CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Spirals
That night, I pored over the satellite footage of the area surrounding the killing fields. Even with a paid upgrade from GeoEye, the area that might otherwise show a massive animal care facility just happened to remain blurry. It had to be some kind of paid exclusion. Greaves was no fool. He didn’t want high-res satellite imaging of Build-A-Dragon’s dirty laundry out there for the world to see. I stayed up too late, obsessing over the desert facility and what secret might be there that was worth killing over.
Though the next morning came painfully early, I had to return to work like everything was normal. That was the shittiest part of all. Lots of people missed work the day Redwood died—he had plenty of acolytes at Build-A-Dragon—but life must go on, as Greaves put in his company-wide e-mail lamenting Redwood’s death.
“Nihao, Wong,” I called over the wall as I got into my workstation.
Wong rolled out in his chair. “Noah Parker. Ni zěnmeyàng?” How are you?
“Mama huhu,” I answered. Just so-so.
“Yes,” Wong said. “Very sad day yesterday.”
“Did you come in?”
“Of course.”
I shrugged. “I just couldn’t.”
“It was hard. But I take no chance with visa.”
“How was it around here?”
“Quiet. Like a ghost town.”
I sighed. “Guess I should get to work.”
“Same.” Wong gave me a crooked smile and rolled back into his workstation.
I plugged away at design work. It was slow going. I tried to do right by the designs that came in, and I delayed as long as I could before printing new eggs. The week seemed to pass in slow motion. I trudged through it like a ghost. Finally, around lunchtime, my phone buzzed with an incoming phone call. It brought an instinctive feeling of dread. Few people called. Lately it seemed to be all bad news.
Then I looked at the display, and saw it was Summer. That perked me up a bit. I hustled out to the stairway, because we weren’t supposed to use phones near the God Machine. “Hello?”
“It’s Summer,” she said.
Her voice made me smile. “Hi, how are you?”
“I’m fine.”
The feeling of dread returned. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to make sure you’re still alive or whatever.”
“That’s nice of you,” I said, though her tone absolutely had a chill to it. “I’m okay.”
“All right. Well, I gotta go.”
Damn, she’s pissed. I couldn’t imagine what for. “Summer, wait!”
“What?”
“What’s going on?”
Silence.
“Did I say something to upset you?”
She sighed. “I admired him too, you know.”
“Who?”
“Simon Redwood.”
“Oh.” A slow breath escaped me. “I didn’t know.”
“You’re not the only one having a shitty week, is all I’m saying.”
Oh, hell. “I’m sorry. I just got caught up at work.”
“So you’re still working there.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Is it? You work for a company that kills dragons. Whose founder just died in a mysterious fire.”
I wanted to tell her what I was really doing here. What I could do for my brother, if I could only get my hands on the right dragon. But the steady LED of the staircase surveillance cam stared at me like a baleful eye. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I could practically feel Fulton watching me on his monitors. “I can’t talk about it.”
“I guess we don’t have anything to talk about, then.”
“Summer—” I started.
The line went dead.
I tried to get back to work, but the Summer thing gnawed at me. I tried calling her a few times that afternoon but got no answer. She was pissed, and it was my fault. I hadn’t realized that she might be upset about Redwood, or about my coming back to work. I’d only been thinking about myself. From her point of view, we’d been getting close and then I suddenly ghosted her. The realization brought a tightness to my chest. I suppose I could have given her time to cool off and then try again, but every minute I spent knowing that she was pissed at me made my stomach hurt more. I could practically sense the gulf forming between us.
That was the emotional straw that broke the camel’s back. Everything started to spiral. I’d failed my Condor, failed my brother, and now I’d failed Summer. The one bright spot in my recent existence—Simon Redwood—had been ripped away from me, too. No, not just me. From the world.
All those failures had one thing in common: Build-A-Dragon’s desert facility. If Greaves had secrets, that’s where they were. The more I thought about it, the more I obsessed over it, the more I convinced myself that I had to go back there.
But the place was huge. I’d never be able to cover it by myself, at least within a short enough time period to avoid any security patrols. Octavius would help, of course. It still might not be enough. I needed four or five of him.
Four or five of him.
That gave me a crazy idea. A small act of rebellion that would lay the groundwork for a much larger one. It was time for me to start printing dragons.