I heard Lavack curse and order, “Knock it down.”
Something rammed against the door. Once… twice… it disintegrated under the blows. Blade pushed Darren and me behind him, scooped up the chair and began swinging it around at the guards pushing into the office.
“Dragon, hurry up,” I yelled.
I tried to remember what would happen if someone yanked the connection out while Dragon was busy online. Nothing. No, that was if we were in Grogan’s headquarters. There it wouldn’t matter because he would’ve been connected to the system in several different ways. But here, that wasn’t the case. What would happen?
My brain turned into a hamster wheel, spinning under the influence of scattered thoughts. I knew the answer, I knew it. It was right there.
But all I could think about was the time ticking away.
Dragon battling with the virus, unable to run. His brain sitting right there, in front of a man who wanted to destroy him.
Griffin’s hate-filled red eyes.
My mom, locked away upstairs.
Dragon’s fading image, his golden brown eyes dying.
“Dragon!” I screamed, knocking away a hand that reached for me. Several guards were crowded into the office. One pulled a taser gun and fired at Blade.
“No, stop it,” I shouted. Sobbed, more like it.
He fell to the floor, his body shaking. Three guards dragged him outside and held him down. As if he could jump up after that.
Darren was fighting off a guard but didn’t last long either. Then there was me.
“Lavack, don’t,” I said, tears choking my voice. “He’s trying to save us all. Just leave him alone.” A guard ran at me. Before I could kick or do anything else useful, he scooped me up and over his shoulder.
I punched at the padded vest on the guard’s back. I doubt he felt a thing. I screamed, “Leave him alone. He’s not doing anything wrong. Lavack, listen to me. Dragon! Dragon!”
The last thing I saw before collapsing into hysterical tears was Lavack yanking out the sensor unit and dropping it to the floor.
Chapter 30: Myth
We spent the rest of the afternoon locked up in a small room. Blade held me and stroked my hair while I blubbered uncontrollably all over his shoulder. By the time the tears stopped gushing, his shirt had a large wet spot and my face was a puffy mess. My head floated in a fog that muffled all thoughts and feelings except one: despair.
Darren kept checking his watch. I didn’t want to. But I knew when the time on the cart finished. His skinny, pinched-up face blanched. He blinked once, twice, then came to sit beside Blade and me, and held my hand.
I cried some more. The fog thickened.
We sat like that, huddled in a corner, not talking. What was there to say? Dragon was gone. No, not gone. Dead. Let’s just say it like it is. If Lavack didn’t damage him by pulling the unit out or throwing the tank over a cliff, the support system would’ve depleted completely by now. Whatever happened, Dragon was finished. Permanently, this time.
And the virus? I figured we’d find out soon enough if it launched or not. So far, the lights were still on. Of course, the compound could have its own backup generator. But that would only last so long.
Guards came and wordlessly escorted us to a dining hall. I wasn’t hungry. Blade insisted I eat. I didn’t argue. That would’ve taken energy. I didn’t have any energy, just a grey fog to mute the pain.
After we were finished, we sat in silence, me in between the two others, waiting to be led back. Or for the lights to go off. Or both. I slouched in my chair, stared at my hands lying limply on the table.
A door opened. Lavack and my mom walked in. Darren grabbed at my upper arm and shook me. I ignored him. Even the sight of my mom didn’t stir up much apart from a vague relief that she was alright. The two sat across from us.
“You know, I could charge you with impersonating me,” Lavack said, stroking his chin. He was smiling in that smug way of his.
His words slapped at me. He’d murdered my best friend and possibly launched a virus that would destroy everything, and here he was smiling. It was his fault. All of it. My anger burned away a bit of the fog, enough for me to glare at him.
“I should charge you with impersonating someone with intelligence,” I retorted.
“Myranda,” my mom said in that tone. You know the one. All mothers have some version of it. It’s the young-lady-you-watch-that-attitude tone. Normally, it was enough to slow me down. Not today.
