Page 11 of Flames and Blood

“Why?”

“Because you look tired and I’m making conversation. If you’d rather sit there in silence for six hours, be my guest, but one of us has a book, and the other one has a drain in the floor.”

His mouth opens and shuts again.

“Three,” he says. “Two after midnight. It’s not a hard site.”

“It’s not a hard site because there’s nobody in it?”

“There’s going to be.”

“Is there?” I let my head rest back against the wall. “I walked the whole block coming in. Both sides. Every door open and nothing behind any of them.”

“That’s not— They told us it fills up.” He shifts in the chair. “That’s what the induction says. Forty on this wing when it’s running, more when the far side’s done, and the far side isn’t done, it’s walls and cable. They had us learn a rotation for forty.”

“How long have you been running a rotation for forty?”

He doesn’t answer that.

“Sir,” I say.

“Don’t call me sir.” Then, quieter: “You’re the first one so far.”

“Lucky me.”

“You’re not supposed to be here long either.” His pen stops. His whole face stops. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Said what?” I close my eyes. “I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about your razor.”

I wait for him to say something else, but he doesn’t. He logs from the near desk until the shift bell, and I lie there with my eyes shut and my face doing absolutely nothing.

I run through the handful of details I’ve been gathering.

This place is brand new. Too new for occupants. It’s still under construction. But someone’s set a wing of it up with guards and a roster and put me here, away from the regular pipeline. The blood still goes out on a cycle. Whatever it’s for, it isn’t some sicko with a taste for dragon.

What the fuck are they doing with it? Why am I here?

I think about it until my head aches, and I’m no closer to an answer. Then I doze off, because sleep is all I have in here.

In the afternoon, a maintenance man comes through with a stepladder and sets it up at the near corner of my bars, reaching for a hall light that’s been buzzing since morning. His eyes are on the light. His shoulder is a hand’s width from the bars. His wrist is closer than any wrist has been in days.

My dragon comes up fast, straight at him. My hands curl. My back teeth grind together.

No!

I turn my face to the wall and breathe. Slow. Boring. Sweat runs down between my shoulder blades while I do it, and holding still takes everything I have.

This one’s complacent. The kid who guards me is a rookie. That doesn’t mean the men outside aren’t ready for me.

I need to know more about this place.

He changes the bulb, folds the ladder, and leaves without one glance at me. He’ll never know how close he came.

My dragon is seething. Holding her used to be a decision I made once. Now I make it constantly.

I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling until the panels blur.

Breathe. Just breathe.