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CHAPTER FORTY

The Ambush

We met in the desert at five a.m., so early it was still dark outside. No moon, no clouds. I’d forgotten how many stars you could see outside the city at night. The air still held warmth, though, and a promise of a brutally hot day. Wong and Korrapati beat us to the rendezvous point by a good ten minutes. Driving a big truck, as it turned out, was no match for wrangling half a dozen small flying dragons into a standard-size Jeep.

“Sorry we’re late,” I said. “How are the dragons?”

“Hungry,” Wong said.

“Yes, we fed them,” Korrapati smiled. “I’ve never fed a dragon by hand before.”

“Really?”

“Me neither,” Wong said.

“You guys haven’t done any hatchings?”

“Not everyone is the golden child who gets to imprint the dragons alongside Tom Johnson during field tests,” Korrapati said.

“I guess I just assumed . . .” I said.

“You are very special,” Wong said.

“All right, that’s enough out of you.” I gestured back to the Jeep where Summer was in the middle of a tug-of-war to reclaim her hoodie from Marcus Aurelius. “Besides, the charm of feeding dragons wears off. Trust me.”

“It hasn’t yet, at least for me,” Korrapati said. “I almost hate to do this to them.”

I did, too, if I was honest with myself. Even knowing that they were purpose-made for things like this didn’t make it much easier. Dragons were living, breathing things. “With luck, they won’t come to any harm.”

She nodded, but looked as though she didn’t entirely believe me. I wouldn’t have, either.

Summer joined us, looking frazzled but wearing a mostly undamaged dark hoodie. All of us pretended not to notice the delay or the tooth marks.

“Are you ready for this?” she asked.

“Yeah. Are you?”

She brandished a leather tool-bag. “My part’s easy.”

I hoped that was true. Summer was going to disable the Frogman’s vehicle outside his place, and then guard the entrance to the road that led to the facility. Well, guard was a bit of an overstatement. She’d park her Jeep on the side of the road—which wouldn’t attract too much undue attention in this area—and let us know if any vehicles started heading this way. It was Saturday; I didn’t expect anyone to be working, but you never knew. The Frogman had always kept odd hours, and for all I knew Greaves was demanding a seven-day workweek.

“Be careful, all right?” I hugged her.

“You too.” She waved to Wong and Korrapati. “Good luck!” Then she opened her hatch.

Benjy flew out first with Octavius right at his tail. Hadrian and Titus made streaks of green and orange after them. Then came Nero and Otho; I quickly lost them in the dull brown landscape behind the Jeep. I eased off my backpack and extracted my tablet. We’d fitted each of the little dragons with a pinpoint camera and GPS tracker—the kind that extreme athletes used—and all of them were hot-linked to my tablet. The video feeds scrolled with rugged desert terrain, alternating with glimpses of the gold-streaked horizon. All but one feed, that is. The bottom right corner of my grid showed an unmoving view of Summer’s backseat. We’ve got a straggler, and guess who.

“Marcus Aurelius!” I called.

The last dragon took wing in a manner that could only be described as grudging.

I called Octavius to me and winced as he landed on my shoulder. He’d gained almost a pound in the past week—they all had—as I’d let them eat as much as they wanted. “Listen, buddy. Just liked we talked about. Stay high, spread out, and watch for other dragons.”

He started to take off, but I grabbed his legs. “Hey. Look after your brothers, all right?” I released him and he launched himself into the air, chirping to his mates. They all wheeled around to form up in something resembling a line. I watched them until they disappeared over the high ridge that separated us from the shallow valley where the facility was.

“All right, we’re ready,” I told Wong.

He jogged to the back of the truck and hauled the doors open. Korrapati came over to look at the video feed. Dawn was breaking as we got our first glimpse of the target facility. It looked bigger somehow than the drone footage. Darker, too, and more intimidating. I was fairly sure that was just an effect of the light.

“It looks like our building,” Korrapati said.

“I know. It’s weird, huh?”

“Very.”

Nero and Otho were coming up on the building at a good angle. I pointed out the balconies where we’d seen the flying dragons. Nothing moved as far as we could see, though I hoped Octavius and his siblings maintained a high altitude.

Wong had the cages open by that time. “We are ready,” he said.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Up until this moment, we hadn’t committed any serious crimes. “Are we sure about this?”

Korrapati laughed nervously. “It’s a little late for that.”

“What about you, Wong?”

“We go,” he said, without hesitation.

Their confidence got me over the hump. “All right, let’s get this over with.”

They called out the dragons, which had waited patiently in their cages. They already showed far more discipline than my lot, though that wasn’t saying much. The infantry models flowed down the ramp onto the sand, tongues flicking out to taste the air. Wong ordered them forward. I tore my eyes from their sinuous movement to watch the flying dragons emerge from the truck. They took to wing straight out of their cages. They swept low to gain momentum, and then shot up into the sky. Korrapati set them sweeping over the dunes, air cover for the ground troops.