Lavack waved her off. “It’s alright, Kathy.”
“How magnanimous of you,” Darren said. His shoulders were slouched and he was shivering. His grip on my arm hadn’t loosened. Was he holding me back or holding himself together? I glanced at him and nodded approvingly. He straightened up, his shivering subsiding.
“The point is, this young lady was right,” Lavack said, ignoring Darren.
“The point is, it’s too late,” I said. I gritted my teeth.
He shook his head, smiling. Seriously, couldn’t he have apologised? Begged for forgiveness? Admitted his error? Oh no. He smiled. “No, actually, it’s not too late. By some miracle, Dragon managed to dismantle the virus.”
“Yeah, right before you dismantled him,” I said before he could continue, ignoring the good news part. “How’s that for gratitude.”
Lavack turned to my mom. “Is she always like this?”
“Only with people who deserve it,” Blade said, his voice rumbling right beside me.
I smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile. Saw my mom’s dagger look. So I coughed and scratched my upper lip. Why was she annoyed with me? How could she sit beside the man who’d killed her creation? Who’d murdered my best friend?
“We checked the virus after. You were right. Griffin had tampered with it, dangerously so. And he’s not dismantled, Myth,” Lavack said, watching me. Like he was wondering if I was safe to be around.
“His support system,” I said, except it came out all garbled because just thinking about it made my throat hurt. Darren’s grip tightened and Blade wrapped an arm around my shoulders. The weight of it calmed me down. But it didn’t take away the fog that had returned.
“Myranda,” Mom said. Soothing. She reached across the table and took my hand. I wanted to pull away from her, but I didn’t. It wasn’t her fault, even if she was sitting beside Lavack. And I was glad to see her. But the fog was too much. I didn’t have the energy to yank my arm back or be angry or happy or anything.
She rubbed my hand. “When Lavack told me you had landed on the beach, I remembered what you’d said in your last call, about the tank running low. So I rigged something up. It’s very rough, barely enough to keep him alive in a drug-induced coma. But it’ll…”
Her words drifted through the fog, becoming lost, blurring into a background murmur. Coma? What coma? He was dead. His brain couldn’t last one minute without external support.
“Myth, did you hear that?” Darren breathed into my ear. It tickled. His nails dug into my upper arm. “He’s alive.”
I shook my head. “No. Lavack killed him.”
Blade squeezed my shoulders. I glanced up at him. He was grinning, his eyes shining. I didn’t have to hear anything more. I knew. The fog liquidised into tears. I sunk my face into Blade’s arm and sobbed, too exhausted and relieved to be embarrassed about all my crying.
Lavack snorted and asked, “Is she always like this?”
Chapter 31: Dragon
Darkness appears out of nothingness. I stretch my dragon form, waking slowly. Too slowly. It reminds me of the first time I woke up after the accident. I can sense the remaining drugs lingering in my mind, numbing it.
A few moments or centuries pass. The drugs fade away and my mind sharpens. I spring up, out of the void. Stars glitter in a newly created universe. How long have I been here? Time has lost meaning.
A bright light forms in the distance. There is a voice inside it, calling me. I’ve heard many voices while in this space, in my dragon for
m, but none of them have the power this one has. I glance back at the void, but it no longer holds me.
“I’ll never return to you,” I tell it. “Whatever happens next, life or death, I’ll take it. This dream is finished.”
I flick my tail and fly to the light and to the one and only voice that matters.
Chapter 32: Dragon
It’s just the four of us in the office: Lavack, Dr. Johansson, Myth and me. Thanks to Darren, my portable unit is working, apart from the irritating buzzing noise in the audio sensor. Thanks to the doctor, I’m alive. And, in a strange way, thanks to Griffin, all of the MindOpS brains are getting a third life.
“We’ve found a candidate for you,” Lavack is explaining. “The patient needed an eye transplant as both eyes were blind from childhood. They decided to use robotic eyes. But there was a…” He hesitates. “Complication.”
