by C Sharp
After she’d lost any concept of time, Mr. Allen returned to demand that she answer all the same questions again. And after another unbridled fit of screaming, she found herself, once again, recounting the secrets she’d sworn to keep to a room full of complete strangers. Blank faces watched her closely as she spoke. Others kept their compassionless eyes trained on a machine that scrawled lines on a spool of graph paper while straps with electrodes were connected to her arm.
When they’d opened the door to wheel out what she could only assume had been a polygraph machine, she’d heard Dr. Markson’s voice yelling in the hallway, but the door had slammed shut and locked again before she could make out what he was saying. Sometime after that, they’d brought her some bland food and a bottle of water. Mr. Allen thanked her for her candor and told her to get some sleep with a casual wave to the bed, which was nothing more than a steel slab that was fixed to the wall and fitted with a blue polyester hospital pillow.
Chloe sipped the water and perched herself on the cold slab with her back to the wall. Her eyes locked on the ceiling above. Behind the tinted glass dome in the corner, she could see a camera lens tracking her every movement. She’d had to pee for hours, but couldn’t bring herself to do so with an audience. When her legs were shaking and she couldn’t take it anymore, she marched over to the bowl, hunkered low with the pillow across her lap and let go with a desperate rush of relief. After a blissful few seconds of listening to the metallic splatter, she looked directly into the camera with her middle finger held over her head.
Afterward she’d climbed back onto her perch and curled up with her sweatshirt stretched over her knees. She closed her eyes and tried to reach out to Uktena—searching for the deep rumble of his heartbeat, hoping to gain some sense of his presence—but there was nothing. What if they killed him? What if his death is why the world will end—and it’s all my fault?
Finally the fatigue won out, silencing her spiral of fear and doubt as she moved to her side and dropped her head to the pillow. But just as she was starting to drift off, the door opened abruptly, and Mr. Allen and his team bustled into the room. This time a portly, shrew-faced woman with a syringe came with him.
“Sorry to interrupt your sleep, Chloe,” he said with a conciliatory wave. “I know this must be starting to get a little uncomfortable for you,” he smiled. “But my colleague, Dr. Hoyt here, is going to administer a shot, and then I’ve got a couple more questions to ask…”
• • •
After a while, Chloe couldn’t tell if she was dreaming or awake or if she’d been there for hours or maybe days. It was Dr. Markson who finally ended it, opening the door early Wednesday morning with soothing words for Chloe and furious looks toward Mr. Allen and his team. But before Mr. Allen relinquished the room, he commanded Chloe’s attention one last time. He put a finger to his lips. “Be careful who you talk to about any of this, Chloe,” he warned. “I wouldn’t want to have to bring anyone else in to answer these same questions.”
Chloe couldn’t stop trembling. She felt like she had hypothermia, though she suspected this chill was mostly in her head. Dr. Markson zipped up her jacket and draped a blanket over her shoulders with surprising tenderness before helping her to stand.
“I’m sorry, Chloe,” Dr. Markson said quietly. “This never should have been allowed to happen. I haven’t been able to gain access to you until now.” He gave her a quick glance then looked away. “I’m ashamed this occurred on Daedalus Group property. I tried to warn you, but it was too late.”
“How long have I been here?” Chloe’s voice was hoarse from sobbing.
“Forty-six hours.” He helped her toward the door, where Dr. Cunningham was waiting with a hot cup of tea.
“Drink this. You’ll need a jolt of caffeine and something hot to get you home,” she said. Her breath smelled like cigarettes and coffee. “You’re a tough girl. That officious son of a bitch, Allen, is still convinced you’re some kind of Chinese spy,” she added with a bark of a laugh.
They watched her down the tea in a few desperate gulps before ushering her out of the room and down a long hallway that was lined with morning-lit windows.
Audrey leapt up from the waiting area sofa and turned toward Chloe’s shuffling approach. Chloe slipped a hand from the blanket and waved. In an instant, Audrey was running as fast as her daughter had ever managed. She enveloped Chloe in a hug with a sob of relief before stepping back to scan her daughter for injuries. “Honey, are you okay?” she begged. “What did they do to you?”
