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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Trainer

Dragons have good instincts, and our infantry model would be no exception. Yet unlike many of our production models that served as family pets, anything designed for the military would need a lot of training. Beyond that, each dragon had to imprint on humans—specifically, their human handlers—right after hatching. Per my agreement with Evelyn, I’d kept my eyes on the design process while she worried about the logistics. There were lots of those in the DOD requirements, things about training and production and delivery. I’d ignored all of it and focused on the performance specs.

So when she told me I was going with the training team to deliver the infantry model eggs, it took me by surprise.

“Me?” I asked. “Are you sure?”

“The training team wants a designer there, so yes.”

We stood in a corner of the hatchery, which was busier than it had been since I’d come back. Eight active pods. The unrelenting Arizona sun—which provided an ideal incubation temperature—streamed through their windows. Two teams of hatchery staffers moved among them, rotating the eggs in their synthetic foam beds.

It was hot in here, but I didn’t mind. “Can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s good to see hatchery staffers in here again.”

“It is. And I’d like it to remain busy,” she said. “Which is why you have to go.”

“How far away is it?”

“It’s near Yuma. Just under three hours.”

Three hours?” That would be my whole day, probably two days. Even longer if they needed me to stay to witness the training. “You know what? Let’s send Korrapati.”

“Do you know who’s overseeing the hatching?”

I grinned. “I know you promised them Tom Johnson.”

“That’s who they’re getting.”

No way. “How in the heck did you pull that off?”

“I can be very persuasive,” she said, in a faux-baritone imitation of my voice.

“You did learn from the best.”

“I think he would like Korrapati fine, but he asked for you.”

Maybe it was silly, but I felt like my heart actually skipped a beat. Tom Johnson had been a celebrity in the wildlife community well before he captured many of the reptilian species that went into the Dragon Genome Project. Despite the fact that he headed our Herpetology Department, I rarely saw the guy, much less interacted with him. The trip would be like a full day in his presence. And he asked for me. “When do we leave?”

Evelyn smiled. “Tomorrow morning.”


That’s how I found myself in the cab of a box truck at the crack of dawn, driving west into the still-dim Sonoran desert. The truck was all-electric, so the noise from the engine was little more than a hum. Even at a steady eighty miles per hour, it was eerily quiet. For the last five minutes, I’d been trying to think of something intelligent to say to Tom Johnson, who was driving. Since the start of the trip, he’d said a grand total of six words to me: Hold this. Carry that. Let’s roll. For a guy who made a name for himself in television, he really didn’t talk more than he had to.

“So, Mr. Johnson,” I said at last. To my ears, I sounded like an awkward teen boy.

“Call me Tom, kiddo.”

“So, Tom.” It felt weird addressing him by his first name.

“What’s your name?”

“Oh. I’m Noah Parker.”

“Good to meet you,” Tom said.

“We’ve met before at dragon hatchings. Twice, actually.” Not that I’m counting or anything. “I thought you asked for me.”

“Who said that?”

“Evelyn.” The CEO, in other words.

“Oh, yeah.”

“So you asked for me?”

“Kind of.” He hitched a thumb toward the back of his truck. “Asked for the egghead who knew the most about these things.”

Egghead. It wasn’t my first choice for a nickname, but I’d heard worse. “Well, that’s me.”

“Tell me about ’em.”

“Are you familiar with our attack dragons?”

“That’s not a production model as far as I know.”

“No, they’re custom jobs, but we have a standard recipe.”

Tom scratched his chin. “Think I saw one of those in action once.”

“Really? In the wild?” I could picture that. Tom Johnson knee-deep in swamp water, narrating as he filmed one of our sleek attack dragons stalking some hapless animal. Maybe it was dark, but I took a grim sort of pride in how well I designed those models.

“No, it was in-house. Slaughtered this ridiculous pink-and-purple dragon that hatched in the same pod.”

