The Elementalists

by C Sharp

  Both of them had received her latest text, and both nodded when they saw her. She’d been trying to prep them for this moment via e-mail and text since the mad plan had come to her the night before. She sat down across from them and scanned the surroundings for anyone in earshot before sliding a manila folder across the table. Kirin opened it just enough so that he and Stan could peer inside.

  Stan’s face split into a grin as Kirin’s eyes went wide. He leaned in to get a closer look.

  “He’s being held by the Department of Homeland Security in the Daedalus Group headquarters,” Chloe said quietly. “They have him in deep sedation as they run experiments, but there’s going to be a five-hour window of opportunity to get him out on the evening of the twentieth.”

  Kirin turned to another laser-printed photograph of the unconscious dragon, this one showing a close-up of a heavily dilated blue eye and the diamond-ridged pattern on his forehead.

  “Dude, are you saying that we’re going to try to bust a dragon out of a high-security government complex?” Stan whispered without taking his eyes from the picture.

  Kirin flipped to the next print, this one showing a wide angle shot of the monster’s full length, though Uktena’s blade-tipped tail still stretched off the edge of the frame.

  “Yes, that’s what I’m saying,” Chloe answered. That silenced them for half a minute as their eyes fixed on the unlikely series of images.

  “How did you get these pictures?” asked Stan with a hint of awe.

  “Someone in the Daedalus Group slipped a flash drive into my pocket before they let me go. I just found it last night along with a note.”

  Kirin was expressionless as he studied what he saw.

  “Who gave it to you?” Stan pressed. “And why you?”

  “I think that maybe the fewer people that know who is helping us, the better,” Chloe stated. “And he gave it to me because I kind of know a lot more about the whole Cow Thief situation than I told you.”

  Kirin looked up and met her gaze. “It was living in your barn, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Chloe admitted. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you both about him a long time ago, but I was scared of what might happen if I got you involved.”

  “Him?” Kirin repeated. “You’ve talked to him?”

  Chloe nodded. “His name is Uktena, just like the fifth dragon on your father’s cauldron.” They both stared at her, waiting for more. “He’s been alive for thousands of years but asleep for the last seven hundred or so… And he believes that he’s woken up this time to usher in the end of mankind.”

  Their silence stretched on as the sound of Brian’s raucous laugh carried from beyond the ferns. The trio was deaf to the outside world.

  “Then why would we help him escape?” Stan finally blurted.

  “He saved my life twice,” she met Stan’s wild eyes, “and yours once, too… I’m not totally sure about this whole end-of-the-world thing yet, but if it’s true, I think that maybe he could help us stop it.”

  “The van,” Stan said with awe. “I knew we went over the edge of the quarry.”

  Chloe nodded, glancing back to Kirin as she tried to gauge his response. “He told me that he’s just the forerunner to the doom of man, the catalyst that sets it off. And the prophecy said that ‘when the spirit of the land withers and dies,’ the other dragons will return to claim dominion. Well, Uktena is the spirit dragon and he’s dying now, but maybe if we can save him, then we can stop the others from waking up.”

  Kirin was looking down again as he turned to the final print, showing an overhead schematic of the Daedalus Group building with one little ‘x’ on a side door beside the loading dock and another big ‘X’ in the center of a large room at the heart of the complex.

  “How do you intend to get him out of there?” Kirin asked while studying the map.

  Chloe shrugged. “I have a couple ideas, but that’s kind of where I was hoping for your help.”

  Kirin straightened the prints and closed the folder very deliberately before sitting up and meeting her gaze again.

  Chloe’s palms were sweating, and her leg was shaking below the table.

  He cleared his throat and took a sip of his Vitamin Water, then nodded with the hint of a little grin. “First tell us everything you know.”