“I’m all right,” Chloe forced, though she felt far from it. “They just asked me a lot of questions and didn’t let me sleep.”
Audrey took Chloe by the shoulder and held her close as her eyes locked on Dr. Markson. He wilted before the fury in her gaze.
“I’m sorry,” was all that Dr. Markson could offer.
Audrey looked for a moment like she might actually attack. “Who the hell do you people think you are?” she snapped before starting to lead Chloe toward the door.
“I don’t know anymore,” answered Dr. Markson as his sad eyes met Chloe’s weary glance. “But for what it’s worth, Chloe, I believe everything you said… It’s the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen.”
Chloe and her mom stopped and looked back. “It’s a he, not a thing,” Chloe mumbled. “You need to save him.”
Dr. Markson gave her an intense look. “Maybe you do,” he whispered with a nod that she did not understand.
Audrey stepped between them with the heat of her rage forcing Dr. Markson to step back. “Someday I’m going to get you for this,” she hissed.
He nodded again, this time with resigned acceptance. “I hope we’re all here long enough for you to get the chance.”
• • •
Chloe woke up twenty hours later with a hacking cough and a throbbing in her temples. A flu-like ache had taken hold throughout her body, and waves of teeth-chattering chills kept her shivering beneath layers of blankets. After stumbling out of bed and shuffling her way downstairs, she’d fallen backward into the sofa just a little after five in the morning; she hadn’t taken her eyes off the perverse ramblings of the cable news since.
The day’s BREAKING NEWS was an unceasing bombardment of analysis and conjecture surrounding what they were calling the worst tornado disaster in recorded history. Entire towns had been sucked up and reduced to kindling, and thousands of people were dead or missing. Images of splintered homes and ruined lives played in repeat across every station. Chloe had seen the same footage of a filthy dog limping down a littered wasteland, which had been the suburban outskirts of Topeka, Kansas, at least forty times already. Apparently a series of what they were calling long-track F4 and F5 tornadoes had cut a swath from Wyoming to Louisiana, and the full extent of the carnage was still being pieced together.
Relegated to the ticker along the bottom was an endless streaming text:
Continued volcanic activity at Kilimanjaro leads many to predict a big blast just days away. Still more than 1.2 million displaced refugees living in the possible blast radius… Another 6.1 earthquake rattles central China, further hampering ongoing aid efforts as starvation and cholera continue to spread… Lindsay Lohan arrested again for DUI and cocaine possession…
Chloe felt helpless and alone.
• • •
Audrey came downstairs at seven after a miserable night of nervous pacing and checking on Chloe again and again. She still had no idea what the hell was going on. Half of the barn had exploded across the yard on Monday morning, and by the time Brent called and she’d gotten home, the whole site had been cordoned off with caution tape. After she’d retrieved Chloe two days later, a black SUV had been permanently installed across the street, and people in plastic ponchos were digging around the wreckage and taking pictures. All that anyone had told her was that her daughter had been temporarily detained at the behest of the Department of Homeland Security.
Chloe had been barely coherent during the
car ride home—both wired and asleep at once—as she mumbled in disjointed spurts about “the hubris of mankind” and how the planet was “getting ready to shake us off and start over.”
Though Audrey was reluctant to admit it, she’d heard that sort of talk before, and it rattled her deeply to hear it again. With one weary look at her daughter splayed and shivering on the sofa, she decided to not even bother asking if Chloe was ready to go back to school. “How’re you feeling?”
Chloe just shrugged, her vapid gaze locked on the television.
“Can I get you something to eat?” Audrey asked before noticing the dregs of a large bowl of cereal and a pulp-smeared juice glass discarded on the coffee table.
Chloe shook her head. “No, thanks.”
Audrey approached the sofa and waved toward the slipper-tipped legs that were draped across the cushions. Chloe scooted back into the nook of the armrest to give her mother some room.