“I see.” My burgeoning confidence deflated like a popped balloon. Yes, those had been my dragons, but also my mistake.

“So that’s what these are, huh?”

“That was the starting point. We’re not under the points system for these, so we made the teeth and claws longer. They’ll have natural camouflage skin coloring, all with earth and desert tones. The main difference is in musculature, though. They’re heavier, stouter, and stronger. Kind of like a Komodo dragon.”

Tom grunted. “Komodos. Nasty buggers.”

“You caught one of those for the Dragon Genome Project, didn’t you?” I tried to make this a casual remark, more I heard about this bit of trivia than I’ve memorized your life in every detail.

“I caught three of them for the DGP.”

“Three? What, were the first two not good enough?”

“Redwood wanted a female to make sure we got a copy of each chromosome.”

“Oh, right, they’re on the ZW chromosome system.”

“Bingo.”

In humans and placental mammals, biological males had one copy of each sex chromosome, X and Y. Lizards, monitors, and most birds had the opposite system; biological females had one copy of each sex chromosome, Z and W, whereas males had two copies of Z. The names of the chromosomes were arbitrary; geneticists only used different lettering to tell them apart. “Are females harder to catch?”

“None of them are easy. Hundred and fifty pounds of teeth and claws, with bony scales that are like a suit of chain mail.”

I laughed. “Sounds like fun.”

“The problem with catching a female was our permit from the Indonesian government. We couldn’t take one if it was tending a nest.”

“How do you know that in advance?”

“You just have to stalk them for a couple days to be sure.”

The notion of tracking an apex predator through a tropical rainforest frightened me to my core. I liked the outdoors well enough, but I got to come home to a soft bed in an air-conditioned condo. Maybe that explained why this guy was famous, and I was not.

We talked more about the animals he’d caught for the DGP or for zoo collections, and he peppered me with questions about the design of the infantry dragon.

“How smart are they?” he asked.

“Similar to the Rover,” I said.

He nodded, as if that were good enough. “What about behavior?”

“More aggression, less impulsiveness, and theoretically a stronger comfort with risk-taking.”

“Theoretically?”

“These traits are a lot more complicated than physical attributes. Lots of genes involved,” I said.

“Environmental factors, too.”

“Yes.” I was impressed. He might not be a genetics expert, but the guy knew his biology.

“That starts with the imprinting exercise at hatching.”

“How’s that going to work?” I asked.

“If everyone in the hatching environment wears the same uniform, the dragons will imprint on that rather than a specific handler.”

“They will?”

“Theoretically.”

“Heh. Good one.”

“We haven’t tried anything like this before, so there’s some guesswork involved.”

You can say that again.

Now that we’d broken the conversational ice, the time flew by. Before I knew it, we were turning off I-95 into the Yuma Proving Ground.


We encountered the first security checkpoint not far from the highway. Checkpoint was putting it mildly; raised concrete barriers blocked the entire road. A soldier in fatigues popped out of the attached guardhouse and signaled for Tom to stop the truck right in front. More soldiers materialized all around us; I had no idea where they came from. In seconds, the back of the truck was open and soldiers swarmed up in there, too. Once they’d checked my ID, I walked back there—slowly, of course—to keep an eye on things. Dragon eggs were fragile, and this was the most crucial period of incubation.

“Be careful with that!” Tom snapped. He’d beat me back there by five feet. “They’re eggs, damn it!”

If the recipient of this warning apologized, I didn’t hear it as I rounded the corner of the truck. There were two soldiers searching the egg crates—a man and a woman—neither of whom looked particularly contrite. However, they did seem to open the next crate with exaggerated care. Hatchers had packed the dragon eggs with biodegradable foam peanuts. The soldiers ran their hands down deep into the foam on all four sides of the egg before putting the lid back on. I kept an eye on the digital thermometer readout on the side. If the temperature dropped more than a couple degrees, the HVAC unit in the base of the crate would kick in and apply a little heat. It could cool the crate, too, if the temperature got too hot. Neither was necessary in this instance. Movement on the side of the truck caught my eye; now there were soldiers on either side inspecting the undercarriage with mirrors.