Myth stops chewing her nails. “What kind of complication?”
I can tell she’s still not fully comfortable with viewing Lavack as a good guy. She doesn’t believe he’s willing to help without any payback. Well, she’s right, even if she doesn’t fully know why. This isn’t a free gift he’s offering. Strings are definitely attached, as far as I’m concerned. The question is: are those strings so bad? Especially when compared to the alternatives?
“The patient contracted a very rare form of cerebral meningitis,” Dr. Johansson says. “It killed off his brain. The body is on life support. The patient’s family has agreed to donate it if we wish to use it.”
They’re all staring at me, at the hologram of me. Lavack clears his throat. “It’s your choice, Dragon. We can plug you back into Sana, as MindOpS, or into this body. A third chance at life, so to speak.”
I focus on Myth. She’s blinking back tears as she whispers, “Whatever you want.”
I study her. I can tell she has a preference, but she won’t say. She’s leaving it to me.
And that raises an interesting question. What do I want? Do I really want to take over the body of someone else’s son? What if I meet that family one day on the street? They’ll recognise the form and see their child. They won’t see me. But who will I be? Will I still be me, the dragon boat racer and former smuggler? Will I be MindOpS in a human form? Or someone else entirely different?
And do I want to be locked up in a body? As MindOpS, I’m limited only by the limits of the system, and the system is vast. I’m everywhere at once, seeing from multiple views, having numerous, simultaneous conversations. I am the island.
But once I plug into the donor, there’s no going back. I’ll always be an isolated, disconnected brain, small and blind to the wider world around me, frail and easily damaged. I’ll only see, hear and feel what is immediately in front of me.
I’m still watching Myth as I think of all that. She’s in front of me, but I can’t feel her hands even if I reach out to them. Maybe she wouldn’t want me to anyways. It’s never been an option, so I’ve never asked. As MindOpS, I’ll never have that possibility. I’ll always be near her but separated by a chasm of technology. She’ll grow up and grow old. She’ll find a man who can hold her hands and she’ll move away. And I will stay as I am, unchanging and always waiting, permanently the twenty-one-year-old with the dragon tattoo and the golden-brown eyes.
Is that so bad?
She might not even like the donor’s form. It won’t look like me at all. And from experience, I know she doesn’t see me unless I’m in the form she knows.
I glance towards Dr. Johansson, but her face is as confused as I feel. She smiles and says softly, “Whatever you want, we’ll support you. Just remember though,to be human doesn’t require a certain physical form, but rather a spirit that strives to be human.”
A lovely philosophical statement, but it doesn’t touch at the root of my dilemma. “If I take the donor, I won’t look like me,” I say.
I’m really talking to Myth, making sure she understands, but it’s her mother that answers. “It’s not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.” She smiles. “That’s a quote by Thoreau. Something to think about.”
But will they see me? I nod my head at the doctor but say nothing, staring at the floor, picking up on a spider creeping across the tiles. I wonder what it sees.
“I’m not sure. I don’t know if that’s what I want,” I murmur.
I hear a slight intake of breath and glance at Myth. I pick up on the rapid blinking of her eyes, the tears forming. She wipes at her eyes before anyone else can notice. I’ve hurt her.
I’m so sorry.
“Why don’t we give you some space,” Lavack suggests. “The family would like a decision by tonight though. They want to move on.” He herds everyone out of the room and I don’t watch them go. I especially don’t look at Myth, at her eyes.
I stand still in the silent, empty room, unsure what to do, now that I have nothing I have to do. Apart from making a decision, of course. It’s a decision that will change everything, whichever way I choose. What if I regret my choice?
I sink into my indecision, drowning in it. There’s no lifeguard to pull me out and resuscitate me. There’s no procedure I’m obliged to follow, no precedence, no orders to follow. I’m on my own and I don’t like it.
I float over to the window. It has a stunning view of the ocean. Across the glassy, silver-grey surface, Sana Island rises up like the back of a green whale. Beyond, the sun is just appearing, kissing the water with golden light.
