Of Cinder and Bone

by Kyoko M

  He shut his eyes, suppressing the first hundred violent threats that rose to mind. “Is she alive?”

  “Of course she is.”

  “Let me speak to her.”

  “Do you think I was born yesterday? Why on earth would I do that?”

  “You want the dragon, don’t you?”

  “I do, but I also know she’s too smart to behave if I put her on the phone with you. Fujioka is a brilliant, observant, dangerous woman. I’m actually thinking about keeping her, to be honest.”

  Jack’s blood boiled and threatened to shoot out of his ears. “Is this a hostage negotiation or not?”

  “You know the terms. The dragon for your woman. Send the cops and I’ll slit her throat and then I’ll find you and do the same.”

  “You know where I am. What’s to stop you from doing that anyway?”

  “I don’t have ojō-sama’s location yet. Killing you would do nothing but gather unnecessary attention to my organization. We succeed only by misdirection and patience.”

  “You have all the data. You have Yagami. Why do you still even want the dragon?”

  “Because she’s a living marvel, Jackson-sensei. Not everything can be solved through equations and theories. Nothing can compare to studying a live specimen. You know better than most that life is full of surprises that not even science can explain. Now it is up to you to decide. Do you risk involving the authorities or do you accept your fate and face the end of the line?”

  Without even realizing, Jack had been pacing the length of the sidewalk, bumping into people on occasion, one hand fisted in his messy hair. His mind raced to find some kind of solution, but it all led back to the same horrific road. How had it all gone so wrong?

  “You don’t want to let me talk to her? Fine. Take a picture and send it. Then I’ll make my decision.”

  Okegawa sighed. “Very well.”

  The line quieted. Jack kept pacing. A couple minutes passed.

  When Okegawa returned, his voice was tight as piano wire. “You will have to settle for good faith. She’s not in any condition for a picture at the moment.”

  Jack stopped dead. An exhilarating thrill of adrenaline streaked through his veins. “I see. Give me an hour. I’ll be there.”

  He hung up and pumped both fists in the air, screaming into the heavens in pure elation. The random spectators around him visibly jumped in surprise.

  “She got away!” Jack shouted hysterically. “Goddammit, I love that woman!”

  ~*~

  Being a bodyguard definitely had its perks. Fujioka could make her own hours, pick her own clients, and instruct said clients on the best way to stay safe.

  Instructions that included how to escape restraints.

  The second Okegawa had closed the door to the barn, she shook her head hard enough to get her wet, tangled hair out of her face and took a good, hard look at her surroundings. She listened for thirty seconds and confirmed that there was a guard outside each exit. Okegawa wouldn’t give her long, since he thought she was in emotional distress. Probably two to three minutes, possibly five at the max. Just enough time to slip the zip-ties and make a move.

  The yakuza were a knowledgeable bunch in the ways of kidnapping. They hadn’t let her keep her hands with her thumbs facing each other, balled into a fist, since that would allow her to maneuver the zip-ties off with the extra room. Instead, they had tied them at her wrists with her palms mirroring each other. The average hostage would have no chance of getting it off without using something to saw a hole in the plastic. But Fuijoka was a trained professional. She used the shimming method, inserting her nail into the clasp of the zip tie, which unlocked it, and she managed to slide it off. Her legs were trickier, but she pried a rusty nail out of the chair and sawed through the duct tape pinning them to the chair’s legs.

  Okegawa had left through the right entrance. She had about a minute and a half to two minutes, so she stayed low and headed for the left entrance. The barn was enclosed on all sides, so the windows were welded shut to prevent any loose pigs from trying to escape. She’d been brought in as a prisoner, so the odds were high they hadn’t locked the enclosure.

  She backed up against the left door and placed one hand on the bar, holding her breath as she inched it forward. A tiny shaft of late afternoon light poured in and granted her a view of the yakuza standing there. Six feet tall, wiry, wearing a hip-holster that housed a .9mm semiautomatic. The bored look on his face led her to believe he wasn’t fully alert. He stood about a foot in front of the door, so his peripheral would probably see it if she pushed it all the way open. He stared aimlessly out at the farmland, so she deduced that none of his buddies were in the area or they’d be chatting it up by now. She had a miniscule window of opportunity to act.

  The guard sighed and pulled out his phone, tapping away at it. Fujioka kept inching the door outward until she had just enough room to slip her svelte frame through it. She aligned her body as much as possible with his from behind, still holding her breath, and counted to three.

  Then she reached up and snapped his neck.

  The man wheezed once and his body crumpled as if it had been a puppet with its strings snipped. She caught his heavy frame and pressed her hand hard over his nose and mouth as he took his last few breaths and finally died. She dragged the corpse around the side of the building and grabbed the gun before going through his pockets for anything else useful. No extra magazine, but she kept the phone and immediately dialed an emergency number as she slunk away from the barn. It wouldn’t take the yakuza long to notice. She had to put as much distance between them as possible and be stealthy in the meantime. Once they figured out she was gone, they’d conduct a manhunt and if they found her, she’d have to make her final stand.