Audrey sat and put a reassuring hand on her daughter’s fuzzy white foot before speaking again. “How are you, really?”
Chloe kept staring at the TV. “There was a whole string of giant tornadoes across the Midwest last night,” she droned. “They think a couple thousand people might have been killed.”
Anderson Cooper had a grave look on his face while another reporter on the scene tried to summarize the misery highlights in a minute and thirty seconds. “That’s horrible,” Audrey observed, mesmerized for a moment by the spectacle of disaster.
She turned her attention back to Chloe. “But I need you to turn off the TV and focus on me for right now.”
After a moment of hesitation, Chloe picked up the remote and did as she was told. “I’m kind of tired of answering questions,” Chloe sighed.
“I know you are, and I’m truly sorry to make you do it again, but you have to anyway.” Audrey inched closer. “You said a lot of pretty out-there stuff to me before you fell asleep, and I was up all night trying to make sense of it all.”
Chloe met her mother’s eyes. “I’m not crazy, Mom,” she insisted. “I need you to believe me!”
“I do believe you, honey; I just don’t understand,” Audrey reassured. “I might be upset that you didn’t feel the need to talk to me about whatever it is that’s going on with you, but I want you to know that I still trust your reason and judgment over that of pretty much anybody else.”
Chloe didn’t think she could possibly have any tears left, but she was wrong. “I was worried you’d think I was…like Dad.”
Audrey scooted closer and used her thumb to wipe away the drip from Chloe’s cheek. “Chloe, your father was a kindhearted and loving man, and I thank God that you are like him in so many ways.” She gently raised Chloe’s head to claim her watery gaze. “I know you’re not crazy. But it’s my job to help you, and I can’t do that if you won’t let me in.”
Without warning, Chloe lunged in for a hug and buried her face in her mom’s neck. Audrey rocked her gently and squeezed her closer. It had been a long time.
“I’m sorry for everything,” came Chloe’s muffled words.
“Everything is kind of a lot to be sorry for,” Audrey answered. “You don’t have to shoulder all that.”
Chloe pulled away, and her eyes seemed to state the contrary. “Yeah, I think that maybe I do.”
“Chloe, what’s going on?” Audrey pressed as Chloe crawled back into her cushion-lined nook. She seemed to consider her response for a long time before she answered.
“I saw something in the woods by the pond that they didn’t want me to see, and now they’re trying to make sure that I keep my mouth shut.”
“What did you see?” Audrey pleaded.
Chloe met Audrey’s gaze and shook her head slightly. “You said you trusted my reason and judgment, well, I need you to trust me now.”
“I do trust you,” said Audrey.
Now it was Chloe who reached out to put a hand on Audrey’s knee. “I can’t tell you what’s happening, Mom. I don’t want to go back there for more questions, and I don’t want you there either,” she stated. “I’m pretty sure that I’d still be in there if I hadn’t been a minor.”
“Chloe, what happened to the barn?” Audrey whispered. “I know you’ve been sneaking out there a lot recently, but I just thought you were going out to talk on the phone or write in your journal or something.” Audrey held her daughter’s gaze. “Chloe, the barn is gone, and they won’t let me get within a hundred feet of the wreckage!”
Chloe shrugged unconvincingly. “Maybe it was a tornado?”
Audrey glared and waited.
“Mom, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to let it go for now!”
Audrey sat quietly for a long moment, trying to come to terms with “letting it go.” Chloe’s tone left no room for debate, and Audrey knew from experience that if she pushed now, she would hit her daughter’s impassable wall of silence. But she could tell how scared Chloe was, and the fact that she couldn’t fix it made her want to scream. She managed to breathe and hold her impulse to freak out at bay, recognizing, above all, that Chloe needed her now to be rational and calm. “What can I do to help you, honey? You have to give me something so that I don’t feel totally useless here.”
Chloe thought about it. “I have a birthday coming up.”
“Yes, sweet sixteen, just two weeks away.” Audrey thought for a moment of the brand-new microscope and refurbished iPhone that she’d saved up for.
