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CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

The Army

Korrapati and I hustled to the door that led to the hatching pod. I pulled the door open, straining at its weight but glad to see no one waiting on the other side. Greaves would have hired hatchers, and the people who took that job tended to obsess over it. We ran out of the building into the heat and bright sunlight. Wong must have heard us coming and assembled our remaining dragons to cover our departure. I checked my watch; it had been ninety seconds since Summer saw the SUV pass.

On my left was the route back into the desert and the truck, the planned egress. Even with the vehicle approaching, we were within our timetable. A short jog to the boulder cliffs and we’d be under cover, bound for freedom. Instead, my legs carried me to the right, into the scree and scrub brush. The dragonets were all flying there in tight circles, chattering to one another. With Octavius down, I had no way to talk to them. There was an urgency to the way they were flying.

“Noah?” Korrapati asked.

“I need a minute.”

“Do we have a minute?”

Not really, no. I didn’t answer her, though. I didn’t have a good explanation for what pulled me the wrong way with the weight of the Codex prototype heavy around my shoulder. I heard a quiet conversation between Wong and Korrapati behind me. Moments later, half of the surviving infantry units fanned out in the brush to either side of me, while two aerial units winged forward.

The brush was thicker here in the deepest part of the vale. Boulders, too, were piled almost on top of one another. It was like every hard or uncomfortable obstacle had drifted down here just to be in my way. I pushed through it all, ignoring the scratches on my arms. There was no wind here, and the heat pressed in. It was hard to breathe. It got harder when I saw the glint of scales through the brambles. The bodies of Greaves’s flying dragons lay in a lifeless tangle on a jumble of sharp rocks. The adaptive camouflage that once made them so striking was gone now, leaving only a dull gray behind.

Even after what they’d done, seeing the enemy dragons so grotesque in death bothered me. They had been elegant creatures in the air. Dangerous, too. It infuriated me to think that they’d gone for the weakest aerial targets rather than picking a fair fight. There was a brutal caginess to that.

Octavius was clever, too. The smartest little dragon I’d ever met. It was so like him to take on dragons four times his size. What had he been thinking? Maybe he hadn’t been thinking. Like me, he saw Hadrian in trouble and just acted. And yet I couldn’t find him. As much as it would break me to find him crumpled over the rocks like these, I couldn’t leave him out here alone with them. I couldn’t see him anywhere, though. Then I heard it, a soft noise.

“Noah!” Korrapati called.

I shushed her. Maybe I imagined it. No, there it was again. I grabbed the top dragon by the limb that was not broken at a horrifying angle and pulled. It barely moved; the thing was heavier than I’d expected. I heaved, throwing my body into it and stumbling back into the cactus behind me. “Ow!” The flying dragon’s body slid free at last.

There was a small gap between the dragons, a pocket protected by the lower one’s crumpled wing. And there he was, tucked into it. “Octavius!”

He was alive. That was all I could tell as I gently plucked him out of the carnage and tucked him under my arm. His wings looked torn and I was pretty sure one was broken, but his eyes were still open. He made another little croon, so faint I could barely hear it. “Hang on, buddy.”

I jogged back to the building, not daring to check my watch. I knew it had taken too long. Korrapati and Wong called the dragons back and led the way to our escape route. My dragonets wheeled after them. Maybe they sensed the urgency. I hazarded a look at Octavius. His eyes were closed, and his breathing seemed labored. Between carrying him and the now-awkward satchel holding the Codex, I was struggling to keep up.

By the time we reached the boulder pile, they were a good distance ahead. They turned as if to wait, and have the dragons wait with me. “Keep going!” I shouted. Getting all of the surviving dragons back was almost as important as keeping control of the Codex prototype.

I kept checking on Octavius, but he wasn’t responding any longer. He felt warm, but I was worried even so. Between checking on him and lugging the bulky, uncomfortable Codex in my satchel—like the One Ring, it felt like it was getting heavier with each step—by the time I reached the top of the boulder pile, they were far behind. And then I heard it.

“Parker!”

Robert Greaves stood in the basin behind me. It could only be him. No one else wore a dark turtleneck and pants in this heat. His dark SUV was parked haphazardly in the clearing behind him, not close to the building. That meant he’d seen us running out. Or maybe seen our dragons. It didn’t matter which; both were bad.

