Talker 25 (9780062121929)

by McCune, Joshua

  21

  The next day begins too early with a fanfare of music, a low-level jolt from my CENSIR, and, worst of all, a chirpy “Wakey, wakey, everyone” from Evelyn. By the time I’ve opened my eyes, the other girls have gathered near the entrance, a couple nodding in rhythm to the Kissing Dragons theme song blaring from the screen.

  “Wakey, wakey, Twenty-Five.”

  I groan into my pillow, then stagger to my feet and join the group.

  “Where’s Lorena?” I ask Pam. It appears Claire’s missing, too. Unless she’s still in the bathroom.

  Pam shrugs. “Probably in the battle room. Lorena’s a top operator.”

  I start to ask what she means when four soldiers enter the barracks carrying boxes overflowing with clothes. Evelyn and company fawn over them like they’re rock stars handing out autographs, not gun-toting soldiers doling out jackets, boots, gloves, and ski caps. Twenty-One, counting her fingers repeatedly, whispering “Burn, burn, burn” as she does, is starting to look more normal by the second.

  Evelyn beams at the thick-necked soldier guarding the door. “Everyone was up on time, Lester, except Twenty-Five.”

  “She’s new here. Why don’t we give her a break?” He tosses her a Kit Kat. She thanks him like he just awarded her the Miss America crown. Terrific. Whenever Big Brother’s not spying on us, I’ve got to worry about Ms. Perky and her band of informants ratting me out for chocolate.

  The soldiers load us onto a black bus outfitted with monster tires and a snow plow. Inside, a steel grating separates the driver from the rest of us. Evelyn and her crew crowd the front seats, chirping away or flirting with the soldiers, who scan our faces and monitor their tablets.

  A half mile down, we debus and single-file it into a mess hall with a small buffet area and several long tables, most of them occupied by All-Blacks. Several leer at us as we enter. A couple hoot or whistle.

  One gropes my ass. “Hey there, pretty girl, what’s your number?”

  I ignore him.

  “I’m Lover One,” he calls after me. His buddies laugh. Their taunts follow me into the buffet line, where a server loads my tray with runny eggs and overcooked sausages Pam assures me don’t come from dragons.

  We head for the table farthest from the entrance. Pam indicates a pair of girls seated at the far end. Talker Twenty and Talker Twenty-Two. Each has a Bible laid open beside her tray.

  “Would you like to join us?” Pam asks.

  I don’t, but I don’t want to be rude. I bow my head as she recites an opening prayer. “‘We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.’ Amen.”

  I give the obligatory amen, smile amiably, and dig in.

  Breakfast tastes like heaven. While I eat and pretend to listen to Pam lecture on suffering and hope, I scan the table on the other side of the cafeteria where the male talkers sit. I count seven, all high school or college age, none of them familiar.

  “Where’s James?” I ask Lester, who stands behind us. “Talker Twenty-Six,” I clarify when he doesn’t respond.

  “Best you forget about him,” he says.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Means you should forget about him.”

  Something tugs at my pant leg. I look down to find Twenty-One beneath the table. “What are you—”

  She presses a finger to her lips. “Everyone you care about, everyone you care about, gone. Poof,” she whispers. “Make them go. Kill the dragons, or the dragons kill them. Burn, burn, burn. Yes, yes, yes.” She nods, spins around, and crawls to her chair.

  We’re clearing our trays from the table when Lorena, Claire, and two boys enter the mess hall under guard. Though I can’t be sure, it appears they’re all holding Kit Kats. Claire says something. Lorena slaps her, throws the chocolate at Claire’s feet, then storms out of the cafeteria. A couple of A-Bs escort Claire and the two boys to the buffet line as the other two soldiers race after Lorena.

  “She’s in trouble,” Evelyn says. “Actions have consequences.”

  I imagine stabbing my plastic fork through the smile plastered on Evelyn’s face. My CENSIR shocks me.

  “Control your emotions, Twenty-Five,” Lester says, finger poised over his tablet. “Violent thoughts will not be tolerated . . . even against her.”

  “I wasn’t going to do anything,” I say.

  Once he’s sure I’m calm, we join the others on the bus. As we pull out, I see a soldier shoving Lorena into the back of a Humvee.

