Dragon's War

by Ehsani, Vered

  Dr. Patel didn’t waste any time. “You understand that as far as we know, this has only been done successfully once?”

  I peered up at Dragon as he nodded his hologram’s head. But he wasn’t looking at the doctor. He was watching me.

  “And that this is highly experimental and could quite possibly fail?”

  Again the nod.

  “What do you mean, fail?” I squeaked out. This was the first time the “f” word had been used. “Fail? As in what? As in it may not work? Or…”

  “It means if it doesn’t work, my brain won’t either,” Dragon answered for the doctor. He didn’t sound worried.

  I started worrying, again. “That’s not safe. It’s too risky. I…” I grasped for some kind of rationale. “I don’t want to lose you again.” My face felt hot, my hands cold. I didn’t care.

  “If I don’t do this, I’ll have nothing to lose,” he said softly, smiling at me. Golden eyes. Voice as refreshing as a cool stream of water. He waggled his hand at me, reminding me of my earlier request, one I now intensely regretted. “I’m a phantom right now, Myth. I can’t live inside a tank for the rest of my life. That’s not living.”

  My nose started dripping. I wiped at it with my sleeve, trying to choke back the snivelling misery rising up my throat. But the way I saw it, I deserved it. Hadn’t I already set him up by telling him he wasn’t real enough? God, I was so mean, so thoughtless sometimes. And way too tearful lately.

  “It was done once,” he whispered. “And it worked then. It can work again. I have to try, Myth. Please. Let me try.”

  “Do you need my permission?” I demanded, wondering what I would do if he said yes.

  “No.” He smiled gently. “But I would like your blessing.”

  What could I say? After everything he’d gone through, could I deny him this? I gave it, praying that I wouldn’t regret it.

  They left me there, in that small, sterile room with its few chairs and a view of gardens.

  I chewed at my nails. Nothing else to do. Chew. And pace.

  Would it work?

  It has to work.

  I paced some more, my heart pounding, about to fly out of me. What if it wasn’t successful? What if he lost the one thing he still had, his mind?

  Sometime later, the door opened again. My mom came into the room. I almost knocked her over with my hug. She held me up, held me tight.

  “The donor body is healthy, Myranda,” she said, trying to reassure me. “Only the brain was destroyed. But the rest is healthy. There’s a very good chance it’ll work. They studied Griffin’s procedure carefully. They’re prepared. And they’re the best.”

  She was babbling. Trying to convince herself as much as me. I let her words roll over me, blanket me in warmth and hope. And I repeated my own words, willing them to be true, hoping that this time, this one and only time, the repetition of hope-filled words would create a miracle.

  It has to work.

  Chew and pace.

  Please let it work.

  Chapter 34: Dragon

  A sound wakes me up.

  I struggle to place it. It reminds me of a drumbeat but much softer. And very close. I try to pinpoint its source. It sounds like, feels like… But that can’t be right.

  Something is wrong. Terribly wrong. Where are my sensors? Why aren’t they responding to my commands? Why is it so dark?

  I try to run a check on the systems. No response. Nothing works. The drumbeat speeds up. I hear its thrum, feel its movement.

  “He’s coming out.” A voice. At least my audio sensors work.

  “Dragon.” Another voice. A woman.

  But not Myth.

  Who else knows that name? Who else calls me that? I’m MindOpS to everyone except her. Why aren’t my sensors responding?

  “Are you awake?” the voice says. “Open your eyes.”

  My eyes?

  My sensors, she means. I try to tell her they are offline, that I need my technician. It seems the speaker is also down. What a mess.

  Light flickers on, off.

  “That’s right,” the woman continues. “Try again.”

  What’s wrong with the lighting system? Why isn’t it responding properly? That sort of nonsense is unacceptable. It’s still dark.

  Flicker.

  At last. The lights stay on.

  “His eyes are open,” the woman gushed. “Tell the rest of the team.”