  • • •

  By the second Friday in December, various elements of The Plan had already started to take shape. Stan had procured the video camera again and had managed to steal a ten-pound bag of espresso-strength, organic ground coffee from the office where his dad worked. Since his parents had implemented biweekly drug tests, he’d found that he was operating at a far more efficient level. But he also discovered that he was remembering things that he’d just as soon forget and dwelling on things that he’d previously been able to brush aside. The fact that he’d signed on to Chloe’s potentially bleak view of the immediate future did not inspire confidence in his prospects at continued sobriety.

  Kirin was still working on his assignments. Through a “college friend” of Cynthia Decareux’s and a quick perusal of Craigslist, he’d managed to procure both a set of lock-picking tools and an authentic grappling hook. After a week of nightly online tutelage and steady practice on the locks around the house and at school, he’d become semiproficient at identifying and breaking an array of simple, standard locks. So far, with the grappling hook, he had only managed to break a couple tree limbs, partially remove a rain gutter, and badly bruise his shoulder bone.

  Chloe was not doing as well with her list as either of the others. She’d tracked down the name of the organic meat farmer that sold to Positive Pete’s, but he was out of town until the New Year and she didn’t have any money anyway. She knew that to get Uktena strong again, she’d need a grossly large quantity of clean meat. Against all better judgment, she could think of only one other place to get it…

  That Friday night, Kendra was having a smallish gathering at her house with only the coolest and most fortunate kids in attendance. Needless to say, Chloe, Kirin, and Stan were not invited. But Liz was still dating Paul Markson, and that got her past the twelve-foot-tall radio-operated gate.

  Chloe approached Liz after school on Friday, and Liz’s reasons for refusal were not able to withstand Chloe’s onslaught of guilt and pleading. By 9:30 that night, Chloe, Kirin, and Stan were all hunched low in the Grand Wagoneer, parked across the street from a shadowed stretch of the stone wall that ringed the Roberts estate. They were all dressed in black—except for Stan’s absurdly sky-blue sneakers. Kirin fidgeted nervously with the barbed prongs of the grappling hook in his lap, and Chloe’s gaze danced back and forth between the street and her cell phone.

  “I still don’t think it’s fair that so much of this plan relies on me and this grappling hook,” Kirin muttered for the third time. “It’s a lot harder to use than you’d think.”

  Stan’s leg hadn’t stopped bouncing for twenty minutes. “What are you complaining about, dude?” he whispered emphatically. “You get to stay by the wall with an escape rope. I’ve got to steal God knows how many pounds of raw meat and carry it through the woods without being seen!”

  “It’s all going to work,” Chloe declared just before her phone lit up and vibrated with a new text. Everyone went silent as she grabbed it from the dashboard and opened the message from Liz: Basement door off back patio. Txt when close.

  “It’s on,” Chloe announced. “The meat locker is in the basement. There’s an outside entrance from the back patio.” She closed the phone and started toward her pocket just as another text came in from Liz. She opened the phone back up as a pregnant hush returned to the car: This is totally STUPID! Chloe frowned and snapped the phone shut. “Let’s go.” She opened the passenger side door before the others had time to protest again.

  She was at the wall with her back to the cold stone and her breath pluming before the others had even shut their car doors. They joined her in a crouch beside the designated entry point a few seconds l
ater. Chloe gave Kirin a supportive nod.

  He sighed deeply before rising to his feet with the coiled rope in one hand and the three-pronged hook in the other. “You might want to watch out,” he whispered. “It’s been known to come back down in a hurry.” He wound up and hurled the black hook over the wall, where it swung down and smacked against the far side with a dull clang.

  He took another slow breath before starting to haul it, scraping and bouncing, back up the rock face until it finally latched securely at the lip. He tugged again with a relieved smile as the rope went taut in his hands.

  “See,” said Chloe with a playful punch to his shoulder before she grabbed hold of the rope and scurried up the side of the wall. I hope my butt looks good in these jeans popped to mind before she swung a leg up and disappeared over the top.

  Kirin and Stan were watching closely.

  “She made that look pretty easy,” whispered Stan before accepting the rope. But he, by contrast, ascended with a lot of fumbling and cursing under his breath. He made it over the top with banged knees and elbows and dropped down to the ivy on the other side with a grunt.

