CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Trial
We convened in a large, utility concrete structure near another ten-foot chain-link fence, this one plastered with signs reading weapons range—keep out. Beyond these lay a rugged landscape of scree and cacti, most of it too dense to see anything useful. The building itself was at least two stories tall, and the concrete glistened as if recently poured. Still, I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. Even if we stood on the roof of the structure, we probably wouldn’t have much of a view.
A man and a woman in Army fatigues led us down a long flight of stairs into the semidarkness. There, we encountered a security checkpoint that made Build-A-Dragon’s procedures look Mickey Mouse. Our escorts keyed us in through two steel doors that led to a small kind of anteroom. There, two more soldiers, both dudes, both of them huge, asked to see our IDs—mine and Evelyn’s—which they passed under a scanner interface discreetly tucked into an alcove in the wall. Meanwhile, yet another pair of soldiers—both women, and both cradling automatic weapons—watched the proceedings with impassive expressions.
We stood there in silence for at least ten or fifteen awkward seconds. I couldn’t decide where to look, and settled on my hands, which I held carefully in front of me. Then a buzzer sounded, everyone relaxed, and I started breathing again. Our escorts pulled open the inner doors. We passed through and entered a large, well-lit room. A few more personnel with a decidedly tech-savvy vibe occupied the workstations along both walls—some typing on keyboards, others speaking softly into headsets. I registered their presence for a brief moment before my eyes were drawn to the far wall, which was lined with high-definition flatscreens. Not projection monitors, but next-gen display mesh that even we couldn’t get out hands on yet. Of course the military had it, and they put it to good use. The definition was incredible. It was like using your own eyes to look at something with a pair of binoculars. There were four rows of four panels each, each one rotating through a few video feeds. Some showed areas inside the bunker, like our security checkpoint, but most were exterior views showing rocky desert terrain or sun-drenched buildings.
For a brief moment, I remembered the first time I’d been inside Ben Fulton’s office at Build-A-Dragon. It was called Reptilian Corporation then, and I’d been getting ready to start my first day. The guy would have loved it here. The cameras shifted and pivoted views so quickly, it had to be controlled by some sort of AI. In harmony, they all shifted to show the same dilapidated stone building. It was two or three stories high, with several windows and a single door out front. I thought I saw a flicker of movement inside, but it was hard to tell. Then all the views pivoted away, and it was gone.
I leaned in to Evelyn. “Do you have any idea what’s happening?”
“No.”
“Got to admire the tech, though. When can we get some of these monitors?”
“When we get the contract. Maybe.”
The soldiers who’d escorted us stood up straighter—which I hadn’t believed possible—as Major Johnson swept into the room. He waved the tech operators back to their chairs before they’d finished standing, and turned to greet us. “Dr. Chang, Dr. Parker. Good to see you again.”
“Good to see you, Major,” Evelyn said smoothly. “And please, call me Evelyn.”
I shook his hand. “You can call me Parker, if you’d like.” Fulton had done that. I kind of missed it.
“I like your style, Parker,” Johnson said.
“Is this a new facility?” Evelyn asked.
“Some of it, including this bunker. The range has been mothballed for a while.”
“What was it used for?” I asked.
Johnson gave me a flat look, and then looked back at the monitors. “Something else.”
“Right. Sorry.” I kept forgetting who these people were and how little they were allowed to talk about their jobs.
Evelyn swept in to my rescue. “Will Major Nakamura be joining us?”
“She’s watching from the other building.”
The other building, where our competitors are, I thought grimly. Evelyn pursed her lips, and I gathered she’d had the same suspicion. We all knew Nakamura was the shot caller. The fact that Greaves had her at his elbow wasn’t a good sign. Nor was it an accident, most likely. Our former boss was good at worming his way close to influential people.
Evelyn started to ask a follow-up, but one of the operators cleared her throat and said, “Major?”
Johnson acknowledged this with a nod, and drew our attention to the monitors. “It’s starting.”
The camera angles shifted again to the run-down building. Holes pockmarked the worn stone surface, and there was no front door. Without warning, gunfire erupted from two of the windows. The staccato bursts caught me off guard, and I nearly stumbled into Evelyn.
“Those are simulators,” Johnson said, pointing to each of the windows where the guns had gone off. “Not live rounds, but made to look and sound like them.”
I’d let my eyes drift to some of the other monitors, the ones that showed the boulders and crags of the surrounding landscape. There was a flicker of motion, and then the loping, almost elegant movement I’d come to recognize in our attack dragons.
I nudged Evelyn. “Here they come.”
The dragons flowed across the broken landscape with almost preternatural grace. Their camouflage hid them well, but not so well that we couldn’t watch their progress toward the bunker. When they reached open ground, I could count them. Five dragons, with one out front, two behind it, and two behind those on the outside.
“Look at that,” Evelyn said softly.
“That’s a wedge formation,” Johnson told us. “Infantry tactic. Looks like your dragons took to their training.”
We’d kept the prototype eggs in the hatchery for most of their incubation period, but allowed the military to take possession before they hatched. The idea was that they’d imprint on the soldiers who did their training. They were domesticated animals, and theoretically as trainable as dogs or cats. Still, it was reassuring that this held true for some of the most intense training in the world.
