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CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Corporate Retaliation


I had to go home after that. I didn’t even go up to get my stuff. My feet carried me to the parking garage on their own. I let the Tesla take me home and just sat there, in a daze. Didn’t even turn on the radio. Too much sound would hurt me. I needed the soft hum of the Tesla and nothing else.

Those dragons had been special. Not just because I’d made them, or because of what they meant for Connor. Everyone on the demonstration field had seen the promise of what these creatures could be without point restrictions. Strong, graceful, and clever all at once. An image, even, of the mythical dragons that Connor was always geeking out over. Greaves had seen all of that and ordered it locked away. The worst part was, my fliers were intelligent enough to understand what quarantine meant. That they would never have the freedom of the skies they’d been made for.

All of it was my fault, too. I should have seen Greaves’ reaction coming. All the evidence was there. Now those fliers would spend their lives in purgatory.

I should have known better.

When I got back to my condo, I found Octavius watching the television.

“What the hell?”

He gave me an honest-to-God guilty look, like a kid caught sneaking a cookie.

“Is this what you do every day when I go to work?”

He shrugged his scaly little shoulders and turned back to the screen. They were running a puff piece about hypo-allergenic cats, and the joy they brought to the feline-loving-but-deathly-allergic segment of the population.

No wonder my channels were never the same when I turned on my TV after work. “You little rascal,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it. His cleverness knew no bounds.

My flier had been clever, too. So clever that Greaves gave an order to shoot it down, as easily as some people order lunch. I didn’t want to care about dragons, but those were mine.

Those dragons felt different.


I took my sweet-ass time getting in to work the next day. Part of that was my reluctance to face the other designers after the disastrous demonstration. Beyond that, I was hardly eager to start churning out one custom dragon after the other. When I got off the elevator, I even imagined that my badge might not work at the security doors. I pictured the red-light-and-buzzer combination, and then the awkward conversation with the security guard. Greaves had fired people for lesser offenses than going outside of the points system.

Termination might even be a relief. Better a quick death for my scientific career than a slow, agonizing spiral. I approached the door to the hatchery. Moment of truth. I held my breath and waved my badge in front of the scanner.

Nothing happened.

My heart sank, but there was a chance I wasn’t close enough. I tried it again. The light blinked green, and the door hissed open. Thank God. I tried not to let my relief show as I hustled through the hatchery, dodging the occasional egg cart. The design lab lay in cool, productive silence. No one noticed my arrival, or if they did, they were nice enough to pretend otherwise. I was actually starting to cool off a bit when I got to my pod.

I reached in to flip on the lights, which is how I noticed a red LED on the back wall. “That’s new.”

I leaned closer to inspect it and saw the unmistakable round glass lens of a security camera. “What the hell?” I leaned my head over the divider. “Wong?”

He rolled out in his chair and raised his eyebrows.

I pointed a thumb back at my camera. “Do you believe this?”

“We all have them.” Because of you, he didn’t have to add.

Build-A-Dragon had hundreds of security cameras—in the hallways, in the elevators, watching all the main entry and exit points. I passed at least a dozen just going from my car to my chair. I’d stopped noticing them a long time ago. But this one was pointed at me. Well, technically it was pointed at the God Machine, but I’d be in the frame. It didn’t have the angle to read my screens, or I’d have refused to work outright. I could just picture Fulton down in his security office, watching us with unblinking eyes.

“Unbelievable,” I muttered.

“Not good for us,” Wong said. “But still better than Shenzen.” He rolled back into his station.

“Noah?” asked a soft voice. Korrapati had tiptoed over. “I’m sorry about the Condor.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“It flew wonderfully.”

“Yeah, it did.”

She glanced surreptitiously at the camera. “Well, see you.”

She scurried away. Not that I blamed her. No one in their right mind wanted to be associated with me at the moment. I was toxic.

I sighed and logged in at my workstation. There were already two messages from Evelyn telling me to come to her office as soon as I got in. That rankled me a little bit, too. Yet another little corporate power-move she had picked up from the execs: summon someone to your office first thing, like they have no higher priority in the world.

Her door was open, but she had her back turned. I knocked on the glass. “You wanted to see me?”

She smiled, but it wasn’t convincing. “Come in, Noah.”

I sat down, and she activated her doorseal. Technically, the engineers put that in as a safety measure, but all of us quickly discovered that the hermetic seal provided wonderful soundproofing, too. The perfect thing for awkward conversations.

I almost blurted out a question about the camera, but I held my tongue. Let’s see if she brings it up voluntarily. Something told me she wouldn’t. She knew me enough to guess how I’d feel about up-close surveillance.

“I was just talking to Robert about the flier demonstration,” she said. “He is not very happy with us.”

I barked a laugh. It sounded as spiteful as I felt. “Yeah. Well, the feeling’s mutual.” I still couldn’t believe he’d sent my fliers to quarantine.

“This is his company.”

“I thought it was Simon Redwood’s company.”

She bit her lip, as if nervous. “Robert oversees the day-to-day operations.”

“I’m aware.” A spark of anger flared up in me. “You know, you could have backed me up out there.”

“What do you mean?”

“With the point limitations. You didn’t even make our case for an exception.”

“You went so far outside the limits. I couldn’t deny it,” she said.

You were meek, I wanted to tell her. You let them slaughter him.

“That dragon was perfect,” I said. “There’s no way to design one without bending the rules. Not with the specs that you want.”

“I think we should let one of the other designers have a crack at it.”

“What for?”

“We need to keep you out of the spotlight for a while.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” I demanded.

“Work on the customs. Keep your head down,” she said.

“This feels like a punishment.”

“It’s not. It’s . . . a strategy for us.”

A part of me knew she was doing the right thing, that she was protecting me and my not-so-secret temper from doing something brash. But it was a setback. Instead of winning freedom with Build-A-Dragon’s resources, I’d managed to win a double-secret probation and additional scrutiny.

“I’m thinking about your career,” she said.

“Mine, or yours?”

“Noah . . .” She sounded hurt.

I waved my hand in something that might have been an apology. “It’s fine. I can stay busy.” I turned to the door and stood there, waiting for her to release the seals.

“The dragon wranglers couldn’t find body of the flier,” she said.

I turned back. “What?”

“The one that flew the demo.” She shrugged. “They never found the body. It may have gotten away.”

“It doesn’t stand a chance alone in the desert.” I forced myself to keep the anger on my face. To give nothing away. Because the tiny, fleeting hope that my unlocked prototype might have escaped into the desert was something I could cling to. I cleared my throat. “I should get to it.”

She sighed quietly. Something had changed between us, and she knew it. Still, I refused to look at her. Then the seal hissed open, and I stalked out.



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Framed