  And she wasn’t about to die on a damned pig farm.

  The feeding barn was at the center of the farm itself, situated between the fenced-in area where the pigs were left to graze, and the slaughterhouse. She spotted a silo up on the hill that didn’t appear to have anyone near it, but there was a good forty yards between them. The farm had about twelve acres of empty fields surrounding it, and she was as good as dead if she made a run towards the forest with zero cover. Even at breakneck speed, the authorities wouldn’t arrive any sooner than thirty minutes, if that.

  “Well,” Fujioka muttered to herself, eying the rusted wood and metal outer walls of the feeding barn. “When all else fails, hide in plain sight.”

  She stuffed the gun in the small of her back and climbed onto the roof of the building. Her injured shoulder shrieked in protest, but she steeled herself and worked through the pain. Once there, she flattened herself against the burning hot metal and thumbed back the hammer on the pistol, waiting for the inevitable.

  It didn’t take long. A minute later, she heard Okegawa roar and smirked as she listened to his borderline panicked verbal assault on his men for letting her get away. She could hear them banging around checking all the pens for any sign of her, and the men who had been near the fenced area eventually began a methodical sweep of the area. They discovered the corpse rather quickly and spread out to search the grounds. In the meantime, she considered her options: waiting until the guards left an opening and heading for the silo, staying put to wait for the authorities to arrive, or taking Okegawa hostage to get his men to back off.

  The safest bet was retreating to the silo. It would give her the best vantage point for taking out Okegawa’s men and holing up until help arrived. Staying put was bound to get her caught sooner or later. Trying to overtake Okegawa would be unnecessarily reckless.

  Too bad the son of a bitch had brought up Kyōya.

  Fujioka checked the magazine of the .9mm and jacked a round into the chamber, chuckling darkly to herself.

  “No one lives forever.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  WATERSHED

  “This is Dr. Kamala Anjali, a post-doc grant
recipient of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Microbiology department, conducting an updated physical exam on the first hybrid varanus lacerto ever born in the modern era. Forgive the unusual environment. This recording is to serve as evidence in the event that tragedy should strike and I am unable to do this back in my own lab. Bear with me for a moment.”

  Kamala flipped the phone to check the time. “It’s about three-thirty in the afternoon in the Kanagawa prefecture of Japan. I will attempt to note as much as I can about the subject’s drastic changes over the last three days, depending on her demeanor.”

  She walked over to Pete, who lazily opened one yellow eye to watch as the phone’s flashlight swept over her long, streamlined body. “The subject, codenamed Pete, was approximately two-point four pounds, twelve inches long, and six-point-five inches tall. Her wings measured at four inches long and two inches wide. By my current estimate, she is now just under seven hundred pounds, six-foot-seven inches tall, seven-and-a-half feet long from snout to hindquarters, her tail is four-and-a-quarter feet long, and her wingspan is easily twelve-feet long, if not more. How is this possible in only three days? I’ll be damned if I don’t wish I had an answer for that. We’ve narrowed it down to one of two things: a defective gene that was a side effect of her genetic engineering or a result of her hybrid breeding causing her traits to take on more of the Komodo dragon side than the varanus lacerto side of her biology. Either way, this is by far the most extraordinary growth spurt I’ve ever witnessed in any animal. If I ever get her back to a lab, the rate of cell production will be off the charts.”

  She laid a hand on Pete’s snout and rubbed gently. The dragon snorted and closed her eye again, and a vibrating hum filled the air. “As a result of the exponential growth, her physical traits more closely resemble the dragon side of her DNA. Her scales are thicker, she has more ridges in her facial features, her teeth are larger, and according to a witness, she has venomous sacs that are lethal when they come in contact with human skin. Behaviorally, though…”

  Kamala scratched beneath the dragon’s chin. “I don’t know what to make of her. It’s been hypothesized that certain breeds of dragons imprinted on the first beings they came in contact with, and that some even had a pack structure rather than being solitary like most reptiles. But Pete has shown far more depth and mystery than any reptile I’ve ever observed. For example, my partner and I were in danger while trying to get her somewhere safe. She broke loose and escaped… but then she came back for us and flew us to safety. What on earth would you call that? Don’t get me wrong; animals have been known to save lives, but historically, it’s a trait you see in mammals, especially canines, felines, and dolphins. There are even a few stories about horses or livestock building attachments to people and finding them help when they need it the most, but I can’t recall a single instance of a reptile doing such a thing. We have only scraped the surface in our research about a dragon’s cognition and social behavior. Pete appears to have moods. A personality. She also seems to understand direct commands to a certain degree, as demonstrated by my partner when we were escorting her to safety. She picks up on tone of voice for certain, as I’ve been able to keep her calm with reassuring words and gestures. I’ve honestly never seen anything like her. The world has never seen anything like her.”