  “They going to recondition her?” I ask Pam.

  “Lorena? She’s done worse,” she says, then shrugs as if to say “you never know.”

  Our bus makes a short commute between a pair of missile launchers to the opposite side of the road. We idle close to the entrance of what must be the ER—thankfully out of sight of the parapet of dragon heads. A tractor pushes a flickering Red strapped to a rolling slab up a ramp and into a garage bay.

  “Give me fifty on that lightbulb not making it past the flame bath,” I overhear the driver say to Lester.

  “Only if you’re paying triple. That thing probably won’t make it past intake,” Lester says. “At least it’s got a thick head. Should make for a good workout.”

  They both laugh.

  Under the guidance of a couple of soldiers, the slab is maneuvered onto some sort of rail system. Four figures dressed from head to toe in black—faces hidden by goggles and masks, a couple carrying hatchets—walk into view. The slab rotates ninety degrees, pointing the dragon down the length of the ER. A semicylindrical sheath lowers from the ceiling, comes to a stop inches from the dragon. The tractor reverses, the garage bay closes.

  The driver opens the bus door. The stench of burned meat wafts in. I hear the faint grind of what sounds like chain saws.

  A seat ahead of me, Sixteen tenses.

  “One, Five, Twelve, Eighteen,” Lester calls.

  A chorus of excited thank yous rings out from the front. Sixteen relaxes.

  “Kill the dragons, yes, yes,” Twenty-One says.

  A soldier escorts Evelyn and three tagalongs toward the ER. The girls smile the entire way.

  We cross back to the other side of the road to a building decorated with massive dragon-wing skeletons. Must be from a Green.

  Or Baby. I swallow. No, they wouldn’t have killed her already. They’d want to experiment on her first. Doesn’t matter. One day soon, she’ll be a trophy on a building. On several buildings, maybe. Will I recognize her?

  Lester checks his tablet. “Seven, Ten, Nineteen.”

  The rest of Evelyn’s posse offers up more overzealous thank yous and plastic smiles as they follow a guard off the bus.

  “Or the dragons kill them,” Twenty-One says with a gleeful laugh.

  A block down the road, we stop again.

  “Thirteen, Sixteen, Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two.”

  “Chocolate time. Burn, burn, burn.” Twenty-One bounces up from her seat and skips down the aisle. Pam crosses herself, mumbles something beneath her breath, then follows.

  When the bus starts moving again, it’s just me, Lester, and the bus driver. “Where are we going?”

  “To get you processed,” Lester says. “It shouldn’t take long. Assuming you cooperate.”

  We drive to a three-story building that looms at the end of the road between a pair of artillery guns. An American flag flies from the pole atop it, glimmering in the sunlight. We park beside a cluster of cages similar to the dragon ones, except smaller. Exiting the bus, I get a better view of the flag. It’s made of dragon scales.

  Lester takes me to a top-floor office occupied by a grizzled man, a painting of Saint George spearing a dragon, and a half dozen thinscreens. A couple broadcast the twenty-four-hour news stations; the rest are turned off.

  “Colonel Hanks, this is Tw
enty-Five,” says Lester.

  “Thank you, Sergeant.” The colonel dismisses Lester, then gestures to the chair opposite his desk. I remain standing. His eyes narrow a fraction. “Do you know what we do here, Twenty-Five?”

  Horrible things, but I say, “Hunt dragons?”

  Another fraction. “We do God’s work. And he has granted you a great gift.”

  “This great gift has gotten me into a lot of trouble.”

  He removes a plaque from the wall, sets it on the desk so I can read it. DO NOT BE DECEIVED: GOD CANNOT BE MOCKED. A MAN REAPS WHAT HE SOWS. GALATIANS 6:7.

  I snort. “What does God say about torture?”

  “The house of the wicked will be destroyed, Twenty-Five. Whether you are inside or not is up to you.” The colonel indicates my CENSIR. “You know why we make you wear that?”

  I don’t respond. He shows me his tablet. The screen contains my brain image, personal data, and biometrics. I choke off a bitter laugh when I read the words. Current synaptic state: confused, angry, scared. No kidding.