I shouldn’t have stopped, but I turned and looked at him.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.

“Just reclaiming some stolen property.”

“Take all the dragons you want. We can make more.”

I snorted. “That’s what you think.”

His eyes flickered to my satchel, which until that moment he might not have seen. “Well, we can add larceny to your list of crimes today.”

I said nothing. Benjy had winged back and now circled overhead, listening in to our conversation. Nero and Otho joined him a moment later. In another minute, my entire cadre of dragonets would be here eavesdropping. I wished I had a way to tell them to keep out of sight.

“Looks like you brought some friends along,” Greaves said, glancing up at the dragonets. “But those aren’t production models.”

“They’re not your business.”

“Too small to be customs, though,” he continued. “You have permits for these animals, son? Or should we add harboring illegal animals to your growing rap sheet?”

That hit a little close to the mark, because I legitimately did not have any sort of paperwork for my dragons, including Octavius. And that could get me in trouble; as genetically created organisms they were supposed to be entered in a registry when they left our building. He was onto something, in other words, and I really didn’t care to pursue that line of discussion. “Sounds a lot better than espionage,” I said.

He shook his head. “Every time we talk, you’re in over your head.”

“You have no right to this.” I shook my satchel. “Just as you had no right to set fire to Redwood’s place.”

“Don’t talk about things you don’t understand. And that you can’t prove.”

This was getting old. I was hot and tired, Octavius hadn’t moved in a long time, and worse, the dragons were coming back. I could sense the infantry dragons creeping back up the rocks. Korrapati and Wong must have seen that I’d stopped and sent them back to cover me. Out of the corner of one eye, I saw the flicker of dust-colored wings. The aerials were back, too, gliding low across the cacti toward the rocks where I stood.

“We both know what these kinds of dragons can do. I don’t trust you with them. I barely trust myself.”

He stared at me for a moment, but with his dark sunglasses I couldn’t get a read on his face. “Competition in a free market is good for everyone.”

“It’s not always good.”

“Can you honestly say you’d have designed dragons as cleverly if we didn’t go for the contract?”

I opened my mouth to reply, but didn’t have the words. I hated it when he did that, when he said something that I couldn’t refute. Competing to build the best thing seemed very different from offering it to whoever could pay the most.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Greaves said. “So how about you worry about selling your dragons, and we’ll worry about selling ours.”

“Sorry, but you don’t have the right to sell dragons. You lost that right when, as you’ll recall, they fired you.” I started to walk off.

“Don’t be stupid, Parker. I’ve got a security team already on the way. Give me the Codex and I’ll forget I ever saw you and your unauthorized dragons.”

He’s bluffing. But I couldn’t resist the urge to look out across the valley for the sign of more approaching vehicles. I saw nothing, though that didn’t mean there weren’t some on the way. I’d told our lookout to leave, after all. I held Octavius and my satchel close against me. I shifted away again, toward escape. Which is how I saw that our dragons were close, just below the precipice where Greaves wouldn’t see them. I didn’t fear them. Even knowing how dangerous they were. What they could do. These were my dragons, in one of those moments of rare bravado inspired by Robert Greaves.

“You’re not leaving with my Codex,” he said.

“Your army’s not here yet.” I pointed behind him. “But mine is.” The infantry dragons prowled over the rocks and into view at that moment. Flying models soared up behind me like fighter jets at an air show. They circled him once, no more than an arm’s reach away. They must have sensed the threat he offered, and that made him a hostile.

With one shouted word, I could have told them to attack. I could have put an end to the thorn in my side that was Robert Greaves.

“Stand down,” I called instead.

Greaves relaxed a shade when the dragons left him and followed me.

I climbed down toward Wong and Korrapati. It was painfully slow going with the weight of the bag and only one free arm. The infantry models climbed down much faster, spreading out to either side of me like a security escort. They could go almost vertical on the rocks. They made practically no noise. Their light-adaptive skin rendered them almost invisible, especially when they paused to let me catch up.

“Show-offs,” I muttered.

Within minutes we had the animals back at the truck. Korrapati and Wong helped me load them in silence, and then we climbed into the cab.

“What was that about?” Korrapati asked, as she started the truck. She must have heard.

“Nothing. Let’s get the hell out of here.”


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Framed