CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The Ghost
Tracking down a ghost is not as easy as you’d think. Especially a capricious spirit that tends to show up on a whim. That night while we were trying to get Octavius to eat a carrot, I’d told Summer about my meeting with Evelyn and its many surprises. We still couldn’t wrap our heads around how it had played out.
“Why didn’t you give her the Codex?” she asked.
“It didn’t feel like the right thing to do. Besides, it doesn’t belong to Build-A-Dragon. Ow!” I jerked my hand back. Octavius had lost his patience and nipped my forefinger. Someone is getting his spirtis back.
“Is this really about property rights, or do you just want to see Simon Redwood again?” Summer grabbed my dragonet by the snout and jammed a carrot in his mouth. “Chew.” They stared at each other for a few seconds, and then my dragonet complied.
I grinned at her. “Can’t it be both?”
Unfortunately, since Simon Redwood was legally deceased, there was no way to reach the guy electronically. Not that I’d had any luck with that before, but recent crackdowns by technology companies ensured that all of someone’s verified accounts got deactivated when they passed away. He might not even be in the country. Still, I had to try. My best idea was to return to the place I last saw him and put the word out. So Summer and I strapped on our hiking boots, herded the dragonets into the Jeep’s backseat, and drove out to Big Mesa. This was the name of a geocache in a huge natural area, a bit farther out into the desert than our usual jaunts. I couldn’t say why, but I had a feeling it was somehow closer to what we needed.
We brought the dragonets, which were key to my plan. While Summer drove, and after the required breakfast burritos had been consumed, I gave them the briefing.
“Listen up, guys.”
They were sprawled in a heap in the backseat, many of them still licking crumbs from their lips. Except for one, who was pretending to doze.
“Marcus Aurelius,” I said firmly.
He perked up and blinked as if waking from a deep slumber.
“We’re going out to the desert. I’m going to let you fly free for a while. I want you to look for other dragons, and tell them that I need to talk to Simon Redwood.”
“This is crazy,” Summer said.
“Ignore her,” I told the dragons. “Find the crazy white-haired guy, okay? Or find one of his dragons. It’s important.”
The dragons chirped—or in one case, snored—what sounded like agreement. Only Octavius was quiet. He’s going to be a problem.
Summer got us to the lot, drove basically over the culvert, and parked in something that might have been a parking space, or might not. More importantly, it put us into a narrow band of shade cast by one of the rock formations.
I climbed out and called Octavius to me. Once he’d hopped onto my shoulder, I threw the door open more widely and pushed my seat forward. “Out you go!”
The dragons took off in a flurry of wings. I held Octavius fast to my shoulder. “Not you, buddy.”
He fought me, straining against my hold. When that didn’t work, he dug his claws into my shoulder.
“Ow!” I swatted him. “Stop that. You’re not healed enough yet to fly.”
He stopped struggling and resorted to pouting instead. It was the equivalent of having a large wet rag drooping on my shoulder.
“Perk up, little buddy. It’s for your own good.”
He turned his head deliberately so he wouldn’t have to look at me, and acted as if he hadn’t heard.
“Would it make you feel better if I told you I still had half of my burrito?”
His hearing miraculously returned, and he snatched the burrito from me almost before I got it unwrapped.
Summer was tracking the dragons on a tablet; we’d kept their GPS units just in case there was a problem. This was the desert, after all, and they weren’t necessarily at the top of the food chain.
“How are they doing?” I asked.
“Well, they’re spread out. Nero and Otho went south. Hadrian and Titus are flying northeast. Benjy is heading due west; he’s the farthest out. And Marcus Aurelius is . . .” Her brows furrowed. She leaned over the side of the Jeep. “Still in the backseat.”
“Of course he is.” I threw up my hands. Sometimes his stubbornness was endearing, and other times it irritated me. “Why don’t you try managing him?”
“Marcus Aurelius?” Summer called sweetly.
The dragonet lifted his little head over the edge of the door. Summer put out her hand and he flopped into it. He did look a little drowsy; maybe the sleep wasn’t an act. I made a mental note to review my security camera feeds from the condo. If he was this tired, he must’ve been up late.
“We need a big, strong, clever dragon to fly east of here,” Summer purred. “None of the other dragons were brave enough. Do you think you could?”
It was such an obvious play to his ego. There was no way he’d go for it. He marched to the beat of his own drummer, but he was no fool. None of them were.
I’d no sooner had that thought when Marcus Aurelius puffed up his chest, chirped, and took off across the rocky landscape. Life just wasn’t fair, sometimes.
“See? It’s not so hard,” Summer said.
I shaded my eyes to follow his progress. “He’s flying west.”
“Crap. Marcus Aurelius!” She waved at him and then pointed. “That way, please.”
The dragonet backpedaled and took off in the opposite direction, chirping contentedly. Only Marcus Aurelius—or maybe Octavius in his younger days—could do so much wrong and look happy about it.
Summer sat down against her Jeep on the shady side, and I slid down next to her to help watch the tablet. The dragonets had scattered—enjoying freedom not only from me, but from their watchful and injured older brother—and they were covering lots of ground.