  I see a room. Two people in white coats, an older woman and a younger man with masks over their mouths, stand nearby, staring at my sensors. What’s so fascinating? I order my visual sensors to zoom in on their nametags.

  The sensors refuse to work.

  The doctors leave. My sensors flicker off again. Until I hear the voice. Her voice. The only one I want to hear. I turn my visual sensors on.

  She walks in. Trendy jacket. Green eyes. Black curly hair. Carmel skin. Seventeen years of attitude. And nothing else matters.

  Chapter 35: Myth

  To be honest, I don’t know what I expected. What I hoped, unrealistic and impossible, was that he would look just the same. Tall, slim, brown hair, golden eyes.

  What I saw was something else.

  I stared at the form on the bed. Pale. Thin. Weak. Alive.

  Tubes and machines everywhere. But not on the bed. On the bed was a living body holding the most precious of all things: Dragon’s mind. His soul. His memories, I hoped.

  I swallowed. It hurt. This wasn’t what I’d expected.

  His face was smooth, baby smooth. Nothing was right. The body looked about fourteen years old. They hadn’t told me that. Just that the donor body was healthy apart from the dead brain and the blind eyes. And that they were fitting the body with synthetic eyes. But this was the body of a kid. Not of my Dragon, dragon boat racer, smuggler, friend.

  “Dragon?” I called softly, still unsure. Maybe I stepped into the wrong room.

  His eyelids flickered open, each movement an effort. I watched, waiting. The eyelids finally stayed open. His eyes. Big and golden brown. Unlike the body, the eyes were familiar. I could recognise them—light brown eyes with golden flecks that transformed the brown into something magical, golden dragon eyes.

  And of course, that’s why he’d done that. Now I understood. He must have requested this, that the synthetic eyes be the same as his, so there was one thing familiar for me to see, something I would recognise. He knew me well. He knew I wouldn’t see him in this new form if there wasn’t something from the past I could hold onto.

  He smiled. His smile. The glow in his eyes reassured me. This was my Dragon. Head swathed in bandages, inside the body of a boy. But I could see him in there.

  “Why so young?” I whispered to the doctor who’d escorted me in.

  She shrugged, but Dragon answered, his voice strained and gravelly, like he’d been coughing a lot lately. Or hadn’t been using his vocal cords much. “There’s not exactly an abundance of brain-dead, living bodies around.”

  I nodded. Of course. Made sense. They had to make do with whatever material was available. We were lucky. The other MindOpS brains were still waiting.

  “Yes, he certainly is a unique case,” the doctor added.

  “No,” he said softly. “Not unique. There’s one other.” He glanced at me.

  I knew who he meant. I could guess what he meant to do about it too. But now was not the time to go chasing after Griffin. She and the Games Boss had disappeared. I actually hoped they’d stay that way. I’d lost any taste for revenge I might have had.

  The doctor smiled and said something to me. Didn’t hear her. She left.

  I started to cry. Pathetic, I told myself. Pull yourself together. Enough tears. But I couldn’t stop.

  “I’m still here, Myth,” he said. His voice was raspy.

  “Yeah.”

  “And I’m real now, a real boy.”

  I covered my mouth with a hand, trying to stuff the pain back down.

  “We’re together, like before,”
he continued.

  Nothing was like it was before.

  “Sure.” I wiped at my tears. “Maybe I can babysit you sometime.”

  He reached for my hand. I could see the pain it caused him, even that small movement. But maybe also my reaction. I stopped crying.

  “Bodies grow up,” he said. “So will this one. It’s already fourteen.”

  It? I stared at him. He hadn’t yet connected himself with this physical body. He didn’t fully own it yet. He was talking about it like he would a projector unit. Some foreign object, not his new home, his own body.

  “You look…” What could I say? “Young.” I finished. Had I already said that?

  He smiled. “Yeah, I guess it hasn’t hit its growth spurt yet. It will soon, and it really is fourteen. It’ll turn fifteen in a few months.” His voice faded. Like it was a huge effort to talk.

