Talker 25

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Talker 25 Page 21

by McCune, Joshua


  I’m not sure why the major tells me this. I guess to justify what he wants me to do, or maybe just to pass the time while we wait for mission clearance. Duckworth’s nephew, a thirty-something councilman from Anchorage, is on vacation in Jamaica.

  Which means he’s ripe for the torching.

  An easy assignment, at least according to Major Alderson. All I need to do is fly my dragon into Montego Bay, a coastal resort town, and instruct it to open fire when Alderson gives the order. Get in, get out. A few deaths, for sure, but that’s the cost of victory.

  “We are green for mission go.” Lester’s voice echoes through the battle room. It’s practically empty in here. Just me, Lester, and the major.

  Alderson hands me a pair of those wraparound sunglasses. “Enable communication and activate VR-HUD.”

  On the lenses, a herky-jerky video appears—from the camera attached to my dragon assassin, a Green named Almac. He’s inside one of those compartments. Animal remains, dragon crap, and something I’m guessing is vomit cover half the floor.

  “Initiate communication.”

  My CENSIR loosens. “Hello, Almac.”

  The dragon scans the compartment, looking for something. Me, I suppose. “What do you want, human? Where is Lorena?”

  “I’m in charge today,” I say. “You ready?”

  “To kill humans? Always.”

  Grimacing, I give a thumbs-up.

  “Release the hound,” the major says.

  The compartment hatch opens from the top, revealing an expanse of gray sky. Almac launches himself toward the clouds, then glances back. The compartment bobs up and down with the roll of the ocean.

  “Discard the package,” the major orders. Seconds later, the evidence is gone. “Twenty-Five, have your dragon bank left to a due south heading.”

  “Almac, bank left . . . level out.”

  “Where are the humans, human? I want to kill humans.” He scans the darkening skyline, searches the seemingly endless ocean. “Where are they? Where is my fire?”

  “He’s getting angry,” I say to the major.

  “It’s thirty minutes before landfall. Tell him to keep his temper in check until then.”

  Almac continues to grumble, but stays on course with an occasional shock and reassurances of the slaughter to come. I tell myself that this is nothing more than a video game, that the bloodthirsty dragon and the wicked major are characters in some twisted plot; I must carry out this mission with them to keep my brother and father safe. No do-overs. No extra lives.

  Besides, if I don’t take out the senator’s nephew, someone else will. That’s the piece of this puzzle that doesn’t fit. “Why aren’t you attacking the senator himself?”

  “We are not attacking Senator Duckworth because he’s a powerful man with powerful connections,” the major says. “It would be in our interest to gain his allegiance.”

  I grunt. “So you’re going to show him how dangerous the dragons are.”

  “He already knows how dangerous they are. He just doesn’t consider them much of a threat anymore. It’s out of sight, out of mind for him. We want to open his eyes.”

  “You ever wonder if what you’re doing is wrong?”

  I expect him to reprimand me, but instead he says, “Every day, Twenty-Five. That’s what makes us different. You believe you’ve got the world figured out, you—”

  “I don’t have anything figured out,” I say with a bitter laugh. “Less makes sense today than it did yesterday. But I know what you’re doing is wrong. What we’re doing, I guess, but we only help you because we have little choice. You do.”

  “The world’s a dark place. Sacrifices must be made for the greater good. I don’t always agree with them, and I don’t often like them, but every atrocity you think we commit here, I see as a means to an end that gets us closer to the light at the end of this dragon-riddled tunnel.”

  “A brave new world, huh?”

  “No, Twenty-Five, a peaceful one. Let’s focus now. We have work to do.”

  In short order we reach land, veer south toward rows of brightly colored villas and homes . . . none of them black. Guess these people never worried about dragons. Not until today.

  “Activate Almac’s fire,” the major says, and my heart jumps into my throat. “Tell him to open fire, Twenty-Five. . . . Open fire, Twenty-five . . . think about your family.”