  Kirin followed quickly, unhooking the prongs from the stone edge before leaping down gently into the woods beside the others. All three scanned the grounds before exhaling again. Through the woods, they eyed the side of the sprawling mansion a hundred yards away.

  Chloe caught Kirin’s sideways glance and smirked with a spark of excitement passing between them. “No sweat.”

  Kirin whipped out a small LED flashlight in one hand and his dad’s binoculars in the other. Stan took the video camera from the bag and turned it on with a series of quiet beeps.

  Chloe and Kirin watched as he pushed record and it beeped again. He’d covered the glow of the red REC light with a piece of black tape, and he switched the camera into NIGHT SHOOTING mode and aimed it at his two accomplices. “Cool.”

  “Stan, what are you doing?” Chloe asked.

  “What do you mean? I want to get the full experience before we go next week.” He zoomed in for a close-up on Chloe’s face.

  “It might not be such a good idea to videotape our grand larceny one week prior to breaking into a government facility,” suggested Kirin.

  Stan brought the camera away from his eye for only a moment. “Dude, if this is gonna be the end of the world, I want a record that we at least tried to stop it.” He returned his eye to the viewfinder to better capture the moment of Kirin’s response.

  Kirin shrugged. “Sounds reasonable to me.” He raised the binoculars and continued scanning the grounds. “It looks clear to the house.”

  Chloe took the coiled earbud from her pocket and attached it to the headphone jack on her cell. Kirin did the same with his iPhone before pressing the autodial. Chloe’s screen lit up in her pocket a second later. She pressed the button to answer and then locked the keypad.

  “Now I’m in your head,” Kirin whispered in her ear, despite facing in the other direction.

  “Nothing new there,” she confessed.

  Stan swung the camera smoothly between them. “Gee, maybe this could be a documentary about young love?”

  Chloe gave the camera the finger and turned back toward the house. She took a ski mask from her pocket and pulled it on as the others did the same. They shared a last quick look.

  “Good luck,” Kirin offered.

  Chloe nodded. “Okay, on three… One, two—” and before she knew it, she was running through the woods toward the brightly lit windows. Stan followed just a few strides behind, with the camera bag slapping against his back with every step. They moved along the tree line, passing window after window—no hint of activity within.

  The house itself was a brick McMansion, clearly built in the last ten years, with class and style taking a back burner to the desire for overwhelming girth. Its multistory wings stretched across the property for what looked like twice the length of Uktena, and there must have been fifty or more rooms within.

  Chloe and Stan slinked through the shadows toward the back as the sounds of laughter and conversation carried from around the corner.

  “Looking good,” whispered Kirin in Chloe’s ear, sending a little thrill down her spine. “It’s clear to the back, but I’ll lose you around the corner.”

  They moved out from the shelter of the woods and scurried across the manicured lawn before sliding between the evergreen hedge and the wall of the one-story annex that ringed the back patio. Chloe put up her hand to stop at the corner; the sounds of roughhousing and banter were close by, and she could smell the drift of cigarette smoke clinging to the crisp air.

  She turned back to face the dark woods and flashed her LED pocket light.

  “I see you,” said Kirin in her head.

  “Me too,” whispered Stan with the camera in her face.

  Chloe took her phone from her pocket and unlocked the keypad again. “All right, I’m texting Liz now.” She was wearing black fingerless gloves, and her thumbs worked quickly despite the cold: I’m in place, but I hear people on the back patio?

  They waited for a long moment, staring at the phone. Then the screen lit up again: Smokers. W8 a sec. A minute later and the sound of talking receded and then a distinct slam of a door was followed by winter silence… GO! Stairs down on right.

  Chloe nodded and they took off around the corner. The “back patio” was more like a theme park recreation of a Roman Villa, built by a flamboyant emperor. There were curving staircases and complex topiary designs that climbed up a multitiered garden toward a magnificently lit heated pool. Steam rose from the crystal blue water.