The three of us jogged after them; they were fast. We crested the ridge together, trying to keep them in sight. It was fully light out now, and a trill from Octavius—the only dragonet with duplex audio linked to my tablet—told me he’d spotted something. I brought up his feed to full screen, and there it was. One of Greaves’s infantry models. It prowled the shallow vale in our direction. I could barely see the thing, it blended so well.

“Contact,” I said. “About halfway between us and the building.”

Korrapati and Wong both issued the same command, an order I’d never imagined I’d hear someone speak to a dragon.

Kill.

The flying dragons swept forward, climbing to gain altitude. Two broke off left and another two right. The dragon on the ground had marked them now, and craned its neck to follow the central pair. They dove, swooping down at him like falcons. The dragon hunched low to the ground, watching them approach. They plummeted toward him. They were maybe fifteen feet up when it crouched and leaped upward, slashing. Only the flying dragons broke off right then. They banked away, out of reach. That’s when the infantry dragons arrived, catching the thing in midair. They were quick about it. Brutally so. Korrapati looked away. Wong and I stared, but said nothing. It wasn’t the first time I’d watched dragon-on-dragon violence, but seeing it again was no easier.

Nero and Otho, meanwhile, had located another dragon slinking its way among the dunes. Two of our infantry units ran to intercept it. The dragon saw them coming, and they didn’t have the luxury of an airborne distraction. Nero’s camera view showed only a blur of scales, claws, and teeth. When the dust settled, two dragons were down: one of theirs, and one of ours.

“Shit!” I said. “We lost an infantry unit.”

Then another pair of Greaves’s ground dragons appeared and we were too busy to lament the loss. Which might have been for the best, because there were others: another infantry unit that reached them first, and a flying model that strayed too close to the ground. Damn, they’re dropping like flies.

“Any more ground dragons?” Wong asked.

The dragonets were searching, their video feeds all scrolling different directions across the vale. While that happened, I fed all of the video they’d recorded so far through Connor’s dragon-detection algorithm. It picked up the enemy dragons as well as our own infantry units, but no others. “I think we’re clear.”

We pressed forward, climbing down from the ridge into the protected vale beyond. Into the battleground. I hope I’m right. The remaining infantry dragons formed up and quested across the ground in front of us. It offered some reassurance. But our activities had not gone unnoticed. No sooner than we’d walked fifteen steps, dark wings unfurled on the balconies of the steel building. Greaves’s flying dragons leapt into the cloudless sky. They didn’t come for us, nor did they engage the aerial units that had taken up formation just ahead. No, they shot up into the sky and went straight for my dragonets.

Oh hell. “Korrapati!”

“I see them.” She sent the aerial units skyward but they had a ways to go. And Greaves’s flying dragons were fast. It seemed that they’d figured out the missing piece about the wing joints. I don’t know whether it was his bright orange coloring or the fact that he was the smallest of the pack, but they closed on Hadrian. He sensed them approaching and swerved just in time to avoid slashing claws. They swept past him, already banking to make another pass. I opened my duplex audio to Octavius. “Octavius! Hadrian’s in trouble.”

Octavius folded his wings and dove toward Hadrian, with Benjy close behind him. The other dragonets continued providing air support. At least, I think they did; all I could watch was Hadrian dodging the bigger flying dragons while Octavius and Benjy streaked toward him. They had to see the size of the enemy dragons. They had to know it was practically suicide to challenge creatures purpose-bred to kill. In the same way, I didn’t want to watch but I had to. They slammed into the lead dragon simultaneously. It broke off its pursuit of Hadrian, snapping back at them. They kept away from its head, harassing it about the midriff. Which would have been fine if there weren’t another aerial dragon right behind it.

I saw it coming. “Octavius, watch behind you!”

But the big dragon had already swept forward at them, claws extended. I winced as they disappeared under it.

Then they both broke off to either side. The rear dragon tried to backpedal but instead flew right into the other one. Clever, boys. Their wings and tails tangled together and then they were falling.

I pumped a fist. “All—”

The lead dragon whipped its tail up and wrapped it around Octavius’s leg. He squirmed but couldn’t get free. I watched, helpless, as they plummeted in a tangle of scales, teeth, and claws. Come on, buddy, get free!

He tried his best. I’m sure of that. But they were too low already. Falling too fast. They slammed into the hard, unforgiving earth. A plume of dust marked where they’d struck. In my heart, I knew nothing could survive that. I looked in desperation but nothing moved. Octavius’s video feed winked out.

He was gone.

I stood there, numb and unable to move. A dull roar in my ears blocked out every other sound. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. He wasn’t a soldier, born and raised for fighting. He should have been home asleep, dreaming about breakfast. I hadn’t even fed him anything on the way here. I’d wanted him light and alert. The thought that he’d gone hungry . . . it was too much. This was all a mistake.