“Well, I think I want a hand-crank radio, a high-powered flashlight with a lot of batteries, a year’s supply of canned food, and some industrial-sized jugs of bottled water.”
“That’s what you want for your birthday?” Audrey was incredulous.
“Yes,” Chloe answered with a decisive nod.
“Chloe, should I be scared right now? I have to tell you that all of this is scaring me.”
Chloe sighed. “I’m not really sure, Mom… But yeah, I think maybe being at least a little bit scared is probably appropriate.”
• • •
The fever didn’t break for four days. Audrey and the family doctor thought it was just a standard flu, brought on by the extended stress and lack of sleep, but Chloe knew better. At least once a day, she woke from a nap with Uktena’s low, melancholy growl vibrating as if from within her own throat. In quiet moments, she could still sense his muted fury and the deep well of sadness beneath it.
At least I know he’s still alive, she told herself again and again as the ghost malady persisted. And though she wanted more than anything to be able to tell her mother what was happening, how could she explain that she was sick because of a sympathetic link to a tranquilized dragon across town? How could she voice the possibility that the end of the world could be only days away and there was nothing she or anyone else could do about it?
On Sunday, Chloe started to feel a bit more like herself again, though it brought her no comfort. She knew it was not because Uktena was also coming out of the darkness; he had sunk deeper into it, and the unexplained link that they’d shared was fading completely. Despite the continued texts and e-mails of support from Kirin, Stan, Ezra, and Liz, with the severed connection from the dragon, she felt lost and helpless…until she decided to venture outside for the first time to get a closer look at the barn late that afternoon.
She grabbed her jacket from the coat rack, where her mom had hung it days before, and slipped her weary arms into the sleeves. It had started to get cold outside, and she stuffed her head into a wool hat and wrapped a hand-knit scarf around her neck before burying her hands in her pockets to shoulder open the back door. That was when she felt the piece of paper and a hard, plastic rectangle in her right pocket.
Her hand came out with a handwritten note and a 64GB compact flash drive with the Daedalus Group logo blazoned on the side. She glanced out at the black SUV parked across the street and backed away from the windows. Despite the lingering pain in her stitched leg, she found herself bounding back up the stairs an instant later. She h
urried down the hall and retreated to her room, quickly drawing the blinds before she finally allowed herself to open the note.
Chloe,
I’m sorry I can’t do more. They’re watching everything I do. “The dragon” is being kept heavily sedated as they run experiments. More so-called scientists arrived from Washington, and there’s a lot of jurisdictional fighting over which department will own the tests. I’ve convinced them to keep it alive until I get to examine it myself after the Lightning Tower Project goes live on the 20th of this month. But I fear that it’s already having a bad reaction to either the drugs or the food they’re giving it.
On the afternoon and evening of December 20th, the experiments will be put on hold, and all hands will be on-site at the pond. There will be five or so hours of relatively low building security from 4 p.m.-9 p.m. that day.
I don’t know what you might be able to do with this information, if anything, but there it is. It’s the best I can do. It truly is the most magnificent creature to have ever existed, and I could not live with myself knowing that I didn’t at least try to save it. From listening to your account, I can tell you feel the same way.
I don’t believe the world will end, I can’t, but then again, I don’t believe in dragons either.
I’m sorry and good luck!
—Dr. Markson
Chloe read the note again and looked down at the flash drive in her hand. In a matter of seconds, she’d ripped the hat and scarf from her head and started booting up her computer. A second later, her printer beeped and whirred to life.
Chapter 28
Harebrained
Chloe kept the hood of her sweatshirt up as she walked quickly through the lunchroom. Still she could hear people whispering about her as she passed. Now wherever she went in school, her classmates either wanted to inexplicably be her friend or they averted their eyes and quickly backed away from her approach. She had no time for any of it, striding with unwavering purpose as she rounded the fern planter into The Cave. She kept her head down as she passed the table where Cynthia and Brian were sitting; Stan and Kirin waited at the furthest table in the corner.