  For a moment Chloe and Stan lost their focus amid the cherubic fountains and nude statues on pedestals. Their rushed scamper slowed to an unsure shuffle as Stan’s camera swung around, trying to take it all in. Chloe snapped out of it after she stumbled through a flower bed and conked her head on a bird feeder that hung from a willow tree. She grabbed Stan by the shoulder and yanked him after her as they climbed up the slope of the yard past rings of hedges and waterfalls.

  At the top tier, adjacent to the pool, Chloe spied an iron railing that led down a stairwell to a subterranean door. She motioned toward it and darted across the terrace, but before she reached the descent, someone opened the glass doors at the back of the house. She and Stan doubled back and ducked behind the sixteen-burner gas grill that was mounted into the wall of a barbeque piazza off to the side.

  They held their breath as the sound of dance music blared from inside, but no one signaled the alarm. Then a girl let forth with a high-pitched yelp before a familiar, grating voice cut through the chill air. “It’s friggen COLD!” Kendra announced. The patter of her bare feet across the patio was followed by a splash as she entered the pool.

  “Damn,” muttered Chloe under her breath.

  “What’s happening?” implored Kirin in her ear.

  She peeked over the grill’s lid to see Ezra approach the pool behind Kendra. Despite the cold, he wasn’t wearing a shirt as he sauntered toward the water, carrying two cans of beer. Chloe was momentarily distracted by his molded perfection.

  “Daaaaaamn,” repeated Stan. The lens of the camera hovered over the grill beside her with Stan’s face glued to the pop-out screen. Ezra dropped out of frame with a splash.

  “We’ve got company in the pool,” Chloe whispered into the dangling microphone cord of her earbud.

  There was a long pause as Kirin considered the predicament from afar. “Could Liz create a diversion?” he suggested.

  “Worth a try,” said Chloe as she removed the phone from her pocket again. She wasn’t skilled in all the shortcuts and emoticons of accepted text-speak, but her quick thumbs made up for it: People in the pool! I NEED help with a short diversion???

  She waited a long moment for a response as Stan switched out of NIGHT SHOOTING MODE and zoomed in for a close-up on her phone’s screen.

  “Anything?” asked Kirin impatiently.

  “Waiting,” whispered Chloe
just as the screen lit up with a returned text from Liz: Chloe U $ me 4 this!!! 1 sec.

  Chloe and the camera peered back over the grill, unable to see what was causing the hysterical cackle of squeals and giggles in the pool. Stan artfully framed the ripples of light that played off the back of the house. Suddenly the lights went out.

  The back terrace went dark as Kendra’s laugh morphed into an angry yell. “Hey!”

  Chloe scrambled to her feet and grabbed Stan by the elbow. “Come on!” she hissed as the two bolted toward the railing. Chloe glanced through the gloom as she ran, able to make out the two shapes in the pool that splashed toward the wall at the far end.

  “Come on, turn the lights back on!” shouted Ezra toward the house as Stan and Chloe grasped the cold iron and slipped down the stairwell. Chloe grabbed the doorknob and turned it as quietly as she could; the door swung open without a creak. They slid inside with a soft click behind them just as the full array of lights returned to the terrace above. Chloe and Stan shared a joint exhale to cut the silence.

  “We’re in,” said Chloe into the mic.

  “Nice work,” said Kirin.

  “Dude, I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff when I was high, but this has got to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever tried!” Stan allowed himself only a moment to lower the lens and reflect on his predicament. He snapped it back up and did a 360-degree pan of their surroundings. “What now?”

  The term basement didn’t quite do justice to the sprawling maze of dark wood-paneled rooms that stretched out in three directions. To the left was a multilevel descending wine cellar. To the right was the entrance to an extended man cave, complete with pool, ping-pong, and poker tables beside a full bar with swiveling bar stools and a classic jukebox. The room they were in was lined with shelves laden with all manner of grilling tools and games. Tongs, knives, two-pronged forks, and grill brushes were next to the spices and sauce collection on one side; a high-end croquet set, horseshoes, and an assortment of other lawn sports were displayed on the other.