Summer sighed. “It’s hot.”
“Must be that global warming you kept ranting about when we were in college,” I said.
“Global warming is real, Noah.”
I knew it was, but I also enjoyed getting a rise out of her. “Climate fluctuates over time. Isn’t global warming just a scam that the progressives use to stunt corporate growth?”
She nudged me with her shoulder. “Stop trying to rile me up.”
I smiled and nudged her back. “Hey, I’m just trying to pass the time.”
“Oh, are you bored? Here’s something we can talk about.”
I laughed, because I knew that tone. “Uh-oh.”
“So, now that you’ve met my dad, and I’ve met your mom, what’s next?”
Yikes. Caught totally unprepared, I went with humor to buy myself a moment. “I say we start having kids. I’m thinking, like, five.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“Well, we can’t do that yet anyway, because my mom hated you.”
She laughed. “That’s just mean. But I know it’s also a lie.”
I sighed overdramatically. “Yeah, she loved you. And bonus, now you know what my mom is like.”
“You’re too hard on her. She’s a sweet lady.”
“She’s mostly harmless, I’ll give her that.”
“Anyone who raised you and Connor while keeping their sanity deserves a Nobel prize.”
I chuckled. “Fair enough.”
“Against all odds, my dad finds you tolerable.”
“Good enough for his little girl?” I asked.
“Oh, hell no. Nobody’s going to hit that bar because it’s impossible. But he hasn’t ordered me not to see you.”
“Well, that’s . . . good,” I finished lamely.
“And now we come back to my original question.”
“What do you want to be next?” I asked her.
“I need to know that this is real.”
“I know it seems rather haphazard on my side, and my life has been a little complicated recently.”
“A little?”
“Okay, a lot complicated.” I’d been stalling for time, but now that I had to answer, it was easy. I didn’t have to think about it. “What’s next is, I’m in love with you. If it wasn’t clear, I’ll have to double my efforts.”
She watched me silently for a moment. “Don’t you mean redouble your efforts?”
Oh my God. “Are you really attacking my grammar right now?”
She giggled. I scowled at her.
She squeezed my hand and said, “I’m in love with you, too.”
She leaned closer to me and I kissed her. That’s when Octavius chirped from his perch on the Jeep.
Every damn time. I forced myself to pull away from her and glared at him. “What?”
He was staring at the horizon. I followed his gaze and saw two dragons were returning. “Nero and Otho are coming back.”
Summer looked at the tablet. “Benjy’s heading this way, too.”
“Bring them all back.”
She used the tablet to activate the beacon, which sent a ping to the GPS units via satellite that told the dragons to return. We watched the remaining dots on the map slow in their trajectories and start heading this way. Even Marcus Aurelius, who’d decided to do as he was told for once. As the dragonets returned, I corralled them all in the back of the Jeep. If I was right about this, we didn’t want a bunch of little dragons flying around unsupervised.
“Look,” Summer said.
A dusky-colored flying thing had appeared on the horizon to the southwest, sweeping across the tops of the dunes. It was still far away, but approaching fast. And too large to be a bird of prey. I knew it from the coloring and the way it flew, somehow graceful and efficient at once.
“Is that—” Summer started to ask.
“A Condor,” I said. It came out a whisper, as if some part of me feared that saying it out loud would make the thing disappear. This was one of the flying dragons I’d designed to replace the Pterodactyl. I’d gone well outside the points system to the displeasure of Robert Greaves, who canceled the design. Thus there were only a handful of these dragons in the world, and here was one. It glided in a wide circle around us and overhead, looking down. Shortly after hatching, my Condors flew better than any dragon ever printed in our lab.
This one seemed to be struggling to maintain altitude. It flapped more than it should, its entire body quivering with the effort. Still an impressive animal, but slowly succumbing to the genetic fate I’d given it all those months ago.
“It doesn’t look too good,” Summer said.
“That’s my fault.” This was the fate of any animal with BICD2 disease that couldn’t get gene therapy. It would happen to the surviving field trial dragons we’d brought back to the Farm, too. Dr. Sato told me that their muscle biopsy specimens had all shown the characteristic signs. He’d gotten in touch with the clinical laboratories that did their testing, and we expected their variant classifications to change pretty soon. Connor was ecstatic when I told him the news. In the next breath, he asked me how soon I could do the same for some other patients. We were building a bunch of new prototypes, not just for the military but also for the rapidly growing Chinese market. It wasn’t hard to slip more of those mutations in.
Now, as the Condor approached us and I felt the weight of its gaze, I experienced a pang of something. Guilt, maybe. There was too much knowledge in those eyes. I wonder if it understands what I did, and why.
I forced myself not to look away and hoped it understood.
If it recognized me, it made no sign, but it broke off its circle and flew back to the southeast. The little dragonets watched it with starry-eyed gazes, like people encountering a celebrity on the street. I knew exactly how they felt.
It was not long—maybe a minute, maybe two, before more dragons came. These were ground-based predators, a Guardian and a K-10. They blended well with the landscape but their shadows made them a bit easier to track. They came fast, and even though the rational part of my brain knew that we expected dragons like this, the primal survival instincts made me want to jump into our vehicle and lock the doors.
