CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The Handoff
When we met Summer at the rendezvous point, Octavius still hadn’t woken. His breathing was light and shallow. The A/C in the cab of the truck seemed to bring a bit of color back to his scales, but I was still worried. I handed him off to Summer.
“Oh, God, what happened?” she asked.
“He got tangled up with some other dragons and fell.”
She cradled him gently and carried him to the front seat, concern etched in her face. Then I had to turn my attention to the cloud of keyed-up, concerned dragonets. It took two minutes to settle them into the backseat of her Jeep.
“Calm down, guys,” I said. “I’m sure he’ll be okay.” Then I turned to her. “If he wakes, see if you can get him to drink something.”
“I thought I was supposed to follow you to the Farm,” she said.
“Change of plans. We can handle going to the Farm if you can get the dragonets home.”
“Are you sure?”
Hell yeah, I’m sure. Too many dragons had already died today. If I lost Octavius on top of that, I wasn’t sure I could bear it. “It’ll make me feel better to know he’s safe with you.”
“All right.” She hugged me. “Be careful.”
Korrapati, Wong, and I took the rest of the dragons back to the Farm and got them into their holding pens. We were three short, but I was hoping no one would notice. I did feel bad leaving our casualties out in the fields where they had fallen. I started to wonder what the military would do with the dragons that fell in the field. It wasn’t clear if the credo of no one left behind applied to animals. Probably not, by my guess. Best not explore that line of thought.
The drive with Wong and Korrapati brought little relief. We were hot, we were tired, and I imagined that we were all more than a little bit worried that Robert Greaves had caught us in the act.
“How is Octavius?” Korrapati asked.
I sighed. “I’m not sure. I hope it’s just heatstroke or something.”
“Me, too.” She paused, and cast a nervous glance at me. “Do you think he’ll say anything?”
“He’s not really a talker. The only word he knows is medicine. Long story.”
“I meant Robert Greaves.”
“Oh, him. I honestly don’t know.” He couldn’t really gripe about taking back the Codex, but we’d technically broken into his building. Worse, he knew we’d deployed our weapons-grade dragons in the field. There hadn’t been much legislation in the area of aggressive reptiles—mostly thanks to the devoted efforts of Build-A-Dragon’s high-priced lobbying firm—but it didn’t seem very different from aggressive dogs. Which were making quite the comeback now that the canine pandemic had ended.
“Our dragons did well,” Wong said, in characteristic oblivion to the mood of the truck.
“Wong! How can you say that?” Korrapati said.
“It’s true, no matter what.”
He wasn’t wrong about that part. The dragons had done well, as had their handlers. This was a victory no matter how you did the math. It just didn’t feel like one because of goddamn Robert Greaves. “Both of you did, too. You were lifesavers out there today.”
“So were your dragons.” Korrapati gave me a little smile. Then she shifted into fourth, which threw the gearshift very close to my sensitive parts.
“We got the Codex. Most important thing,” Wong said.
“No, we didn’t,” I said.
“What?”
“We got to the Codex and managed to destroy it so that Greaves won’t be able to print more illicit dragons.”
“I don’t understand,” Korrapati said, looking down at the bundle on my lap.
“Me, too,” Wong said. “No understanding.”
“First of all, we didn’t do anything today. Korrapati, you were across town eating at the Endless Pitabilities food truck. There’s a receipt on your desk. You had the chicken Parmesan.”
“How is there a receipt from today already on my—”
“The date on their printer is a day ahead. I went there yesterday.” I left out the part where I loitered for half an hour until an Indian woman of similar build walked up, just in case Korrapati’s alibi needed backup from security camera footage. Cameras were everywhere, after all.
“Uh, thanks,” Korrapati said.
“Wong, you’re not here either.”
He put on his little smile. “Where am I?”
“You’re at work, of course. Server logs show you were running simulations from your workstation all day. We really should give you a raise.”
“Yes, you should.”
I chuckled. “I don’t actually have the authority to give you one.”
“This is disappointing,” he said.
“On the bright side, you have a good alibi.” I paused. “You know that word, right?”
“Of course. American television.”
“Good.”
“You have another problem.”
I’d love to have just one problem. “What?”
“Lao-bahn.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll talk to the boss.”
I meant to arrive nice and early at work Monday morning, maybe even catch Evelyn before she started her grueling daily meeting schedule.
Sadly, that was not to be—Sunday night, I noticed a trickle of blood on Octavius’s snout. Cue all kinds of panic and a very expensive visit to an animal hospital that treated exotic pets without asking too many questions. Cash only. They could not find a precise cause of the bleeding, but we ruled out the scary stuff like pulmonary edema. That was some comfort, though it cost me my Sunday evening respite. Summer, too, did not enjoy this period; apparently after I ran out with Octavius tucked under my arm, his siblings feared the worst and took a long time to calm down. I was up another hour after getting home, because I insisted she go to bed while I cleaned up. She had a job, too, and she didn’t do well on too little sleep.
I overslept by almost an hour before I dragged myself in to work. So I came late, post–board meeting, to deliver the unofficial good news about our dragon-building competitor. This brought me face-to-face with Roger, the assistant we’d all insisted Evelyn hire when we were pulling crazy hours working on the DOD contract. She was plenty effective with her ever-present tablet but she was also gone so often that I could never find her.
Enter Roger. I don’t know where Evelyn found him—rumor had it, he grew up in Hong Kong—but he brought an almost insane level of efficiency to her office. Suddenly you could get face time with Evelyn if you really needed it and if her day wasn’t too crazy. The guy had her schedule memorized. He was always appearing at her shoulder to quietly tell her to go to the next thing.
Oh, and he was obnoxiously good-looking.
