held up her glass. “You know much more than you did. You know where the dragon eggs are roughly and how to recover them. It will take a lot of work to get there, but this is progress. This is worth celebrating.”
“Here, here,” Wilder stated, holding up his glass to join Mother Nature’s.
Everyone else looked at Hiker, watching for his reaction. Finally he sighed. “Yes, that’s something to celebrate.” Holding up his own glass, he said, “To a new spring full of possibilities. To new life.” He glanced around at the dragon eggs littering the Expanse. “And to the Dragon Elite. May we overcome the challenges presented to us in order to make this planet a better place.”
Everyone held up their glasses, smiling and clinking each other’s flutes. “Cheers.”
Sophia took a sip of her champagne, enjoying the bubbles as they danced in her mouth. The world was changing all the time, but never before like it was now with so many possibilities sprinkled around them. Her eyes swept over the dragon eggs on the Expanse. She realized something beautiful then.
The world was full of so much good and so much evil, but the Dragon Elite was ready to help maintain the balance between both.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Lasers.
They streaked back and forth in the narrow hallway, a security measure to keep trespassers out of the highly restricted area at Langer Technologies.
Sophia was so tired of stupid lasers. They were a constant theme of her current life. After being imprisoned and nearly burned to death by lasers at Medford Research, she confessed she would be happy to never see a laser again.
Unlike at Medford Research, these lasers were not static. They were moving back and forth, ready to catch any thieves who dared to go further. Thankfully, these were just security measures and wouldn’t turn her to ash like the ones at Medford Research.
She would prefer not to bring out a bunch of security guards who she would have to put in headlocks and tie up.
“So how about you do some fancy moves to get past these things,” Evan suggested as he stood next to her, facing the long corridor and eyeing the solid reinforced door at the end. “That’s where we need to get through, after passing the lasers.”
“I don’t think so,” Sophia said, thinking as she scanned the tech devices installed on the wall.
“Oh, come on,” Evan stated. “You can do some fancy flips and then a slow-motion backbend like that one movie you made me watch. What was it called? Pattern?”
“Matrix,” Sophia corrected. “How come you can name all of the Jonas Brothers, but you refuse to remember names of anything else from modern culture?”
“Have you heard the Jonas Brothers?” Evan asked, gawking at her. “They’re great.”
“They’re a boy band,” she argued, continuing to study the area in front of them, inches from where t
he lasers were located.
“And I’m a boy,” he agreed. “That’s what I’m supposed to listen to, right?”
“Yeah, flawless reasoning,” Sophia told him sarcastically. “You’re a boy.”
“Man,” he corrected, knocking his fist into his chest.
“There has got to be an easy solution to this.” Sophia chewed on the inside of her cheek.
Evan rolled his eyes. “Sometimes you just have to suck it up and do what’s got to be done. Let me show you how a man does it.”
He stepped forward, ducking as one of the lasers flew overhead. Then he jumped as another ran across the ground. The dragonrider looked like he was doing a dance as he progressed across the long corridor, bending and stretching to avoid the lasers. To Sophia’s surprise, he was avoiding them.
Making a strange limbo move, Evan nearly lost his balance and fell backward onto a laser as it streaked by. He sucked in a terrified breath and Sophia bit her lip, ready to fight whoever came through the door at their back when Evan triggered the alarms. He caught himself in time and rushed forward, avoiding the rest of the lasers and arriving at the door on the far side.
Sophia let out a relieved breath. He was in a safe zone.
“And that’s how it’s done, Pink Princess,” Evan said, clapping his hands and brushing off his shoulders. “Your turn. Show me a cartwheel, and if you add a spin and a leap, you get six extra points.”
Sophia nodded and narrowed her eyes at a small black box. She lifted her hand and pointed, making it burst. Smoke and sparks sprayed down from the device, but a moment later, the lasers all faded away, making her path clear.
“How much do I get for doing that?” she asked.
Evan shook his head. “Sure, take the easy way out. Anyone could bring down the security system so they could waltz through the high-security area.”
“But real men break a sweat to get the job done, is that right?” she teased, turning to face the last door dividing them from what they were after.
The equipment they had stolen from Medford Research wasn’t complete for what they needed to recover the dragon eggs from underground, where Sophia suspected Trin Currante had buried them.
The LiDAR equipment was missing some important components according to Alicia, the magitech scientist she had enlisted to help them with this project. She had shown Sophia what to look for and even given her the idea to steal it from Langer Technologies, a place where she used to work.
Alicia had outfitted Sophia with the security badges she needed to get inside after hours. She had explained they would have to get by the rest of the security measures on their own.
It was actually pretty genius, Sophia thought. What better place to steal the LiDAR technology from than one of the competing firms to Medford Research. Getting it from Langer ensured they would be able to find what they needed.
First, they had to get through the last major obstacle, a thick metal reinforced door.
“Why don’t you try that handy dandy spell you just used to fry that electronic box?” Evan suggested.
“That was an exploding spell,” Sophia explained. “I don’t think you want me throwing that at a solid metal door with us standing so close.”
Evan gawked at her. “You used an exploding spell on something just over my head?” He pointed to the burned-out part of the wall, only a few feet away.
“Oh, what are you worried about?” she joked. “You could have employed some of those sweet moves you did to get around the lasers to avoid the explosion.”