Evelyn was telling the major the story of how we’d finally cracked domestication, but I listened with half an ear. The dragons were approaching their target. The first two moved to flank the door and held their position. The ones behind them charged through the doorway, colliding with one another and getting stuck for a moment as they did. The flanking dragons waited a beat and then followed them, disappearing into the darkness with a flick of their long, desert-colored tails.
The enemy “combatants” were lifelike dummies holding replica weapons. So the major told us at least; if there were cameras inside the target building, we didn’t get a feed. Instead, we had to rely on the play-by-play from the operators.
“Target one is down.”
“Targets three and four are down.”
A few more seconds passed, and then came the word. “Target two is down. All targets neutralized.”
“Time?” Major Johnson asked.
“Fifty-five seconds from breach.”
The major looked at me and Evelyn, smiled, and gave us a nod. I wasn’t an expert in these things, but it seemed like we’d done well. Take that, Robert Greaves. The best news was that it had happened so fast, he wouldn’t have had time to take many notes on our dragons.
“Ten minutes to reset,” said one of the operators.
“Are they going to do it again?” I whispered to Evelyn.
“Yes, but not for us. It’s Robert’s turn,” Evelyn said.
“Oh. Right.” In the excitement of our dragon’s success, I’d nearly forgotten about our competition.
I excused myself from the operations center and managed to find a restroom. I couldn’t bring myself to go, even though my bladder felt like it wanted to burst. My whole body felt clenched. I compromised by washing my hands twice, and drying them four times. The routine motions helped. Greaves was Greaves, and it wouldn’t help me to hide in the bathroom while his dragons undertook their field trials. We didn’t know anything about his operation or plans, and we needed to. So I forced myself to get out there.
Of course, the moment I walked back in the command center, the simulated gunfire started up again. I nearly wet myself in what would have been a moment of humiliating irony. But I clenched my teeth and went up to stand beside Evelyn. She scanned all of the screens, frowning, her brow furrowed in confusion.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I don’t see them.”
The AI that controlled the video feeds seemed to be having the same problem. The cameras panned left and right, zoomed in and out, and swiveled. When nothing appeared, we all inched closer to the monitors for a better look.
“Front of the building,” Major Johnson said suddenly.
Several screens blurred as their cameras pivoted that way. I didn’t see anything at first. Then a shadow appeared on the wall beside the door. A gray-brown dragon’s physique appeared for a heartbeat, then disappeared just as quickly. What the hell?
“Where did it go?” asked one of the operators.
“It’s still there,” Johnson said. “Look.” He traced the outline of a dragon-like shape on the monitor. The edge shimmered against the backdrop whenever the thing moved. “Looks like some kind of active camouflage.”
Evelyn caught my eye, and the explanation came to me.
“It’s a chameleon,” I said. And here I thought my degeneration pigments were so damn impressive.
“Very clever,” Evelyn said, in the tone of a grudging compliment. Greaves had clearly found someone who knew what they were doing.
Judging by the way Johnson was glued to the screen in front of him, he agreed. And it only got worse form there. The dragons’ long and slender bodies served them well in the urban terrain. They had no trouble negotiating the entry—one of them even scaled the wall like a creature from an old sci-fi movie.
“All targets neutralized,” said the operator.
We didn’t even get a play-by-play. It had been fast, too. Major Johnson asked for the time again.
“Thirty-three seconds from breach.”
They’d nearly cut our time in half. Not only that, but they did it with flair. Hell, even the operators had had trouble spotting the dragons before they approached the doorway.
Johnson’s phone rang. He glanced at the screen and answered before it got to a second ring. “Major.” He listened for a few seconds. “Copy that.” He hung up and looked at us. “So far, so good. Your dragons met all performance objectives.”
Evelyn and I looked at each other. But so did Greaves. And his times had been faster. Unfortunately, it only got worse from there. Our dragons did well on the next exercise—which tested their speed and agility—but again, the other team’s were faster. On the one after that, a strength evaluation, they had the edge yet again. The final test combined stealth and endurance: a long run along the bottom of a rock-strewn ravine, then over the top of a ridge, and through another ravine. Our dragons had a slight edge on time—that told me a little bit about how the other team had made theirs so fast—but the bigger part of the evaluation centered on stealth. Camouflage was well and good, but the opposition’s chameleon-like dragons were practically invisible. I grew more and more dejected as the competition wrapped up.
When it was over, Evelyn and I walked out in silence, shadowed by our wordless guards. Maybe it was my imagination, but they seemed a bit more stiff and a shade less courteous than they’d been on the way in. Evelyn waited until we were outside in the baking-hot sunlight before she turned at me and pressed her lips together.
“I know.” I put up my hands to keep her from saying what I already knew to be true. “We lost.”
She frowned and stared back at the test facility. “I’d hoped that he put in a competing bid just to make our lives difficult. But based on what those dragons did . . .”
“He came to play,” I finished. Greaves one, Build-A-Dragon one. No wonder he’d seemed so confident. Like a fool, I’d written it off as alpha-male bravado. Yet if he really wanted to beat us, this was going to be a lot harder than I’d thought.