  Kamala flipped the phone to face her. “I suppose that, more than anything else, is why I decided to go on this journey. It’s ill-advised. If you need proof of that, look at where I am: stuck in a cave on a mountain while my best friend tries to find a way to save the person who was supposed to save us. Life has a funny way of turning things around on you.”

  Pete lifted her large head and settled it in Kamala’s lap. The small scientist smiled and continued rubbing the dragon’s nose. “I guess what everyone would want to know is if this mad chase through the streets of Shinjuku has been worth it. I’m afraid I can’t answer that. All signs point to the fact that we made a mistake, that we got caught up in the emotion of it all, that we were too short-sighted to accept the loss and move on. Still, I can’t help feeling that even if we end up failing… even the slimmest chance of saving Pete’s life and giving her the future she and other dragons like her deserve was worth it. I may be wrong. Only time will tell.”

  She hit the Record button to end the session and the phone went back to the camera screen. She switched it to idle and took a deep breath. It had been over an hour. She needed to get moving to find a way home. With or without Jack, her brain finished in a nasty whisper.

  “He’ll come through,” Kamala murmured to herself stubbornly. “He always does.”

  Is it worth your life believing in him?

  “You’re damned right it is.”

  Pete opened her eye again. Kamala pursed her lips at the dragon. “Oh, don’t you start. Your surrogate father has a knack for driving me crazy. This is just a side effect.” Kamala sighed. “Apparently, the feeling’s mutual. Goddess above, I can’t believe I never bloody noticed. Men. They’re all useless.”

  The dragon kept staring. “Don’t give me that look, alright? He’s sweet to almost everyone. How was I supposed to know I was getting special treatment? Well, everyone but Faye, and even then, he sort of likes her in his own way. In a Sam-and-Diane kind of way, at least.”

  She chuckled softly. “God, if Jack is Sam, who does that make me? We never did finish binge-watching Cheers. Maybe if we live through this, I’ll do that.”

  Kamala patted the dragon’s head and slid out from underneath her. “We’d better get moving. It’s a long way down and the cold isn’t doing either of us any good.”

  She gently took the chain and tugged on it. The dragon made a rumbling sound of protest, but stood to her clawed feet with a yawn that exposed her sharp fangs and black forked tongue. Kamala made sure her few belongings were all secured in her pockets and led Pete towards the mouth of the cave. The clouds had cleared and the blue sky had started to darken as the sun sunk lower on the horizon. She had a few hours before nightfall. She needed to make them count.

  “Ready for another terrifying ride?” Kamala asked, patting the dragon’s neck.

  Pete stretched her wings and flapped them open, catching the bursts of cold air around them. Kamala muttered a brief prayer and climbed on, this time holding onto the chain in the hopes of using it like a horse’s reins. The dragon took a sweeping glance over the mountainside and then leapt into the air like an enormous raven.

  Kamala stifled a squeal as the sharp, cold air slapped her hair away from her face and stung her eyes, but she kept them open as they glided through the sky as if they were nothing more than a couple of leaves in the breeze. In only seconds, they left the forest behind and soared closer to civilization. They caught up to the paved road leading back into the populated areas of Kanagawa, and Kamala decided to try her luck guiding the dragon’s flight. She leaned to the right side and tugged on Pete’s chain. The dragon tilted in the air and began to taper towards that direction. Relieved, Kamala scoped out the landscape until she found an open field and then leaned her weight forward towards Pete’s neck.

  The dragon circled the tall grass once and then landed neatly in the middle of it. The small scientist hopped off and stroked Pete’s neck. “Good girl. You’re the best.”

  She withdrew her cell phone and tapped it awake, then held it up as high as she could. “Come on. I could use some good karma for once.”

  A second later, bars popped up in the top left hand corner of the phone. “Yes!”

  Immediately, she Googled an address and committed it to memory, and then checked to see if she had any messages from Jack. Nothing yet. She noted the time again and decided to take her chances.

  Not long after she dialed, a winded Jack answered the phone. “Hey.”

  She let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “Hey. Are you alright?”

  “I’m stellar, now that I know you’re okay.” She rolled her
eyes, but smirked nonetheless. “You’re such a sap, Jack. Do you have an update on Fujioka?”

  “Oh, I’ve got something even better. She got away.”

  A delirious spot of hope blossomed inside Kamala. “How do you know?”

  “I called the Jackass to get proof that she’s still alive, but when I asked for a picture, he said she’s ‘indisposed.’ I know her well enough. She busted out. Now, I don’t know if that means she’s left the grounds yet, but she’s not in their custody anymore, at least. I’m on my way back to the precinct to rally the troops. Where are you?”

  “I landed to get a signal. I’m heading to the embassy to get Pete somewhere secure and to negotiate the terms of getting us stateside.”

  “Atta girl. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can, but, uh, it might not exactly be quick-like.”

  She arched an eyebrow at his guilty tone. “What did you do?”

  “…nothing?”