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CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

Jailbreak


It was almost ten by the time we set foot on level ground on the far side of the rock formation. It was strenuous, if not technically challenging. The hardest part was watching Riker negotiate the rocks with apparent ease. I told myself that his lower center of gravity gave him an unfair advantage. We rested in the shade beneath an overhang and drank more water. The heat had grown from mildly unpleasant to stifling. Though Summer and I carried two water bottles each, it was going fast. We hiked over the top of the next ridge, which turned out to border the vale of the desert facility. It looked much the same as I remembered it, a broad steel structure of holding pens beneath a sea of solar panels. Our elevated viewpoint revealed what I’d suspected the last time: there were holding pens on every side. That made for hundreds of them. The massive track-robot that tended them was on the left side, moving steadily clockwise.

“Let’s wait until it turns the corner,” I said. It looked automated, but it probably had at least one video feed.

Summer nodded and bent down to hold Riker in place. She’d sweated through her tank top and was covered in dust from our climb. And just as attractive.

Focus, man. I forced my eyes away, back to the facility. The robot turned the left-side corner and started moving out of view. “Let’s go.”

The terrain offered few challenges here—it was uneven but less rocky and had little slope to it. I told Octavius to keep his siblings close by. It was hard to predict how they’d react to seeing other dragons, especially ones in cages. But as we got nearer, I began to appreciate the scale of the massive complex. I didn’t like it, but I was going to need all of them.

I called Octavius closer. “Okay, buddy. Are you ready?”

He trilled an affirmative.

“Find the Condor!”

He winged off, chirping at the other dragons. They spread out into a loose formation, gliding low across the tops of the shallow ridges. I’d used my simulator to give them an idea of what the Condor models looked like. They were larger than most other prototypes, which would help. Summer and I picked up our pace as we neared the cages. The nearest one held a purple-and-green Rover model. It was eating noisily out of a stainless-steel bowl but looked up in interest as we approached. It seemed more curious than wary.

“That’s a Rover,” I told Summer.

“Those colors are a crime against nature.”

“I know, right?”

“It’s not your Condor, though.”

“No.” Not one of my designs at all; of that I was certain.

“You want to split up?”

I opened my mouth to protest, but she was right. This place was massive, and my Condors could be anywhere. “All right. Just for this row, though.”

She turned right and moved at a fast walk past the row of cages. I went the other way. The next cage held one of the stout police dragons, the K-10. After that was a steel-gray Laptop model with stunted wings. I wondered if that was an intentional choice from the designer, or yet another biological accident.

“Is this it?” Summer called.

I spun and jogged down the row of cages. She pointed at a large flying dragon. I had a brief surge of excitement and then a blanket of disappointment. “No, that’s a Pterodactyl. See the small head? A Condor is a bit smaller and leaner, too.”

I turned back around. Summer walked to the next cage. “All right, what about this one?”

It took a minor effort not to roll my eyes. She doesn’t have to be here helping me, I told myself. But I turned around anyway and checked the cage. There, right on the other side of the bars, was one of my Condors. It lay in the middle of its holding pen, ignoring its bowl of food, its large wings wrapped neatly around it. The wings were probably what had caught Summer’s attention, but for me it was the eyes. They’d haunted me since the day of the field demonstration. “You found it,” I breathed.

The Condor watched us but didn’t move. I couldn’t believe that we’d come this far and found it. Octavius returned and circled overhead, trilling happily down at us. They’d found another one.

Meanwhile, Summer had moved closer to inspect the door of the holding pen. “These are hydraulic. There should be a control panel somewhere that opens them.”

I looked left and right but saw no control tower or any structure. Just a long line of holding pens. “All right, but where?”

“It’ll be flush with the wall. Probably on one of the corners.”

“Stay here.” I jogged past her, counting cells as I went. After I hit fifteen, the cells ended, and I came to a large metallic plate set in the wall. Maybe two yards wide and one tall, covered in a grid of heavy-duty buttons with green LEDs above them. And here I’d been concerned the controls might be too complicated to figure out. I started at the rightmost switch and counted back fifteen, then found the next one over. I waved at Summer and shouted, “You ready?”

She pulled Riker back away from the cages and waved back.

I jabbed the button. A deep motor thrummed behind the wall. Octavius and his mates had located another one down the right-hand side. With luck, the control panel would be right around the corner rather than the far end of the other side. My first Condor was emerging timidly from its cell as Summer and Riker watched in fascination. Yeah, it does have that effect. I jogged around the corner and the panel was right there. But fifty yards down the line, so was Ben Fulton.

“Parker!” he shouted.

Shit. What the hell was he doing here? I had no time to carefully count the switches. I made a guess and jabbed the button. Then, on impulse, I pushed several more.

Fulton cursed. “What are you doing, kid?” He broke into a run.

I ducked around the corner, preparing to shout to Summer that we had to go, we had to run. But I looked up and saw she was already up. Pulling Riker toward us, and in the custody of two men. They wore desert-style fatigues and heavy combat boots, the kind you could walk right over a cactus wearing and not feel a thing. Sunlight glared from the assault rifles in their hands.



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