by Liz Ellor
No way in hell could she go with him. She needed to look like a devoted agent, sneaking back from enemy territory after handing over her own body to gather intelligence. Not like a fool who’d gotten in over her head and required a real agent to rescue her.
“No,” she said.
He froze like she’d slapped him. “These people want to destroy our country and break the Seal. You’d side with them?”
At first, she thought he was joking. But Shawn never joked. Her stomach sank. “Shawn … I’m on your side. I’ve always been on your side. You have to know that.” She’d gone to Shawn for advice on her first crush, cried in his arms over her missing powers, entered rehab at his prompting. Why didn’t he know that she loved him the same way, that she’d fight for him the same way? What have I ever done for him?
“Give me one good reason I should trust you. You’ve lied to me a hundred times.” His face hardened. “I can’t trust you to walk around the city at night without trying to destroy yourself. How can I trust you to be loyal to Indigo?”
His words felt like a bullet to the chest. “I might have been a terrible sister, but I was a damn good agent.” She kept her voice low and balled her fists. Here, even here, she would show him she had what it took. “I would have died for Indigo. All I asked was to be treated like I belonged there. I worked harder than any of them. They never let me prove myself. They gave me the least important postings even though I made the top five on every evaluation. The second they had an excuse, they shoved me behind a desk and called it a promotion. They only put up with me because they needed you, and because I was a Harris. Shawn, I was born to be part of this. To fight for the greater good. I had to find a way back in. It’s who I am.”
“No. It isn’t.” He didn’t put any anger behind that. To Shawn, he was simply stating a fact. “I’m sorry, Katrina. Indigo’s not for you. And now you’ve fucked up the life you actually had. You think you can go back into society looking like that? It’s freakish.”
“Guess Indigo’s my only option, then.” She gritted her teeth to hold back her urge to scream at him. And I like my face. “What if I bring them a wyvern?”
Part 4: The Traitor
Two hours later, and it was all arranged. Shawn had brought a laptop with a secured connection. In terse words, he’d explained to Director Fairfax what kind of weapon Synthos was building. Katrina had sat quietly besides him, knowing the director trusted Shawn much more than her. The director swore to reinstate Katrina in return for her prize. A transport plane would meet her the next evening at the base of Mount Orso, a peak of the Brooks Range toward the Canadian border. Satellite images of Wyvernhall had found a loophole in its borders. The plane crew would bring along nets and tranquilizers.
“I’ll see you then,” Shawn said, his eyes full of worries. She knew he hated the idea, but Indigo needed what she could give them, and Indigo always came first for both of them.
“I’ll be there,” she said, and hugged him. I’ll show you.
A clear glass jug waited outside her suite when she returned. She’d tried to keep down her excitement, since the pressure in the back of her head told her Payaa had returned. Nevertheless, a spike of warm energy ran through her as she reached down to lift the jug. It didn’t move. Guess I’ll have to drag it.
Aren’t you supposed to avoid that stuff? Payaa asked.
Are you my sponsor? Get out. The cravings she used to feel had dimmed, but her rational mind knew very well that this would help her relax. She needed to relax. She could handle herself. A dozen memories of times when she hadn’t handled herself bubbled up. She ignored them.
She bent to drag the jar. Her hands froze halfway there.
Payaa made her stand up. Katrina, you almost killed yourself the last time you relapsed!
Her blood ran cold. How the hell had the wyvern discerned that piece of information? It’s none of your business how I spend my time! She fought the bonds, trying to slide her thoughts back into her hands. For a moment, she contemplated trying to see if she could pull off the opposite maneuver and control Payaa, but grappling two-ways for control would require a terrifying degree of intimacy.
Tayamlaa! Payaa called into the echoing space between the minds of wyverns. Fear lined her thoughts. Get your pilot up there! He’ll know what to do!
Right away! Tayamlaa’s mental voice was richer, somehow, and the quick reply carried a hint of subservience. Katrina distinctly remembered Tayamlaa seemed almost two feet shorter in length than Payaa.