A movement closer to shore catches my eye. It’s a small, wooden canoe, bobbing about restlessly. An older man holds it while a young child clambers in. The man pushes the canoe out as he climbs in and begins to paddle.
The canoe glides over the surface as smoothly as a dragon flies through space. The paddle dips and swoops to the tune of a heartbeat. From my memory, a sound drifts across an ocean. I can hear the pounding of the drum that transforms wood into muscle, paddles and arms into wings. I begin to fly as the vessel slips into the golden light.
And I make my decision.
Chapter 33: Myth
I’m not a big fan of hospitals. Who is, right? But normally, I’m not uncomfortable in them either. Except this time.
As we waited for the medical team to finish prepping, I slumped in my seat, focusing on not chewing my nails. Dragon lounged gracefully across the small room from me, the hologram perfectly normal-looking. I couldn’t see any gap between his image and the chair.
“If this works, I’ll have a body,” he said, his first words since Dr. Patel, the lead doctor, had left us.
I smirked, still lost in my worry and confusion. “Kinda like Pinocchio. You’ll finally be a real boy.” As soon as I said that, I wished I hadn’t. Stupid, really stupid. And so wrong. Why had I said something so wrong, so cruel?
He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees, his chin on his hands, his gaze intent on me. He looked so… real. So solid.
“You still don’t believe I’m real already, do you?” he asked softly. “Just like Griffin said.”
My cheeks heated up. I chewed at a nail. “Um… You know what I mean.”
“No. I don’t. But I’d love to understand. I think this conversation is long overdue.”
He was right, but that didn’t make it a conversation I wanted to have. I pushed myself off the chair, pacing the room, studying the tiled floor, the view of a lush garden through the window. Anything but his eyes. “It’s just that if this works, if you get a body, you’ll be more real. You can do things like other people do.”
He chuckled softly, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “So as long as I’m made of wood, I’m not real enough.”
I stopped in front of him and forced myself to stare into his eyes. This would be the last time I’d see those particular eyes, golden brown. Or hear that voice that reminded me of a cool, mellow creek trickling over smooth stones on a hot summer afternoon.
I stretched out my arm towards him. He leaned back. “Take my hand,” I ordered, wiggling my finger
s for emphasis. “Take it.”
He just stared at me, eyes wide, mouth agape.
“Maybe I’m just being superficial,” I pressed on as I lowered my arm. “But I need you to be more than an image, more than a trick of light. I get that you’re real, like on a soul level or something. And you’ve been the best friend I could ever have hoped for. But it’s not enough. Not for me. I want you to be able to hold my hand when we walk together. That’s what I mean when I say real.”
That hurt. I could see it in his eyes. I walked to the other side of the room. I pressed my forehead against the window and studied the view. A moment later, he joined me there, pretending to lean against the wall, his eyes fixed on my face. I couldn’t look at him.
I am superficial, I thought, hating myself.
“I like your new hairstyle,” he said.
Flustered, I swivelled to face him, pushing my hand against the window, wishing the coolness would cover my face as well as my palm. “Huh?”
He shrugged, looking like I hadn’t just told him he wasn’t good enough the way he was. “I meant to tell you before. I like it like this, natural, curly. I could never understand why you always ironed it straight. It’s perfect, just like this.”
I giggled and the sound choked up into tears. He reached out a hand to me. I eyed it suspiciously.
“I’m not going to slap you,” he said. “Even if I could.”
He smiled while his hand hovered above mine. I watched as it sunk down, until it looked like our arms shared one hand. We stood there like that, gazes locked, while the sun heated up the window and time flowed around and past us.
Too soon, the door swished open. I stepped away from the window as Dr. Patel walked in. “We’re ready for you, Dragon,” he said. “I just wanted to have a final conversation before we begin.”
That sounded serious. Great. Another serious conversation. As if the past week hadn’t been full of them already. I sighed, joined the doctor and Dragon, and kept my eyes lowered.
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