  I guess it was.

  “Well, I think you may need a few growth spurts,” I said, forcing a smile.

  He laughed. It came out as a cough. I reached out and squeezed his hand. It was bigger than mine, but seemed so small, cold, weak.

  “I’ll get bigger,” he reassured me, “stronger. This body will catch up to me.”

  “Yeah.” I studied his face. It wasn’t the holographic image I was used to. Except the eyes. Somehow they were the same. Not just the colour. Something else. The energy in them. The spirit.

  It may not be Dragon’s body, but it was him. It was really him. The tension left my shoulders and I sat beside his bed, holding his real hand, staring into his real eyes. The differences of his form became less and less important: the lack of the dragon tattoo on his inner forearm, the darker eyebrows, the younger body.

  I smiled. “I know. And I’ll be here. We’ll get through this, together.”

  He sighed and his face relaxed with relief. After a few minutes, his eyelids flickered shut and he drifted off to sleep. I stroked his cheek with my other hand. Had he worried if I’d really see him? Doubted my ability to find him there inside this new body? Probably.

  But I did see him, and this time, I saw the real Dragon. As I watched him sleep, I whispered a promise to him and to myself, one that I didn’t have to repeat to make true.

  “I’ll be here, waiting.”

  Free Books

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  SOCIETY FOR PARANORMALS: A series concerning dead husbands, African legends and the search for a perfect spot of tea, where African myth meets Victorian manners. For those readers who adore “Pride & Prejudice” and would love to experience a paranormal safari set in colonial Africa.

  Ghosts of Tsavo

  Armed with Victorian etiquette, a fully loaded walking stick and a dead husband, Beatrice Knight arrives in colonial Kenya desperate for a pot of tea and a pinch of cinnamon. But she’ll need more than that if she’s to unravel the mystery of the Ghosts of Tsavo without being eaten in the process. All this while surviving the machinations of her best friend’s dashing godfather and the efforts of her safari guide to feed her to any lion willing to drag her away. What is a ghost-chasing widow to do?

  The Automaton’s Wife

  Beatrice Knight has enough to contend with: a zebra is dead on her lawn, her horse is possessed and a gentleman has arrived with the temerity to propose to her. To top it off, her dead husband Gideon has absconded with an automaton, threatening to return for his wife. The wife in question however soon has other issues, for a killer has moved into town with a nasty habit of carving up the victims. As luck should dictate, who should be the next target but Mrs. Knight herself?

  Revenge of the Mantis

  All is going as it should for Beatrice Knight, until the Lightning God lands in her barn and announces that her old nemesis Koki is about to pay an unsolicited visit. While powdered cinnamon works well on many insects, the giant Praying Mantis won’t be so easily dissuaded from exacting revenge against the intrepid paranormal investigator. And let’s not forget that Mrs. Knight’s cousin is engaged to a bat man while her brother has returned from the dead as a werewolf. As if that isn’t complicated enough, Mr. Timmons presents a possibility too terrible to consider, yet too tempting to refuse. Now, if only she could survive long enough to make a decision…

  The Fourth Mandate

  Having offered her firm and unequivocal resignation, Beatrice Knight is certain she is clear of her former employer, the Society for Paranormals, and is now free to proceed with her life and a wedding. It all seems quite simple, until the Society’s Director Prof. Runal shows up at the train station, her cousin announces horrifying news and a ponytailed dwarf decides he needs her powers to eradicate all non-humanoid paranormals. At least one thing is certain: anything is manageable with a pot of tea and a fully loaded walking stick.

  Curse of the Nandi

  Mrs. Beatrice Knight is preparing to move into a life of marital bliss, or at least marital satisfaction, with her new husband who fortunately is very much alive and can’t float through walls. While she is no expert on honeymoons, she’s certain that they shouldn’t involve brainless heads, bloodsucking fireflies and Bubonic Plague. These however are mere inconveniences, for there’s another threat of greater significance: the Nandi are rising up against their colonial masters and are determined to rid the land of all things British. The intrepid Mrs. Knight faces all this with her usual aplomb, her hefty walking stick and, of course, a pot of tea.