You’re the boss of them, Katrina realized. But you’re still scared for me.
And?
Not good. Leaders shouldn’t show fear. People have to believe a leader is in control before they feel comfortable following them.
And you’d know? What do you know about fear? Nothing! And fearlessness isn’t a virtue. You don’t care about anyone enough to worry about them! You don’t even care about your own well-being! Look what you’re doing to yourself!
Katrina looked at her hand, frozen a foot from the jar lid. Heat filled her cheeks. That’s none of your business.
Of course it is! Don’t you think it might affect me, if you start drinking again? We’re linked together. Your actions affect both of us, and I will keep you sober.
Kyle shook his head as he walked up the hallway. “Really, Katrina?” He knelt to pick up the jug, failed, and pulled out the stopper and knocked it on its side. The smell tugged at a wave of memories: some happy, some blurry. A weak craving tugged at her. She could resist it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said.
“Why? Because you can control yourself?” He kicked the empty jug down the hallway. It hit a wall and shattered. “You’re such a damn liar, you know? But for fuck’s sake, stop lying to yourself! You’re an alcoholic. You told me, up on that ledge. That means you can’t always control yourself. I was there, that last night in the city! You knew you couldn’t control yourself, and you went out anyway—”
“To keep my eyes on you!” she shouted. “Because that was my job. Watching you, because you’re a thirty-year-old man who can’t be trusted to behave himself in public!”
“You should have told me the truth years ago!” His already-tilted eyebrows sloped higher. “You think you would have been fired if you’d spoken up? Katrina, I might have been a shitty friend, but I wouldn’t have let that happen!”
“You drank on the plane.” It was almost a whisper. The whole conversation made her want to curl up and vanish. “The day after I almost killed myself because I relapsed. You went to the bar and started drinking in front of me.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed, hard. “You’re right. I wasn’t—no, I should have thought. I should have cared enough about you to control myself. Fuck, I know, I should have known.”
She couldn’t remember ever hearing him apologize for anything before. “Kyle, it’s okay.”
“Not Kyle.” He smiled, slightly. “Face it, Kyle Winters was an asshole. I don’t want to be that person anymore. I … I won’t be that person. Call me Quickfingers, like Tayamlaa does.”
“It’s okay,” she said, “Quickfingers.” As the name left her mouth, it went from strange to solid. This wasn’t the same man she’d known all her life.
He pulled a box of playing cards from his pocket. “Come on. I’m going to keep an eye on you tonight. Round of war will be good for us both.”
She found she could stand, and move her hands again. “Thanks,” she muttered.
“I’m doing it for Payaa, too. She’s got a good heart.”
They played cards until midnight. He sat at her kitchen table after she crawled into bed. The words to say ‘thank you’ never seemed to make it into her mouth before she fell asleep.
The next morning at breakfast, Katrina walked past Vasilyev’s table. She greeted him, passed him a note, and asked if she could schedule an appointment later. The note ordered him to use his credentials to log in
to Wyvernhall’s computer network and deactivate the radio chips located in her and Payaa. The note also ordered him to go to her suite at midnight, where he’d find the flash drive and, with it, access to Shawn’s explanation. Neither she nor Shawn had wanted to risk blowing her cover by explaining the truth before she left. Extractions could be the most dangerous part of any field operation.
The scientists spent the early morning watching her and Kyle exercise. After a round of weights and running on the track, Dr. Harper escorted them both to one of the engineering labs, buried deep in the mountain. There, they watched as an eager young man held up fabric as grey as a wyvern, embroidered in a pattern of scales.
“It’s thermalnealing fabric, like the rest of us wear around here. Nano-engineered not to let any heat escape your body. The pores are like tiny mirrors that reflect energy back on your skin.”
“I’ve used it,” Katrina said. “The black cloth. It’s amazing. Why change it?”
“Everyone here has the black version. Dr. Harper thought you might like to have a uniform.”
