by C Sharp
Chloe couldn’t pay attention to the drone of her teacher and hadn’t even done the reading that had facilitated this particularly long-winded recap of the text. Instead, her eyes held on Kirin’s fingers, thrumming quietly on the edge of his desk. The nails looked to have been trimmed with his teeth, and the hand itself was tanned and calloused. They were good, practical hands, and she found herself mesmerized by the gentle rhythm of his long digits. They looked strong and weathered, and she wondered what he did to keep them looking so…ready.
She realized in that moment that there was still so much that she didn’t know about him. What kind of music does he like? What’s his favorite color, or book, or movie? Please, just give me the time to find out!
She caught his sideways gaze on her and quickly straightened her spine with a sheepish smile. Her hand instinctively went to her phone in her pocket before turning back for a pen instead. She quickly scribbled across her notebook and angled the page for him to read: Sorry!
He raised an eyebrow and scribbled on his own notebook in answer: For what?
Staring. And dragging you into my weirdness, she scrawled in response.
This time, Kirin wrote for a while with a little smile creeping across his face as the gentle scratch of the pencil continued. Chloe’s leg shook with anticipation. He angled his notebook with a wink: Stare away, babe—I know I’m easy to look at! Then he moved his hand to uncover the rest: And your weirdness is the best thing that’s happened since I moved to Virginia, so SHUT IT!
If Chloe could have leaned over and kissed him without creating a shockwave of rumors and repercussions, she would have. Instead, she chewed her lip and wrote “Thanks” before turning to face the back of Liz’s head. That was when she started to feel an uneasy quiver building in her stomach—like a deep, grumbling vibration…
She looked out the window at the parking lot but saw nothing strange there or in the overcast sky above. But the grumble grew like a warning inside her as cold sweat glazed across her scalp and her heart rate climbed.
Kirin leaned over from his desk. “What’s wrong?” he whispered.
“Nothing,” she answered unconvincingly as Mr. Jacobson shot her a brief glance over his shoulder before continuing on about the hazy limits of executive privilege. But then she heard Uktena’s deafening roar tear through her, shaking in the marrow of her bones as she lurched in her desk and went delirious with a rush of rage and terror.
Liz and some of the other students turned around to look as the blood drained from Chloe’s head. She’d gone deathly pale and a feverish tingling gathered in her extremities. She heard the muffled echoes of splintering wood and shouting, and she began to thrash in her chair as if she’d lost control over her own body.
“Chloe!” Kirin said beside her, no longer even trying to whisper as the rest of the eyes in the class swung toward her and a wave of mockery and concern pressed from all sides.
“What is it this time, Ms. McClellan?” asked Mr. Jacobson from the front.
But she couldn’t answer as she felt the scorching crackle of electricity erupt from her open mouth. Her own teeth were clenched shut and chattering, but she could sense the shock of searing heat passing between them all the same. Then she heard the shrieks of dying men around her and pressed her hands to her ears in a useless attempt to silence the horror.
A series of sharp twinges stabbed into her neck with what felt like hornet stings, and she instantly started to feel woozy and light-headed. One of her hands traveled from her ear to her throat, but there was nothing there but her own unbroken skin. She was only vaguely aware of the abrupt knock on the classroom door, and Mr. Jacobson’s march to reveal Principal Harlow standing beside two men in dark suits beyond. She began to tremble uncontrollably and clenched the edges of the desk with white knuckles as the men conferred in hushed tones before turning back toward her with hard eyes.
“Chloe McClellan and Kirin Liou,” called Principal Harlow, stepping into the room. “Please gather your things and come with me.”
Kirin reached out to help, but before Chloe knew what she was doing, she reeled back from his touch and snarled at his outstretched fingers as if she was preparing to bite. His hand retracted suddenly, and his eyes went wide as tears began to stream out of Chloe’s eyes. She staggered to her feet and knocked over her chair with a loud clatter.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered, hearing her own slurred words echoing back in her mind as if from a great distance. Her vision clouded, and she could barely make out the two dark blurs that moved into the room past Principal Harlow.
“Ms. McClellan, we’re going to need for you to come with us,” one of them commanded.
“Hold on! Who are you and what’s this about?” interjected Kirin as the men came closer.
“It would be better if we stepped outside, Mr. Liou,” said the other dark shape with a gesture for Kirin to follow.
“I think she’s sick,” said Kirin. “I’m not sure if she can hear us right now.”
Chloe’s hands and feet tingled with such intensity that they felt like they were on fire. She wanted to scream, but instead a deep guttural moan emerged from her stomach and reverberated through her skull.
“Right now, Ms. McClellan! Gather your things and let’s go,” commanded the first voice again as his hand reached out toward Chloe’s elbow. Now, when the urge to snarl and snap coursed through her, she found her appendages completely unresponsive, as if she were outside her own body.