Serious about security. Then again, since I’d once found an unwanted device hidden under my Tesla, I understood. That had been a GPS tracker, not a bomb, but thinking of it still rattled me. Luckily, these soldiers found nothing untoward. A minute later, they gave us the go-ahead to proceed. They even closed the truck back up, and one of them opened the truck door for me. I climbed back in.

Tom, naturally, seemed perfectly at ease with this turn of events. He hit the button and put the truck into drive while the concrete barriers sank slowly into holes in the ground. We glided through.

“Good security here,” I said.

“About as good as I’ve seen, outside the Pentagon.”

“Did you say the Pentagon?”

He handed me a thick sheet of paper, a map with a travel route on it traced in red marker. “Here’s our route. Get us to the right place.”

“Okay, sure.” I haven’t used a physical map in about five years, but I’ll give it a whirl. I gave the map a hurried inspection; it appeared to have the Yuma Proving Ground and the major highways around it. I got it oriented, found I-95, and located the security checkpoint. Just inside, there were three possible roads. I hadn’t seen which one he took.

“Which way did you turn when we came in?”

“Left.” He glanced at me and had a little smirk on his face. “Or maybe it was right. Not sure.”

The left-hand route was the one marked in red on the map; it led northeast. The other choices would have taken us due east or south-southeast. It was midmorning, so the sun would be in the east-southeast. And it was pretty much to my right when I checked. “You took the left-hand turn. Which is the marked route.”

“Hope you’re right, and we don’t end up in a minefield.”

He wasn’t kidding; there was an actual minefield according to the legend. Not anywhere near our route, but it did exist. “No, that’s southeast of here.” I used the distance key and my pinkie finger to estimate. “And over three miles away from our route.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. Stay on this road another half mile, and then we’ll turn right.” After the turn, the red line ran perpendicular to a series of thin parallel lines. “It’ll take us uphill.”

“Now you’re just guessing.”

No, I know how to read a topographical map. “Goes up around two hundred feet, then levels out, and we’ll have arrived.”

Tom gave me a sidelong look. “What, were you in the Boy Scouts or something?”

“Nope. I’m a geocacher.”

He nodded in a way that suggested he knew the word, and why it often came with the ability to read a topo map. Admittedly, I hadn’t used a physical printout in a while. I didn’t even think they still existed. I flipped this one over and found the source. Printed by the Department of Defense. Well, at least some things didn’t change.

“You got any dragon experience?” Tom asked. “Direct contact, I mean.”

“I own one. More like a dragonet, but very smart. Had him for just over a year.”

I didn’t know why I’d told him that. The fact that I personally owned an unlicensed dragon was, at the very least, a violation of city ordinance, state law, and our company’s agreement with the government. Which was why I’d never told anyone at Build-A-Dragon about it. Now I’d just spilled the beans to a department head. Well, at least I didn’t tell him about all of my illegal pet dragons. Or Redwood’s guardians, or the attack dragon that had killed Fulton right in front of me. Yeah, I had some direct experience, all right.

“What’s his name?” Tom asked.

“Octavius.”

“Does he act like an emperor?”

“More often than I’d like,” I said.

Tom chuckled.

“I’m not complaining. He’s a good little guy,” I said.

Tom made the right-hand turn. Sure enough, the road went uphill like I’d said. “You might be useful out here in the field with us,” he said.

I could have refused. I’d come on this trip to represent the Design department and address any questions about our designs. The infantry models weren’t cute little pets; they were engineered killing machines.

“Sure. Happy to help.” Surely it was a safe facility and I’d be perfectly fine.

I’m sure that’s what the pink-and-purple birthday dragon thought, too.


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Framed