I mean next-level Korean soap opera star good-looking.
I approached his desk outside Evelyn’s office, which appeared to be dark. She had motion-detecting light switches, so that meant either that she hadn’t returned or was sitting very, very still.
“Nihao, Roger.”
“Good morning,” he said, with a perfectly polite smile. Any indication that I’d attempted to speak Mandarin to him was soundly ignored per usual. For all I knew, he didn’t speak it, though I was hell-bent on finding out.
“Evelyn’s not back yet?”
“She’ll be here in two minutes.” He didn’t have to check his watch or computer or anything. He just knew.
“All right.”
“Would you like to wait in her office?”
With the carnivorous plants was the unspoken end of that sentence.
“Sure, I guess. Thanks.” I walked past him, for some reason acutely aware of the fact that there was not a single wrinkle on his tight-fitting slacks and silky dress shirt. Meanwhile, I’d apparently worn my old shoes that were gradually separating from their treads, toe-first. I’d been in a hurry and couldn’t find my good ones. If I didn’t consciously lift my toes, each step was announced with a ker-clop. Mercifully, I made it to a chair by Evelyn’s desk without tripping over my own feet.
And then there were the carnivorous plants to contend with.
I took inventory of the Venus flytraps, pitcher plants, and other green monstrosities while I waited. The cobra plant was doing well. To my surprise, there were a couple of new additions: a waterwheel plant growing in a glass tank and a lovely little cape sundew on the sill. This last one was hard to get; they were native to South Africa but classified as invasive species in most of North America and Europe.
The clicking of heels announced Evelyn’s approach. I heard a murmured conversation outside, and then she bustled in. “Noah Parker.”
“Morning, boss.”
“You are looking comfortable.”
“Yeah, the Asian Ryan Gosling let me in. I hope it’s all right.”
“Ryan Gosling?”
“Good-looking actor.”
“I wish you’d stop saying that!” she whispered, a little too fiercely.
“Do you really not watch movies?”
“I am busy,” she said, with a touch of primness.
“I can see that.” I gestured to the new carnivorous plants. “Is that actually a cape sundew?”
“It is.”
“I’m impressed,” I said.
“Why?” She shrugged. “They practically grow themselves.”
“Yeah, sure, if you can get them. They’re illegal, you know.”
“It’s a grafted hybrid.”
“Hmm.” If that was true, then the plant was classified as a genetically modified plant, putting it neatly outside the import bans. Not to mention, bonus points for doing it with science. “Congratulations.”
“I feel like I should be the one saying congratulations.”
I did my best to put on a neutral face. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Do you know the first thing I did when I took over as CEO, after the whole canine debacle?” She activated her keyboard and brought up a new projection monitor in the air between us.
“Yeah.” I pointed to her cobra lilies, which had almost doubled in size. “You got those.”
“That was the second thing I did. The first thing was to improve security at the Farm.” She beckoned me to her side of the desk.
Uh-oh. I moved around and got a look at the screen. Yep, she had me on video at the control panel of the holding pens, flipping switches. Whoops. The last thing I’d been looking for was a camera.
“Care to explain?” She asked.
“It was only me.”
She brought up another video from a camera that must have been pointing down the row of cages. Wong and I were clearly visible, carrying a cage with an aerial dragon out of frame. “You were saying?”
“I hadn’t finished. I was saying, it was only me and Wong.”
In response, she brought up yet a third video with Korrapati and the truck.
I grimaced. This is bad. “And Korrapati.”
“I’m trying to remember when I gave you permission to remove dragons from their holding pens. Or even to go to the desert facility in the first place.”
“That’s because you didn’t give me permission.” There was no point in denying any of it now, not when she had me on video. I watched myself jog back to the control panel and flip another switch. Man, I look sweaty. It reminded me of an oddity I’d nearly forgotten. “Funny thing, though. That control panel had a security keypad on it. I didn’t know the code, but it decided to unlock itself right when I needed it to.”
Evelyn put on her stony face, but the corner of her mouth flickered upward. “Strange.”
“It’s almost like we had help from an unseen benefactor with security override permissions, which I certainly don’t have.”
She leaned forward, her eyes sparkling. “So, where is it?”
“What?”
“The Codex prototype.”
“Oh, that. It was destroyed.”
She frowned. “That’s unfortunate.”
I paused, because now I was going off script from what I’d planned. “I didn’t really have a choice. Greaves showed up out of nowhere.”
She frowned. “He caught you?”
“Kind of, yeah. I wasn’t expecting anyone to show up on a Saturday.”
She sighed. “Robert works on Saturdays.”
“Ah.” That information would’ve been useful a week ago, I didn’t say. This was the disadvantage of keeping Evelyn out of the loop so that her hands were clean. She knew things I didn’t.
“So what happened? Did he talk to you?” She asked this rather casually, but I sensed she was keen to hear the answer.
“A little bit.”
“What did he say, exactly?”
“The usual Robert Greaves crap. I wasn’t really listening.” That was only half a lie. It had been crap. I was pretty sure of that.
“He is not trustworthy.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. But he’s out of the game, for now at least.”
“I suppose that’s true.” Her brow furrowed with concern. “Was everyone all right?”
“The humans were.” I didn’t tell her the rest. If she had security footage and could count, she already knew.
“That is what matters,” she said.
“Yeah.” I looked away from her, trying unsuccessfully not to think about the dragons. “I should get back to work.”
She put her hand on my arm. “You did well, Noah Parker.”
“Thanks.”
I left her office, not quite on the cloud nine I’d been expecting. I passed Roger on my way out.
“Thank you for coming by,” he said.
“Zài jiàn,” I said. See you later.
Still nothing.
“Worth a shot,” I muttered to myself, and headed back down to design.