Katrina met her eyes. Dr. Harper shrugged. “I’ve already begun looking for the next recruits. Payaa’s oldest are mature enough to be bound. We can expand quickly, now that we know the procedure works.”
Both Katrina and Payaa heard her, but Katrina was more disturbed. Payaa had always expected this. The wyverns been made with a purpose in mind, and fighting Dr. Harper’s will never did one any good. At least my children have fifty percent odds of having a decent pilot, Payaa thought.
“They’re three years old,” Katrina said, using information gleamed from Payaa’s mind. “They’re teenagers, mentally. Forcing this kind of thing onto a teenager—”
“Would you rather I do it in infancy? So they know no other life? So their pilot can tell them ‘this is the way things are supposed to be’ and they know no different? Unpleasant it may be, but we need pilots. In my experience, the most unpleasant things in life are foisted on the young.”
“Your only experience is being young,” Katrina pointed out. Dr. Harper was four years her junior.
Her eyes seethed. “You’re very good at talking when nothing’s at stake, Ms. Harris.” That look promised storms. Again, Katrina ran through her memory, asking herself what had passed between them the first time they’d met. It could be a bluff. She could be toying with me. Maybe that was what you were supposed to expect from a genius. But for all the intelligence Dr. Harper certainly possessed, Katrina didn’t think she had the subtlety to weave an act like that. No. I hurt this person, somehow, and now I’m in her power.
Quickfingers must have caught the tension between them. “Hey, look! They’ve got the weapons out!”
The young engineer opened a case. “We’re calling this the butterfly spike.”
“That’s a spear,” Katrina said. A black metal shaft five foot long lay inside, topped with a dull-pointed head and two pairs of sharpened curved guards jutting out from the sides just beneath the head. “Not even a fairly sharp spear. The tip’s supposed to be pointed.”
“We based them off whaling harpoons. Meant to bring down something much bigger than a person.” The engineer lifted it. “We developed a new alloy two years ago that changes temperature very rapidly. Stand back, please.” He flipped the switch on the base. The dull tip glowed red-hot. Katrina stepped backwards. Quickfingers muttered in appreciation. “Eight hundred degrees Celsius. Passes through flesh, wood, plastic, some metals …” He flipped the switch again. The glowing stopped. “Cools rapidly as well. The batteries are in the shaft. An hour’s charge gets you about fifteen seconds of heat, and you can keep them on for almost a minute total before they shut down. We’re constructing an projectile version that can be used as part of an anti-aircraft system, but thought you might like to have a few of these around …”
“I want fifty,” Katrina said. “We can use them in hand-to-hand drills.” Dr. Harper gave her a strange look. “What? You said yourself we’d be getting more recruits. They’ll need to be trained by someone, and I’m qualified.”
“Captain O’Brien can train them.”
“He’s not what we are,” Katrina said. “He’s got advantages we don’t. I’ll take fifty butterfly spikes and a rack for my gym.”
The ‘my’ raised Dr. Harper’s eyebrows, but she signed off on the delivery. If the order went through, it would tie up Synthos’s manufacturer for weeks.
Payaa’s attention returned as she latched on to the suspicious thoughts. What are you doing?
My job, Katrina thought. Because I have one. I’m not a broodmare like you.
The venom made Payaa recoil. Katrina steadied her thoughts, smoothing over any site of turmoil before the wyvern could catch on further. Shit. Now she’d really owed Payaa an apology. But how could she apologize for keeping secrets without giving those very secrets away?
Soon enough, it wouldn’t matter.
“I’m taking this with me,” she said, pulling the butterfly spike close.
“I’m honored, ma’am. Now may I show you the rest of your cold weather gear?”
It wasn’t the handgun that drew her eye, but the snowshoes—collapsible, durable metal. A box of ammo. A coil of rope. A fire kit, and a first aid kid. A new radio, and a flashlight. The telling part was what wasn’t there: tents, blankets, all survival gear too heavy for her new body to handle alone. This gear would keep her alive for a couple hours, if she got stranded. It would not let her move long distances.
