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Gideon frowns. “Will you come pick up the swords, or not?”
“You just want me to pick them up?”
He nods.
I don’t see how that could hurt any dragons. “Fine.” And who knows? Maybe I’ll get my hands on the swords and break free.
But as Gideon cuffs my hands behind my back and marches me out of the suite where I showered—we’re clearly in a hospital—out of the building, and around the corner, I pass hundreds of soldiers.
I also pass at least fifty ice-spear crossbows.
The sight of them sickens me.
And now I’m going with Gideon to help them study more things they think might kill dragons. It wasn’t that long ago that I wanted to kill dragons. I understand the desire, but this time, thanks to me, the dragons didn’t even attack. I like to think that I’d have taken that as a sign that we might get along with them and not massacred any of them.
As Gideon and I walk up to a huge domed tent, I struggle to take in the scope of it. Where do you even get a tent that’s the size of a Costco? “What is this place?”
“It’s our research and development headquarters.”
“Wouldn’t it make more sense to have this back in the US?” I ask. “I mean, especially if the scientists are all back there.”
As we walk through the doors, I finally understand why it’s here. This is where the dragons are. In massive enclosures with electrified perimeters, there are two water dragons and four earth dragons. In the first one, a dark brown earth dragon that looks like a frilled neck lizard is pacing back and forth.
When it sees me, it stops and hisses, the frill around its neck standing out. I remember his name—Phileas. I think that’s it. He shrieks loudly, slamming his massive front feet against the ground. He even slams against the side of the pen, being electrocuted for his trouble. I can’t help cringing a little when he falls to the ground and starts writhing in agony.
Next to him, there’s a bright yellowish-brown dragon that looks like a horned toad, wide and squatty, and covered with dark blotches. The horns at the front of his head curve backward, almost reaching his back. His nostrils flare, but otherwise, he doesn’t move. I don’t recall his name, but he was on a few different perimeter sweep crews with Rufus at one time or another.
The blue dragon the closest to me is on her back, tubes and lines running into her from all sides. Her eyes are closed, and somehow they’ve managed to penetrate her scales. She looks sedated. There are whole sections of her hide that have been removed, and internal organs glisten underneath. A dark, reddish-brown goo is leaking out of the open areas and puddling on the ground beneath her. I can only tell she’s female from the extra layer of facial horns that all the female water dragons seem to have.
The other blue dragon’s the color of a sky on a spring morning, and she’s lying, listless, on the ground. Her tongue’s hanging out just a little, and her eyes are glazed over.
One of the earth dragons is stuck under what looks like a glass dome, and it’s coiling and twisting and moving around constantly, like an angry grass snake that’s big enough to eat the pest control truck. Its eyes flash—but as I’ve never seen it before, I don’t even know whether it’s male or female. The earth dragons don’t seem to have any kind of head frills that delineate, and unlike the electro dragons, the females don’t have daintier heads, either. There’s something spread all over the floor of its enclosure, and I don’t know what it is, but when one of its coils touches the powdery stuff, its scales smoke.
“What’s happening in here?” I can barely get the words out. “What are you doing?”
Gideon leads me past those dragons to the last one, the one I could barely see. It’s dark brown—almost black—and it looks like the quintessential Chinese dragon, with a large, square head, covered in long and short whiskers that shift and change, with two large, impressive front legs, but no back legs. Its powerful body tapers down near the end of its body into a very long, very muscular tail with a pronounced spiny ridge that runs down its back all the way to the forked end. When it sees me, it hisses loudly.
“We’re learning all we can about the dragons now that we’ve created the technology to contain a few.”
They’re torturing and experimenting on them. I want to ask him whether it feels wrong to him. I want to ask how he can sign off on this kind of treatment. But I can’t. If I do, they won’t let me near my swords. They won’t give me any chance to escape. I’ll be stuffed back in that tiny cell and left to rot.
Or killed.
Clearly the people here know how to eliminate any threats with extreme prejudice. As we walk past each dragon, I note clumps of humans gathered around computer screens, as well as several soldiers with crossbows slung over their backs, monitoring.
I don’t want to make it obvious, but I’ve counted at least eighty people in here, half of them soldiers. And presumably, they feel somewhat confident in their ability to keep the beasts contained in their cages.
“Here are the blades.” Gideon finally stops in a small enclosure with small, temporary walls just beyond the last dragon cage. “As you can see, they’re sunk into the concrete floor.”
He’s right. Both of them are face down, and sunk at least six inches into the concrete foundation.
“Not many human blades could even penetrate concrete, much less sink in on their own like this.”
I blink. “And you want me to, what?”
“Hello, Ms. Chadwick.” A man with light brown hair, neatly combed, wearing a white lab coat stands up and salutes. “Thank you for coming to help us.”
I want to tell him I’m not going to help. I want to tell him to go to check out a local volcano, but I don’t. I grit my teeth.