Her head rolled on her rubbery neck as the man took her elbow in his grip. Instantly a shock of built-up energy passed into his hand and launched him across the room to crash into the vertical blinds. The window cracked, and he fell onto the radiator before flopping to the linoleum in an unconscious heap. Kids started to panic as everyone but Kirin stumbled and tripped in a frantic attempt to get away from her. Chloe just stood there on the edge of collapse, like a severed tree waiting to tip over.
That was when the second man fired two Taser darts into her stomach and started to pump the trigger…
• • •
Before she could see or hear, Chloe smelled industrial antiseptic and plastic. Then she slowly began to move her fingers and toes, but found that her ankles and wrists were strapped in place. Her lids fluttered open. She was lying on her back, staring into a bright light. There were people moving around her, and hushed voices fired back and forth from either side. The words started to make sense.
“There has been no indication since you brought her in that she could have the capacity to carry an electric charge,” said a woman’s voice that sounded like it had been worn down by a lifetime of smoking.
“Then how do you explain what happened to Mr. Wagner at the school?” a man countered with cold, clear enunciation.
“I really couldn’t tell you,” she responded curtly. “But as far as I can tell, your men have tased and abducted a perfectly normal teenage girl here.”
The blurred face of the woman started to come into focus above her.
“She’s awake.” The woman leaned closer. She was wearing a surgical mask over her nose and mouth, but her magnified brown eyes peered through thick lenses and locked on Chloe. “You’re okay. You’ll be groggy and a bit woozy,” she said with a gentle rasp that betrayed a southern upbringing. “You were sedated, but you’re safe and in no danger,” she reassured.
“That will be all for now, Dr. Cunningham,” said the man dismissively. “I’ll need to speak with her alone.”
The brown eyes pulled away, but the woman’s voice grew louder. “I don’t agree with this at all!” she said. “I’m taking this to Dr. Markson, and I promise you he won’t stand for it either.” She started toward the door.
“Thank you for your opinion, Doctor, but this is a national security matter, and I’m really not concerned with whatever Dr. Markson will or will not stand for.”
“We’ll see,” she challenged before slamming the door in punctuation.
Chloe tried to move her hands
again, but they wouldn’t budge, belted down tightly to the gurney below. She turned her head when she felt a fumbling at her right wrist, and the face of the man came in to focus. He didn’t look to be any older than in his mid-thirties, with neat black hair and chiseled features that would have been handsome if they didn’t also look a little cruel. His big smile looked a bit like a leer, and something about the twinkle in his eyes was artificial. He unstrapped the belt at her wrist and freed her hand.
“Hello, Chloe, my name is Mr. Allen.” He moved down to unbind an ankle. “I’m sorry about all this, but we needed to restrain you until we were sure it was safe.” His teeth were too white to be believed. “You gave us quite a scare back there; one of my associates is just a couple rooms down with second-degree burns and a concussion.”
“Where am I?” Chloe croaked.
“You’re in the medical center at the Daedalus Group headquarters just a few miles away from your school.” He moved to her other ankle. “Your mother has been notified of your whereabouts and is waiting for you in another part of the building. There’s nothing to be concerned about. We just need you to answer a few questions.”
“Who are you?” Chloe demanded.
“My name is Mr. Allen, like I said.” He paused before releasing her left hand. “I’m a civilian contractor with the Department of Homeland Security. We’re here working with the Daedalus Group in a cross-agency development initiative funded by the U.S. government.” He smiled again. “We’re the good guys.”
“Where’s Kirin?” Chloe demanded, trying to piece together the outlandish and horrifying chain of events that had occurred before waking up here.
“He’s nearby in another room,” said Mr. Allen, “as is Stan Strakowski.”
Chloe clenched her eyes tightly. Please let this be another bad dream! “Why?” she asked with as calm a voice as she could muster. “They don’t know anything.”
“You know why, Chloe.” He released her left wrist. “Because of the thing that you’ve been harboring in your barn, the thing that destroyed our twenty-million-dollar research tower and electrocuted two of our men.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she blurted, just as Mr. Allen took a piece of paper from his pocket and laid it across her legs. She pushed up on her elbows to get a better angle. It was the note that she’d left in the barn for Uktena—it detailed everything. Her head sunk into her chest. I’m such an idiot!
“You refer to it as Uktena and imply that not only does it read, but that you have spoken to it on a number of occasions.” His gaze was unwavering. “I’m going to need for you to tell me everything you know about what it is and why it’s here.”
Chloe’s heart was thundering in her throat. “I won’t tell you anything until you let the others go,” she declared in an unconvincing show of defiance.
Mr. Allen gave her an oily smile. “Have you heard of the Patriot Act, Chloe?”
She nodded.
“Well, among the tenets of that act are the details of the DHS’s power to fulfill its job of protecting the territory of the United States from terrorist attacks and natural disasters. It also details our legal rights for the heightened needs of guarding our resources and energy infrastructure against any possible outbreak of dangerous illnesses or elements.”
“Okay?” Chloe said, waiting for more.