  “The CENSIR is meant to help you find the righteous path, Twenty-Five. You have been led astray by evil forces.”

  He switches the CENSIR to record mode. “Be warned, any lie or omission will be detected. Tell me the names of every dragon and insurgent you know.”

  I hesitate. Colors appear on my brain image, accompanied by text that indicates my reluctance.

  “I am disappointed,” the colonel says. He uses the tablet to activate a thinscreen. A moment later, Simon Montpellier’s awful voice fills the room.

  “Sometimes the face of terror is obvious,” he says. A picture of a scowling black guy with a scar along his jawline flashes onto the screen. I squint. The same guy from the Shadow Mountain Lookout picture? He disappears. A new image forms, the pixels sharpening slowly into focus. “Sometimes it’s the last person you’d expect.”

  My junior-high yearbook picture crystallizes.

  It’s a teaser for that Kissing Dragons spinoff.

  “Why does a girl destined to be valedictorian, a girl from a loving, patriotic family, join the other side?”

  The screen flashes to the famous clip of Mom leading the Green away from the Arlington suburbs in the yellow Bug.

  Back to my yearbook picture.

  “Melissa Callahan, a good girl from a distinguished family . . . a family with the darkest secret,” Simon says. The image shatters, to be replaced by a video of me on Baby amid the gunships. They’ve made her into a Red. She releases a blast of CGI fire that consumes the screen. White text appears: Kissing Dragons: The Other Side debuts after Kissing Dragons. (Check your loyalty at www.kissing-dragons.com/check-your-loyalty).

  “You know what happens to the families of traitors, Twenty-Five?” the colonel asks. “Your brother and father will be eviscerated by the media. . . . What did they do wrong? How come they didn’t see it coming?” He pauses. “Or maybe they were involved.”

  My throat constricts. “They didn’t know anything.”

  “I pray that’s true. That teaser hasn’t gone live. The producers are eager to air the episode, but the army has final say in the matter. Now, Twenty-Five, tell me the names.”

  Two choices . . .

  “Gretchen,” I whisper. “I don’t know her last name. I don’t know if she’s alive.”

  “Please give her description.”

  I do. Everything I say appears in bold text beneath the image of my brain. Colonel Hanks checks the content, asks a few more questions, then saves everything.

  “Who else?”

  I go through names and descriptions the best I can remember.

  “Anybody else?” he asks.

  I shake my head, but my thoughts give me away.

  “Twenty-Five, you have taken a step away from the devil’s side. Do not fall back.”

  “Preston,” I say. The tablet indicates I’m suppressing something. I clench my fists. “Williams. Preston Williams. He was a transfer student to our high school. Maybe that’s not even his real name.” God, I hope not.

  “Anyone else?”

  Yes, one more. The one that hurts most. I scour my mind for a way out, but my mind is the trap.

  “Do not make me ask again.”

  “Keith,” I say, feeling like an executioner delivering the death blow. “Major Keith Harden. That’s it. That’s all of them.”

  The colonel stands. “Excellent. Be good, Twenty-Five, do what you’re told, and God will favor you. You are dismissed.”

  On the way out, he hands me a Kit Kat.

  22

  There’s somebody in one of the cages. Cap pulled low, jacket zipped to his chin. James. Hugging himself, he bounces from foot to foot.

  “What are you doing to him? Stop it!”

  “Control yourself, Twenty-Five, unless you wish to join him.” Lester drags me into a Humvee.

  “Let me talk to him. Please! I can make him cooperate!”

  “Sure you can.”

  “Please. A couple minutes. Give me a chance.”

  He rolls his eyes, sighs, speaks into his helmet’s mouthpiece. “Radio go. . . . HQ, Twenty-Five wants to talk with Twenty-Six, who is currently in a Smurf pen. She believes she can persuade him to behave.” A brief response from the other end. Lester nods to me. “You have five minutes.”

  I realize why they call it the Smurf pen as I get up close. James’s cheeks and nose are tinged blue. He squints in my direction but looks confused. I call his name three times before his eyes find focus on mine. I reach between the bars and press my gloved palm to his face.

  He flinches, loses his balance for a moment. “It burns . . . burns. How . . . can burn . . . and be . . . so cold?”