  “Almac, your fire’s active,” I whisper.

  “It’s about time, human,” he says, then goes silent because I guess he can’t talk and incinerate at the same time.

  At the major’s orders, I direct Almac lower, until we’re skimming the rooftops. We create an ocean of flame behind us that consumes everything. People spill into the streets. My attempt to convince myself that this is just a video game collapses when some of the victims look over their shoulders. I see the stark terror in their faces; they know they’re going to die. And then they do. I force myself to watch the first few melt into the dragon’s fire, to implant the memory of my horrible crime.

  I close my eyes for the rest of it, ordering Almac to shift course at the major’s discretion. The dragon doesn’t talk while he works, but I hear a funny noise in my head, something between a growl and a purr.

  “Target neutralized,” a soldier says.

  “Contact the Gerald Ford and request DJ countermeasures,” Major Alderson says.

  “Dragon jets have been launched, Major. Anticipate intercept in two minutes.”

  “Set Twenty-Five to inhibit,” Major Alderson says.

  I open my eyes. Half of Montego Bay still burns. The rest is charred ash. Soon the resort town will be nothing but black death. Almac spins around. From the distance, five dragon jets zoom toward him. “I can hear the invisible monsters! Where are they, human? Where are—”

  My CENSIR warms and tightens; the line goes dead. The dragon sweeps his head back and forth to create an arc of fire in front of him. Useless. The jets disappear off the video, but I can see them on the radar, yellow icons closing in on the green target.

  Almac dies fast, in a blur of gunfire and missiles. Tumbling head over tail, he crashes into the jungle. His collar explodes; the video blacks out.

  Major Alderson jerks the video glasses from my face. “Good job, Twenty-Five,” he says in the same sardonic way he congratulated me for killing Claire. I don’t know why he’s not happy. We destroyed the town. We destroyed everything.

  “I didn’t do anything. . . . I did nothing,” I mumble. Nothing at all.

  “You don’t know much about dragon talking, do you?”

  “More than I’d like. What’s your point?”

  “Greens feed on talker emotion. It fuels them, literally. We figured Almac would destroy half the town before he ran out of juice, but he obliterated everything and caused far more collateral damage than was necessary because you couldn’t get it together.”

  “Don’t you blame this on me! I did everything you told me. You could have launched those jets at any time. Turned on his fire restrictor—”

  “That would not have been within the scope of reality.” He waves Lester over. “Sergeant, remove Twenty-Five from my battle room. Take her back to the barracks and let her think about what she’s done.”

  That evening, as I get drunk with Lorena, we watch a news report about an unprecedented attack on the heretofore dragon-free nation of Jamaica. The Green that perpetrated the massacre was shot down by dragon jets launched from a nearby aircraft carrier. With the help of the U.S. government, the Caribbean islands are now scrambling to institute a mass blackout policy.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong, Melissa,” Lorena says, not for the first time.

  I thump my head against the wall. “How many people did I kill because I want to keep Sam and Dad safe?”

  “Forget about it if you can. Otherwise, drink up.”

  I cough against the burn in my throat. “Maybe it’s easier to just be another bobblehead number. Blondie Number One certainly seems to have
it figured out.”

  “Gimme a break.” She shoves my shoulder. “This is what they want. You’re gonna really piss me off if you give them what they want.”

  I shove her back, a little harder. “Says the drunken whore.”

  “I am who I am. Who are you?”

  “A mass murderer. A pretty pawn. Pick your poison.”

  “Huh?”

  I fill her in on my fan website and the show they want me to do. I take a swig, snort. “The redemption of Melissa Callahan.” Another swig. “You know, my mom used to always say that there are no bad guys, only victims.”

  “Deep.”

  “It’s bullshit.”

  Lorena squeezes my arm. “Don’t give them what they want, Melissa.”

  “Easy for you to say. They’re not dangling your family out there on surveillance footage.”