  THE GHOST POST MYSTERIES: An Urban Fantasy Series in which the humor is darker, the characters more deadly

  Lethal Takeout

  When Axe Cooper is murdered while picking up Chinese takeaway, he’s pretty irritated about the loss of a good dinner, not to mention being dead. Not prepared to move on just yet, Axe decides to stick around and haunt his best friend, Lily Chan, while trying to figure out why anyone would kill a janitor. In the meantime, Axe is hired by The Ghost Post to track down recently deceased writers. As he learns more about his new phantom friends, Axe realises his murder is not an isolated event and that if he doesn’t learn to fly like Superman, Lily could be next.

  Fatal Secrets

  Just when Axe Cooper thinks he’s safe, guess again. His memory is fading and unless he wants to lose his mind, he has to figure out why he buried an old friend in a swamp. And let’s not forget the ghost-eating Deathmark that’s developed an unhealthy interest in Axe and his friends. Being dead is no protection from the secret that is about to crawl back into his life. But he’s not the only one with something to hide and some secrets are deadlier than others.

  DRAGON & MYTH: A Sci-Fi Adventure Series

  Dragon’s Mind

  Ten years ago, a human brain was installed into a computer system. To most people, it is a non-living entity operating in the background of their lives. Only a girl named Myth knows better: his name is Dragon and he is very much alive. And after ten bodiless years, Dragon has a dream that will change everything. The dream will put his mind and Myth’s life in mortal danger. There are powerful forces that don’t want the truth revealed and they’re coming for Dragon. But where do you run to when you’re already everywhere?

  Dragon’s War

  How do you stop a war you started? And should you, if your species’ safety and wellbeing depend on winning at all costs? These are the thoughts that plague Myth as she paces the fortress where she is being kept “for her own protection.” Meanwhile, Dragon is in hiding, hunted by the albino assassin and the city’s very systems that he once ran. As his backup reserves are depleted and the clock ticks down to the launch of a global virus, Myth must escape to save Dragon and together stop the war that they launched. But time is running out and the albino is watching.

  GHOSTS & SHADOWS: Fantasy Adventure Ser
ies with some Time Travel thrown in, just for fun

  Diary of a Part-Time Ghost

  Fifteen-year-old Ash wants nothing more than to be a normal kid and avoid trouble. Then his birthday gift transforms him into a ghost and zaps him back in time to the beginning of the American Revolution. If he thought that was bad, it’s about to get a whole lot worse. Ash must rescue his ancestor from one danger after another, including an implacable enemy who controls the very shadows. What starts out as a brief experiment in time travel rapidly changes into a race for his very survival, and Ash is running out of time.

  Where Shadows Dance

  Ash was looking forward to a summer of camping and time travelling. Then his Great Aunt fades away (literally) and his near-death nightmare gets even weirder. Juna isn’t having a great time of it either: having escaped from her parole officer, she barely survives falling out of an airplane. While Ash and Juna try to get out of the past and back home, events and dreams keep pointing them to the place where it all starts and ends, where shadows dance and time bends. If they can get there, they may be able to stop an implacable enemy from destroying their future. Of course, getting there means surviving first…

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Vered Ehsani has been a writer since she could hold pen to paper, which is a lot longer than she cares to admit. She lives in Kenya with her family and various other animals. When she isn’t writing, she pretends to work as an environmental consultant.

  Visit Vered and her world at http://veredehsani.co.za and get free books. Email her at veredehsani (at) gmail.com — she loves to hear from her readers.

  Copyright © 2013 Vered Ehsani

  All rights reserved

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  Editing by Amy Eye at www.theeyesforediting.com