  I unwrap the Kit Kat, press it into his hand.

  “This is what they give you when you’re good,” I say as he struggles to chew and I struggle to keep it together. “Doesn’t seem quite fair, does it?”

  He tries to smile, but it must hurt too much.

  I bite my lip hard. “Just do what they want, James. Please.”

  “They . . . will . . . have . . . kill . . . me first,” he stutters through chattering teeth.

  “They won’t do that. They’ll recondition you.”

  “Maybe . . . that’s . . . better.”

  Despite my best efforts, I start crying.

  “Don’t.” He takes my hand between his. “What . . . was . . . phrase . . . you . . . told me . . . about . . . the spirit one?”

  “Baekjul boolgool,” I whisper. “Please, James.”

  “It’s time to go, Twenty-Five,” Lester says from behind me.

  “I’m . . . sorry.” James releases my hand and turns away.

  “James, don’t.”

  He ignores me.

  Lester grabs me by the arm.

  “Please. Just a few more minutes.”

  “Don’t make this difficult, Twenty-Five.” He pushes me into the Humvee. “You should forget about him.”

  “Stop telling me that.”

  “Just trying to help.”

  “I don’t need your help.”

  “You need all the help you can get out here, Twenty-Five. Actions, consequences, it all boils down to this, the most helpful piece of advice anybody will give you: don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re brave.” He points a thumb over his shoulder toward the Smurf pens, grimaces. “It won’t end well.”

  We drive to the building where the bus dropped off Twenty-One and Pam. At the door, I hear a boy’s muffled cries from inside. “I’m scared, I’m scared. Please, I need your help. The invisible men are after me.”

  “Join us or die!” somebody else shouts.

  “Burn, burn, burn!!!”

  “What’s going on?” I ask as Lester types in the passcode to the door.

  “Greasing the scales,” Lester says.

  As he ushers me inside, other voices rise and fall, some with anguished pleas, others with growled commands. After hanging our coats on a communal rack and stuffing gloves an
d hats into marked cubbies (25 for me, L. ROGERS for him), I follow him down a short hallway that ends in a fluorescent-lit office crowded with a dozen cubicles, most occupied by an All-Black and a dragon talker. The soldiers monitor tablets while the talkers beg and growl at computer screens.

  Major Alderson watches intently from the front of the room. Actions have consequences and Weak links break chains are written on the whiteboard behind him. Beneath that is a list: 3, 4, 6, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 20, 21, 22. Red and green tally marks adjoin each number. Eleven has the most, with seven reds and two greens. Twenty-One’s right behind, with six reds and two greens.

  “Cube twelve,” the major says, writing 25 at the bottom of the board.

  Lester guides me to the cubicle adjacent to Twenty-One’s, then sits me on a folding chair in front of a computer.

  Target: Pravik (Red)

  Call frequency: Unknown

  Last known whereabouts: Central Canada

  Known dragon associations: Calixis, Korm*, Oryson, Ulg†

  Known insurgent associations: None

  Your name: Sandra Bynum

  Your location: Sioux Falls, South Dakota

  Your insurgency group: The Nebraska Reds

  “A star by the name means that association is deceased,” Lester says. “A cross indicates that the dragon is imprisoned. Never mention a captured dragon to the target. Here’s your script.”

  He hands me a couple sheets of paper. I’m supposed to start by introducing myself as an insurgent in need of a temporary hideout. If the dragon agrees to help, I ask for a location image. If the dragon hesitates, go to the rebuttal section, which has a dozen options depending on the dragon’s response.

  Several places in the script require me to fill in the blanks with my or the target’s information. Beside each section, handwritten notes instruct me to Pretend you’re scared! or Get angry. It seems ridiculous the dragons would buy any of this, but by the time Lester comes back with a cup of coffee, Major Alderson’s already added another green tick to Twenty-One’s tally.

  Lester taps the transmit button on his tablet. Three choices appear. 1-to-1, Partial, Full—grayed out. He selects Partial. The CENSIR loosens slightly.

  “Go time, Talker Twenty-Five,” he says. “Speak everything aloud. Any attempts at silent communication will be punished. Stick to your lines until you become familiar with protocol.”