He cleared his throat quietly. “The creature that you have been aiding has proven to be a direct threat to a brand-new and potentially world-changing source of energy. It also poses a major health risk for introduction of unknown toxins into our environment… As of now, and until we understand what we might be dealing with, it will be considered a terrorist threat to our way of life, and you and your friends will be charged with aiding and abetting an enemy of the state.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered under her breath.
“Have you been read your rights yet, Chloe?”
“No.” Her eyes widened.
“That’s right, and we can detain you without doing so for another—” Mr. Allen checked his watch, “seventy hours… But I don’t want your friends to have to be here that long, do you? I’m not sure your mom will make it through the next three nights sleeping on that metal bench in the lobby.”
“What did you do with the dragon?” Chloe demanded with a shaky voice.
Mr. Allen perused some notes on a clipboard. “Dragon, yes, this Uktena.” He scanned a few lines. “A giant winged creature that breathes lightning like some monster straight from myth… I must admit that I never thought we would find something like that in the barn, despite all of Dr. Markson’s outlandish claims… To tell you the truth, I think even he was a little shocked after we managed to bring it in. We had to pump it full of enough tranquilizers to down a whole herd of elephants.”
Chloe said nothing. She stared at the note and tried to remember all that she’d written there.
Mr. Allen snatched it away from its perch on her knees and scanned it himself. “It seems that maybe we’ll have to bring in this old lady and the college professor with his little story about the end of the world after all.” He slipped the note into the pocket of his jacket. “He’s the father of this boy, Kirin, who was supposed to come to your barn today to meet ‘the dragon,’ is that right?”
Chloe kept her mouth shut and her eyes down.
“Doesn’t it seem odd that it’s just one family of Chinese nationals and their acquaintances that happen to have foreknowledge of this…dragon? And all of this just happens to occur in the same rural town where our Daedalus Group development team is testing?” He shook his head and started to pace around her gurney like a circling shark. “It seems to be more likely that a group of recently transplanted deep-cover Chinese spies has relocated to the area because of its proximity to the project. And that they have brought with them some sort of fast-growing, bioengineered monstrosity that’s designed to look like a beast from mythology.”
Chloe shut her eyes and tried to reach out to Uktena in her mind. All she found was darkness. Her lids snapped open again. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” Although her voice quavered, she forced herself to meet his cold gaze. “Don’t you think that maybe the simplest explanation might be that, against all that we thought we knew about science and reason, maybe the prophecy on the cauldron is true? And unless we can do something about it, maybe the world really is going to end in a few weeks.”
Mr. Allen stared at her for a long moment. “All the more reason to cut it open and see what’s inside.”
A rush of panic tore through her as she shot up and started to yell. “You have to let him go! You have no idea what you’re doing or what you might start!”
“Then why don’t you tell us,” he countered.
“I want to see my mother now! You can’t just keep me here!”
Mr. Allen took a step toward her and raised a hand to silence her. “Your mother has no idea where you are or what’s going on. She’s frantic and quite frankly on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but she won’t know anything more for days unless you play ball with me.”
Tears welled in Chloe’s eyes as she tried and failed to force herself awake from this nightmare.
Mr. Allen started toward the door. “I want to know everything you know about that thing and its involvement with the Liou family, and I want to know how you were able to shock one of my men unconscious.” His hand rested on the doorknob for a moment as someone unlocked it from the other side. “You tell me that, and we’ll see about letting your friends go and getting your mother in to see you.”
He opened the door into a brightly lit hallway, but Chloe couldn’t see anything beyond that. “If you don’t talk to me, these next seventy hours are going to get pretty uncomfortable for you and a lot of people you care about.” He stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him with a metallic bang. A trio of locks slid into place on the other side.
The only thing to fill the silence that followed was
the sound of Chloe sobbing.
Chapter 27
The End is Nigh
Chloe wanted to be able to say that she’d remained strong in the long days that followed. She would have been proud to tell of how she’d done the right thing despite the suffering and threats, and that she’d held out against the tyranny of her oppressors—but that would have been a lie. Twelve hours after her initial meeting with Mr. Allen, Chloe cracked under the stress of it all. She told them everything. She couldn’t stand to think that the Liou family and Stan were caught up in this mess of her making, that her mom was screaming and pulling her hair out before some stone-faced, agency goon nearby.
Amid the waves of blubbering and shaking, she told them what she could remember about her various encounters with Uktena. Months of pent-up fear and confusion spilled out of her in a disjointed rush as Mr. Allen and his flunkies recorded and inscribed every word she said before following up with a repetitive onslaught of nit-picking questions. Once she got started, she found herself wanting to get out every detail, but her connection to Uktena and all that had happened between them was still hazy and distant. More than once, she caught impatient looks flashing back and forth between her various interrogators.
They left her alone to wallow in shame and self-loathing, waiting for the door to open again so that she could leave or for the moment when her mother would rush in with a consoling hug. But the minutes, then hours, crept by, and there was no reprieve from the misery.