  “Lucky me,” she says. I start to apologize, but she interrupts. “Sorries don’t matter in the frozen suck. You just gotta survive to the next day.”

  “You’re drunk.” I shake my head. “Forget it, I’ll figure it out.”

  She taps her temple. “It’s not about in here.” She taps my chest. “It’s in here. Look, Twenty-One’s family were known insurgents. That drone video was just a scare tactic to string you along.” She sticks out her tongue at one of the cameras watching us. “They’ll fuck you up, but they won’t do anything to your family.”

  I’m not sure I believe that, but it’s a chance I have to take.

  I cannot be a victim, I cannot be a bad guy. I cannot be Talker Twenty-Five.

  I have to be Melissa Callahan.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  30

  When I inform Colonel Hanks that I won’t do the show, he pulls a weathered brochure from his desk. A vacation advertisement for a place I’ve never heard of called Fiji. “Doesn’t have a Kremlin circus, but the weather is a bit more hospitable.”

  The implied bribe means Lorena was right. My decision won’t endanger my brother or father. The grip of dread squeezing my heart loosens a notch.

  He hands me the brochure. Based on the swimsuit styles of the models lounging in seaside hammocks, it’s over a decade old. Fiji must be one of the forgotten islands that went off the grid after the dragons showed up. With no commercial airplanes or cruise ships, nobody could get there anymore. Except the military.

  I set the brochure on his desk. “Sorry, too many vultures.”

  His brow furrows. “Fiji doesn’t have vultures.”

  I restrain a smile. Big Brother listens but doesn’t always hear.

  “I’m sure it does,” I say, thrilling in his confusion.

  “You have until tomorrow morning to change your mind,” the colonel says in dismissal.

  While Lester and I wait for the elevator, the colonel picks up the phone. He glances my way and gives me a look that warns me he has an ace up that starch-pressed sleeve of his.

  Unless they produce James out of thin air—an unreconditioned James—there’s no bait big enough to hook my cooperation. But I know that won’t happen. Someday soon he will show up at the cafeteria, call center, or ER, no longer the farmboy I remember. Will he even remember who I am?

  Thankfully, he’s not in the ER today.

  Lester and I suit up in our protective gear, then meet Patch and Tim at Station One. A couple minutes later, the hangar doors open, and a dimly lit Red tied to a slab is towed in via tractor.

  Even before I attempt communication with the subject, I know by the look in his eyes that he’s what Lorena calls a grandpa, an old dragon who’s ready to die because he’s sad, lonely, and tired of living in a world with invisible monsters.

  “Hello, Curik,” I say after Patch puts me into transmit mode. “My name is Melissa.”

  “Hello, Melissa,” he says right away. “This isn’t going to be painful, is it?”

  “It will hurt less if you cooperate. I’m sorry.”

  I get a CENSIR jolt for apologizing, but I don’t care.

  According to the adjacent computer screen, Curik’s responsible for hundreds of deaths in Minnesota and Michigan. I don’t know how the military determined this, but I don’t doubt that he’s killed at least a few people in his time. He’s not a rager, though, a dragon like Almac who lusts to kill.

  I go through the standard list of questions. Most of his answers are variations of “I don’t know.”

  “Curik, please give me the names of your dragon friends.”

  “Where do I begin?” Curik says. “There was Kald. He was great. Once, when we were flying over ocean, he saw this group of dolphins. I was hungry and wanted to eat them, but he thought they were graceful, so he made me go swim with them.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Two years ago, your invisible monsters found him in the woods. He was trying to talk to a bear. He always had this way with animals, but till the end, none of them ever spoke to him. Foolish dragon.”

  “Hurry it up, Twenty-Five, we don’t have all day,” Patch says.

  “Who else?” I ask.

  Curik starts in on stories of his many friends, but I cut him off because the Mengeles don’t care about anything but the names and their death status.

  “What about your human friends?” I ask when he can’t think of any other dragons.