“What are you telling me, I can dodge bullets?” Evan asked, repeating a line from the Matrix. That had not really stopped since Sophia showed him the movie. She was seriously considering never showing him anything ever again.
She shook her head, centering her attention on opening the security door.
“No,” he said with disappointment. “You were supposed to reply with, ‘No, Neo. What I’m telling you is when you’re ready, you’ll not have to.’”
“I’m not calling you Neo,” she declared. Alicia had given her a universal key, but ironically it wouldn’t work on this. For as helpful as the key was, it didn’t work on a lot of locks.
The door could only be opened with three keys and a password, all of which Sophia didn’t have. She had maybe been a bit naïve to think she would figure this part out once she got to Langer Technology.
“How are we going to open this door?” Sophia muttered.
“Have you considered there’s no door?” Evan speculated.
“Have you considered how you’ll look when I break your nose?” she asked.
“I’m trying to free your mind,” Evan said, doing his best impression of Morpheus, which was pretty awful. “I can only show you the door. You’re the one who has to walk through it.”
“That’s it,” Sophia said. “You’re brilliant. You figured it out.”
He nodded smugly. “About time you see that. What did I figure out exactly?”
“I kept trying to figure out how to open the door,” Sophia explained. “But we’re magicians. We don’t need to open doors when we can walk through them.”
“You’re my kind of woman, Blondie,” Evan said, looking impressed. “You’re already drunk, and it’s morning our time in Scotland.”
Sophia sighed. “I’m not drunk. Remember that spell I was trying to master the other day?”
He yawned. “I know you think that like Wilder, I pay attention to every bloody thing you do, but I really don’t.”
“Fine,” Sophia stated. “It was a reverse object permeance spell.”
He nodded, seeming to be following her. “Totally. I just need you to explain what that is.”
“Well, object permeance is the idea that something tangible continues to exist even when it can’t be seen,” Sophia began to explain. “And—”
“Wait, I’m going to need you to explain this to me like I’m five years old,” Evan said, making a reference to The Office. After he finished the Matrix and highjacked Sophia’s account, he had started marathoning episodes of the show. She was certain she would hear Michael Scott lines for the rest of her very long life.
“Okay, remember when you were a kid and would close your eyes and think it meant you were hidden?” Sophia asked.
He shrugged. “When I was a kid. Last week. Sure.”
“Object permeance states the thing continues to exist even if you can’t see it,” Sophia explained.
“Can we call it something else like Thing Still There theory?”
“Well,” she said, drawing out the word and ignoring him, “the spell my brother Clark was trying to teach me is the reverse. If you close your eyes, using the spell, then the object doesn’t exist and therefore…”
“We can blow it up,” Evan said proudly, triumph on his face.
Sophia slumped with defeat. “No, I thought we could walk through the door.
“Oh,” he said, looking equally defeated. “I guess, but that doesn’t seem as cool.”
“Walking through walls doesn’t seem cool to you?” she asked skeptically.
He shrugged. “At what point do you offer me the red or blue pill and give me the decision to jump down a rabbit hole?”
“At what point do you stop being a pain in my butt?” Sophia queried, mock seriousness in her voice.
Evan laughed. “Hah-ha! That’s what she said.”
“Okay, let’s do this before I murder you.” Sophia turned to face the door, calling the spell to her mind. “You’ll need to close your eyes and hold my hand.”
“At last, you get to have your way with me,” he said, holding out his hand.
Sophia had to refrain from laughing. “If that was true, then you would be gagged.”
“Ew…Kinky.”
“Shush it and close your eyes,” she ordered and took his hand. It was sweaty in hers. “I’ll tell you when to walk through.”
“If you make me hit a wall, I’m going to be mad.”
“Noted.”
Sophia closed her own eyes and hoped this spell worked. She had been working on it since Clark shared it with her but hadn’t gotten it to work entirely yet. It was her hope she could get into places in the Castle Quiet had on lockdown, but either she was bad at the spell, or Quiet had outmaneuvered her. She expected the pressure of the moment would make it so she was successful with the spell where she had failed in the past.
She repeated the ancient words that evoked the spell in her mind, forcing all of her energy around them and honing her attention on a single idea. Sophia knew there wouldn’t be any signs it would work based on what Clark had told her. She would just have to have blind faith.
She nearly giggled at the pun, but refrained, keeping her power focused.
When she felt there wasn’t anything else she could do, Sophia stepped forward, expecting her boots to meet a solid surface. She didn’t and continued forward, walking through something that felt like cobwebs. Like the silk of the webs, it registered but didn’t hold one back.
“Oh, that tastes weird,” Evan remarked.
“Dude, stop being a mouth breather,” Sophia whispered, walking blindly. It was hard to know when they had gotten through since the door was much thicker than most. She didn’t want to stop part of the way through and have Evan stuck in a metal door….or maybe she did, on second thought.
Sophia took a few extra steps for good measure, and when she sensed she was nearing something, she halted and opened her eyes.
They were in a brand-new room lined with shelves full of strange and awesome technology. Evan’s hand was still in hers. To her relief, they’d made it through the metal door.
“Open your eyes,” she whispered in the darkened room.
“Oh, baby,” Evan said, smoothly. “Now things are heating up.”
“I’m about to roundhouse-kick you in the head,” Sophia threatened.
His eyes popped open and he flashed her a smile. “I know kung fu,” Evan remarked, doing his impression of Neo when he would download lessons.
Sophia shook his head. “No, no, you don’t.”