She organized the supplies neatly in the pack they’d given her and clipped the gun to her belt. The butterfly spike fit in the loops on the outside of the pack. It was bulky, but she needed a way to transport it.
She didn’t dare say goodbye to Quickfingers as they parted in the Eyrie stairwell, her making for the roof, him making for the cafeteria. He’s happy, she told herself. She didn’t know how long that happiness would last, but it made parting easier to bear.
The size of the den threatened to overwhelm her as she climbed in. The mouth could have held three elephants, side by side. The tunnels were wide enough to fit two-lane roads. They wormed their way through the heart of the mountain, sloping dramatically downward. Heat radiated off the heating elements locked to the walls. Katrina’s boots scuffed along the rough brown stone. This place was not built for humans to enter.
Payaa’s chamber lay to the back. Five cat-sized whelps clambered all over her, squawking and squealing. In the corner sat a large LCD touch screen, mounted on its own podium. In their shared memories, she felt the wyvern running the otherwise-useless thumb on her second wing joint over the screen, reading books.
Your favorite? Katrina asked.
Tolstoy. Flashes of Cyrillic slipped between them. In the original language. It suffers in translation.
You’re smarter than I am.
Payaa straightened her neck, suspicious. When you lack the hands and resources to build things, you try to build something in your mind. What do you want from me? Her patience was rapidly running low. She’d been insulted enough by her pilot.
Katrina made herself think it. I came to apologize. You were right, earlier. I’m not ready to completely open up my mind to you. There’s a lot of bad stuff in there. Her bad stuff seemed pretty pathetic compared to Payaa’s, and some of it slipped through—cuffs on her wrists after a bar brawl, getting fired from her second job—but Payaa didn’t seem interested in judging her. I just need time to get used to this. To you.
One of the larger whelps clambered over and started climbing up her leg. Katrina reached down and tried to pluck him off. He wriggled free of her grasp and perched atop her head, spreading its wings wide. Talons scratched her scalp. She yelped.
Keetek, enough. To me. Me!
The little wyvern jumped from Katrina’s head to the ground, scuttling back to his mother’s side. Katrina felt a sharp stab of guilt, one she couldn’t even try to hide.
I accept your apology, Payaa said, and Katrina knew she meant it.
Can
we go flying? she blurted out. I found this interesting route we could take—loops around to the south, very scenic. Might take a few hours, but if you’re up for it.
Payaa considered. Katrina knew the wyvern felt her guilt and wanted to do something to make Katrina feel better about herself. That only twisted the knife.
I’ll come, Payaa decided. Can you get my harness?
Katrina ran to fetch it, and Payaa climbed up to the terrace. It took fifteen minutes to get all the straps in place. At last, she climbed onto Payaa’s back and clipped the climbing harness wrapped around her legs to the loop in the saddle. Payaa rose. Her weight shifted back onto her legs, and Katrina slid back in the saddle. She had an uneasy feeling she sat atop a mountain.
This is going to be very cold, she thought. The mountain pitched forward. Katrina’s breath caught. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Wind slammed across her face, and then she was falling. Terror laced from her mind to Payaa’s, and the wyvern stuttered, pushed past it, and spread her wings. Air blasted against the wide surface, throwing them upwards with a jolt. Payaa flapped rapidly, bringing her speed under control. Katrina lost herself in the pattern of strokes—strong and sure, like oars in a river, or feet pounding on asphalt. An athlete. Some identity they shared.
Payaa loved this.
Katrina opened her eyes. They danced across the sky, taking in clouds, the low sun, exploring them in dizzying detail. Clutching the saddle so hard her fists hurt, she dared looking out through the junction of Payaa’s shoulder and neck. Her vision darted across the thin fall snow, picking out shadows, rocks, and tracks.
Caribou tracks, Payaa told her. Thousands more flock here in winter, and we eat like kings. Through memories, Katrina could feel her dive, closing her talons around a buck and snapping its neck as she pushed back into the sky, muscles straining gloriously with the weight. Where did you want to go?