  “One spoke with me a few weeks ago. Scarlett Graves. She was so scared. The invisible monsters were after her. I wanted to help her. She seemed nice.”

  Scarlett Graves—that’s one of Twenty-One’s call center aliases. “Yeah, she is nice. Anybody else?”

  “No, other than you. You seem nice, too.”

  “That’s all for now, Twenty-Five,” Patch says.

  ”They’re going to silence us, Curik. I’ll be back when we change stations.”

  “Could you continue to talk with me?” he asks. “I like hearing—”

  My CENSIR tightens.

  “Can I keep talking to him?” I ask Patch.

  He growls a sigh. “You have to stop sympathizing with these monsters, Twenty-Five.”

  “I’m not sympathizing. It will make him more cooperative,” I say.

  “He’s not giving us anything useful. Besides, you’re both inhibited. It won’t hear anything you say.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  He waves an impatient hand. “Fine.”

  Tim and Lester whisper roars my way, make sawing motions with their knives.

  Ignoring them, I mount the slab and sit beside Curik. He smells of rusted iron and radiates a pleasant heat . . . though in a few hours, he’ll reek of smoke and chemicals, his warmth will be to embers, and he very well might not have any wings.

  Ever since my “outburst” with Vestia, Patch has insisted on studying “the acoustic-emotional resonance of a dragon in a weakened state.” To the amusement of everybody within hearing distance, I’ve roared at more than a dozen wingless subjects. A couple brightened a smidge, according to Patch’s tablet, but none has come close to a death nova.

  “If you can somehow hear me, Curic, let go. Fly into the next tomorrow as fast as you can. . . . I’m sorry about your friends. I miss mine, too.” I think of Trish. “I’m not sure what’s happened to her. Our town was destroyed by a stampede of Blues. Her mother died. She probably blames me—”

  A buzzer goes off.

  “Twenty-Five, time to move,” Patch calls.

  The door at the opposite end of the hangar opens; the disposal trucks enter. After All-Blacks load crates full of Green body parts onto the trucks and the bloodied slab on which it was dismembered is hauled away, the remaining dragons are slid down the line to make room for the next victim. Our team follows Curik to Thermals, where he’s scheduled for a low-degree flame bath, which is one of the more pleasant experiments, at least to a dragon.

  A buzzer later, on our way to Impactions, the overhead speaker orders m
y team to switch places with Evelyn’s, which is rotating from Electrics to Station One for the next intake interview. A talker swap’s not abnormal—sometimes a dragon’s personality jibes better with one talker than another—but Curik and I get along well, and the Green Evelyn was working on is already dead and halfway toward decapitation via an All-Black with a large ax.

  “Be gentle with him,” I tell Evelyn. “He’s doing his best to cooperate. Sometimes he gets a little addled, but—”

  “I know how to deal with these monsters, Twenty-Five.” She smiles at the surrounding A-Bs. “Once a glowheart, always a glowheart. She probably still thinks her CENSIR’s a dragon-queen crown.”

  “Control yourself,” Lester says, grabbing my arm before I can retaliate. “It would serve you well to ignore her.”

  “It would have served me well if she’d been in the battle room instead of Claire,” I snap.

  “Families need to get along—”

  “Yeah, I know, otherwise they get hurt. Why don’t you go lecture her for a—” I break off as the hangar door opens and a silver glow suffuses the area.

  Baby. I thought she was dead. . . . I should have known better.

  Scars and gouges cover her from tail to head. Her wings are frayed and bent at awkward angles beneath the metal straps. Her glow’s a ghost of what it should be, but when her eyes find mine, she brightens. My lungs seize up, but I force myself to smile at her.

  This is the colonel’s ace in the hole.

  Two choices. Reprise my dragon queen role and keep Baby on life support until my fifteen minutes of infamy are up, or let her die on my watch right now.

  It’s no choice at all.

  “I need to speak with Colonel Hanks.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

 

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