“Noah . . .” Summer said, her voice rising.
“It’s fine.” My voice shook a little. She heard it, and squeezed my hand tight.
The two dragons slowed as they approached us. They prowled close, tongues flicking in and out, and then skirted around us. The K-10 stopped ten feet away and stared at us. We stared back. The Guardian leaped onto the Jeep so it could look inside. This brought a cacophony of alarmed flapping and hissing from the dragonets. None of this seemed to perturb the Guardian, which snorted and leaped back to the ground. It rejoined the K-10 and both of them bounded off into the brush. Summer and I each let out a long breath.
Then we heard something new: a low rumble like the sound of a distant lawn mower, but somehow deeper in tone. A cloud of dust rose southeast of us and the rumble grew to a roar. Over the dust cloud, a dark figure resolved itself against the blue sky.
It was a man on a jetpack.
“No frickin’ way!” I shouted, because otherwise Summer wouldn’t have been able to hear.
The pilot wore aviator’s glasses and a breathing apparatus that obscured most of his face, but the mop of chalk-white hair was unmistakable.
“Is he serious?” Summer shouted.
“I told you, he likes to make an entrance!”
The jetpack itself was a metal frame strapped to Redwood’s back, with two L-shaped arms that stretched out near his hands. Those must be the controls. I watched him fiddle with right-side control, and the roar of the engine faded to a loud purr. He lurched downward, landing heavily on the far side of the parking area. The angle gave me a quick glance at the jetpack; it had three tarnished metal tubes mounted vertically on a battered steel chamber. Forget futuristic, this looked like a low-budget steampunk costume from Comic-Con. Still, I couldn’t argue with the results. Like a lot of Redwood’s inventions, it didn’t look like much but still managed to work as promised.
“I hear you want to talk to me,” Redwood said, without preamble.
“You got here quick,” I said. “I’m impressed.”
Redwood waved me off. “I was in the neighborhood. Spend a lot of time in the desert these days.”
“Yeah, me too. And I have good news.” I took a breath and smiled. “Robert Greaves is out of the dragon-printing business.”
“Really? Good for you, kid.”
Summer nudged me. “He keeps calling you kid.”
“I know, I’m right here,” I whispered back. I shouldn’t blame her for being a little starstruck; I’d had more time to adjust to being in the presence of a legend than she had. I lifted my satchel out of the Jeep and handed it to him. “I believe this belongs to you.”
“Thanks.” Redwood threw the satchel over his shoulder and gave us a big, toothy grin. His teeth were perfectly white. “I’ll try to hang onto it this time.”
“Greaves saw it happen.”
“Did he?” Redwood laughed. “Good.”
“He told me some things.” My mouth felt dry, but I pressed on. “He said I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“Of course he said that. It’s what he does. Back in the day, he got me thinking that I was the problem. That the dragons would be better off with him in charge.”
“He gaslighted you,” Summer said.
“Gaslights would be a thing of the past if more people bought into my solar LED idea.”
What a classically Redwood thing to say. “It worried me a little, that’s all. That he was trying to look out for me or something.”
“The only person old Rob looks out for is himself. Trust me on that.”
I had to believe him. He knew Greaves better than anyone. And believing him meant letting go of the doubts that he’d started to sow in my mind. “Do you think Evelyn is going to do right by the dragons?”
He gave me a side look. “You’re asking me?”
“Well, yeah. It’s your company.”
“Dead people don’t have companies. Besides, I’m not the reigning expert on Evelyn Chang.”
I shrugged. “Well, who is?”
“Someone who studied under her. Spent time problem-solving with her and learning how she operates,” Redwood said. “Someone who helped remove her predecessor so that she landed in the big chair.”
“I don’t know anyone like that.”
Summer giggled. “He means you, dummy.”
“I don’t— I can’t . . .” I stammered.
“Everything he said is true. You’ve worked with her as long as anyone. More importantly, she trusts you.”
“She can see it, kid, so why can’t you?” Redwood asked.
“I wanted to be sure.”
“You’ve got to trust your instincts.” He pressed a switch on his controls and the jetpack’s engine rumbled to life.
“Thank you!” I shouted.
“I’ll tell you one last thing.” He pointed at Summer with his free hand. “Whatever you do, don’t let that one get away.”
The jetpack revved up, dispelling a swirl of dust around his feet. Then he was climbing steadily ten, twenty, thirty feet in the air. He pivoted in place until he was facing southeast, banked forward, and flew away over the ridge to the southeast. He was still visible at a quarter mile away when two winged dragons joined him in the sky, forming up around him like a fighter escort. They were Condors as well, but too far away for me to tell if they included the one that came up close.
“Not bad for an old guy,” Summer said.
“He’s got style, doesn’t he?”
She climbed into her Jeep. “Let’s go get some lunch. I’m thinking Mexican.”
“Again?”
“Your mom’s got me hooked on the mahi-mahi tacos.”
I climbed into the passenger seat. By the time Summer fired up the Jeep’s engine, Simon Redwood was only a speck in the distance. He could have been a bird. Or even a dragon.