I became aware of a tug at my arm. There was a sound, too, intruding on the dull roar.

“Noah!”

Korrapati’s face loomed into my field of view. “Noah!”

My mind was running on autopilot. I tried to brush her aside, but my arms had no strength.

“We have to go,” Korrapati said.

She was right. We had a small window of opportunity to infiltrate the main building. As much as I wanted to run out into the scree to find Octavius, we had no time. I stumbled after her up to the front door of the building. Wong was already there, hunched over a small tablet that he’d wired to a port beside the double glass doors. We reached the threshold in time to see them hiss open. Wong pulled his wire free, wrapped it around the tablet, and tucked it into a large pocket of his cargo shorts.

Cool air and the smell of fresh paint rushed out to envelop us.

Korrapati and I hurried inside and paused to take off our sunglasses. The plan was for Wong to stay outside and maintain a perimeter with our dragons.

My eyes adjusted as the ambient light came up; it must have been motion-activated. It was like we’d stepped out of the elevator onto the seventh floor of our building. Frosted glass walls on either side bordered the lobby. Assuming the layout was the same, the design lab would be to the right on the far side of the hatchery. “Well, this looks familiar.”

“You’re right, it’s the same,” Korrapati said. “How peculiar.”

“Did he design our building, too?”

“I think so.”

“Well, he’s done us a favor. Come on.”

We had to pass through the hatchery first, of course. Between the two sets of heavy doors were twelve hatching pods, six to either side. Same design as ours. Out here in the desert with no air pollution to contend with, they probably maintained perfect hatching temperature with very little effort. All of them were active, too. It was tempting to peer into the windows for a glimpse at their dragon eggs. Yet another luxury of time we couldn’t afford. The design lab was up ahead. We pushed through the heavy door back into the coolness of the dark space. Oddly enough, the sense of being in a seemingly familiar place was comforting.

Here we encountered the first aberration from the Build-A-Dragon corporate schematic. Instead of six workstations arranged honeycomb-style around the biological printer, there were just three. Two of them showed signs of use—scuffs and Post-it notes covered part of the work surface, and the floor was crisscrossed with wheel marks from the chairs. I told myself that was a good thing; it meant that Greaves hadn’t managed to recruit another genetic engineer beyond O’Connell and the Frogman.

Beyond the workstations was another piece of déjà vu: a large instrument the size of a minivan, bristling with metallic arms and wiring. Three conveyor belts connected it to the workstations; that was where the eggs came out. I squeezed between the center workstation and its conveyor belt to get at the heart of the machine. Beneath all the high-tech machine wizardry was a laptop-sized piece of silicon wrapped in plastic wires, lit by the steady flashes of old-school LED lights. The Redwood Codex. I had no idea what it truly did—only some educated guesses—but without it, Greaves couldn’t print viable dragon eggs. This was the prototype, which looked even more janky and cobbled-together than the one in Build-A-Dragon’s biological printer.

Hot air blew in my face as I pushed closer to it. There were two wires to disconnect. The first came unplugged easily, but the second wouldn’t budge. Crammed as I was up under the machine, I couldn’t get any leverage to pull it free. “Damn it!”

“What’s wrong?” Korrapati asked. She stood over by O’Connell’s workstation, rearranging his Post-it notes. He’d always hated that.

“I can’t get it loose.”

“Let me try.”

I yanked at the plug again, with no result. Might as well. I wriggled out and let Korrapati have a go. While she did, I took the liberty of lowering the Frogman’s desk chair to the lowest setting, and then removing the adjustment knob. I pocketed it and came back to check on Korrapati, who was backing out of the machine with the Codex in hand.

“You got it? How?”

“Strong fingers.” She handed me the Codex and scooted out from under the machine. “Careful, it’s hot.”

I took it eagerly and nearly singed my fingers as a result. “Jeez, you weren’t kidding. I always knew this thing was a fire hazard.” I tucked it into my knapsack and then helped her up. She managed to be graceful even crawling out from all the metal arms. “Remind me again why you’re single.”

She straightened, stretching in what was almost certainly an unnecessary display. “Who says I’m single?”

I held up my hands in mock surrender. It was the first time I’d borderline-flirted with Korrapati and it was weird. “Fair enough.”

My phone rang. Summer was calling. Either that was the universe reminding me that I had a pretty good thing already, or she had news. I touched my earpiece to answer. “Hey.”

“You’ve got company. Dark SUV.”

“Shit. How long do we have?”

“It just passed. Maybe three or four minutes.”

“All right. We’re coming out. You can jet.”

“On it. Be careful!” Her Jeep engine rumbled to life so loud I could hear it over the phone.

I hung up and turned to Korrapati. “We have to hurry.”


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